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‘But – I sent an email to a man who’s about to marry someone and now heisn’tgetting married. That’sawful, isn’t it? And people at work who used to speak to medon’t, or they’re acting weird with me, gossiping about me like I’m a – I don’t know. Dark ogre? You saw them all, outside the café—’
‘But, so what?’ Jack shrugs and it takes me by surprise, that nonchalant, almost harsh ‘so what?’.
I gaze at him across the table and a disbelieving burst of laughter puffs from my mouth. ‘So what?’
‘Yep. So, what?’ Jack looks at me. His eyebrows lift upwards, a silent, ‘well?’
I scoff – a puff of air from my nostrils. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt so what?’ I say. ‘Actually, I think it’s that I haven’t felt so what for so long that it justfeelslike never. I feel the opposite to so what, actually, most of the time, whatever that is.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Like, I .?.?. need to make sure everything’s OK, at all times?’ I offer up.‘Plus, how can I feel at allso what, at the moment when I’m waking up day to day and suddenly not knowing what to expect.’
‘But why do you need to know what to expect?’ asks Jack quickly.
‘Um.’ I stare at him across the table, words gathering, jamming in my throat. And I laugh again. With confusion. With amusement at his disarming questions. ‘I .?.?. don’t know. Because I .?.?. I’ve come tolikeknowing what to expect.’
Jack shakes his head. ‘Overrated,’ he says.
‘Is it?’
Jack gestures with a hand, at us, sitting here, at BackDonalds, at this little table, below the portrait of Elvis. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Everything’s better when it just .?.?. happens.’
I smile. ‘Is that why you’re leaving again soon, then?’ I wrap my still-cold hands around the chunky, white mug on the table. ‘Away from the shackles of Flye and knowing what to expect? Of call sheets and Chatty Martin and being .?.?. forced to have a bin?’
‘Mute Martin, you mean,’ he says, with a smile. ‘And yeah, I – suppose so? It was always temporary, coming back here. Needed the money, and they always have me back, so .?.?.’ And he gives a ‘so why not?’ smile. A totalso whatsmile.
‘So, that’s why you’re here. It’s money to go travelling again?’
‘That’s the aim, yeah,’ he says, easily. ‘My mate Enam and me. He’s going a bit earlier than me and I’m meeting him out there. No real plans except Quebec this Christmas, then New Zealand. We’re staying on an alpaca farm somewhere actually.’
‘Seriously?’
‘One of Enam’s bucket list things?’ Jack laughs warmly. ‘I dunno. His thing.’ And there’s love in that laugh. I bet Jack’s a good friend. I bet he’s all back-slaps and hugs and ‘here for you, man’. ‘But, yeah. Few months on the move, and we’ll just – see how it goes. No plan.’
‘No expectations,’ I say.
‘Zero.’
And something coils, then, in my gut. So much so, I find the palm of my hand moving to rest there, on top of my damp blouse. Is it jealousy? Admiration? To be able to be someone like Jack, who sees work as just money. Life, a game to be played. Someone who’s about to go out into the world to explore, with no plans, nothing keeping him here. I wonder if he has exes and a story about a broken heart. I wonder if his parents have hopes for him that he’s dashing. I wonder if he has unsaid secrets, or whether he’s dating at the moment. I wonder if he and Jess have kissed. I keep thinking about how–energeticit was between them yesterday. A little spark of that same Christmas party zing between us, maybe. But then, Jack’s so free and easy, maybe he just zings all over the place, just has hot one-night stands on beaches or intense week-long love affairs on mopeds in Italy, full of passionate kissing and ‘I wish I didn’t have to leave you, but the sea is calling me,mi amore.’ I bet travelling with Jack is fun. All ease and calm spontaneity .?.?.
‘So, an alpaca farm .?.?.’ I repeat, shaking myself out of my daydream. That’s pretty niche.’
‘You know those strange things you just have in your head as wanting to do someday?’ asks Jack. A song begins to play in the diner. Something I expect is from the fifties. Grainy, banjo-like guitars, muffled vocals. I almost wouldn’t be surprised if we suddenly discovered we’d fallen through time and space itself, here, in Back-Donalds. What I wouldn’t give, actually, to discover this placeisa time-machine. I’d certainly press all the knobs and buttons that lead back to a life B.E.
‘That’s one of Enam’s things,’ says Jack. ‘The alpacas? Mine is .?.?. well, loads of stuff. Like, have a regular, bog-standard, family Thanksgiving in the US. Like the movies. Not sure why. Just is.’
‘Rhubarb farm,’ I say, with a smile.
Jack looks at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Rhubarb farm?’
‘That’s one of mine,’ I tell him ‘A – a forced rhubarb farm?’ and I’m surprised how easy that just left my lips; rolled out, a whole, solid, rounded truth. Donk. Just like that. One I have never told anyone before. And I realise then that I used to have so many of these things. I’d daydream them up during lectures when I was at university (during the eighteen months I spent reallytryingto make ‘fine art’ and university life feel like ‘me’, before I left) or talk about them, with Alexis, on our breaks outside in the alleyway when we first met at the pub. She’d smoke, leaning against heavy, burgundy fire door of the kitchen, talk passionately, hungrily, about how she’d turn everything around for her hard-working dad and younger sister now her mum had left them, get a permanent position after her sales internship ended, pay off her debt, clear her dad’s mortgage someday (and she did, on all counts). And I’d listen, throw lots of things out there, too, like wishes, into the night sky, imagine them wisping off, like her cigarette smoke. See Rome. Kiss someone in the rain. Learn to speak German in Germany. Take a cookery class in France.Makesomething someday, that means something to someone. Like Mum does, with the illustrations she creates; children’s books and charity campaigns. Just .?.?. find out who I am. That was the aim. But then came, job to job, rent to rent, Owen and heartbreak and .?.?. life, I guess. The way it sort of sucks you in, sometimes, turns days into years, morphs ‘some day’ into ‘oh, Iwish.’
‘That’s an interesting one,’ says Jack. ‘The rhubarb. And .?.?. forced?’
‘Watched a documentary on it once. This bloke just walked quietly around this rhubarb farm in the dark with a candle and it just seemed so .?.?. peaceful. They trick it into growing? By keeping it in the dark.’
‘Ah, yeah, I think I know what you’re talking about.’ Jack sips from his espresso. ‘In kind of – candlelit sheds?’
