Page 5 of Wish You Were Here

Ben

I am at work, desperate to leave because I am meeting everyone at an Italian restaurant on Rathbone Place for Will’s birthday, but I have to email a new client in Australia.

I’m an asset manager, primarily working in the real estate market, although I have moved around within the company since I joined on a graduate scheme straight from university.

I did my degree in economics and statistics, and that’s how my brain works.

I have to work everything through in a very conscientious, pragmatic way, analysing all the available data before making the best possible decision. If only my love life were that simple.

My office is near Liverpool Street, and for the most part I enjoy my work and the life it provides me.

The hours can be long, sometimes the commute from Clapham can feel like a bit of a grind, but it’s all a trade-off because it gives me a certain amount of financial freedom – I say certain because I haven’t yet bought a house, got married and had children – the trifecta of the most expensive things I will ever do.

It’s nearly seven o’clock, and we are meeting at the restaurant at seven-fifteen.

If I am quick and find a cab, I might just about make it on time.

I quickly type out the email, press send, before I grab my bag, slip it over my shoulder and then leave the office in a hurry.

Fortunately, at this time of night there are a number of black cabs in the area, and it doesn’t take me long to get one.

I tell him where I’m going, then before I know it, we’re whizzing through the marginally quieter back streets of London towards Fitzrovia.

It’s a gloomy night, but at least the earlier rain has eased up.

Although as I step out of the cab, I am forced to dodge a particularly large puddle before I walk into the restaurant to meet my friends.

Will is the first of my mates to turn thirty.

It’s a shocking realisation that our twenties are almost up, and it feels like thirty is the age when you should start really getting your shit together.

Being young and single in your early-to-mid-twenties, getting drunk every Friday night, trying to meet girls, and maybe you do or maybe you don’t, and the weekends are fine for playing video games or going to the pub, but in your late-twenties it starts to feel different.

For a start, you begin losing people. In your early twenties, the weekend group is strong, and there are at least fifteen of you, all desperate to go out and have fun, but gradually one by one they begin falling away.

Harry from work was always up for a pint, but is off travelling.

Laura used to love the pub quiz, and she organised the team WhatsApp, but she moved to Brighton with her boyfriend.

Sam Butler, that friend of a friend, who somehow joined the group and stayed, is now engaged and too busy for drinks.

George and Katie, the couple everyone aspired to be because despite being together since the first week of university, still loved going out, can’t anymore because she’s pregnant.

Like a well-worn combat platoon in a World War Two epic, characters that started out together so full of hope and optimism gradually get killed off, and it’s only a matter of time before there’s hardly any of the old gang left.

‘Happy birthday!’ we say loudly as Will comes strolling into the restaurant.

He does a quick bow, and then we all get up, give him hugs, kisses from the girls, before he sits down and we order drinks.

It’s Friday night, and it has the potential to be a big one.

At least it does until Will says quite matter-of-factly.

‘I can’t stay out late. I’m off to the Cairngorms in the morning.’

‘Excuse me?’ I reply. ‘It’s your birthday, Will. Your thirtieth birthday! We have to stay out until at least two or three in the morning.’

‘No can do, mate. I have four days of hiking in Scotland.’

‘But …’ I whimper.

While I am in a dark grey suit with a white shirt and smart black shoes, Will is wearing a pair of slightly battered green chinos, a pair of dark brown leather boots and a denim shirt under a navy gilet.

He has a week of stubble on his face, a couple of colourful friendship bracelets on his right wrist and an expensive adventure watch on his left.

‘I’m staying out!’ says Abigail.

‘Good for you,’ says Poppy. ‘Although Hugh and I need to get back after dinner. We’re off to Hugh’s parents in the morning.’

‘What! Why?’ I say, exasperated that no-one, except Abigail wants to go out, out.

‘It’s my father’s sixtieth birthday,’ says Hugh. ‘Big family reunion business. They’ve hired a bouncy castle, and Uncle Tom is pit roasting a whole pig in the back garden!’

‘I’m staying out,’ says Flatmate Simon.

‘Coolio,’ says Abigail.

‘Sorry, mate,’ says Will. ‘I got offered the chance to hike Ben Macdui and I couldn’t say no. It’s the tallest peak in the Cairngorms and the second tallest in the UK.’

‘But you could get hammered at a nightclub, stagger to a kebab shop, fall asleep in your underwear and have a hangover that will completely ruin your entire weekend with us. Is there even a winner?’ I look hopefully towards Will, and it’s clear what the winner is.

‘You have to accept that things are changing,’ says Poppy.

‘She’s right,’ says Hugh, the oldest in the group. ‘Once you hit your thirties, it’s not all about clubs, alcohol and nursing a hangover for days. It’s happening, Ben. The wall.’

‘The wall?’ I enquire.

‘You know when people run marathons?’ says Poppy. ‘They say that at some point, you hit the wall?’

‘Yes, and then you have to smash through it and keep going,’ I reply.

‘Correct,’ replies Poppy. ‘But with age it’s like there’s a wall too, but what happens with the age wall is that everyone you know one day, and without any prior warning, go from wanting to go out every weekend, to wanting quiet nights in and cooking recipes from the latest Jamie Oliver cookbook because it’s nice, and everyone has to be up early for a parkrun or trips to IKEA , anyway. ’

‘So you’re saying that we’ve hit the wall?’ asks Abigail.

‘I’m saying, the wall is coming, and it’s coming fast,’ says Poppy, and then a waitress appears, and we order our food, but all I can think about is the bloody wall.

We are a table of six, and apparently this is going to be the main event for the evening because we are now proper grown-ups, and messy, drunken nights only belong in your twenties.

So we order big. We get focaccia bread, a variety of olives, burrata, meats and calamari.

Poppy orders the cacio e pepe spaghetti, Hugh, ravioli, Abigail gets a Margherita pizza, Will goes for a 35-day aged sirloin, Flatmate Simon orders a spicy nduja pizza, while I decide to go for Mafaldine Al Tartufo pasta.

Then we order cocktails. As the trickle of food and drinks begins to arrive, I think to myself that this is the sort of comfortable, grown-up birthday celebration we are going to get from now on.

For a point of reference, when Will turned twenty, we went on an eighteen-hour bender, which included six pubs, two nightclubs, a kebab shop, three packets of cigarettes, three girls from Newcastle all called Kelly, a shopping trolley and it ended up with Will puking up in a bathtub, proclaiming himself ‘King of the World!’ before falling asleep on the sofa, wrapped in a black bin bag, a traffic cone for a crown.

‘So, what happened with you and She-Who-Cannot-Be-Named?’ asks Poppy as we tuck into our food, and I tell them the story of how I broke up with Saffy.

The day after the intervention, I agreed to meet Saffy in a pub after work.

I arrived early and had a quick drink for some Dutch courage before Saffy arrived in a bullish mood.

She’d had an awful day and would only be staying for one drink.

After some brief small talk, I told her we had to break up.

I wasn’t happy, didn’t see us going anywhere, and long-term, I didn’t think we were the right match, but ultimately I wanted her to be happy. She cried, stood up and then said.

‘Thanks for making a truly shit day even worse. I hope you go to fucking hell, Ben Armstrong!’ Then she left, and I haven't seen or heard from her since.

‘That doesn’t sound like it went too badly,’ says Will.

‘I suppose not. Although it leaves me on the cusp of turning thirty, single and with little prospect of finding love anytime soon.’

‘To be fair, that’s your own fault,’ says Poppy.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Because your choice of women is terrible. There’s Saffy, never a good choice, and she lasted for a year and a half, and before her there was Holly.’

‘What was wrong with Holly?’

‘Mate,’ says Will. ‘No offence, but Holly was the most boring girl in the world.’

‘She could send a room full of insomniacs to sleep,’ says Abigail.

‘Okay, fine, Holly wasn't the most exciting girlfriend. Hence, why we broke up.’

‘Then before her there was Claire,’ says Poppy, and everyone groans.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Claire was a thief!’ says Poppy.

To be fair, it was mainly replaceable things like toiletries, condiments, a few shirts, a suit, and a few hundred pounds I had in a drawer for emergencies that mysteriously vanished around the time we broke up. She also used my Netflix password for six months before I realised.

‘And there was Ruth,’ says Flatmate Simon.