And I was glad, too. Because – even in that moment – I knew, I knew, I knew.
5.
Josh
March 2000
‘I’ve been talking to Giles,’ Wilf says, letting me into his flat one Thursday night.
Wilf is a genius. Certifiably so: once named Britain’s brainiest kid, he has an IQ of more than 200 and won a place at Cambridge before he’d even turned sixteen. Back then, the local paper was always running articles on him, and he’d get asked to do things like appear on TV shows to solve maths equations against the clock.
These days, he keeps a lower profile, working as some kind of lab chemist for Big Pharma, earning the kind of salary that still makes his father choke on his own-brand muesli.
‘Tea?’ Wilf offers.
‘Go on, then, if you’re having one.’
‘I’m not,’ he says mildly. But he disappears to make one anyway.
Wilf and I met at primary school. Wilf seems to think he’s still indebted to me for stepping in one day as he was being repeatedly shoved against a brick wall by a seven-year-old skinhead. But as I always tell him, anyone else would have done the same.
Perhaps we would never have become friends if that tiny bully hadn’t seen Wilf’s uniqueness as an excuse to pick on him. But from that first encounter in the playground we have somehow felt loyal to each other in the way that animals do, sharing a bond that seems to transcend any of the usual social norms.
Wilf’s flat always reminds me of an art gallery: almost empty, save for a few prominent pieces. Big pleather sofa, bulky hi-fi system and a huge Philips TV. He does have all four of my books lined up on a shelf, though, which amuses me – my entry-level crime novels slotted between hefty textbooks on organic chemistry and the Riemann hypothesis.
He’s read everything I’ve ever written, usually adding his feedback to the margins of my drafts. Rachel does the same, albeit slightly more tactfully and not in all-caps and red pen. Still. I don’t mind. I’m pretty sure that, between the two of them, they have made me a better writer.
Weirdly, my fear of dying young was one of the first things I ever confided to Wilf. Or maybe it wasn’t so weird. Back then, it just felt like a vaguely fascinating fact I could tell people about myself. A kind of ice-breaker for seven-year-olds. A conversational party trick.
My mum and her relatives didn’t see it that way, obviously. They discussed it in grave voices, usually bringing each other to tears, whenever they thought I was somewhere else in the house, or watching TV. And it didn’t take me long to understand why. It was alarming how quickly novelty turned into trepidation as soon as I’d given it more than a passing thought.
Whenever Wilf and I discuss it now, his brain usually reverts to its factory setting of statistical thinking. He starts talking about probability outcomes, axioms and risk matrices, at which I mostly try to tune him out. Because it’s clear – even with my non-understanding of probability calculus – that the chances of me beating a pattern scored into the sands of time are terrifyingly low.
Wilf returns, passes me the tea, takes a seat next to the fireplace. Outside, a biting March wind is charging the walls of the flat in rips and gusts.
‘Giles told me about your problem.’
I sip my tea. ‘That all sounds a bit STI-clinic.’
He just blinks at me.
‘Sorry – what problem?’
‘That you think you’re going to die some time within the next—’ he glances at his Casio ‘—fourteen months, two weeks and six days.’
I shiver as he says it. My own personal Y2K, still waiting for me on the horizon. ‘This shouldn’t be news to you.’
‘I meant more that it’s imminent. Anyway. I think I may have the answer,’ Wilf says, then abruptly gets up and leaves the room.
I just stay where I am, drinking my tea. I have long since stopped wondering if I should follow Wilf whenever he walks off midway through a conversation.
Sure enough, he soon returns. He stands in front of me, hands me a small plastic bag, containing two round white pills.
Gingerly, I take it. Turn it over between my fingers.
‘The illnesses that killed your relatives are age-related,’ he says.
I frown my disagreement. ‘None of them made it past thirty.’
