Love, Unscripted

by Owen Nicholls

  “Do you really not like Star Wars?”

  The decision to watch the videos takes a long time. I can honestly say I never intended or expected to see any of them, but there’s something fateful about loading the USB stick and seeing the four files. Something inevitable.

  Each file has a name and the date of taping: 2009, 2010, 2011. One is cryptically labeled BONUS.

  I open the first, Ellie to Lucas—10 April 2009.

  I see her face. She’s in my old house, the one before we had our own place. She looks like I remember her from our first night. That skin. Those eyes. The only difference from 2008 Ellie is the red hair’s fighting a losing battle with her natural brown.

  A few months later, it would never return.

  I press play.

  Hey, Lucas. Little bro. Sproglet. What am I going to say? This is very much going to be about me, isn’t it? I miss you. There. That’s a start. A pretty sad start but a start nonetheless. Mum and Dad miss you too. Okay. Happy stuff. Lighter stuff. What would we talk about? I live in London now. It’s busy. Lots of busy people. Sorry. I don’t really know who I’m speaking to. I didn’t lay out any ground rules. Am I speaking to you as a five-year-old or you as a twenty-five-year-old? I should have thought this through first. I’ll try the latter.

  The screen goes blank and my heart skips a beat. Then, as quickly as she’s gone, she reappears.

  Hey, brother. ’Sup? Miss you. Life in London is pretty good. Coming up to one year now. Work is okay. I take lots of pictures of people holding things. It seems to be a local news thing. Hold this Roman coin you found in your back garden up for the camera, please. Hold this cake you baked for Prince William up to the camera, please. Hold this bill from Virgin Media that says you ordered pornography—even though your husband insists he didn’t and is now in far too deep to just admit he did—up to the camera, please. The look on his face. Oh Lucas, it was sublime.

  I’m not sure if I’d actually talk to you about this next part, but I like to think we’d be a cool close sibling pair. So here goes. I met someone. A guy. About six months ago now. It was his idea for me to do this tape. He’s very, very sweet like that. His name is Nick. We’re very much in love.

  I think a lot about what I’d have been like around your girlfriends. Or boyfriends. Would I have been wildly protective? Would I have set you up with my friends? Would you have come to me for advice? Would I have come to you? Maybe that’s what this can be. My forum for asking your advice. I never consider myself an only child. Because I had you. It felt important to let you know that. I know the rest has been waffle, but if I just find one important thing to say, it’s probably worth it. Right? Right. Okay. That’s me done for now.

  See you soon. Love you.

  Part of me wants to savor these, spread them out over days and keep her with me for a little longer. The other part of me wants to mainline them like they’re the Godfather trilogy. You can never stop at Part 1. Even for all the faults of Part 3, it has to be watched. I know which part of me will win. It already has, as I press play on the next one: Ellie to Lucas—10 April 2010.

  She’s in our flat now. 2010 Ellie has shorter hair, the red is no more. She’s wearing one of my gig T-shirts (Regina Spektor’s Far Tour from the previous summer), so she can’t have been up long. I always loved how she’d wear my clothes to bed, especially my tatty ones, and make them look magical.

  She’s super-happy today. She has props in the form of a notepad. She glances at it before she addresses the camera.

  Hey, Lucas. I’m much more prepared this year. I made a checklist of things I want to let you know about. So rather than the rambling nonsense of last year, we have five bullet-pointed items. Are you ready? Good.

  Bullet point number one. The quote unquote career is still going well, although I now work freelance rather than just for the Clapham Gazette. I’ve been covering a fair few gigs recently, which is awesome because I usually get to meet the bands and singers and they’re super-happy to have a professional taking their picture rather than some blurry snapshot from a cameraphone. I like my job most days now.

  Something I didn’t tell you last time. I take photos because of you. It was all I had of you for some time. I’m ashamed to say I’d forget your face sometimes, but Mum and Dad took enough photos to fix that. I could get lost in them. So, there’s that.

  Bullet point number two. Mum and Dad. Dad gave us a scare this year. A nasty case of pneumonia after the new year. I don’t like hospitals—for obvious reasons—and seeing him in bed all day was awful. He said it was like prison, which made me laugh because, really, Dad in prison? Try as I might, I can’t conjure up an image of him with tats, bench-pressing in the yard. Once he had the all-clear, things were back to normal (i.e., Mum complaining that the grass was getting long) soon after.

  Bullet point number three. An update on Manchester United. I’m afraid they did not win the league this year. But apparently the Manchester derby was one of the finest ever, with a man named Michael Owen scoring a goal in the ninety-sixth minute. Which I’m informed is quite late to be scoring a goal. I would not know if this is true, as I’m allergic to the footballs. I go through this fact-finding mission just for you. With help from Nick, which brings me to…

  Bullet point number four. Nick is still as wonderful a human person as ever. He says to say hi from him. He’s decided he’s finally going to be an Oscar-winning screenwriter, but he seems to spend more time watching Oscar-winning films than actually writing. He calls it research. I’m sure it is. We moved in together a few months ago. It’s a very small flat above a florist. This is useful because, as I told you when you were four, boys are very, very smelly. The flowers help combat this. But even at Nick’s most odorous, it’s worth putting up with the smell for all the good times. There are many good times.

  Bullet point number five. This has a heavy title: “Losing You.” It’s not meant to be all sad. I was. All sad. For quite some time. I was angry next. For even longer. Ours was a happy home before—and after, there was just a gap. We all went to different therapy sessions to help and they told us lots of things about moving on, and I don’t know, maybe it got through eventually. Mum and Dad were constantly being told they had to put me first, which was awful advice to overhear. It made me feel crappy, like they had to forget about you and focus on me when that wasn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted us to talk about you. For years we didn’t. And for years I was really, really miserable. Like I said, that misery turned to anger and I think I’m lucky to be okay now. A few wrong choices and I think the trifecta of cool job, brilliant boyfriend, and happy home would have been hard to come by.

  It came down to a choice. I’m happy I chose love.

  I miss you. I hope you like this tape. I know I like making them.

  Love you, Lucas. See you next year.

  Before the must-see next one, I try to figure out the purpose of all of this, the purpose of her sending me these recordings, the purpose of me choosing to watch them. Why are we putting ourselves through this? What lesson is there to be learned? Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

  And now I remember. There’s a man I need to see about a thing.

  * * *

  —

  THE LAST TIME I saw Richard, I didn’t actually see him. I just heard his voice through the intercom as he refused to let me in to return Ellie’s bike helmet. This time, however, upon hearing that his daughter’s ex-boyfriend is outside his fancy Battersea apartment, he decides to buzz me in.

  When I reach his floor, I take a moment to compose myself. Why am I here? What am I hoping to get out of this? Couldn’t I just have texted an apology for the texts I sent? I knock and he opens the door.

  He doesn’t invite me in, or even acknowledge my presence; he simply turns his back on the open door, leaving me to step inside and close it. I’ll be honest. It’s a
pretty gangster move for a guy in his sixties.

  As I meekly make my way across the hallway’s black-and-white tiles, I see the back of Richard’s legs turning into a room. My mind wanders and I consider the possibility that he may have just let me in so he can murder me and claim self-defense. He’ll tell the police he had no idea who I was, that he thought I was a burglar, which was why he beat me to death with a nonstick frying pan.

  His back is still to me and he pours himself a glass of wine. I reckon the glass and the wine both cost more than I made today. He doesn’t offer me a drink.

  “I’m impressed,” he says. “I didn’t think you’d have the courage to say you’re sorry in person.”

  “What makes you think I’m here to say sorry?”

  He sips and shrugs, although the sip is more like a chug.

  “Actually,” I say, “I am sorry. And I am very much here to say that.” I know that if I delay by even a moment the apology, which he deserves, I’ll bottle it.

  He pulls out his phone and scrolls, reading the messages I sent moments before I passed out blind drunk at Tom’s party.

  “You’re sorry for saying ‘Because you couldn’t make your wife happy…’ ”

  I wince as he continues to read, covered in the shamiest layer of shame. It’s like he’s playing a video of me in choir in primary school and my trousers have just been pulled down and I’ve wet myself.

  “ ‘…you’re to blame for my and Ellie’s misery.’ ”

  “Yes. That. I’m very sorry for that.”

  He opens another message.

  “And for calling me a ‘humane paraquat’?”

  “That’s supposed to be a ‘human paraquat.’ But yes. That too.”

  “What’s a para—”

  I cut him off. “It really doesn’t matter. What matters is I shouldn’t have said any of it. I was in a very bad place and looking for someone to blame. For some reason, that person was you. Will you accept my apology?”

  He finishes his drink and pours himself another, pondering my question. After a moment, he smiles and his arm extends, just a little, as if the wine is slowly making its way to me. I smile back and reach out a hand to accept the olive branch, just as he snaps it back.

  “No. I don’t accept your apology.”

  “Why?” I whine.

  “I have thirty years of groveling experience on you, Nick. And that was quarter-arsed at best.” He sits for the first time. Looking simultaneously up at me and down on me. “Anyway, why do you even want my forgiveness? You and Ellie are over. You saw to that.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, knowing full well what it was supposed to mean. But not knowing how he’d figured it out.

  “Ellie’s mother wasn’t the only woman I was ever with,” he explains. “We didn’t meet until I was twenty-seven. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for your generation to consider the fact that we had multiple partners over the course of our twenties. Probably because so many of you think solipsistically.”

  He studies my reaction and spells it out. “You think the world doesn’t exist when you’re not around.”

  “I know what solipsism is,” I retort, with a little added petulance.

  “Explained in a film, was it?”

  Touché, Mr. Brown. Touché.

  “So, thrill me with your acumen. Why did Ellie and I split up?”

  “I didn’t say I knew why. I just know what you did. I’ve done it myself. I probably did it to my wife too.”

  “Ex-wife.”

  “Yes, thank you, Nick.”

  He composes himself, takes another glug of Merlot.

  “You understand that if you want to break up with someone you love, you don’t fight with them. You don’t cause arguments—or even worse, cheat on them—you don’t do any of that, because that stirs up emotions and then you might realize what you mean to them and them to you. No. To really end things, you just slowly fade away…”

  Richard looks over at a picture of his family, the four of them, happy.

  “That’s how you disappear completely.”

  I move over to the bottle of wine and pour myself a glass. Richard doesn’t give me, or it, a second glance.

  “So why did you do it?” I ask. Half of me is hoping his answer might help me. The other half genuinely wants to know, in case there’s something I can do.

  “There wasn’t just one reason. It’s never usually that simple. Especially after so much time. You?”

  I scratch at the back of my head and rub my neck. I suddenly feel very small.

  “Because she deserves to be happy and I wasn’t good enough for her.”

  He stares me straight in the eye for the first time.

  “I don’t like you, Nick. I’m glad you’re not a part of my life anymore. You make weird jokes which you always seem smug about. You’re vague in a way that’s incredibly off-putting. At almost thirty years of age you still dress like a teenager. You say things like, ‘Thrill me with your acumen,’ thinking people won’t know you’ve stolen it from Silence of the Lambs, even though the line is actually ‘Enthrall me.’ ”

  Shit, I think. He’s right.

  “For all these reasons, I don’t like you, Nick.”

  He stops his judgment for a moment and the pity returns.

  “But my daughter did.”

  It might just be the nicest thing he’s ever said to me, and I feel like crying all over his expensive Persian rug.

  “Thanks, Richard,” I say. “I’d better go. There’s a video I need to watch.”

  As he walks me out of the room, he mutters, “And there’s that vagueness again.”

  “Maybe it was one of my smug jokes.”

  I return the look of pity he offered me moments ago.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “If I say no, are you going to make a list of films we could watch together to help sort me out?”

  He sees the look of enthusiasm in my eyes and I see the fear in his.

  “If you want me to.”

  “Goodbye, Nick.”

  * * *

  —

  BACK AT THE FLAT, Ronnie is out and so I have the time and space to watch the third video. It’s the one labeled BONUS that I’m desperate to get to, but knowing Ellie, there’s a reason why she wants me to watch these other ones first.

  I click on Ellie to Lucas—10 April 2011, and like magic she’s here with me again. To the uninitiated she looks like she did in 2010. A jumper replacing the T-shirt. The hair the same, just tied up. Those ears on show. But there is something more this time. Something I can’t quite figure out. Something behind the eyes. A self-assurance I missed at the time.

  I hit play.

  It’s me. Speaking from the other side.

  This one will be present tense. I think in previous years we’ve covered grounds both new and old, but today we’ll be firmly in the here and now. Agreed? Agreed. Well, I’ll try at least. The past does have a certain allure after all.

  Mum and Dad are well. He’s suddenly taken an interest in gardening, so after years of being forced to mow the lawn and weed the borders, he’s now enjoying it. He even has a little vegetable patch, although everything in it grows in the most peculiar direction. Still, he’s proud of his wonky carrots, so we leave him be. Mum’s retiring next year and I’m sure she’ll have some advice on straightening them. How they’ll get on when they’re around each other twenty-four-seven is anyone’s guess.

  Work has its up and its downs. Feast or famine is the life of a freelancer, or so they say. I’m considering going back to full-time employment, as much as I loathe the idea. It’s nice that Nick has a steady-ish job, although I’m not sure it’s as future-proof as he likes to believe.

  He showed me an
old film last week. He does this sometimes. I used to get a bit moody with it, like he was pushing his taste on me, but I know now it’s just him wanting to bring me his loves. It’s okay when the film is good—and last week’s was. Anyway, part of it is set in heaven and there’s a line in which the lead character contemplates what the afterlife is like: “I think it starts where this one leaves off, with all our earthly problems solved but with greater ones worth solving.” I liked that. I thought of you when he said it. I wondered if, where you are, you’re curious as to my earthly problems. Anyway, I don’t have many problems. I know how lucky I am and I’m grateful for it all.

  But I do worry about Nick sometimes. Sometimes he goes places. I don’t mean like the pub. I mean he just gets lost in his thoughts. Someone will say something and I’ll see him staring into space, working out what it all means, like there’s some deeper meaning to a joke or a throwaway comment. He takes things so much to heart. I guess a lot of us do, but I notice it with him more than I’ve noticed it with anyone else. It’s not a fault, I just sort of wish I could keep him here in the present. I want to yell at him, “Wake up, Nick.” Selfish of me, I guess.

  I wonder what the future holds for us. We’ve talked about children, but never marriage. I still feel like a kid myself a lot of the time. Next year I’ll be thirty. Don’t tell anyone.

  C’est la vie, mon ami.

  Okay, bye.

  The abrupt ending is like a punch in the face. Although having actually been punched in the face recently by a coffee table, maybe the analogy is inaccurate. That one knocked me out. This one is having a different effect.

  Both Gabby and Ellie have diagnosed me and they’re rarely wrong.

  Is there a cure?

  For added torment, I skip back to the moment Ellie says, “Wake up, Nick.” I play it over and over like she’s Pinkie Brown and this is the end of Brighton Rock.