‘You got together in September though, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but it’s the anniversary of us moving in together,’ she smiles. If this was a Jane Austen novel, she would be swooning at this point. I forget how many different anniversaries that people have when they’re in extended relationships. The longest relationship I’ve ever had was way back in sixth form. I was happy to stay with her but she wanted to go and fuck people from a different county at Bournemouth University. I didn’t get much say in the matter.
The train arrives and we get on, scoring an empty table. A few rowdy sixth formers get on after us and, although we’ve got our backs to them, it becomes apparent that they’ve invented a game that involves spraying each other with shaken-up fizzy drinks. Not our problem – we have no control over them outside the school gates. In fact, we have little control of them within the school gates.
As we pass through Blackpond, we discuss arrangements for Lara-and-Steve’s wedding tomorrow. The train lurches through the uneven track at St Simon’s and we talk about the stupid beard the headmaster is growing and how trendy he thinks it makes him look. At South Greenfield, we’re so busy complaining about the upcoming changes to the curriculum that we almost forget to get off.
We arrive at the estate, entering as usual via the south entrance of Ottley Street by the municipal recycling bins. We part ways with an air kiss, Ruby back off to her boyfriend, me off to the cat. It’s a nice estate, built in 1985, with streets named after British Olympic medal winners from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Thankfully, we won a fair amount of medals that year, or else the estate would be tiny.
There’s a few of my friends on this estate. Ruby-and-Alex live on Thompson Avenue, Shell (one half of Shell-and-Terry) lives on Budgett Close and there’s also Peregrina-and-Pete up on Redgrave Street. I try not to read anything into the fact that their streets are named for gold medallists and mine, Eckersley Road, is named for someone who won bronze.
The second I step through the door of my modest house, Catsby – short for The Great Catsby – is in the hall, mewing. It might mean he’s happy to see me, it might mean he’s hungry. With cats, it’s usually the same thing. He slinks around my feet like the little ginger tripping hazard he is as I move to the living room to take my boots off.
The evening progresses at a snail’s pace as I make dinner and listen to a podcast about the Egyptian Pyramids, and by six-thirty I’m gunning to see someone. It’s Friday night! I’m in my twenties! I should be out painting the town red, or at least a pale shade of mauve. I pick up my phone and scroll through the contacts list. I send Annie a message and ask if she’s up for a drink. I pour myself a glass of Merlot and put on the TV while I wait for a reply. Twenty minutes later, she tells me that she’s off to the cinema with Matt.
I call Gavin to see if he’s free for a chat, but he’s trying to put together a flatpack wardrobe and doesn’t have time to talk. Iris told me at work that she’d see me tomorrow, so she’s out, and I know that Jay-and-Kay are on a date night with another couple.
Among the names of contacts that I haven’t spoken to since university, met on Tinder or see every day in the staff room, Lara is the next person I could call, which I consider for a second before remembering that she’s getting married tomorrow and probably has other things to be doing. I message Peregrina, but she and Pete are already half an hour into a film at home and don’t want to go out. Priti doesn’t respond at all, and Ruby… no, she has anniversary plans. I call Shell but instead Terry answers her phone and informs me that she’s in the shower and they’re going out to meet some of his army friends.
Alone and out of options, I eat a Cornetto and fall asleep on the sofa with Catsby on my lap during an interview with a French policewoman about unidentified lights in the sky over France. Around midnight I wake up again, put the dregs of the wine back in the fridge and make my way to bed. My final thought, which happens in that fuzzy place in between awake and dreaming, is of Lara-and-Steve joking in their wedding speeches that ‘at least they didn’t end up alone like Dexter’, and everyone laughing.
Like I said, generally I’m fine being alone, but some nights it’s worse than others.
Two
Priti-and-Art
My friends. I wonder what happened to them. I know the final fate of some of them – I was there – but others I’ll never know. That’s the trouble with real life. In a story, you get all the answers. They tell you why Bertha was locked in the attic, or why Yossarian can’t escape the army. You might not like the answers, they might not make sense, but they’re there.
I try to think about what I do know, and what I remember. I think about my friends. They may have been moving on and pairing up, but I didn’t love them any less. You can’t begrudge your friends happiness. Things change, and sometimes it’s a struggle to keep up, that’s all.
With one exception, I originally knew each couple that I count among my friends as singletons. That is, I was friendly with one half before the second half came along. Truth be told, I get on well with the new halves as well, but it’s never quite the same, is it?
My friends were – are – the most wonderful people and I’ve known a lot of them a very long time. Take Priti.
*
Priti Sengupta is my oldest friend, having held the position for about twenty years. We were in the same class from Year One upwards. It’s funny but, with the friends I made later, the stories of how we came to be friends are more detailed, like a lot more effort went into those friendships. Priti and I have always been friends in the way that the Pyramids have always stood and the Rolling Stones have always been performing – it began so long ago, it’s irrelevant exactly when or why.
There are three incidents, however, in the first year of our knowing each other that stand out for me, and the combination of them probably cemented a bond between us that has strained at times but never snapped. They are, in order, the Rabbit Incident, the Scarf Incident and the Maze Incident.
The Rabbit Incident occurred when, early in Year One, a small petting zoo was established in the school playground one morning for us to see and study various small animals. There was a goat, some guinea pigs, a couple of ducks, a sheep and, most importantly, a rabbit. It was a large female, the colour of a foggy autumn morning, with long droopy ears.
Priti had won the jackpot in my five-year-old eyes, as she’d been allowed to hold the rabbit on her lap. I hadn’t spoken to her much before this moment, although I was aware of her. She was one of the few non-white kids in the school and, in a small town like ours, that made you stick out. She was very quiet and had few close friends, preferring not to speak to anyone she hadn’t already formed a bond with. However, she had a very nice rabbit on her lap, and I was desperate to stroke that rabbit. I had to speak to her, so I approached slowly while she tickled the rabbit between its ears.
I sat down next to her and pretended to have no interest in the rabbit, but once my inner excitement had become too much to contain, I burst out, ‘Can I stroke her too?’
‘She likes it on her head, here,’ said Priti, not looking at me, keeping her eyes focused on the grey bundle in her lap. Taking Priti’s lead, I moved my hand to where she’d been stroking the rabbit and put my fingers against the warm fur.
‘She’s really soft,’ I said.
‘I like her,’ said Priti. She was very quiet, as if speaking above a certain level might be dangerous. Together we stroked the placid bunny for a few minutes, before she was handed on to someone else. Something about that moment, however, meant that we were able to talk when we saw each other in the playground or during class group work. Over the next few weeks, most of our conversation revolved around one of us saying, ‘Hey, do you remember the big rabbit?’ and the other declaring how much they loved it. At five, you can sustain a friendship with that.
The Scarf Incident occurred in late November, a couple of months after the Rabbit Incident. Priti and I were getting our things together off the pegs of
the Year One cloakroom, when she squealed and tears pricked at her eyes.
‘What is it?’ I asked. She held up the end of her blue woolly scarf. It had been cut roughly and looked like a ferret had been at it. We both knew who was to blame: Tyler North and Thomas Townsend. Even at five, you knew they were eventually going to end up in prison. They delighted in the suffering of others and trading your tears for their laughs. They spent an inordinate amount of time being told off, but neither could be expelled as their mothers were both rich as hell and served on the board of governors.
Priti’s scarf was ruined. Presumably they’d been at it with some scissors. We stared at it in horror and Priti whispered, ‘Mummy is going to be really mad.’ I looked at my own scarf. It was, aside from the damage, exactly the same as hers. I held it out to her and she looked at me, perhaps a little hurt and thinking I was rubbing in the fact that mine was fine.
‘Take my one,’ I said. ‘We’ll swap them. My mummy and daddy might be a bit cross, but they’ll be OK. I’ll ask for a new one for Christmas.’
‘Are you sure?’ Priti said, reaching up for the scarf with a tentative hand.
‘Of course,’ I said with a smile. ‘You let me stroke the rabbit.’
The Maze Incident took place the following March and was the final thing that ensured Priti and I would be best friends for the rest of time. We were on a school trip to a Tudor castle. It was a crumbly old one surrounded by a green-watered moat, and after we’d explored it and been spoken to by a grey old man who looked old enough to have been an original inhabitant, the teachers let us off to discover the far more exciting adventure playground and hedge maze.
Despite what happened within that maze, I have always loved them, and I’ve always been good at them, even before discovering in my mid-teens that there is a blindingly simple way to get out of pretty much any maze.
I ran on ahead, laughing with a boy called Darren I was friends with at the time. Veering round a sharp left, we found ourselves at a dead end.
‘There was another turn back there,’ I said, and we set off giggling to find where it was. However, we didn’t reach it, as we had been cornered in our dead end by three bigger boys. They wore blue jumpers, unlike our red ones, and were around eight or nine. They were much taller than us, like giants towering over frightened villagers, with faces contorted in evil grins that haunted my dreams for months afterwards. They were from another school, and that, by the logic of childhood, made them our enemies. It was the law of the playground.
‘What’s this?’ said one of them, the biggest of the three. He had blonde hair shaved down to a few millimetres and was missing one of his incisors.
‘Can we get past, please?’ I said, possibly a little more bravely than I felt. I don’t think I considered these people a serious threat. You don’t at that age.
‘What do you wanna do that for?’ said the boy. His two friends, one either side of him, sniggered and looked at him with a pathetic awe.
‘We’re trying to find the middle of the maze,’ said Darren, timidly. The boy tutted and stepped forward a pace. His cronies followed suit, like infant bodyguards.
‘Make us move,’ he said.
‘Can we pass, please?’ I tried again.
‘No,’ said the boy, reaching out a meaty hand and jabbing me in the shoulder.
‘Leave them alone!’ said a quiet voice. Our unfriendly acquaintances turned to see who had spoken, only to find the diminutive figure of Priti standing further down the run. She stood with hands on hips, legs askance, her long black hair in a ponytail resting on her shoulder. She was wearing my scarf.
It’s hard to recall exactly what happened in the next couple of minutes because it happened so fast. I remember the boy threatening this new interloper, although saying that he didn’t want to hit a girl, so she should go away. (He didn’t actually use those words, though, thus leading to the first ever time I heard someone say the words ‘fuck off’.)
Priti didn’t take kindly to that and, like I say, there were some fast movements, a mere blur, and the boy had been unflanked. His companions had run off, and he was on the floor, dirt and mud up his black trousers. He’d lost another tooth as well. It stuck out pale yellow with a fleck of red among the hedge roots.
‘Alright, I’ll go,’ he said, tears streaking down his face. He got up and, without even pausing to look back at me and Darren, he ran off, having learnt a valuable lesson about how you shouldn’t judge things by their appearance, because even the smallest and most docile-looking girls might already have had a year’s worth of karate lessons.
‘Thank you so much,’ I said, running at Priti and hugging her. It appeared to catch her off guard and she did an awkward half-squeeze back and pushed me off.
‘It’s OK,’ she shrugged. ‘It was my turn to help you.’ She smiled, and I grinned back. Our friendship was sealed.
They say that the best friendships are forged during times of great stress or war, and while we didn’t have a troll to fight like Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, or get put in detention for the day like the Breakfast Club, it seems that doing battle with three eight-year-olds will definitely have the same effect.
*
Priti met the unconventional and ever-so-wealthy Art Callaghan three years ago on the Greek island of Icaria, where she was on a long weekend break from work and he was staying in one of the villas owned by his father. It was nothing like love at first sight.
Priti was in the Kambos Museum, home of various archaeological antiquities, and looking at a particularly impressive and beautiful sarcophagus, marvelling at the engravings of fruit and garlands, when she became aware of someone standing next to her. The museum was very quiet, and she was irritated that the person who may well have been the only other visitor had decided to invade her space. She turned to move off when the figure spoke.
‘Hi there,’ he said. ‘Were your parents Greek gods?’ She turned to look at him, finding that he was about seven inches taller than her, with lapis lazuli eyes and a strange excuse for a beard on his chin. ‘They must’ve been to make a goddess like you.’
‘No,’ she said, tonelessly. ‘They’re marketing consultants from Croydon.’ That had thrown him. According to her story, she’d given him a withering look, as if daring him to come up with something better. Realising that he was beaten, he instead shrugged, held out a hand and said, ‘I’m Art.’
‘Priti,’ she said. He confided in me much later that at this point he’d wanted to say ‘Yes, you certainly are’, but felt that it wouldn’t have been well received, so instead settled for asking her out to dinner. Priti, not knowing anyone else on the island and having dined alone for the last two nights, figured that he didn’t look like a rapist, so at worst he may turn out to be crass and boring; it would at least be some company and he might even foot the bill.
As it turned out, his family owned the restaurant and paying the bill was not even remotely an issue. They had a number of things in common, mostly tastes in music and deep passions for video games that sacrificed plot for big guns. Since he lived in Kensington, and South Greenfield isn’t too far on the train from London, they decided that it was possible to begin and maintain a relationship.
Privately, I (and some of the others) have often wondered if Priti would be so interested in Art if it wasn’t for the enormous piles of money that he and his family are sitting on. Although she does appear to love him in her own distant way, he idolises her in a way that isn’t reciprocated as far as we can tell. I guess it’s just one of those things that we’re not allowed to see – you don’t stay with someone for three years and put up with them if you don’t actually like them, regardless of the money.
For what it’s worth, too, Art is one of my favourite other halves and the two of us have met up for drinks without Priti on a few occasions, although we are often cross-examined later by Priti for anything either of us may have said that she doesn’t approve of. Whether or not it’s true love or he’s hypnotised by her, t
hey make a solid couple.
Then again, Yellowstone looks solid, but no one would be surprised if it exploded.
Three
The Wedding
The weather is perfect in the manner usually reserved for television weddings. Lara-and-Steve have exchanged vows and rings, kissed to seal the deal and are now being moved around by the photographer, who is trying to get as much of the old hotel they’ve chosen as a wedding venue into the background as possible. It’s a gorgeous location and we gather on the lawns with glasses of champagne.
Everyone is coupled up and talking about white goods or whatever it is long-term couples talk about, so I focus on the alcohol and check my phone. Maybe I can get in a level of Candy Crush – I’ve been stuck on Level 433 for weeks.
‘Come on, get that phone away,’ I hear. I look up and find Jay-and-Kay approaching, beaming. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, wearing dark glasses and a smart trilby. She’s short, pale and pointy like an Arctic fox. On the occasions I do get bitter, they’re probably the couple I have least bitterness about, as they were already married by the time I met them, so I’ve never had time to resent the idea of one of them being stolen from singlehood.
‘Beautiful ceremony wasn’t it?’ smiles Kay. She’s from Brooklyn, and it strikes me once again how much louder an American voice is on British soil.
‘Lovely,’ I grin back. ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer couple.’ I mean it too. Lara and Steve make a great couple. He’s about three years older than her, and they’ve been together nearly ten years, since she was sixteen.
As Kay launches into a speech about the sudden prevalence of meteor showers that have been seen over Europe lately – I remember seeing headlines about it on Google News – I notice a face in the crowd. I’ve managed to avoid Georgina so far, but now she’s seen me. Crap, crap, crap. I swivel my head back round with a speed that means I risk whiplash to look at Kay, and laugh at the wrong point in her story. She gives me a weird look.
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