by Jon Rance
Happy Endings
Jon Rance
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Jon Rance 2013
The right of Jon Rance to be identified as the Author of the Work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
eBook ISBN 978 1 444 77752 9
Book ISBN 978 1 444 77751 2
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.hodder.co.uk
To Mum and Dad, for everything
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
Aristotle
Contents
Kate
Four Years Later
Kate
Ed
Jack
Emma
Kate
Ed
Jack
Emma
Kate
Ed
Jack
Emma
Kate
February
Ed
Jack
Emma
Kate
Jack
Emma
Jack
Ed
March
Kate
Ed
Jack
Emma
April
Kate
Ed
Kate
Emma
May
Jack
Emma
Kate
Ed
Jack
June
Kate
Ed
Jack
Emma
Kate
Ed
Emma
Kate
Ed
July
Jack
Emma
Kate
Acknowledgements
This Twentysomething Life
This Thirtysomething Life
About the Author
Kate
‘It’s about doing something you love,’ said Jack. ‘Every single day waking up and doing the one thing you know makes you happy.’
‘Are you talking about Emma?’ said Ed with a pithy smirk.
‘Of course,’ Jack said with a smile. ‘Nothing makes me happier than knowing I get to wake up next to the thing I also get to do.’
‘I’m right here,’ said Emma with mock indignation.
‘That’s a compliment,’ said Jack.
Emma smiled, leaned across and gave him a kiss.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It makes me happy too. Sexy and convenient. I’m living the dream.’
We were at the pub around the corner from our little one-bedroom flat just off Balham High Road. The flat Ed and I had been in since university ended and we were thrust completely unprepared into the real world.
It was our weekly Sunday session, something that had just sort of happened. It began after Emma started dating Jack and now it was a part of our lives; intertwined to such a degree than none of us could imagine a Sunday without it. When we were kids it was the Sunday roast, but now, in our mid-twenties and all based in London, it was the pub. Lunch, newspapers and drinks, talking about everything and nothing.
‘And what makes you happy?’ said Emma, looking at Ed. ‘Apart from Kate, obviously.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied with a courteous smile.
Ed sat and looked at us for a moment. This wasn’t an easy question for him. Emma wasn’t being that serious and she probably didn’t care that much about the answer, but she didn’t know Ed like I did. I knew it bothered him. Such a strange thing, to imagine that happiness could bother someone. Annoy them, actually. But when you’re under as much pressure at work as Ed, happiness is the very last thing you can spend time thinking about. ‘I’ll let you know when I figure it out,’ said Ed.
I reached down and squeezed his leg and he turned and gave me a smile. Just then Ed’s phone beeped, as it did most weekends, and he looked down, read a quick email and then excused himself.
‘Sorry, work,’ said Ed, as though we didn’t already know. It was Sunday and, while the rest of the office world was taking its two-day hiatus, Ed’s maniac boss was still online and making sure Ed was too. Ed scurried outside.
‘And what about you, Kate, what makes you happy?’ said Jack.
Jack always started these sorts of conversations. He was a writer and always wanted to go deeper. Ed would talk about the price of stocks, football and work until the cows came home. Emma loved gossiping about which famous person she’d seen recently, what acting roles she was going for next and the latest on any reality show. I would talk about anything except work, but Jack always seemed to go back to the big questions. The meaning-of-life conversations you have when you’re seventeen and stoned for the first time with your best friend.
‘What makes me happy?’ I mused. I took a sip of my white wine and fingered my packet of Marlboro Lights. What did make me happy? It wasn’t a simple question. ‘This makes me happy,’ I said. ‘Sitting here on a Sunday with my best friends, feeling like this, drinking, talking, eating and not wanting it to end.’
‘Me too,’ said Emma. ‘I look forward to Sunday more than any other day. I dread Mondays.’
‘Why do you dread Mondays?’ said Ed, joining us again. ‘It isn’t like you have to go to work.’
‘Oh very droll,’ said Emma. ‘That’s exactly why I dread Mondays, actually, Ed: because it reminds me I don’t have a job.’
‘Yes you do,’ said Jack, always the first one to support Emma and her dreams of being an actress. I suppose with him trying to be a writer, they shared the same pain. ‘It’s just that your job isn’t nine-to-five, and you’re constantly auditioning to get rehired.’
‘And you’d be absolutely useless in a proper job,’ I said, smiling.
‘Oh, thanks,’ said Emma.
‘You’re welcome. Now, whose round is it?’ I said and we all looked at Ed.
‘Just because I earn the most it’s suddenly my round. Didn’t I get the last one?’
‘Stop being such a stingy git and get the drinks in,’ I said and then leaned across and gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Love you,’ I said with a smile.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Jack.
The boys went off to the bar, via the fruit machine, leaving Emma and I alone for the first time that day. Emma and Kate. Kate and Emma. Best friends since, well, forever. She looked at me with her gorgeous eyes and I knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth.
‘Have you spoken to him about it?’ she said.
‘Not yet.’
‘Oh, Kate, when are you going to do it?’
‘I don’t know. He’s talking about buying a house, putting down roots, getting a promotion at work. I don’t think he’s going to be into it and we’re still young. Plenty of time . . .’
‘But, Kate, you’ve talked about going travelling since we were
teenagers. Remember that week in Newquay? That night we sat on the beach looking up at the stars drinking Bacardi Breezers and smoking weed.’
‘The badly rolled joint that fell to pieces just after you lit it, you mean?’
‘And we had to ask those boys if they could help us skin up, but then you were so drunk you were sick all over that one boy’s feet.’
‘The one with the flip-flops!’
‘Yeah, that one,’ she said and we both laughed.
‘That was the night I told you I was going to be an actress and the night you told me all about going travelling. You made it sound like something you had to do.’
‘I do. It’s just . . . Now isn’t the right time.’
‘And when’s the right time going to be?’
‘I don’t know.’
A part of me knew she was right, but I couldn’t let myself agree with her. I loved Ed so much and my job was still just about the right side of bearable. I was only twenty-five, part of the London hip-erati; there was plenty of time left to travel. Plus, in a couple of years we’d have more money and we could do it properly.
‘I just want you to do what we dreamed about back then.’
‘I will, Em, and you will too. I know your big break is just around the corner.’
Emma smiled at me as the boys sat back down again. Ed put our drinks down, while Jack tossed two packets of crisps in the middle of the table. It was a beautiful day outside and the pub was packed with people just like us.
‘Jack’s got another one,’ said Ed, before his phone buzzed again.
‘Go on,’ said Emma.
Jack sat down next to her and Ed wandered off outside, phone to his ear.
‘Where will you celebrate your thirtieth birthday?’
‘That one’s easy,’ said Emma. ‘With you lot, in the pub.’
‘Kate?’ said Jack, looking at me expectantly. ‘What about you?’
I didn’t know what to say. Four years was a long time.
‘Who knows, right? You could be a successful writer. Emma could be a world-famous actress. Ed and I could be . . .’ I stopped, not quite sure what to say next.
‘Anything you want,’ said Emma, finishing my sentence for me.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Anything we want.’
Four Years Later
January
Kate
‘Love you,’ said Ed, holding my hands gently in his.
‘Love you too,’ I said. A wash of salty tears, which I’d been trying my best to keep in check until I was at least on the plane, suddenly leaked out and slid down my face. I pitied the unlucky person who had to sit next to me, a blubbery backpacker bound for Bangkok, for twelve hours. ‘I should probably get a move on. My flight leaves in forty minutes and I still have to go through security.’
We were at the departures gate at Heathrow: the final goodbye hurdle. People walked past, apprehensive-looking parents with children who clung tightly to their teddy bears, oblivious solo travellers playing with their iPhones, businessmen and flight crew, while Ed and I stood motionless, caught somewhere between the past and the future. It was why I loved airports, because they were neither a part of where you’d been or where you were going. They were a separate entity. A sort of purgatory between states of being that held the promise of adventure and freedom.
‘I just . . .’
‘What, Ed?’
‘I just wish you weren’t going, that’s all.’
The past week had been the Olympic Games of emotional blackmail. Ed had been quiet, depressed, loud, obnoxious, loving and every other possible state in the hope something would break me down and stop me from leaving. Now he was being morose. His whole being was dripping with sullenness.
Ever since that blustery November evening when I’d sat him down and explained I had to go travelling otherwise I’d regret it for the rest of my life, he’d had the same strained expressions of annoyance and incredulity. He couldn’t understand why I had to do it and, like a lot of men when placed in an uncomfortable emotional situation, he made it all about him.
‘Is it something I’ve done?’ were his first words.
‘Is this about me?’ were his second.
‘How can I change your mind?’ were his third.
I tried to explain it had nothing to do with him: I needed this for me. I conceived the idea after Nan died and left me some money; it wasn’t much, but sufficient for a year away and just enough left over for my half of the mortgage. I’d realised that, at twenty-nine, if I didn’t do something a bit impetuous right away, that would be it. My life would tumble headlong into middle-age and the usual suspects of marriage, kids and a fridge door full of mundane lists that would run my life forever. I needed time to breathe. When I was young I thought I was special and would do something amazing with my life, and then I grew up. I wanted that feeling back. I wanted to be amazing again.
The simple truth was I wasn’t completely happy. It wasn’t one thing in particular, but the combination of every aspect of my life not equating to a big, happy whole. My job in public relations was stressful and the initial excitement I’d felt when I started the job after university had been replaced with a depressing feeling of inevitability. I looked at the people higher up the corporate ladder and I didn’t want to become them: crushed by the weight of a career that sustained a life I wasn’t even sure I wanted. Every tiny facet of our lives seemed so depressingly settled in a way I hadn’t ever intended. I needed to get away. I needed a break. And, of course, there was the tiny fact that I’d really thought Ed would come with me.
‘I’ll be back before you know it. It will fly by,’ I said, trying my best to keep our last few moments together as civil and upbeat as possible. I wanted Ed to be happy for me. I wanted to see a spark of something in his eyes other than the lingering disappointment and bitterness that had kept me awake for the past week.
‘It will for you. You’re off travelling the world, while I’m going to be stuck here in depressing, miserable London, working like a dog for twelve hours a day just waiting for you to come back.’
‘You could have come too,’ I said, finally losing my patience as he made the same cloyingly annoying face he’d been making for the previous two months.
‘You know why I can’t come,’ said Ed in that oh-so-patronising voice of his.
I hated it when I felt like I was talking to city banker Ed. I imagined him at work in his giant phallic office, shouting at other miserable-looking suits and telling people to buy this and sell that, while nervous-looking secretaries served up coffee and biscuits, terrified of being scolded because the FTSE was down against the Yen. It wasn’t the Ed I knew and the Ed I loved.
‘But don’t you see. All the reasons why you’re saying no are the same reasons why I have to leave. I know you love me – I love you too – but it isn’t about that. I can’t keep going along pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t. I don’t want to wake up at forty and blame you for me not doing this. I want to be happy and this is going to make me happy.’
‘So what you’re saying is I don’t make you happy anymore,’ said Ed glibly.
‘Don’t be like that, Ed, please. I know this isn’t what you had planned for us and you think it’s a giant waste of time, but I don’t. Look, I don’t want to leave on an argument; can you please just be happy for me?’
‘Promise me one thing,’ he said, a sudden cloud of vulnerability descending upon his face. He reminded me of one of those children of the war, fleeing London during the blitz for the safety of the countryside. A sad little schoolboy standing by a steam engine while his parents cried and handed him a jam sandwich for the journey. All he needed was a raggedy old teddy bear under his arm and a pair of short grey trousers. ‘Promise me you won’t change.’
I suppose what he meant was, don’t cheat on me and not come back. I had no intention of cheating on Ed though and even if I was I wouldn’t have needed to go to such extreme measures. Plenty of men at work had shown enough int
erest in me and hinted that if I ever wanted to turn public relations into private relations, they would happily oblige. My trip wasn’t about men. It wasn’t about sex, Ed or having a quarter-life crisis, it was about me. It was something I had to do. For me. ‘Of course I’m not going to change. It’s just a six-month holiday, Ed, not six years in a kibbutz.’
‘Good, you’d better not. I want to marry the girl you are right now,’ said Ed, forcing a smile.
‘Come here you two,’ I said, turning to Jack and Emma, who had been standing dutifully behind Ed, waiting for their moment to say goodbye. We’d done everything with them over the last five years. They were our couple of choice: the two additional sides who made us a perfect square. They waded in and we had a group hug. Four late-twenty-somethings at Heathrow airport; it could have been a Richard Curtis film – except for the distinctly un-romantic-comedy air wafting towards me from Ed.
Emma had been my best friend since primary school and the one person who when I said I wanted to go travelling didn’t scoff or look disappointed, but supported it wholeheartedly. She encouraged me from day one because she knew what it meant. I would miss her and our chats terribly, Saturday mornings at Starbucks catching up on the week, bitching about the boys and gossiping about everything and nothing.
‘I love you all,’ I said, trying to stem the rising mass of tears that were forming a less-than-orderly queue behind my eyes.
‘Just make sure you’re back in time for my wedding,’ said Emma, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘You’re a bridesmaid, remember?’
‘I’ll be back by then. Promise. And fingers crossed for the film.’
I gave Jack a quick peck on the cheek and Emma a long tearful hug before I took one last look at Ed. I was afraid I’d forget what he looked like, which was crazy because I’d seen him every day for the past eight years. But it felt like once I stepped onto the plane his face would be wiped from my memory forever. The thick, dark hair with the schoolboy haircut I publicly mocked, but secretly quite liked. The steely blue-grey eyes, the long, thin nose, the high cheek bones, the slightly narrow mouth and the chin dimple; the sort of face that would look good on a coin. His weekend-casual outfit, which wasn’t actually that casual, as though he could never quite let go of his weekday self: navy blue V-neck jumper over white work shirt, khaki chinos, boat shoes and a long wool coat. Ed didn’t really do casual. At weekends, while I would slouch around the house in pyjama bottoms and old T-shirts, Ed wouldn’t go less than a pair of dark jeans and a freshly ironed polo shirt.