Chapter 75
Josh
‘It’s good to see you, mate,’ I say to Giles, gripping his hand.
Wide-eyed, Giles looks at Lola, then back at me. ‘Bloody hell. What’s with the funeral face? You know I’m not dead yet?’
I smile. ‘Sorry.’
He shakes his head. ‘Even Blake left his flat for long enough to grace me with his presence yesterday. Things really must be serious.’
‘You have just had surgery for cancer, darling,’ Lola reminds him.
‘Yeah, and they got it all, and the consultant says I have every reason to feel positive.’ Giles examines the glass he’s holding, the contents of which resemble pond water. ‘Not that she was accounting for this, I shouldn’t think.’
‘Complain all you like, but you’re drinking it,’ Lola says, before squeezing my shoulder and leaving us alone.
Giles leans towards me, hands me the glass. ‘Right. Here’s where you get to prove what a good friend you are.’
I smile. ‘Very funny.’
He does look healthy today, I think. Freshly shaved and plump-cheeked, a splash of wintry sunlight brightening his skin.
I’ve always thought getting older kind of suited Giles.
He wears the extra years well, invariably seems pretty content and fulfilled – not like those shells of humans who weigh out their granola and steam-clean their erogenous zones.
Giles just enjoys himself. He gets what life is for.
Which is why this has all seemed so unfair.
I notice a hand-drawn card on his side table. It’s of a bandaged heart, Rachel’s signature a flourish in the bottom corner. It makes me smile and want to well up, all at the same time.
I lift the glass of gunk. ‘Am I allowed to ask what’s in it?’
‘Probably better you don’t know. Although, I’d recommend pinching your nose while you swallow. It tastes like it’s been siphoned off a swamp.’
‘Well, if you think I’m risking Lola’s wrath to drink bog, you must be on the really good drugs.’
Giles stares at the glass as if he’s hoping it might drain of its own accord. ‘Maybe you had it right all along, mate.’
‘Had what right?’
He shrugs, almost helplessly. ‘You’ll never have any of this stuff hanging over you.’
I’d swap my life with yours in a second, I think but don’t say. ‘You have kids, a loving family,’ I remind him. ‘People who give a shit if you get ill. Who make you smoothies out of kale. Who fall asleep at your bedside in hospital. Who’ll do literally anything to make you laugh.’
Giles brightens momentarily. His twin daughters – my tiny Tolstoy enthusiasts, now twenty-eight – are forever sending him funny videos and stupid GIFs to lift his spirits. Some days, he confided, when he was in the thick of it a few months back, they were all that kept him going.
‘You wouldn’t rather have cancer.’
‘No,’ I concede, instantly chastened. Because how can you possibly tell a man in his position that a finite existence is something you envy?
‘Anyway. Rachel would do all that stuff for you.’
‘She might have done, once.’
Giles leans forward, taps his index finger against the table. ‘Don’t tell Lo, but I’ve been looking into all that plasma stuff.’
I have a feeling I know what’s coming. ‘Don’t you think that all feels a bit . . . you know. Cannibalistic?’
‘If cannibalism is what it takes to get a second lease of life, I’m down with it.’
‘You’ve already got a second lease of life,’ I remind him softly.
‘You could give me your plasma.’ The expression on his face straddles that fraying line between humour and hope. ‘Kind of like donating a kidney. Only less invasive.’
‘Giles—’
‘I’d offer you mine in return, but I don’t think you’d want it.’
It’s funny, really. There was a time when I might have. But I no longer crave to be restored to the age I should be, and definitely not via being jabbed with an older man’s bodily fluids.
‘Tell you what,’ I say, ‘if you ever need my spare kidney, it’s yours.’
‘I tell you what. It’s nice to have you back.’
‘What? I never went anywhere.’
Giles taps the side of his head. ‘In here. Thought we’d lost you for a while. It’s nice to see you living for you again. If you know what I mean.’
He’s only partly right, but I appreciate the sentiment. ‘I thought I’d lost me too, for a while, actually. Thanks for kicking me up the arse that time.’
He nods solemnly, then lifts his hand, and we bump fists.
‘You ever hear from Wilf?’ he asks.
How is it that the softest of syllables can still feel so sharp?
It’s a long time since Giles has mentioned Wilf’s name.
But perhaps coming close to death has reanimated all the loose ends of his life to date.
So maybe I owe him the truth now, about how it all went down. The real reason Wilf left the country.
But I still feel a kind of animal loyalty towards Wilf, despite our standoff.
He sacrificed his own life, really, for mine.
And, as far as I know, he remains the only other person on the planet who has been frozen in time.
Which means that one day, I hope, he might be open to resurrecting the friendship we once had.
So eventually, I just shake my head and say, ‘Not for years.’
Without commenting further, Giles rubs a hand through his greying hair. ‘So, come on. When’s Graveyard Heart: The Movie out? I need something to look forward to.’
I tell him not any time soon, because we’ve run into problems with financing.
But the serialisation of one of my older crime novels is just about to start shooting, and I’m finishing up a new standalone book, my eighth.
My newfound readership has been clamouring for more love stories.
But, having wrestled pretty hard with writing the sequel to Graveyard Heart, on that front right now I’m pretty much spent.
Melvin retired just before Christmas, so I have a new, hotshot-type agent representing me, who’s smart and responsive and brokers deals like a demon.
I know how lucky I am, professionally speaking.
I reflect on it every day. But, at the same time, I have come to realise that superficial success – the type that people often envy – comes nowhere close to family, love, the absolute hands-down privilege of getting old.
The gifts people take for granted – which to them might seem unremarkable – increasingly feel like the most magical things to me.
I catch Lola in the kitchen on my way out. The worktop is weighed down now by unpalatable-looking cookbooks, giant tubs of pulses, an industrial-sized juicer.
I pull her into a hug. She is tiny and slight in my arms, and her heart is beating fast. She’s always complaining about feeling old, but, every time, I tell her I envy her crow’s feet and smile lines, the speckles of grey in her hair. All signs, to me, of a life well-lived.
‘You didn’t drink that juice for him, did you?’ she mumbles into my chest.
‘The quagmire-in-a-glass? What do you think?’
‘Breathe,’ she orders, pulling back and putting her face close to mine.
I laugh and oblige.
She tries to laugh too. But then her eyes fill up suddenly, a sharp tide of overwhelm. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without him, Josh.’
I pull her back into my arms. ‘Hey. Hey. You don’t have to think like that. He’s doing really well. You’re going to be okay, I promise.’
We just stand there for a while as I hold her.
‘I heard what you were saying. About wishing you had a family.’
‘Forget it, Lo,’ I murmur.
‘Josh, a family can be whatever you want it to be. It’s not about blood, or biology. You create your family. A love like that . . . it’s made, not inherited. You have our girls, and Polly’s boys, and Emma. Don’t you see?’
‘Better go,’ I whisper, blinking back fresh emotion. ‘I’m teaching in a bit.’
‘I saw Rach yesterday,’ she says, as I’m pulling on my coat and scarf. ‘She’s found a new house.’
‘That’s good. She okay?’
‘You should get in touch.’
My mind journeys back in time nearly twenty-two years. Darren doing his Superman impression. You get what I’m saying. Just give her some time.
‘I’ll wait till she gets in touch with me,’ I say to Lola.
A wry smile. ‘Still playing that game?’
‘I just don’t want her to think—’
‘She doesn’t think anything. But she does need all the friends she can get right now.’