Epilogue
The last of their dinner was sitting in the center of the table: a chicken, most of the meat torn from it, a loaf of bread they’d diligently worked their way through, the last few lettuce leaves in a bowl. Their glasses were smudged with buttery fingerprints, and had been topped up with champagne all evening. There was ice cream in the freezer, a cardamom and caramelized milk recipe that Ash had spent all morning on. The candles were low now, throwing shadows around the room.
“Half an hour to go,” Ash said, standing up and piling plates haphazardly. “I’ll get the paper and pens?”
Each New Year’s Eve, just before midnight, Ash corralled everyone in the room to join her in a ritual she’d borrowed from her cousin. One year it had been just her and Bette, so drunk on fizzy wine and Robyn that they could barely pull themselves together to do it. The first year had been at the university, a huge house party, and Bette had looked on in awe as Ash had found kitchen roll and a couple of pens, and had managed to get everyone in the house settled on the floor in the front room. Through the years, whoever they spent the evening with, there were torn scraps of paper, and a collection of wishes and hopes and wants and desires for the coming year, folded away in a little pile. This was their tenth New Year’s Eve living together. Bette didn’t have to ask what the paper and pens were for.
But there was someone who did need to ask. Someone who would be playing for the first time.
“Paper and pens?” Ruth repeated, looking to Bette with amused eyes. “Are we playing consequences? Have we run out of conversation? Is it time for some doodling?”
“Ash’ll explain,” Bette said, slinging an arm across the back of Ruth’s chair and pressing a kiss to the side of her neck. “It’s her favorite thing. She’d happily murder me if I she thought I was taking over.”
As promised, Ash returned with a stack of paper in pastel hues pulled from her printer and an old golden syrup tin filled with pens. “I wouldn’t kill you,” she said thoughtfully, putting everything in the center of the table. “But I’d make next year a nightmare for you. Well, not me personally. But I’d use one of my pieces of paper on it. And the universe would take care of it for me.”
“Okay, that’s me well and truly lost now,” Ruth said, topping up everyone’s glasses round the table.
“I hate resolutions,” Ash said, as if that explained it.
“Sure,” Ruth agreed. “January is a terrible time for resolutions.”
“See this is why I’m glad we’ve got you now,” Ash said, clearly pleased, and Bette felt almost incandescently happy. “You’re really going to get this.”
“Should we have dessert while we’re doing it?” Tim suggested.
“Absolutely not. You can’t multitask; you need to focus. Dessert after fireworks.”
Tim threw up his hands, but there was a smile hidden at the corner of his mouth.
“Okay, so you’re going to tear your paper into twelve bits,” Ash explained, demonstrating with hers. “And then on each bit you’re going to write a thing you hope for, for next year. A good thing, or to let go of a bad thing. Like maybe start tap classes or stop worrying about the stupid Head Teacher on Sundays—”
“Quality, generic, examples there, Ash,” Tim said, and Ash put a hand over his mouth and continued.
“Or write a letter to a friend once a month. Something tangible or intangible that you think will make your life better. Or something you want to have done by next Christmas. Anyway, do that first, and then I’ll explain the next bit.”
Ruth picked a green pen and snorted in laughter.
“Serial killer,” she said, under her breath. Bette didn’t tell her to swap, didn’t warn her that she’d be stuck with something that looked like it had been written in serial-killer green all year. Instead she tucked a hand between Ruth’s legs beneath the table, tracing over her thigh. Ruth tensed, trapping the hand, and glared admonishingly at Bette. “Ash said we have to focus. No multitasking.”
“That was only for Tim,” Bette protested. “I’m perfectly capable of multitasking!”
“Well, I’m not. Keep your hands to yourself. I’m busy.”
Ash laughed, heartily and long, and shot Bette a smile so wide and so true and so blissfully pleased that Bette wanted to cry. The champagne had done its thing.
But first.
The first few were easy—yoga, a walking holiday with Ruth because she’d like it (unfortunately), more books, drive to Wales to swim, visit her nonna every fortnight. The next few were harder to articulate, the sort of wants that scratched at the inside of her skull but which she never properly said aloud. Open an ISA, sure, but also start thinking about the next bit. Talk to Ash about the future. Stop avoiding it, and make a real plan for the next few years. Figure out how to be an aunt. And then there was space for fun ones: let Ruth teach her to bowl, go and watch some drag with Jody, play wing-woman for Heather, go with Ash on one of her weekends back home and eat too much of her mum’s biryani. Try more…stuff…with Ruth. Figure out which of it was her stuff.
It would be a great year, she thought, if she could do everything on her list. A really great year.
“Okay, fold them all up and make sure they’re tiny. You shouldn’t be able to tell them apart,” Ash instructed.
“Do you know that no matter how big the piece of paper, the most times it can be folded is—” Tim began.
“Seven times! Wild, right?” Ruth replied. “Though actually I think there’s a girl in America who folded a piece of toilet paper in half twelve times? Kind of blew the whole paper-folding game wide open.”
Tim’s jaw dropped.
“Oh great,” Ash said. “He tells us that at exactly this point, every single year. It’s going to become an extended bit now.”
But Ruth had already pulled the article up on her phone and was handing it across the table to Tim.
“No way!”
“Right?!” Ruth said.
“Look, I’m honestly thrilled for you both, and you can nerd out over the physics of paper-folding after midnight, but we only have fifteen minutes.”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Ruth apologized to Ash. “So now we have twelve hopes? Twelve plans? Twelve tiny bits of paper? What do we do with them?”
“We’re going to throw them into a bowl,” Ash said, “one by one, until you’re left with only one in your hand.”
Ruth tossed one in and Bette followed suit. Round and round and round they went, until they were all holding a single squashed scrap of paper.
“We’re going to burn those at midnight,” Ash explained, gesturing at the paper in the bowl. “Outside on the street. And the universe will take care of them. But that one in your hand, that’s yours. You have to be responsible for that.”
“Do we…” Ruth started, working her paper open. “Do we read it out?”
“Only if you want to,” Ash assured her. “I should have said that at the start, so if you don’t want to, no pressure.”
“I think let’s not, this year,” Bette said, as she looked at the word “aunt” making itself known through the half-unfolded paper clutched in her hand. She needed to fill Ruth in on her family, probably. With things going as they were between them, it was inevitable. But it wasn’t the time. Not tonight. She pushed the paper into her pocket.
Ruth looked over, aware, as if she was entirely attuned to Bette’s precise mood, knew that something had shifted. She reached over and took her hand.
“Let’s go and burn the universe ones,” Ruth said, pushing her own paper into her pocket. “Anyone want a top-up?”
There was a flurry of activity as they made their way outside: glasses were refilled, Ruth pulled Bette in for a quick kiss, Ash found some matches and a saucepan, Tim ran back for a lid. And then they were outside, the streets filled with people finding a perfect vantage point for the fireworks.
“What did your piece of paper last year say?” Ruth asked, slipping her hand into Bette’s, twining their cold fingers together.
Bette laughed.
“I can’t tell you. You’re never going to believe it.”
“Ooh, talking about last year’s paper?” Ash said, only a step behind.
“Yeah,” Ruth said, turning back. “Hold on, do you remember too? You can confirm Bette’s story! I’ll believe it with corroboration!”
“The corroboration is at home,” Bette assured her. “It’s pinned above my mirror.”
“Well what was it?” Ruth asked. “Come on, did you manage it?”
“I…did,” Bette said, turning to Ruth, unable to keep the smile from her face.
“Yeah you did!” Ash crowed behind her, and Tim whooped.
“We’re going to find a spot,” Tim said as he and Ash made their way around them. Ash caught Bette’s eye as she passed and the look from earlier was back, the utterly blissed-out, overwhelmed look. Bette returned it.
It had felt too soon, in the past week, to say it aloud. They’d had barely any time together before Bette had traveled down to Devon. By the time she returned on Boxing Day, Ruth was with her parents in London. She knew, of course she did, what Ruth talking about jumping off the cliff meant. They had teased each other about it. It had been waiting on her tongue for a fortnight. But Bette didn’t want to say it in the flurry of everything being good, in response to the relief of Ruth agreeing to come back. She wanted to say it, clear-headed and sincere and so certain that she could feel it in every part of her.
“Bette…” Ruth started, her voice soft, her feet still. “I…”
“Last year, my piece of paper said—it said—” Bette interrupted, desperate to be first. “It said: fall in love, and be beside her at this party next year.”
It so felt good to finally say it: drunk on champagne, at midnight, the fireworks over Bristol behind her. And then Ruth said it back.