Page 4 of Close to You

Two

THE WHY

Three years, ten months ago

Jane frowns across to the pair of blokes who are sitting in the windowsill. They’re roughly our age, late-20s or early 30s, and I don’t know them.

‘Don’t light that in here,’ she says.

One of the men looks down to the cigarette he’s rolling and shrugs. ‘I wasn’t going to.’ He licks his lips and then adds a conspiratorial: ‘Want one?’

‘No.’

He grins and tilts his head: ‘You’ve changed since uni.’ He laughs, though Jane doesn’t, and then the duo get up and head off into the garden.

‘Ben’s friends,’ she says by way of explanation.

As they disappear, a blonde woman in yoga pants and a wool sweater ambles into the living room with her boyfriend or husband in tow. She turns in a half-circle, seemingly lost, and then smiles, waves and shrieks, ‘Happy birthday!’

There are few things quite as awkward as being at the side of a conversation while not knowing who the other party is. The woman’s boyfriend/husband is in the same position and we exchange knowing half-smiles.

‘Ilovethe new house,’ she says.

‘We’ve not got much furniture yet,’ Jane replies. ‘We’re getting there.’

‘We’re still renting…’ The woman delivers her retort with an obvious edge of annoyance, but then levers a wrapped present out from under her boyfriend/husband’s arm and hands it over. ‘That’s for you,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe you’re turning thirty. I feel so old.’

‘Youfeel old? You’re not the one turning thirty.’

Jane opens the gift and it’s a picture frame full of a scrappy piecemeal of photos. Jane looks young in all of them and she’s alongside various people I don’t know.

I presume this is another of Jane’s old university friends. Most of the people at the house party know either her or Jane’s boyfriend, Ben, in the same way.

Jane and her friend make small talk until the woman disappears off towards the kitchen, her boyfriend or husband trailing a step behind like a trained puppy at heel.

Jane runs her fingers across the pictures and then places the frame down at the side of the TV unit.

‘That was Eleanor,’ she says. ‘I should’ve introduced you.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’

I don’t explicitly say that I’m not bothered about Jane’s university friends, though it has to be somewhat implied. I suppose everyone has different lives depending on who they’re with and where they are. It’s only events like birthdays, weddings and funerals that bring it all crashing together.

It’s been a steady parade of guests arriving for Jane’s birthday, but, for now at least, the living room is quiet. We lean on the back of the sofa and stare towards the window at the front. We’ve known each other for so long that, sometimes, it doesn’t need words.

Jane eventually sighs her way into a sentence: ‘So…you have news?’

I glance off to the kitchen, wanting the chat but not wanting to be interrupted or overheard. ‘Gary dumped me,’ I say.

‘I thought you were going to break it off with him anyway?’

‘That makes it worse. I wasn’t into him – but I wanted him to be into me.’

The grin creeps across Jane’s mouth and then disappears. I laugh, anyway. We both get it.

‘Then the gym is closing down,’ I add. ‘I lost a job and a boyfriend all within about thirty hours.’

‘So… that’s two things you didn’t like that are both out of your life. Tomorrow’s a new day and all that…’ She pauses and then adds: ‘Perhaps it’s a chance to look at something else?’