Okay, what else did Liam want?
Two – Try a different job. I know you love your career but try something else for at least a year.
A year? Do what? I’m a musician! I hold up an oboe and blow into a double reed to make sound. That’s what I do. And doing it to a level good enough to be hired by an orchestra has taken me fifteen years of training, I’m not trained for anything else.
And now, the opportunity at the Concertgebouw is unlikely to hang around waiting for me. You don’t turn your back on arguably the best orchestra in the world in order to …what? Live here and do what?
Three – Do something to help someone in trouble. And, no, I don’t mean give money to charity. Give your time, a little part of your life.
Four – Take a vow of celibacy for at least one whole year.
I almost choke on my tea.
And then, without warning, a memory slides into the front of my mind. Christmas a few years ago. My uncle, drunk on too much sherry, decided to be funny by telling my least favourite joke in the world.
When Liam and Brandon were in the womb together, Brandon took all the looks, height, and talent, but Liam got all the love.
It always irked me and that last time I snapped.
“I get plenty of love, thank you.”
Liam laughed telling me that sex was not the same as love.
Probably not. But who needs complications, arguments, and tears. My life is too busy forthatkind of love. Working closely with musicians and singers means there is no end of beautiful, exciting, talented women to keep my bed warm and help me explore new cities. Then, before any relationship can get to the awkward conversation, the tour comes to an end, and one or both of us get a job with a different orchestra. We go our separate ways. Love has always been a short, sweet thing. Followed by another short, sweet thing. Then another.
Celibate? I don’t think I’ve ever been celibate for longer than a fortnight. Could I even survive without sex for a whole year? For six months? Three months? Impossible. I wouldn’t make it for a month.
Five - Make a gift for someone who will not know it’s a gift, nor be able to thank you.
Six - Help someone do something they thought impossible or out of their reach.
Oh, because everything else on this list has been easy.
Seven - Allow yourself to feel pain.
Well, that’s easy. Doing any of the things on this list would be a lot of pain.
Eight - Change your diet, your eating habits. Trust me, this will make sense when you get it right.
This is starting to look like a monumental prank. Liam was never a fan of practical jokes, and I doubt that lying in a hospital bed made him a prankster. He must mean something, but what? What?
Nine – Meet a young woman who does not want to sleep with you and become her best friend. (You might even spend a night sleeping in the same bed without sex)
I carry on reading, not letting myself think because I don’t want to give myself an aneurysm.
Ten - When you have completed all the above, make a new wish list for yourself, for the life you want to have and put something on it that you think is impossible.
I put the last half-eaten sandwich back on the plate and drain the rest of my tea. I want to laugh because he’s funny. Liam is a funny, funny man when you get him. But I can’t laugh because I’m not sure I get it.
Nothing makes sense.Find a woman who doesn’t fancy me and become her best friend?I wouldn’t know where to even begin!
Did he write me an impossible list so I would feel like a failure to teach me humility? It doesn’t sound like my brother, except some of these requests are things he would not find impossible.Making friends and not sleeping with women?That was Liam all over. And he claimed it was rewarding. That same Christmas when my uncle repeated his stupid joke about love, Liam insisted love was not the same as sex. And I’d said, “You should try sex, you might like it, O brother.”
“I have tried it. It’s why I know.” He threw a pinecone at me.
I retaliated with a sprig of holly, and we both pelted each other with roasted chestnuts which were too hot and burnt our fingertips.
That was Christmas three years ago – the last time we’d been together.
