‘Define pine,’ I demand, by way of deflection.
Giles clutches his chest, starts to speak in a pitched-up voice.
I smile despite myself, hold up a hand. ‘Forget I asked.’
I haven’t ever told them what Oliver said to me, the first time we met. It would only get back to Rachel, and make me look bitter.
I think about Wilf. I wonder if he’s started to slowly lose himself over the years too. If he sometimes looks around and can’t believe he ended up living in Spain, playing poker to make ends meet. How he feels about time passing, seeing an unchanging face staring back at him in the mirror. If he ever fears the future, or gets the sense he’s being left behind. If he stalks his old friends online, marvelling at the fact that their kids are doing things like learning how to veneer teeth, while he’s stuck in the early noughties, attempting to style it out.
I’ve tried calling him a few times since my visit to Spain. But the only number I’ve got for him always comes up as out of service.
It still troubles me deeply that Darren and Giles have long-assumed Wilf simply upped and left us all, too selfish to provide so much as a functioning phone number. They’ve stopped discussing how they think he’s doing these days, so I can only conclude they no longer care.
‘You should try to see this divorce as a positive,’ Darren says. ‘The start of a new chapter. You need to look forward. You’re not still considering that antidote idea, are you?’
I shake my head.
‘Good,’ says Giles. ‘I mean, reversing it could put you right back to where you started, no?’
I don’t respond. I hadn’t actually thought of that.
Eventually, I decided against taking things any further with Wilf’s ex-colleague Hester. Rachel has made it clear she will never want the second pill. But for some reason I know I’d still find it impossible to hand it over to a third party, no matter how trusted.
That’s not to say I haven’t spent a fair amount of time trawling the internet, to see if I might be able to track down a cure for what I did to myself. But, predictably, it’s thrown up nothing useful. Just clickbait news pieces about the opposite of whatI’m looking for, like collagen and retinol, and the occasional dubious-looking article about ‘promising tests on mice’.
‘I’d make the most of eternal youth if I were you. I mean, take me, for example. I’m probably going to have a heart attack if I don’t join a gym, stop eating butter, cut back on—’ Giles breaks off to up-end his bag of Monster Munch, shaking the remnants into his mouth.
Across the table, I meet Darren’s eye and we share a smile.
‘I’ve started creaking when I stand up,’ Giles continues, through his mouthful. ‘I need more time to recover between shags. And, last night, I needed to piss twice.Twice.’
‘You’re forty-three.’
‘Exactly. Clock’s ticking. The girls are going to beteenagersin a month. Next thing I know, they’ll be off to uni. And then...’ He trails off and wipes his mouth, seeming dangerously close to becoming emotional.
‘You could still have kids,’ Darren says to me. ‘You could still meet someone. You always wanted a family.’
Giles nods sagely. ‘The point is, you’ve got time.Infinitetime. You never have to worry about your sperm going stale, or being too old. That’s agift, mate. Make the most of it.’
I walk home alone, trying not to dwell too hard on the concept of stale sperm. My route takes me past the takeaway that used to be Sorelli’s. Its neon sign glows red and blue in the dark, the smell of grease and deep-fried chicken wafting through the humid air. The night sky has blown pale, skimmed now with creamy clouds.
I think back to all the times I sat inside those walls with Rachel, spilling spaghetti sauce on my T-shirt and talking nonsense and trying, always, to make her laugh.
For a while I stand on the opposite pavement, watching teenagers mill around the shop, buckets of chicken in hand. Ourlaughter, I realise, has been replaced. New kids are here now, carefree and on the cusp of their futures.
And it is this most unlikely of tableaux that makes me think, yes – why keep living in the past? Because I can never take back what I did.
The world has moved on, and Rachel has too. So maybe my friends are right. Maybe, finally, it’s time I did the same.
SECTION IV
58.
Josh
June 2012
I have just finished a hot yoga session when one of my classmates runs outside to catch up with me.
