Thank You, Next: A perfect, uplifting and funny romantic comedy

by Sophie Ranald

  But then Frazzle started to squirm even more determinedly in my arms, his claws raking across my bare shoulder. He freed himself from my grasp, jumped down to the floor with an affronted meow and trotted off towards one of the corner tables.

  I hadn’t noticed Adam there. He had the D&D set open on the table and was drawing what looked like a massively complex map on a pad of graph paper. There was a pack of coloured felt-tip pens in front of him, pencils, a ruler and a book called The Mega Monster Companion, which I’d never seen before.

  I followed Frazzle towards him, and he raised his head, clocked me and hastily flipped the pad closed. Frazz jumped up on his lap and started to purr.

  ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to spy on you,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t think you were. I just didn’t want to spoil anything for our next game. I’ve got the day off work and I thought I’d come and do some planning here – it feels like I’m in the zone. How’s Frazzle?’

  ‘He’s a cold-blooded murderer. Do you know anything about birds?’

  I blurted out an explanation of the situation, and Adam got up, scooping Frazzle back onto his chair.

  ‘You keep that chair warm,’ he instructed the cat. ‘And stay here until you’re called. Understand?’

  Frazzle looked at him and blinked, like whatever Adam wanted was fine with him.

  ‘Thanks so much. I honestly don’t know what to do. It’s up on top of a door and I can’t reach it and I don’t know if it’s hurt.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Adam said. ‘Rescue mission under way.’

  We hurried up the stairs to my flat, and I opened the door cautiously, half expecting the bird to fly out into the stairwell and create a whole new set of problems. But it was still huddled where I had left it.

  ‘Right.’ Adam glanced around and picked up a T-shirt from the floor. ‘Okay if I use this?’

  I nodded and stammered out an apology for the mess, which Adam ignored.

  He approached the bird slowly, reached up and lifted it down, wrapped safely in the soft cotton.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘you just picked it up.’

  ‘It doesn’t know yet to be afraid of people,’ Adam said. ‘It’s just a baby. Now, have you got a box with a lid?’

  I passed him the cardboard crate Jude’s LP records had come in, and he carefully lowered the bird into it.

  ‘Hot-water bottle?’

  ‘I’ve got one of those microwave wheat-bag things. I use it after the gym sometimes.’

  ‘That’ll do, if we wrap it up in something.’

  Another T-shirt was pressed into service.

  ‘He looks okay, doesn’t he?’ I peered into the box, but the baby bird didn’t look back at me; it was hunched down, its newly grown feathers looking ruffled and unkempt. ‘I mean, not like its wing is broken or anything? It seemed to be flying okay.’

  ‘Yeah, but I think it’s more worrying if Frazzle clawed it.’ Adam’s head leaned over the box, close to mine. He smelled of coffee and shampoo. ‘It’s got no immune resistance to that, and it could get infected and… well…’

  ‘Die.’

  He nodded. ‘There’s a local wildlife rescue place. Want me to call them?’

  I nodded. Suddenly I felt like I wouldn’t be able to explain the situation to anyone without starting to cry. It was just a bird – just a blackbird, not even something rare or endangered (other than by my cat), but I was flooded with awareness, all at once, of the fragility of life. How easily that little bird’s first flight could be its last; how everywhere, all the time, lives were being snuffed out like candles on a birthday cake.

  I waited as Adam called, talked and listened.

  ‘Right,’ he said, tucking his phone back in his pocket. ‘We’ve done the right thing, keeping him warm. They say to bring him in and they’ll check him out, and if he seems okay there’s a chance we can bring him back here and the mum and dad might carry on feeding him.’

  ‘You can hear them now,’ I said. ‘I’ve got so used to the noise outside my window I hardly notice it. But listen.’

  We stood there together in my messy flat. I could hear the traffic on the street outside, the rattle of a delivery of beer to Archie’s shop next door, a child crying. But above it all, closer, were the urgent cheeps of the blackbird parents, trying in vain to summon their little one back to safety.

  ‘They’re worried about their baby,’ I said, my voice going a bit hoarse.

  ‘Just as well he’s in good hands, then.’

  ‘He won’t die, will he?’

  Adam looked down at the box cradled against his chest. ‘I don’t know. But I hope not.’

  ‘It’s just… if he does, it’ll be my fault.’ I felt a tear inching down my cheek and brushed it away.

  ‘Hey, Zoë. It won’t be your fault. Or Frazzle’s even. You did everything you could. And Frazzle – well, you can’t expect a cat to appreciate the sanctity of life, can you?’

  I managed a laugh. ‘I guess not.’

  Adam unwrapped one arm from around the box, and for a second I wondered if he was going to reach out to put his hand on my shoulder. I could have totally done with a hug right then. But there was a rustle from inside the box as the baby bird lurched from one side to the other, no doubt beginning to wonder why it was trapped in this dark, weird-smelling space, and Adam hastily steadied it in both arms.

  ‘I guess we should get him looked at,’ I said.

  ‘Shall we go together?’ Adam agreed. ‘We can get an Uber.’

  ‘Yes. Let’s go together.’

  Twenty

  What you want to feel is a bit different from what you’re actually feeling, isn’t it, Aquarius?

  ‘So it was fine in the end,’ I said. ‘We took the little bird to the wildlife place and a vet looked at him – actually, it turned out he was a her, so that told me with my male-centred view of wildlife – and he gave her antibiotics even though he couldn’t see any puncture wounds or anything. And he said we did the right thing by keeping her warm, and the trip in the Uber was actually a good thing because it gave her a chance to recover from the shock.’

  Jude looked up from his phone and took a gulp of beer. ‘That’s good.’

  Then his eyes returned to the screen.

  We were – at least in theory – on a date. But the location of the date was my flat, and the meal and booze had both been liberated by me from the pub downstairs. I’d paid, of course, using my staff discount, and it made sense for us not to go out, out, given that neither of us could really afford to eat anywhere other than the Ginger Cat – certainly not anywhere that would do food and drink of the same quality.

  But still, it did feel a bit discouraging, somehow, to be eating food on my night off that I’d cooked for the customers the night before, and which was destined for the staff dinner that evening. Not that there was anything wrong with it – it was my special bean chilli, made with no less than four different sorts of hot peppers and loads of other secret spices, and there were flatbreads and rice and guacamole and cashew cream on the side. Thanks to my delayed housework, the flat was clean and tidy and there were candles glowing on the coffee table. Jude had even written on the bathroom mirror in soap, ‘D8 NITE’, with a massive heart underneath.

  Frazzle, however, was still sulking over the removal of his prey and had taken himself off downstairs to the bar like a stroppy husband to scrounge bits of Robbie’s lamb tagine off anyone who’d indulge him.

  I drank some of my red wine. ‘And we brought her back and put her back in the garden like the vet said, and I definitely saw the parents feeding her. Apparently it’s a myth that birds will abandon their chicks if they’ve been handled by humans. They don’t even know, because they hardly have any sense of smell. Which makes sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ Jude said.

  ‘The baby bird. And she’s not there now, so she must have flown away, either back to the nest or somewhere else, I’m not sure. But Frazz definitely hasn’t eaten her b
ecause he’s been in the pub all afternoon. Anyway, how was your day?’

  ‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘I sat in on a consultation with a group of factory workers who were going to be laid off, and it looks like we’ll reach a compromise to save their jobs. That’s fourteen families who’ll still be bringing in an income. I feel like I’m really making a difference, and I’m learning all the time. I just can’t wait to be able to get my teeth into some actual work, if that makes sense, rather than just observing and shadowing.’

  ‘And you must be making useful contacts,’ I suggested, pouring myself some more wine. ‘I mean, I know it shouldn’t be who you know rather than what you know, but it’s like that everywhere, isn’t it?’

  Jude brightened. ‘I’ve been invited to a meeting of the Alliance for Labour Liberty tomorrow and a meeting of the Workers’ Liberty League the next day. And I’m having a beer with some guys from the Revolutionary Workers’ Alliance next week.’

  I couldn’t help giggling. ‘Isn’t that just like the scene in the Monty Python film, with the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea?’

  ‘I don’t watch that film any more,’ Jude said. ‘It’s horribly transphobic.’

  ‘Oh. I suppose it is. But they do sound just the same, don’t they? How do you know which is which?’

  ‘It’s perfectly simple. The Alliance for Labour Liberty is a socialist collective, aimed at changing the party machinery from within. The Workers’ Liberty League is a grassroots Marxist organisation and the RWA are – obviously – revolutionary Maoists.’

  He carried on explaining, and I listened carefully. I knew that what he was saying was important, and I ought to know this stuff already. But I couldn’t stop my mind wandering a bit. I remembered how panicked I’d felt about the baby bird, and how calmly Adam had dealt with the situation. I wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t been there – it didn’t bear thinking about. I imagined the little fledgling, out there somewhere in the night, hopefully safe in the nest with its parents.

  ‘So you should come along,’ Jude was saying, snapping my mind back to the present. ‘There’s a speaker from the Green Party and someone from the Climate Coalition. It should be really interesting.’

  ‘Uh… sorry, when was this again? I’ll have to check if I can get time off.’

  ‘Next Wednesday. Indigo’s going to be there. She was just texting me now.’

  So that was what he’d been doing, staring so intently at his phone. Texting Indigo. I felt a hollow pit of anxiety forming in my stomach, and had to remind myself that I was meant to be fanning the flames of passion between us and not stifling him.

  ‘Sure, I’d love to come.’ If I was honest, I’d rather have done something with just Jude and me. But if the options on offer were Jude, Indigo and me or just Jude and Indigo, I knew what I was going to pick. ‘Would you like more chilli?’

  Jude drained his beer and yawned. ‘I’m all good. And shattered. I’m going to shower and hit the sack.’

  I cleared up our plates and went to collect Frazzle from the bar, gave him his dinner (which he was unenthusiastic about, whether because he was still sulking about the baby bird or because he’d been fed scraps by too many of the pub regulars, I couldn’t tell) and hung the final load of washing on the airer to dry. When Jude had finished in the bathroom I got ready for bed and slid under the duvet next to him.

  ‘Come here.’ He held out his arms and I edged closer, leaning my head against his chest and breathing in the clean smell of him. He kissed me and I felt the now-familiar beginnings of caresses as his fingers moved from my back around to my breasts. But instead of the flickering of desire that would ignite and grow until it consumed me completely, I felt something else.

  I couldn’t put a name to it at first. It was like although my skin was warm under the bedcovers and warmer where Jude’s hands were, inside me was all cold. I remembered the last time we’d had sex, two or three nights before, and how, like almost every time, it had been over almost before it had even begun. I remembered taking Jude’s hand afterwards and guiding it gently between my legs, and waiting. And how he’d stroked me for a few seconds, casually, not really taking any notice of my response, before kissing me, telling me he loved me and I was beautiful and amazing, and then rolling over and going to sleep.

  I knew that was what would happen again this time. I knew I had to talk to him about it, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and how on earth could you tell a man that sex with him wasn’t working without hurting his feelings, exactly? If I hurt him, I might lose him, and then what? But the thought of what was going to happen in the next few minutes – the growing surge of desire and then the disappointment and resentment I’d feel when it was over for him and also for me, way before I was ready for it to be – and the prospect of that happening over and over and over again, and me being powerless to ever change it, was awful.

  I knew what I was feeling, I realised, as he moved on top of me. It was dread. I remembered the message the Stargazer app had sent to me that morning, and I felt totally seen.

  ‘Jude, I’m too tired,’ I said. ‘Not tonight, okay?’

  The next morning, feeling horrendously guilty for some reason I didn’t quite want to pin down, I got up early and silently, careful not to wake Jude, showered and went downstairs to the dark, silent pub. The cleaners had recently left, I could tell, because the smell of bleach was still hanging in the air, overlaying the smells of long-dead fires, beer and varnished wood, which were so familiar to me now I barely noticed them.

  I let Frazzle out into the garden, then glanced into the kitchen and saw that everything was in order, ready for Robbie and me to start the day. There was the bread to prove, the breakfast pastries to bake, a vegetable delivery coming at nine and a vat of stock to reduce. But there was no hurry for any of that; no urgency. It was only six thirty and I could enjoy half an hour of blissful solitude with a coffee.

  Every day used to be like this, I remembered, back when it was just me and Frazzle. I’d imagined that the rest of my life might end up being the same way, and even embraced the idea. But now, I’d got used to sharing my space with Jude – well, used-ish. However crowded the tiny flat might sometimes feel, whatever doubts were threatening to grow in my mind, there was no doubt that having another person in bed with me was reassuring; that I was only starting to realise that I hadn’t just been alone, but also lonely.

  I carried my mug over to a table by the window, pulled up the cheerful orange-and-green-striped blind and sat down. The street outside was just beginning to get busy. Early commuters hurried past on their way to the station, laptop bags slung over their shoulders and phones clamped to their ears. A lorry rumbled by on its way to deliver an order to the Sainsbury’s supermarket down the road. The woman who owned the florist a few doors down parked her neon-pink van on a double yellow line, jumped out and began unloading armfuls of blooms and foliage. As I watched, the sun emerged over the rooftops opposite, and the street was suddenly flooded with light.

  I noticed a man standing outside the pub, stock-still, staring up at my flat. He was wearing jeans, an open-necked white shirt and a leather jacket, and he, too, was carrying a laptop bag and a phone. A totally normal-looking guy on his way to work – so why was he staring up at my window like that?

  It was only when the sunlight illuminated him that I realised it was Adam.

  I put down my half-finished coffee and opened the door, stepping out into the bright morning. The sound alerted him to my presence and he spun around. He didn’t look surprised to see me, or guilty about having been caught loitering in the street outside the pub, though. He smiled and beckoned me over.

  ‘Look, Zoë. Look up there.’

  I took the few steps over to join him and followed his pointing finger. High up in the tree were four blackbirds, all chirping their heads off. It might have been their song that had woken me so early.

  ‘Do you think one of them’s our one?’


  He pushed back his sunglasses. ‘Hard to tell. See the brownish-coloured one? That’s the mum.’

  ‘And the one with the bright yellow beak is the dad, right? I wish I’d paid attention to how many babies there were originally. They both look the same.’

  We craned our necks upwards, trying to make out the two dusty-looking black-brown chicks up in the tree.

  ‘They’re not the prettiest birds ever, are they?’ Adam said.

  ‘How can you even say that about our baby bird? They’re adorable.’

  He looked at me and we both laughed. Laughter changed his whole face, showing off his straight white teeth and making him look almost handsome.

  ‘We could feed them, I guess,’ he suggested. ‘Or leave food for the parents to give them.’

  ‘What do blackbirds even eat?’

  ‘Didn’t the rescue place say worms yesterday?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. We can’t exactly hunt worms to give them, can we?’

  ‘Well, we could, but…’

  ‘I’m a vegan. Mostly, anyway. I can’t go around murdering worms, even if it is to feed a bird.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Adam tapped at his phone a bit. ‘They like fat balls, apparently. But they can’t eat off hanging bird feeders because they’re too big. We could set up a bird table for them in the pub garden if your boss wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Alice loves animals – she’ll be dead keen on that. But won’t Frazzle think it’s a cat table, with an all-you-can-eat bird buffet?’

  ‘All-you-can-eat buffets can’t fly.’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘So why don’t I order one? I’ll get it delivered here and swing by tomorrow morning and we can set it up.’

  ‘Deal,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Adam.’

  Adam shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. I’d better dash, I’ve got an eight a.m. meeting.’

  And before I could properly say goodbye, or even thank him again, he’d strode off down the road, his legs long and strong in his dark grey jeans and his fingers flying over the face of his phone as he walked.