WUTHERING WUTHERING WUTHERING

‘Are you sure I can have it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure. Isn’t there a bit at the front where you can see I’ve ripped out the pages?’

You confirmed that there was.

‘I always do that and then never end up using them,’ I said. ‘So, please. Have it’.

It was big and fat and red, the notebook. It definitely wasn’t something you’d have chosen for yourself, but you’d asked me for paper, and I’d looked (halfheartedly) and then I’d found you taking notes on the backs of vitamin packaging flattened out, and old receipts. It was much better to have a book. And when you’d leave your debris in small piles around my house, and I’d find the book in the kitchen, a biro cigarette between its pages, I was happy to have given you something that was actually useful, instead of advice you didn’t want, or a meal you said you liked a bit too keenly.

Now, you were slapping the book down on the sticky pub table and lopsidedly dislocating several bags from your shoulder, and I was trying not to whisk the book to safety and give it a good wipe down. After all, it was your book now, and maybe even if you didn’t realise, you didn’t mind.

‘How did it go?’

You weren’t paying attention. You were taking your coat off, and your eyes were darting all over the place, and you had a rictus grin to sell the happy entrance of a body reaching its destination well before its corresponding mind.

‘Really well actually!’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m just going to the loo. Can I get you a drink?’

It was 2pm but you could see I’d already had one while waiting for you to arrive.

‘Are you having anything?’ I asked.

‘I might not, if that’s okay. But I can get you one?’

I asked for the same again.

‘No problem!’

I was alone in the booth and the corners of your big red book were tickling a wrinkle in my brain. I wanted to know what was in between the covers that had made those writing agents trip over themselves to sign you. Nothing, when it’s read coldly, is that good. It’s easy not to believe in something. Why had they believed in you?

I could see you ordering at the bar, a pint of lager and a diet coke wobbling into place in front of you. I grabbed the book and read:

To Do:

- Call HMRC

- Doctor’s appointment

- Gift for Tania

- February invoices – paid?

And underneath, in furry patches of handwriting:

Whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same

And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave to the dark and the endless sky

The opposite page was a swarm of numbers and dates. It was all wonderfully and predictably opaque. And you had just finished entering your PIN.

I watched as you made your way over, knowing you were being observed and probably spilling a little more because of it. When you got the table:

‘Cheers!’

We locked eyes. Always too manic, and for too long.

‘Tell me everything,’ I said.

‘It was a really positive meeting,’ you said, and I cringed. You have a way of reporting good things that make the good things seem less good.

‘What happened?’

‘Well, you know, mostly just a catch up,’ you said. ‘And also – I’ve been shortlisted for that award I- ‘

‘What?’

‘Yes!’

‘What award? The $20,000 one?’

‘Yeah, I mean I don’t think I’ll win, but- ‘

‘Oh yeah, you definitely won’t win, but that’s so good!’, I said. ‘It’s all experience and getting yourself out there, isn’t it?’

You were looking at me in a darkly prickly way, but you were still smiling. There was always something we were holding up together when it was just us, and it was a matter of time before I’d feel my end slipping.

‘I love you,’ I said, my hand on your hand on the sticky table.

‘I’m so proud of you,’ I said.

And then, a bit of a leap, ‘Whatever our souls are made of, we’re kind of the same, aren’t we?’

‘Yes! Ah, I love that!’

I had thought it was a bit of a basic sentiment, hormonal and teenaged. Was it really lines like this your editors went wild for? But repeating your own words back to you had made you light up. Yes, you had an ego. Buried perhaps, but just as ugly as mine.

‘When do you find out?’

‘They said by the middle of next week?’

‘Wow’, I said. ‘So soon’.

You’d be devastated, of course. You’d come over with your face pale and puffed up from crying: first after the phone call, then on the phone to your mum, and maybe even to your sad songs playlist. It was weird and indulgent how much you cried. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d nip into my bathroom for a quick one while I was making dinner. I’d cook all your favourite curries to cheer you up, and we’d stay in and do whatever you wanted. And when I had to be out the door at seven thirty the next morning, you’d be in my bed, dreaming sweetly in thoughts and feelings.

I was pissed off just thinking about it.

I was almost horizontal in bed, lowering cheesy puffs into my mouth with my laptop bouncing on my belly, when the phone rang.

I wiped cheesy dust off on my duvet, and answered.

‘Hey – can you hear me?’

‘Yes I can!’

‘How are you?’

A pause. Then, ‘I won!’

‘What?’

‘I won the award!’

I was sitting up now, blinking in the dim of my bedroom.

‘What?’, I said again.

‘Yes, Sarah just rang me! And there’s been some press req- ‘

‘You won $20,000?’

‘I did. I did!’

‘What are you doing to do with the money?’

‘I think I’ll put most of it in my savings account and then-‘

‘Are you serious?’

Another, different, pause. Then you were spluttering. ‘Yes, I- I-, you know I’ve basically burnt through- ‘

‘Come on’. This was ridiculous. This was classic you. This was infuriating.

You were trying to change the subject now, to get the moment you’d wanted when you’d picked up the phone, instead of this souring.

‘It’s going to be featured in- ‘

‘Say you’ll spend some of the money now’.

I kept you on the phone until you said it.

After that, we had snuffed out the spark of the news. I’d have liked a second go at that phone call. I had heard your exuberance fall away and I hoped I wasn’t the first person you’d called.

I said I was tired and I said good bye.

I lay back in the gloom of my bedroom, above a carpet of dirty laundry, sipping the end of a warm beer. And with the whole force of things happening, of things being able to happen, I almost cried.

I thought of you recently. I was in a bookshop and that anthology you got your story into was on one of the display tables. It even had a little card with rapturous praise in bubble handwriting. The book cover drew me in, although I know you probably think it’s too loud.

On my way out, I took a detour past the stationery section. I wanted something to write my thoughts in so I got a little black book. I’ve had a few ideas so far, but nothing’s coming out right. I always rip the pages out.