Elizabeth Day - How to Fail

4th Estate

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

Copyright © Elizabeth Day 2019

Elizabeth Day asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008327323

Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008327347

Version: 2019-11-12

For my godchildren: Imogen, Tabitha, Thomas, Walt, Billy, Uma, Eliza, Elsa, Joe and Gallia.

‘Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour’

Truman Capote

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

How to Fail at Fitting In

How to Fail at Tests

How to Fail at Your Twenties

How to Fail at Dating

How to Fail at Sport

How to Fail at Relationships

How to Fail at Being Gwyneth Paltrow

How to Fail at Work

How to Fail at Friendship

How to Fail at Babies

How to Fail at Families

How to Fail at Anger

How to Fail at Success

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Elizabeth Day

About the Publisher

One of my earliest memories is of failure.

I am three years old, and my sister is ill. She has chicken pox and is lying in her bedroom upstairs, hot and crying, the duvet twisted around her small limbs, while my mother tries to soothe her by placing a hand on her forehead. My mother has cool palms that feel good against your skin when you’re sick.

I am not used to seeing my older sister like this. There are four years between us and she has always struck me as the epitome of wisdom. She is someone I adore and admire in equal measure, the person who looks after me and allows me to sit on her back while she crawls around on all fours pretending to be a horse. The person who, before I was born, told our parents firmly that she would like a sister, please, and could they get on with the business of producing one? Whenever my sister draws a picture or makes a castle out of Lego, it is always so much better than my own attempts, and I will lose my temper at this perceived injustice because I so desperately want us to be the same, her and me. My mother will have to remind me that I’m younger, and all I have to do is wait a few years to catch up. But I’m impatient and don’t want to wait. I want, as much as I’ve ever wanted anything, to be just like my sister.

Now, seeing her wet cheeks and pale face, I am upset and fretful. I don’t like her being in any sort of discomfort. My mother is asking my sister what she would like to make her feel better, and my sister wails ‘a hot-water bottle’ and I see a way that I can help. I know where my mother keeps the hot-water bottles, and I toddle off to the cupboard and pick out my favourite one, which has a furry cover made to look like a bear, with a black button nose. I know that a hot-water bottle must be filled, as the name implies, with hot water. I take the bear to the bathroom, a place I associate with the much-hated evenings my mother washes my hair and I fix my eyes on a crack in the ceiling until the unpleasant task is completed. The single thing I hate more than having my hair washed is having my toenails cut.

The only tap I can reach is the one in the bathtub rather than the basin. Leaning over the enamel lip, I stretch forwards to place the hot-water bottle under the nozzle and turn on the tap with the red circle, not the blue, because I’ve learned that blue means cold. But I do not know I need to wait for the hot water to heat up. I imagine it just comes out, automatically, at the requisite temperature.

When I try to put the cap back on, my stubby fingers cannot quite fasten it tightly enough. No matter, I think – the most important thing is to get this hot-water bottle to the invalid as quickly as I possibly can so that she can start feeling better, stop crying, and become my composed, calm and clever older sister again.

Back in the bedroom, I hand the hot-water bottle over to my sister whose tears stop at the sight of it. My mother looks surprised and I feel proud that I have done something she didn’t expect. But almost as soon as the hot-water bottle is in my sister’s grip, the cap loosens and cold water pours out all over her pyjamas. She wails and the sound is worse than the crying that came before it.

‘It’s c-c-c-cold!’ she stutters, glaring at me with incomprehension, and my mother starts stripping the sheets and telling her everything’s going to be fine, and they both forget that I’m standing there and I feel a swelling of acute shame in my chest and a terrible sense of having let down the person I love most in the world when I was only trying to help, and I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong but I know this probably isn’t, on reflection, how hot-water bottles are made.