Something Like Happy

by Eva Woods

  “No, just really old and crap.” Annie gave a yawn. “I need to go to work today. They would only give me so many days off for Mum.”

  “That’s why I’m here early. So we can make a plan.”

  “What plan?” Annie didn’t have the strength for anything today.

  “I’ll explain. Here we are.” She’d poured the coffee into the dinky little cups, and arranged the croissants on a flowery plate, showering flakes onto the floor, which Annie saw was already sprinkled with dust and toast crumbs. She was really letting things slide. Costas had grown up with seven sisters, and before moving to England had barely had to boil water for himself, so housework wasn’t his strong point. “So,” Polly said, settling herself. She’d taken out a notebook, a hot-pink one with silver edges. “As you know, I have three months to live. So obviously, when I found this out, it was a bit of a shock. You know the drill, crying on the bathroom floor, desperate denial, staying in bed for a week...”

  Annie did know the drill. She’d practically written it.

  “But I realized, eventually, I’d been given an amazing opportunity. I don’t have to bother with any of that rubbish we spend our time on—bills, pensions, going to the gym. My life, or what’s left of it, is now intensely concentrated, thanks to good old Bob the tumor. And I plan to make the absolute most of it.”

  Annie reached for a croissant. “Don’t tell me you’ve made a bucket list.”

  “It is the standard ‘three months to live’ behavior. But no, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I don’t want to just tick stuff off. Swim with dolphins, check. Go to the Grand Canyon, check. I mean, I’ve done all those things, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” muttered Annie, mouth full of pastry.

  “I don’t want to just...go through the motions of dying. I want to really try and change things. I have to make some kind of mark, you see, before I disappear forever. I want to show it’s possible to be happy and enjoy life, even if things seem awful. Did you know that, after a few years, lottery winners go back to the exact same levels of happiness as before they won? And people in serious accidents do, too, once they’ve adjusted to their changed lives? Happiness is a state of mind, Annie.”

  Annie gritted her teeth again. The things that had happened to her weren’t a state of mind; they were very real. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Have you heard of the Hundred Happy Days project? One of those viral internet thingies?”

  “No.” Old Annie would have liked such things, posted them on Facebook, shared inspirational quotes. New Annie was scornful of projects and plans and lists. It all meant nothing when your life had truly come crashing down around your ears.

  “It’s simple, really. You’re just meant to do one thing every day that makes you happy. Could be little things. Could be big. In fact, we’re doing one right now.”

  “We are?” Annie looked around doubtfully at her shabby living room.

  “Breakfast on nice plates. Seeing the dawn in with a friend.” Polly raised a cup to the reddening sky out the window, and Annie thought, Friend? Was it as easy at that? And how could something so small make any difference at all? “Now, I reckon if I’m lucky—lucky in the ‘I have cancer’ sense—I’ve got another hundred days left in me, so I’m going to do the project. And I want your help.”

  “Me?”

  Polly set down her cup. She had a line of foam on her upper lip, and her hair was suddenly burning red with the sun that had decided to come up, bloody and bright and beautiful. “Annie—I hope you don’t mind me saying this—you seem kind of the complete opposite of happy.”

  Annie blinked. “I’ve been having a tough time recently. You saw my mum.”

  “That can’t be it,” said Polly. “An attitude like that takes years of work.”

  “Well, I live in a crappy flat full of plywood and mold, which I share with a Greek child who’d never washed a cup in his life before.”

  “Costas? He’s adorable.”

  “Maybe. But tripping over his dirty pants and chipping cheese off all my dishes—less so. Look.” Annie rooted around under herself on the sofa, bringing up a pistachio shell. “He leaves these all over the place. Drives me crazy. And I haven’t even got started on my job, which I hate, and I’m going to be late for if I don’t leave soon.”

  “Okay. So you’re miserable. That’s why I want you to do this with me. What do you say? For the next one hundred days—if I make it that long—we’ll think of one happy thing every day, and write it down. We can backdate it to when we met, shave a few days off—Time’s winged chariot and all that. I want to prove that happiness is possible, even when things really suck.”

  Annie thought of how to reply. “But...I’m not sure I believe that, Polly.”

  “You could try, though. Why not?”

  For a moment, Annie almost thought about telling her—explaining how much worse it got than a sick mother and an unwelcome flatmate and crappy flat—but she couldn’t. Polly was a virtual stranger. Instead, she said, “There’s plenty of reasons why not. I need to go to work now, or I’ll be late. Again.” She stood up, chucking down the remains of her frothy coffee (admittedly a big improvement on the bitter instant stuff she usually made). “Look, Polly, it’s nice of you to ask me to join your project—” (bloody interfering more like) “—but it’s honestly not my thing. I have a lot on my plate right now. Thanks for breakfast. I’m sure we’ll see each other around the hospital sometime.”

  DAY 4

  Make the most of your

  lunch break

  Much as Annie hated going to the hospital, she had to admit there was something strangely comforting about it. That hushed hum of activity, the sense the staff had things in hand, and you could just sit and wait and soon they’d come to take your blood pressure or scan you with their machines. All those notices about hand washing and crash carts—life in there was serious. There was no point getting upset about stupid things.

  Unlike at Annie’s office.

  “Annie—9:08. Just so you know, for your time sheet.”

  Annie gritted her teeth so hard she was surprised she didn’t spit out bits of enamel. “Right. Thanks, Sharon.”

  “Just make sure you note it down. That’s a quarter of an hour docked off, rounding up.” Sharon, a bitter woman who lived off chips and Appletiser, was the only person in Annie’s office who didn’t hate the new time sheets. Once, Annie had approved of the system, too. She’d even helped to bring it in, in her role as finance officer. Sure, she was sympathetic when people had sick children or late trains or broken boilers, but it was a workplace and they all had a job to do. Back then she’d worn smart trouser suits, or dresses with belts and cardigans, and she’d brought her lunch with her in Tupperware and she’d helped organize the Christmas do.

  Until everything changed.

  She sat down at her desk—dust and sandwich crumbs lodged in every crevice, no pictures, nothing nice. The plants she’d once tended had turned brown and dusty, and she’d thrown her wedding picture in the bin two years ago, shattering it. She switched on her computer, hearing it groan as it tried to come to life. She wondered if Polly still worked. She bet it had been somewhere with shiny clean iMacs, and plants that everyone watered, not just Sharon, who passive-aggressively let them die, then prodded their desiccated corpses like victims at a show trial. Where everyone wore dark-rimmed glasses and had creative brainstorming sessions over table football.

  “Coming for the team lunch today, Annie?” asked Fee, the office manager, scratching at her eczema. “Only I need everyone’s choices in advance.”

  Annie shook her head. She’d once made an effort to join in, but really she didn’t have anything in common with Sharon, or Tim, who blew his nose onto his sleeve, or Syed, who never took off his massive headphones, or—“Annie?”

  “Hi, Jeff.�
�� She pasted on a weak smile. He was her boss, after all.

  “Can I have a word?” He mimed a mouth flapping, as if Annie didn’t understand English. Jeff didn’t seem to realize that he worked in the world’s saddest office, where enthusiasm was about as useful as opening a vein right onto the floor. His office was plastered in motivational posters and Post-its with slogans like Quitters Never Win, Winners Never Quit. His bookcase was crammed with business books. Get Rich or Die Trying. Rich Middle-Manager, Poor Middle-Manager. Although how you were supposed to get rich running local government waste-processing services, Annie didn’t know.

  “Do take a seat in the Chat Area.” Jeff, who owned about thirty-eight suits from Top Man and was trying to grow a beard, was a big fan of the “Chat Area”—two spindly chairs and a table with fanned-out issues of the local government magazine, Inside Lewisham. “Annie. How are you?”

  Shit, she thought. Awful. Dying inside. “Fine.”

  “Because I’ve noticed you’ve been...not so present this week?”

  “I took some days as leave.”

  “Yes, yes, but—when you’re here, you don’t seem to engage with people?”

  Why did he turn everything into a question? “What do you mean?”

  “Well, people have mentioned that you don’t really chat in the kitchen, or go out for lunch, the old watercooler moments, you know, ha-ha!”

  “That’s because I’m doing my job! And we don’t even have a watercooler since the budget cuts!”

  “Well. You know what I mean.” He leaned forward earnestly. He was five years younger than Annie, she knew, yet he spoke to her like she was a stroppy teenager, which, admittedly, was how she felt right now. “Thing is, Annie, an office is more than just work. It’s a team. Friends, I hope. Like the crew of a ship.” He mimed something that she gathered was meant to convey pulling on rigging. “So what’s the harm in a bit of chitchat over a nice cuppa? And it might help if you smiled more. People find you a bit...unfriendly?”

  She felt the ache of tears in her nose again. “My mum’s ill. You know that.”

  “I know. I know. I’m very aware you’ve had...a rough time of things the last few years. And we’re fully committed to a family-friendly, er...” Jeff trailed off awkwardly, perhaps remembering that Annie no longer had a family. He knew, of course. Everyone knew, and yet they still got upset about the franking machine and who’d used all the milk. What was the matter with them? “I know it’s been hard. But we have to bring a positive attitude to work, no matter what’s going on. PMA, Annie!” He made a gesture as if he was swinging an imaginary baseball bat. “You know, there’s going to be more redundancies this year. We’ll all have to fight for our jobs. So...if you could just join in a bit more, smile, you know, ask after people’s kids and so on. I mean, it’s been two years, hasn’t it? Since...everything?”

  Annie stared down at her hands, humiliated beyond words. But she wouldn’t cry in front of him. She would wait until she could slip into the loo and sob her heart out there, as she had done at least once a week for the past two years. Through gritted teeth, she said, “I’ll try. Can I go now?”

  * * *

  Annie stood in the work kitchen, waiting for the silted-up kettle to boil. The air smelled permanently of tuna, and in the sink there was a spill of what was either vomit or instant pasta. Sharon had prized it off with a fork, like a food crime scene, and left one of her trademark notes about it. It is NOT the cleaners JOB 2 wash up ur FOOD. There had to be more to life than this. Dragging herself here every day, on a bus full of angry commuters. Sitting in this office that was never cleaned properly, with people she would literally cross the street to avoid. As the kettle snapped off she felt a cold nugget of certainty settle in her chest. There has to be more than this. There has to.

  * * *

  “There’s someone to see you.”

  Annie looked up from her screen a few hours later to see Sharon hovering. Sharon only seemed to have five outfits, which she wore in strict rotation. Today’s outfit was number two—a red cardigan covered in dog hairs (she had four) and an ankle-length skirt with a misshapen hem. “Who is it?”

  Sharon sniffed. “Some woman. Dressed like a mad person.”

  Oh, no, that sounded like Polly. When there’d been no knock at the door that morning, she’d thought she was safe. Polly was clearly dealing with her diagnosis by seizing life, but would it last? The trouble with seizing life was eventually you had to pay some taxes or get your hair cut or regrout the shower. Why had she latched on to Annie, who wasn’t seizing life so much as hiding from it at all costs, crying in the loos? Maybe she could head her off.

  Too late, she saw Polly was already barreling into the office, waving. She wore a red trilby and a big cape-like coat, and was carrying a cardboard box.

  Annie jumped up. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought we could have lunch.”

  “I don’t have time for lunch.”

  “Annie! Are you paid for your break?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “So they’re getting an extra hour out of you, unpaid, every day?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Annie hissed, looking about her. Her coworkers were hunched at their desks, eating sandwiches or slurping up tinned soup, staring at their computers. “How did you know where I worked?”

  “Oh, you’re on the website. I brought you a care package!” Polly shoved the box onto Annie’s desk. A silver photo frame, a mug that said You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here But You Probably Are. Sachets of tea. Biscuits, sparkly pens, wet wipes, a little plant. A notebook with a blue silk cover. “Just a few things to brighten up your work space. I bet it’s all dirty and nasty.”

  “It is not!”

  “You sure?” Polly ran a finger over the base of Annie’s computer and brought it back, black with dust. “Everyone’s work desk is filthy. We spend so much time at them and we don’t even try to make them nice. Little things can really make a difference.”

  Annie sighed. “Come on, we should go out. We’re not meant to have visitors.” She hustled Polly out the door, past a goggling Sharon, who had finally found something more interesting than Farm World to look at.

  Polly looked at the building—hideous seventies concrete plonked beside ten lanes of traffic—with a critical eye. “I don’t blame you for being miserable. This place would bring anyone down.”

  “Exactly. And I have to work here every day, doing something I hate, so how will adding some tea bags to my desk help?”

  “It’ll help. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

  “You’re not going to suggest I open up and get to know everyone in the office, and learn that we’re all the same under the skin, no matter how much skin there is?”

  Polly laughed. “No. Some people are just awful. And some things need to be run away from, very fast, like an exploding bomb. You should quit.”

  Annie felt anger build again—who was this woman, telling her what to do? “I can’t. I need the money.”

  “You can do something else,” Polly said cheerfully.

  “There’s a recession on.”

  “Excuses.” Polly waved a hand. “Everyone uses that one, Annie. Oh, everything was always better in the past! Things are rubbish now we’re not allowed to send our children down the mines! It’s just a cop-out.”

  “But—”

  Polly grasped Annie’s arm. “I know you’re cross, but I’m sorry—cancer card. You’ll see I’m right, in time. Now come with me. We’re doing something for our hundred happy days. It’s a pretty simple one—take a lunch break.”

  “I never said I’d do the hundred days. And, anyway, I do take a lunch break.”

  “And what do you do? Go on Facebook? Run errands?”

  “Sometimes I buy a sandwich.”<
br />
  “In a nice place?”

  “There is nowhere nice around here. Tesco usually.”

  “Do you at least leave your desk to eat it?”

  “And go where? The loos? The traffic island in the roundabout?”

  “What about here?” Polly stopped, opening her arms wide in the manner of a Las Vegas showgirl.

  Annie looked skeptically at the square of grass they’d ended up beside. “The park? I’m not going in there—we’ll get kidnapped by drug dealers!”

  Polly was already pushing open the gates. “Hello, hello, anyone here selling drugs? I really want to buy some crack! See, nothing. I think we’re safe.”

  “It’s freezing.”

  “I have blankets.” Parking herself on a bench, Polly took two heavy Slankets from her tote bag.

  “I feel ridiculous.” Annie was glad at least that the blanket partly covered her face. What if someone from work walked by and saw her picnicking in the cold, dreary park beside all the dog poop? They’d think she’d finally snapped her last thread.

  Polly whipped out two small cardboard boxes. “You’re not vegetarian?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then eat up!”

  In the box was a crumbly piece of cheddar, a juicy sliced pear, a thick slab of pink ham and a hunk of crusty bread. All topped with jewel-red chutney.

  “You didn’t get this around here,” Annie said accusingly. “It’s all chicken shops and kebab vans.” She tried a mouthful of the cheese, sharp and salty and crumbly in her mouth. Oh, God, it was delicious. And to think she’d been planning to eat some Easy Cheese singles.

  Polly took a few bites, then set down her own box. “Here,” she said, taking something from her bag. “A list of ten things to do at lunchtime within ten minutes from your office. Yoga. A singing group. A street market.”

  “I can’t take a lunch break every day!”

  “Er, why not?”