Jane Green - Bookends

I remember being with Martin. I remember being with other men at university, and going out with men in my early twenties. The whole palaver of having to make an effort all the time. Making sure you look nice. Ensuring he doesn’t know you spend evenings stuffing your face with tasteless crap because you can’t be bothered to walk the three minutes to the corner shop to buy something decent.

I wouldn’t be able to do this if I were with James, with anyone . And even if I could, the risk of hurt, or loss, is always there, and right now I’m happy. I don’t want anyone to come and spoil that.

‘Not even if you could, potentially, be a thousand times happier?’ Lucy once asked.

‘Not possible.’ I shook my head with a grin. ‘Not when I’ve got all of you.’

‘You can’t grow as a person,’ she said sadly, ignoring my joke, ‘when you close yourself off emotionally. It’s all well and good saying you avoid pain by avoiding relationships, but what about the wonderful things you’re avoiding as well? What about the joy and the intimacy and the trust that come with finding someone you love?’

‘I don’t need to find someone I love to have that,’ I remember saying. ‘I have joy and intimacy and trust with my friends. What I don’t have is heartache and insecurity and the loss of my self , and Lucy, trust me, I’m happy like this.’

‘No pain, no gain,’ Si sniffed, but then again he would, because no matter how many times we have this discussion, no matter how many times I try to explain how I feel about men, about relationships, Si just can’t understand.

Which is why, I suppose, he’s with Will now. Si has always settled for second best, for men who use and abuse him, because as far as he’s concerned it’s better than being on his own, although he doesn’t use those exact words. Si always thinks he can change them. The worse they treat him, the more of a challenge it is, and I will say this for Will: he definitely poses the greatest challenge of Si’s life.

I finish the rice cakes and head back into the kitchen, opening the fridge again just in case, but no, same old mouldy vegetables as there were half an hour ago. Aha! The freezer! I thank God, and thank Si, that nestling in among the frozen peas and spinach in the top drawer is the one thing that’s guaranteed to make my night.

A Sara Lee frozen Cinnamon Danish that Si brought over one Sunday but that we never – for some extraordinary and inexplicable reason – got around to eating. Licking my lips, I set the microwave to defrost and linger in the kitchen, smelling the delicious cinnamony, almondy smells that waft from the left-hand corner of the kitchen.

I can’t wait for the ping. I open the door ten seconds before it’s ready and pull the Danish out, tearing off a large chunk even before I put it on a plate. Oh God, this is delicious, the soft dough and marzipan melting in my mouth, and I take the plate inside, vowing to eat only half and settle back into the sofa, plate balanced on my knees.

Ten minutes later I’m groaning with disgust, but even as I groan I’m licking my index finger and sweeping it around the plate to catch any crumbs I missed earlier. I’ve eaten the whole thing, and it was delicious, and I don’t feel guilty. Well, not that guilty.

And let’s face it. I’d never be able to do this if I had a boyfriend, would I? But James is a nice guy. James could be a good friend. I’ve always said I don’t need any more friends, but that’s mostly because Si has filled the role of boyfriend/brother/best friend better than anyone else I could have hoped for. But now that Will has come on the scene, maybe it is time I looked for someone else. Not to replace Si, because nobody could do that, but, even in the short time since he met Will, Si hasn’t been around for last-minute cosy suppers at home. I haven’t been able to pick up the phone to him at five thirty p.m. and tell him to meet me outside the cinema in an hour because we’re going to the movies.

And maybe I have been feeling just the tiniest bit lonely since Si met Will. Then again, I muse, there is always Portia; yet, however close we were once upon a time, I can’t help but feel that there’s too much water under the bridge for us to be that close again.

I can still see the old Portia when I look at her, still have a vestige of the feelings I had all those years ago, but, although part of me steps back into the old role, the other part, the part that’s spent ten years without her, knows that we’ve grown too far apart, that our lives are too different for us ever to be best friends in the way that we once were.

Yes, James would be the perfect friend. I resolve to phone him back, but right now, with bulging belly and lethargy inflicting every bone in my body, I can’t be bothered. But I will ring him tomorrow.

The TV stays on for the rest of the evening. I mute it temporarily to phone Portia and Lucy, and I leave a message for Si, then carry on mindlessly watching, and find myself becoming really quite engrossed in one of those detective drama series, and I’m rooting for the good guy when the doorbell rings.

Shit. Now I know I said that James would be a perfect friend, but I’ve just reached a crucial bit where we find out whether the main suspect’s alibi was in fact real, and this habit James has of turning up with no warning is beginning to seriously get on my nerves.

I stomp down the hallway and open the front door, ready to give James a mouthful but trying to swallow it before it comes out, because I don’t want to frighten him off permanently, not when I’ve just decided he’ll make the perfect friend.

I open the door, trying to smile, and on my doorstep is Si.

‘Si! I was just thinking about you! What a gorgeous surprise,’ I exclaim happily, giving him a hug, and when we pull apart Si gives me a wobbly smile and proceeds to burst into tears.

‘Oh shit.’ I usher him in and lead him to the sofa, sitting down next to him and rubbing his back until the first bout of tears has subsided a little. ‘Cup of tea?’ I say finally, knowing it will bring a smile to his face, as he always jokes that nobody in soap operas can ever deal with emotional outbursts, and all they do when someone’s in a terrible state is offer to put the kettle on and make a nice cup of tea.

He smiles, rolls his eyes and starts crying all over again. After a while I ask if it’s Will, and he nods his head. I ask if it’s over, and again he nods, and along comes a fresh spurt of tears.

Eventually he manages to calm down enough to tell me. I do make a cup of tea, and bizarrely it does seem to help, if only because he has to force himself to stop hiccuping in order to drink the tea. Once the hiccups have gone, he starts to take himself in hand and to take control.

Will had phoned Si at work today, and after a brief chat in which Si now says he could tell something was wrong, Si asked if they would be seeing one another later. Will said that Si could come over if he wanted, and that he’d be in around eight.

So Si duly went over, planning to have a talk with Will. Not The Talk , he said, just a talk about how important his friends were to him, and how important Will was becoming, and how life would be so much easier if he could try to get along. He was going to say that he understood his friends weren’t Will’s types, but sometimes, when you’re trying to make a relationship with someone new, you have to think about somebody other than yourself.

But Si never got the chance to have any sort of conversation. Will opened the front door, then ignored Si as he walked back into the living room. And there, on the sofa, was Steve – a guy they’d met together in a pub a couple of weeks back.

Steve was exactly the sort of man that Si always runs miles from. Good-looking, arrogant, dismissive. Exactly, I thought to myself, like Will, except this Steve obviously didn’t bother with the charm act at all.