Somewhere Close to Happy: The heart-warming, laugh-out-loud debut of the year

by Lia Louis

  The clopping footsteps get closer, and within seconds, a woman rounds the corner; pretty, mixed race, with a warm smile and square black-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Hello, there,’ she says, and holds out her hand. I shake it. My palms are icy with nerves. ‘You’re looking to talk to Ramesh?’

  I nod. ‘Yes please, if that’s possible.’

  ‘Sure. He’s on a call at the moment,’ the woman says, ‘but you can come and wait outside his office. I’m Charlotte.’

  I nod again, stiffly. ‘Thanks.’

  Charlotte gestures for me to follow her with a turn of her head, and she begins walking but my feet won’t move. I cannot walk down the corridor knowing I could walk right into him, like I used to. If he’s here, if he works here, I need to know now so I can ask for him and not just spring up in front of him.

  ‘Excuse me, does Roman work here?’ The words come out loud and rushed.

  Charlotte stops. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Roman,’ I say. ‘Do you have a man here, named Roman?’

  Charlotte shakes her head. ‘I’m afraid he’s not around now.’

  ‘But he was?’

  Charlotte nods again and looks quickly at a dangly silver watch at her wrist. ‘He did a workshop. Think he was only here a week, maybe two. Couple of months back?’ Charlotte eyes me, a flash of worry passing over her face. I realise my lips are parted in a slight gawp, my eyes wide. ‘Is he a … friend of yours?’

  I don’t respond other than something that tries to be a nod.

  ‘Ramesh should be finished soon. Come and take a seat.’

  The familiar smells, the sounds of footsteps that don’t echo, of voices behind closed doors, make my legs wobble. Then I hear him. Ramesh. Muffled, but voice exactly the same as I remember it. Charlotte seats me at the end of the corridor on a black padded chair outside Ramesh’s office, a room we once used for one-to-ones. He didn’t really have an office when we were here. He shared the tiny reception admin office with Cassie and Ian, the caretaker-stroke-handyman who would answer the phones when they were both in classes, shovel hands mucky from working in the gardens or decorating. We never had a Charlotte, who sits behind a white modern desk inside a tiny room opposite Ramesh’s and has bookshelves and a computer with a large screen, with the door pushed to. The Grove looks cleaner, shinier. But smaller.

  I listen to Ramesh chatting behind the closed office door, and look up, when at the end of the corridor, a girl in high-waisted jeans and a cropped white T-shirt, rushes to a classroom a few doors down. I catch the tail-end of someone talking about Othello as she opens then closes the door behind her. I am there. I am hurtling backwards to those classrooms, those therapy rooms with Roman, with Ramesh, as if on a rollercoaster. I feel as though every cell of my body is made of electricity, banging and fizzing as they collide under my skin. I remember everything so clearly. The day I started. The penises Roman painted in art. The lunches on benches, the syrupy smell of Dr Pepper and Wispa bars. The rain, the blistering sun, the laughter, and the tears that told the stories – so many of them, told to the empty space in that loose, scatter of a circle in group therapy. The time Jade and I planted potatoes in the vegetable patch and sang Abba songs, before she punched Mitchell G in the face for calling her a ‘fuckin’ she-male’. (She broke his nose. He cried.) The day we made bread, the day a dance teacher came in and none of us wanted to do it, but by three o’clock, were all dancing a messy routine to Destiny’s Child with silver canes, Roman and the two Toms in feather boas and trilbies. The days of sudden empty chairs, of leaving lunches. The day Cassie told me Roman was in hospital and I cried so much, I was sick in the staff loo. The day I left to go back to school and had to say goodbye …

  The door opens beside me, in one swoop. I jump, look up. And it’s him. It’s Ramesh. The man who helped me build everything, slowly, back together again, painstakingly, one brick at a time. He stands, staring at me. When I smile, his face slowly explodes into a grin.

  ‘Oh my god. Lizzie! Lizzie James!’

  I rise to my feet quickly, and as I do, I put my arms around him. It’s involuntary, like seeing an old friend, and I suppose that’s because it is; he was once one of my only friends. He envelops me in a tight cuddle, and I remember the last and only other time he did this – the day Roman disappeared.

  He stands back, bringing his hand to his open mouth.

  ‘I- I mean, I …’ He laughs again. ‘I really am speechless here.’

  ‘You look the same,’ I tell him. ‘And I am loving the whole silver fox thing.’

  I’m trying to keep my composure, keep up the smiling, with-it, ‘I’m better now’ Lizzie James facade. But every inch of me is trembling, inside and out.

  Ramesh holds open his arms. ‘Come in,’ he says. ‘Sit down. Talk to me, tell me everything.’ I step through to the old therapy room – Ramesh’s office – the walls within which I used to unravel. He calls through to Charlotte to bring in some tea and water and closes the door.

  ‘Gosh,’ he grins. ‘Lizzie James. I’ve been waiting for this.’

  There is silence between Ramesh and me. After the initial pleasantries are done – the ‘so, how’ve you been’s and the ‘what have you been doing with yourself ’s, and after we’ve reached forward to the tray of mugs and settled back into our seats, sipping our tea, there is silence. Ramesh looks at me over the rim of his mug.

  I don’t know where to begin. I have so much to ask, so much to say, but it’s like when something is too full. It gets jammed. My mind has no idea where to start. Everything from twelve years ago, the letter, Edgar Fields, him turning up – supposedly – to Hubble’s funeral but never actually showing, the ‘form’, all I have learned, everything just sits in one giant mass in my mind.

  Ramesh leans forward, putting his mug on the desk, and rests his wrists on the counter, his fingers knitting together. He has a lovely face. Warm eyes and a warm smile, and skin that looks impossibly young when he is clean-shaven. But he must be at least forty-one or forty-two now. I vaguely remember a thirtieth birthday when we were at The Grove.

  ‘I’d ask what brought you here,’ he says, ‘but I think I know.’

  ‘Do you?’

  He smiles, but it doesn’t meet his eyes. ‘Roman.’

  I nod. I wait for him to say something else but he doesn’t. ‘I got a letter from him.’

  Ramesh’s dark eyebrows raise, and his eyes brighten. ‘So, he finally reached out?’

  ‘It was from twelve years ago. Dated the day he disappeared.’

  I slide the letter out of my handbag and push it across the table towards him. Ramesh hesitates but takes it, unfolding it with his long fingers.

  ‘Am I OK to read?’

  I nod, and he studies it, slate-grey eyes crinkling at the corners as he reads to the bottom. It’s the same look of concentration – a sort of full immersion – he’d wear when he listened to us. When we’d ramble and rant and sob and purge, everything from the inside, out. He always listened with everything he had. ‘Wow,’ he says, blowing out a long noisy breath. He folds it neatly back into its rectangle. ‘So, this is all you’ve had?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I tell him. ‘I mean, I’ve done some searching of my own, trying to track him down after I got this. That’s why I’m here. His brother said he called him from this number – from The Grove.’

  Ramesh nods, lips pressed together. ‘Bet that was a shock.’

  ‘Hearing he’d been here? Yes.’ The mug is hot against my hands, and I realise I am squeezing it hard, as if holding on for dear life. I place it on the table. ‘Massive. I guess when he left I put him miles away – seas away, lightyears …’

  ‘Sure,’ Ramesh says, rubbing his stubbly chin. A gold band on his ring finger glimmers in the light. ‘Roman and I stayed in touch. I got a phone call a few months after he left. He was quiet, quick to get off the phone, but I remember all he asked was if you were OK, and course, I told him … you weren’t.’ A flash of hot betrayal sears my chest. I rem
ember the flurry in which I stormed in to Ramesh that day, the desperation in my voice, the wanting to grab him by the lapels and shove him in the tiny office, make him call Roman’s social worker, the police, anyone, to help me find him. He was so calm, so relaxed, it infuriated me. ‘After that,’ Ramesh continues, ‘I didn’t hear for a while. He rang to tell me he was living with his dad; said they’d reconciled and he seemed happy. Then his dad passed away.’ Ramesh studies my face for a moment, waiting for a reaction. I nod, to tell him I already know. ‘He calls every so often, to check in, but a year or two can pass between calls. April was the first time I’d seen him since he was about twenty-three. He’s only visited a couple of times.’

  ‘So, he was here? A few weeks ago.’

  Ramesh nods. ‘He called, wanting to volunteer again. I was overjoyed. Having someone here of his age who’s actually been where they are …’ Ramesh pulls his mouth into a hard line. ‘ It’s huge for the kids. With mental health facilities like this, unity and stories of recovery, they can be so helpful and healing, as I’m sure you remember.’ Ramesh smiles at me, and a slow warm tingling travels over my skin. It’s a comfort – empowering – to have someone talk about something that’s seen as a quirk, a mood, something to ‘pull yourself out of ’, as exactly what it is: an illness. Something to be healed and treated. ‘So, he came down, helped us with a two-week music workshop we were doing. There was a lot of—’

  ‘Morrissey?’

  Ramesh laughs, grimacing. ‘Afraid so. Which stemmed a heated political debate, which of course, he revelled in. He was very popular with the kids. They loved him.’

  ‘I bet.’ I gulp away the ball forming in my throat.

  There’s quiet between us now – silence, except for the ticking of a clock, and the distant whirring and clicking of a photocopier machine. Ramesh sips his tea, but I can’t bring myself to drink. I feel sick. I can’t shake this feeling of unease. The atmosphere is thick, like smoke, and I find myself holding my breath, worried about what he knows, and what he might say, but at the same time, desperately wanting the words to pour from him.

  Ramesh breathes deeply. ‘I really did want to talk to you, Lizzie, to tell you that he hadn’t just disappeared. That he was OK. But … it was difficult to know whether to because you were getting on. And for someone that had been in such a bad way …’ He trails off. ‘So, I decided I wouldn’t, which was a tough one because I know how close you two were. And I am sorry if that wasn’t the right thing to do.’

  I manage a smile.

  ‘Plus,’ he sighs. ‘Roman never wanted me to.’

  I sit up. ‘But why? Did he – did he mention anything that happened? Something bad, that would cause him to run like that?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I asked, Lizzie, believe me, I asked.’ His voice is soft and calm. He always had this way of slowing my heart and my racing thoughts back then, simply by speaking, by listening to me and by reacting to the things I found impossible or terrifying, as if they had an end – as if they would one day be a loose end, tied, and forgotten. ‘I told him he should reach out to you, but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘But why?’

  Ramesh shakes his head. ‘I stopped asking that after awhile. I don’t know. But I am sure Lizzie James hasn’t left Roman Meyers’s thoughts once in twelve years.’

  Ramesh pauses and pushes back on his chair, turning away to the shelves behind him, and I’m relieved. My eyes are misting, the mound in my throat hardening, and I swore I would not cry here, today. ‘Where is it?’ he mutters to himself, running a hand along a row of binders. ‘It was here, Roman took it out. Bet he’s mucked up the system.’

  The way he is speaking of Roman in the present tense, as if twelve years haven’t passed, as if he never disappeared, as if I’m fifteen again and he’s grumbling about Roman losing his paperwork, as he always did, is dizzying.

  ‘Ah. Here we go.’ Ramesh pulls open a folder and passes it to me with a smile. ‘Our trip.’

  ‘Scotland? Are there … photos?’

  Ramesh nods. ‘Yep. Loads.’

  ‘Oh my god.’ I laugh, my hand at my mouth. ‘I forgot you took these.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ramesh smiles. ‘And please ignore my ridiculous haircut. It’s not until you look back on something like this that you realise how many things have changed. There are some bad fringes in there, some very, very bad sweatshirt choices.’

  I am barely listening, I am flicking through the binder, past text and leaflets and printed emails between people arranging the trip and a certificate of the grant The Grove received from a charity. Then I turn the page. Photos – a mosaic of them, covering the page. I can hardly breathe. I want to see his face, just as much as I can’t bear the thought of it.

  There’s Ramesh, grinning at the entrance of The Grove, among suitcases and backpacks, the class on the platform at the train station – and I see myself instantly, standing awkwardly, hands at my stomach, beside Jade and her white-blonde hair. No sign of Roman.

  There are images upon images of scenery – green hills and high cliff-tops – and a lot of Mitchell Geddes and Kai Browne, the confident ones, who I remember hijacking Ramesh’s camera and holding it high above their heads, looking up into it, with ridiculous expressions. So many smiling faces. Masks. You’d have never guessed.

  I turn the page. It’s him. Roman, laughing hysterically, his smile huge and white, eyes scrunched, a floppy maroon beanie hat pulled down on his head, his hair escaping from its edges, a mad mass of curls.

  It’s involuntary. I laugh – a burst. And my hand flies up to my mouth.

  Ramesh laughs too.

  ‘Oh my god,’ I say. ‘Look at him.’

  I turn the page, and then another, hungry for more, but then stop. Because there we are. Frozen in time. Roman and me, together. In fact, there are a few. Not just of us, but a class photo of us walking on the beach, a group photo of us in the hostel, décor straight from the seventies, rooms that all smelled of musty church halls, all of us eating sloppy beige food around a big table. There’s one of us all posing on the top of a cliff, another of a group of us eating ice cream, half of our faces just visible at the back, my hair windswept, Roman’s cheeks the colour of candy floss. There we are. Undeniable. Out in the fresh air, in the open. Together, side by side, at all times. And this one. This one I can’t take my eyes off. It’s the way I’m looking at Roman, who seems to be mid-chat, and I’m laughing – really laughing, mouth wide, cheeks pink. I wish I could remember what was so funny. I wish I knew what he was waffling about. Aardvarks. How Paul McCartney died years ago and the one we all know is actually an imposter. McFly and how, OK he’ll admit it, the album I gave him was ‘sort of decent’ but nothing trumps old school The Smiths or Mary J. Blige. Veggie burgers. Balls. Of course balls.

  ‘This is … surreal.’

  Ramesh nods and sips his tea. ‘Photos can be stirring. Moments caught in time, in a picture. Still quite an incredible concept.’

  My skin tingling beneath my top. ‘I haven’t seen his face for years. Not that he probably looks like this anymore.’

  Then it dawns on me that Ramesh knows exactly what he looks like. He knows exactly who he is – Roman as a man; an almost thirty-year-old man.

  ‘Well, he’s taller, if you can believe that,’ Ramesh smiles. ‘Hair’s a bit calmer, still got those ol’ cheek bones … still got the cheek, too, of course.’ Ramesh chuckles, leaning back on his chair. ‘Had a bit of a beard when he first turned up, too, but he’d sorted that out by the time he left.’

  ‘And is he … is he OK? Is he …’ My voice, tight and tiny now, trails off. The more he speaks, the more the vision of Roman as a man, in present day, grows and becomes more real and I just want to know – I want to know everything. I want to know he’s OK – really. I want to strike a line through the worries that have been plaguing me and dragging me further and further down since his letter found me. I want everything Ramesh has. ‘I mean, where’s he living? What’s he doing? Wh
ere is he?’

  Ramesh presses his lips together, and it’s the way he pauses, then leans forward, slowly, bringing his hands together on the desk that makes my heart sink to the pit of my stomach. ‘I … I really don’t know, Lizzie,’ he says. ‘He isn’t married or settled down, but then I doubt we ever expected wife, kids, mortgage, nine to five.’ He ducks to look me in the eye. ‘He gives nothing away. And I think that’s the way he likes to keep it.’

  Tears fill my eyes now, and how quickly they do surprises me. This feels hopeless. Another dead end. Ramesh watches me, and I think he’s going to speak again, but he doesn’t, and quiet falls over the room. Wind gusts against the windows, and autumn leaves drift to the ground through the glass. I look down at the binder in my lap, at the photo of Roman looking down at me, me hysterically laughing, nothing but sea and sky and the world behind us. Tongue. That’s where we were. And of course he got way too much joy from the name of that town. I remember how he kept saying it, kept saying how one day we’d bring Sea Fog here because it fit our ‘criteria’. It had everything. We ticked them off in our minds as we sat on that cliff, beside the building site, a field of half-finished wooden lodges. Barely any people, check. Somewhere far away, check. Somewhere that could definitely accommodate a wood-burning stove, check, check.

  ‘I feel free here,’ I remember saying to him, as we sat looking out to endless angry ocean and perfect, clear blue sky. And I don’t think I’ve felt as free since. The feeling of having so much good waiting for me, that I just had to get through this and there it’d all be. The feeling of having as many clean slates as I wanted, because nothing was too much to ask for from a world this powerful, this beautiful and vast. And yet, here I am, as free as I have ever been, but unable to move, to see beyond the cloud and the fog – fog that has been thickening slowly, every day, since I lost Hubble. Since I lost Roman. And now sitting here, miles from work where I should be on a Monday morning instead of making up doctor’s appointments … it just feels cruel. Cruel that he was here – right here. That he knew where to find me – has always known – but has never even tried.