‘Isn’t that why you do yoga and wash exclusively in cold water?’
I smile, tempted to remind her there are some types of tiredness that exercise and ice baths can’t touch. But that’s the kind of defeatist talk she likes to tell me off for.
‘If Josh is tired, then I should definitely be feeling my age,’ Rachel says.
‘Should, bollocks.’ Emma tips back some champagne. ‘You feel how you feel. And you feel great, don’t you?’
Rachel shrugs. ‘Yes, mostly.’
‘Good,’ Emma says. ‘Then let’s talk holidays. It’s looking as if I might have a window towards the end of the year.’
A few months ago, Emma officially mooted the idea of the three of us going away together. Rachel has turned down the last couple of trips I’ve proposed, but, once I extended the invitation to Emma too, she seemed more open to the prospect. In the end, though, Emma’s work calendar transpired to be blocked out for the foreseeable future. Since securing tenancy last year she hasn’t had a break that’s lasted longer than five minutes, as far as I can work out. I asked her once when she’ll be allowed to take her foot off the pedal, whereupon she shot me a withering look and said, ‘When I retire.’
‘Where do you fancy?’ says Rachel.
Emma turns to me. ‘Any ideas, globetrotter?’
As nicknames go, it could be worse. I have been travelling a fair bit lately, ever since I caved and paid someone dodgy for a passport with a birth date that finally tallied with my face. ‘Wherever you like. I’m easy. You decide.’
‘Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe somewhere like... Aruba?’ Emma says.
She got it out of me, once. That Aruba was a place I’d wanted to go with Rachel.
I shoot her astop itlook. But she just beams at me.
Thankfully, Rachel appears not to notice, and the moment moves on.
I sit at the edge of the dance floor until well into the evening. Rachel and Emma come and go, mingling and catching up. Fortunately, aside from the odd exchange of pleasantries, I’m largely left alone. Maybe people don’t make the connection with the fifty-something geezer I should be when they see me. Or maybe they do, and have no idea what to say.
The band switches tempo to something slow. A step back in time, to nineties-era Westlife. A blast from a golden past.
As the music kicks in, Rachel appears in front of me, her hand outstretched. There are nearly thirty years between us tonight, but I think – not for the first time – that she looks beautiful as ever. She’s teased a curl through her hair, which is short now but still blonde, albeit slowly greying along the crown. Her dress is a medley of fuchsia and peach, pleated from the waist, and her lips are a riotous pink. She is, as she always has been, dazzling.
Still. No need to kill the moment with a dance. I smile at her, shake my head. ‘Ah, no. We scare people on dance floors, remember?’
‘Don’t worry.’ She returns my smile. ‘They’re bound to look at the two of us and blame me.’
And so, as sunset submits to dusk, and the canopy of lights flares gold, I follow Rachel on to the dance floor. The outdoor air is perfumed with dampening grass, slumbering rose bushes.
I pull her close, wrap my arms around her back. The kite-high pleasure of being close to her like this is something I’d filed into the deepest recesses of my memory. I’m not really ready for what it does to me. She lays her head on my shoulder, and I feel loss blow through me, sharp as a winter wind.
‘Love you,’ I whisper, into the soft folds of her hair.
‘Love you too,’ she whispers back.
As the music plays on and we slowly turn around together, I catch sight of Emma watching us, her phone lifted to capture the moment.
She brushes something from her cheek, and I shut my eyes.
78.
Rachel
June 2030
To celebrate my turning sixty, Emma books dinner for the two of us at her favourite restaurant in London.
I catch the train in, having agreed to meet Emma at her flat. But when I emerge from the tube station – as I have done a thousand times before – it is as though my mind has violently upturned with a mental bout of vertigo.
