bar on the South Bank and the wine was flowing and I looked around the table at all of these great friends of ours and I thought to myself, maybe turning forty won’t be so bad . . . the next morning I started to get out of bed to take a shower and my back went. And when I say it went, it wasn’t an “I’ve just pulled a muscle” kind of pain, it was a proper full-on sitcom moment, frozen to the spot, completely terrified that I’d done some kind of permanent damage to myself. It took me three months and eight visits to a chiropractor to recover properly.’
‘We’re all literally falling apart, aren’t we?’ says Ginny.
‘Just a bit.’
‘We need something to keep us together.’
Right on cue the radio that’s been on in the background throughout our meal plays ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’. Ginny looks over at me, wide-eyed and grinning with excitement. This song was our anthem during our sixth-form years, and the soundtrack to not only every great party but needless to say to the one film that we agreed was the best film ever made and the only film that we knew all the words to: The Breakfast Club .
Ginny grabs my hands and drags me into the middle of the kitchen and then we turn up the volume and start dancing and singing along. As we move around the kitchen, yelling our ‘la, la, la, las’ into the air and laughing like idiots all I can think about is how good it feels to be in the presence of someone who has known me for a lifetime.
Like we haven’t missed a beat.
Like we’re picking up right where we left off.
Like we’ve been dancing to the same song since for ever.
15
Twenty-three years! How is it even possible that the familiar rhythm of conversation Ginny and I have shared all evening and which had kept the two of us going through the years as underage drinkers, university students, fresh-faced graduates and beyond . . . had been going on for more than twenty-three years? Whether it was the biggest cliché in the book or not it really did seem like it was five minutes since we were seventeen with the world at our feet. Now we were back together and (from what I could gather) neither of us was in possession of the kinds of lives that we’d guessed we’d end up with, we were still as unsure and unsteady about the future as we’d ever been. Wasn’t life supposed to get easier as time went on? Wasn’t there supposed to be a point set in the future where you would finally understand how this whole ‘life’ thing worked? How is it that people who can still remember what it was like to have nothing to do and have all day to do it can suddenly find themselves turning forty?
‘So,’ Ginny says, opening our second bottle of wine of the evening, pouring two glasses and returning to her position on the sofa next to me. ‘We haven’t done more than skirt around it all evening, but how are you doing, Matt? Divorce is a huge thing and you’re acting like it’s no big deal but I know you, everything’s a big deal, so why don’t you tell me how you’re really feeling?’
I consider for a millisecond fobbing her off with a glib response, something along the lines of ‘Am I being charged for this session, Dr Pascoe?’ but I know she’ll only accuse me of deflecting, which is annoying because she would be right. The only option here is to man up and tell the truth.
‘I feel battered. Bruised if you like. With parents like mine you don’t get married thinking that it won’t last for ever.’
‘So it was Lauren’s decision to end things?’
‘Well she was the one to bring it up, but I know for a fact that I played my part in that passive-aggressive way I do so well. May I refer you to my two-week relationship with Ruth Morrell when I was nineteen and my month-long fling with Nicky Rowlands when I was twenty-one.’
Ginny laughs. ‘I remember them well. You forced both of those poor women to break up with you by being a total and utter git. You’re like the very definition
‘We’re all literally falling apart, aren’t we?’ says Ginny.
‘Just a bit.’
‘We need something to keep us together.’
Right on cue the radio that’s been on in the background throughout our meal plays ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’. Ginny looks over at me, wide-eyed and grinning with excitement. This song was our anthem during our sixth-form years, and the soundtrack to not only every great party but needless to say to the one film that we agreed was the best film ever made and the only film that we knew all the words to: The Breakfast Club .
Ginny grabs my hands and drags me into the middle of the kitchen and then we turn up the volume and start dancing and singing along. As we move around the kitchen, yelling our ‘la, la, la, las’ into the air and laughing like idiots all I can think about is how good it feels to be in the presence of someone who has known me for a lifetime.
Like we haven’t missed a beat.
Like we’re picking up right where we left off.
Like we’ve been dancing to the same song since for ever.
15
Twenty-three years! How is it even possible that the familiar rhythm of conversation Ginny and I have shared all evening and which had kept the two of us going through the years as underage drinkers, university students, fresh-faced graduates and beyond . . . had been going on for more than twenty-three years? Whether it was the biggest cliché in the book or not it really did seem like it was five minutes since we were seventeen with the world at our feet. Now we were back together and (from what I could gather) neither of us was in possession of the kinds of lives that we’d guessed we’d end up with, we were still as unsure and unsteady about the future as we’d ever been. Wasn’t life supposed to get easier as time went on? Wasn’t there supposed to be a point set in the future where you would finally understand how this whole ‘life’ thing worked? How is it that people who can still remember what it was like to have nothing to do and have all day to do it can suddenly find themselves turning forty?
‘So,’ Ginny says, opening our second bottle of wine of the evening, pouring two glasses and returning to her position on the sofa next to me. ‘We haven’t done more than skirt around it all evening, but how are you doing, Matt? Divorce is a huge thing and you’re acting like it’s no big deal but I know you, everything’s a big deal, so why don’t you tell me how you’re really feeling?’
I consider for a millisecond fobbing her off with a glib response, something along the lines of ‘Am I being charged for this session, Dr Pascoe?’ but I know she’ll only accuse me of deflecting, which is annoying because she would be right. The only option here is to man up and tell the truth.
‘I feel battered. Bruised if you like. With parents like mine you don’t get married thinking that it won’t last for ever.’
‘So it was Lauren’s decision to end things?’
‘Well she was the one to bring it up, but I know for a fact that I played my part in that passive-aggressive way I do so well. May I refer you to my two-week relationship with Ruth Morrell when I was nineteen and my month-long fling with Nicky Rowlands when I was twenty-one.’
Ginny laughs. ‘I remember them well. You forced both of those poor women to break up with you by being a total and utter git. You’re like the very definition
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