Josh
May 2003
On the early bank holiday, I’m invited to a barbecue at Darren’s. It is a perfect spring day, the air clear as water. Acres of blue sky and a still, beating heat.
I try to enjoy the moment, since I’ve been cooped up indoors for the best part of a couple of months, editing my novel. A self-imposed kind of quarantine, I guess, since every time I go out I seem to feel the urge to deal with my emotions by getting off my face, saying absurd things to Rachel, or doing things like sleeping with other people’s wives.
The minute I turned up, before I could even get a drink in my hand, I was roped into playing tag with the kids. But Lo has artfully distracted them now with a paddling pool, freeing me up to take a breather with Darren on a couple of deckchairs.
Which is when Darren tells me – casual as you like – that Rachel has started seeing someone. That she’s bringing him here today.
My stomach plunges to a depth I didn’t know it had. I glance around the garden, as if the pair of them might already be standing right behind me, feeling each other up next to the rhododendrons.
With perfect timing, a shadow falls over us. I look up, breath catching.
It’s only Wilf. But he looks odd. Shaky and pale-faced, as if he’s just been first on the scene at a road traffic accident. ‘I need to talk to you.’
Frowning, I get up and follow him past Ingrid and Lo, who are dancing to a song by that guy out of *NSYNC, margaritas in hand.
As we come to a pause at the far end of Darren’s luridly green lawn, Wilf says, ‘I think someone at work knows what I’ve been doing.’
Momentarily, I’m confused. ‘What have you been doing?’
To my surprise, he reaches out with both hands and pushes me in the chest. ‘Thepill, you idiot.’
I stare at him in shock, mind spinning. ‘All right. Calm down. What are—’
‘Who have you been talking to? I told you to keep my name out of it.’
‘No one.No one. Only Rachel knows it was you, I swear.’
I did mention Wilf’s involvement to my mother, but the odds of her having dobbed him in to his Big Pharma bosses are obviously non-existent. Maybe Rachel’s told her dad, because she tells her dad everything. But, even if she has, he is in his seventies and a nice guy, and therefore, I’d guess, an unlikely candidate for shafting his ex-son-in-law’s friends.
‘Fuck.’ Wilf is pacing now. ‘Fuck.’
‘What makes you think they know?’
He tells me he’s been getting anonymous emails, demanding he share his intellectual property or face legal action. He’s been followed while driving home, can hear strange noises outside his flat at night. Has received a few silent phone calls.
‘It might be that IP lawyer,’ I say. ‘How do you know he hasn’t—’
‘Client confidentiality.’ Wilf shakes his head. ‘He’s way too well thought of to risk that.’
‘Okay, okay.’ I try to think. ‘Well, whoever it is, maybe you should call their bluff. Announce it, officially. Would that besuch a terrible thing? I thought you were talking about pitching it, taking it wider?’
He’s been quiet on this since Valentine’s, other than to say he needs more time to think about it. I’d just assumed until now that he was still feeling sensitive about that night, which he’d ended up spending in A&E because his date turned out to have a previously unidentified crustacean allergy. It’s unclear if they’ve seen each other since.
‘I decided against it,’ Wilf says. ‘I don’t want to play God. I’m not comfortable with being responsible for the downfall of humanity.’
At this, I half-laugh.
‘Do you think I’m joking?’ He glares at me. ‘Oh, never mind. I don’t have time to explain the socio-economic ramifications of everyone living forever—’
‘What are you talking about?’ My heart rises to my throat. ‘Why the hell did you invent it, then? You told me this pill was agood thing.’
Wilf lowers his voice to a hiss, as if he thinks Darren’s bird-feeders might be bugged. ‘Good foryou– not for everyone else in the world. I can’t have that on my conscience, Josh. I was stupid to even entertain the idea. It was just greed.’
If I were a betting man, I might suspect Wilf has casually floated the idea to his God-fearing parents, of whom he thinks the world.
