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“I’m perfect, apparently. And your colleague, Alistair, has a husband called Jason, who works as an accountant in Poole. Alistair says hi, by the way. Let’s get out of here.”
He agreed to go for a coffee with me afterwards, whereupon I discovered Matt preferred his cappuccino with extra milk and a kilo of sugar. And a mountain of flapjacks. God help his teeth. I chose a double espresso and amille-feuille, earning myself an eye roll.
“Why don’t you just call it a custard slice, like everyone else?”
“Because it’s amille-feuille?”
“Not at Tesco, it’s not.”
In the late afternoon, the café entertained very few customers. The mums had already left to collect children from school, and the dog walkers had gone home to cook dinner and do whatever dog owners did between dog walks. We sat opposite each other. It was now or never.
“Matt…I…could we…could we talk about what happened? You can tell me to shut up if you like. And I will. If you want me never to bother you again, then that’s what I’ll do. But…but…you just disappeared. And I don’t mean this second time.”
I’d led a charmed life, something I had always appreciated, even when the road felt a little rocky, like now. Of course, my day-to-day existence suffered ups and downs; like anyone, I soldiered on through weeks when everything became a bit much. To be fair, I’d felt that way quite a lot over the past couple of years. Yet underneath, my bedrock was fundamentally solid. A nice home, decent work, enough money, and a healthy, mostly happy son. Many folk only dreamed of being so fortunate. Sometimes I wished I was more dynamic, that my personality had more pizzazz, and on Sunday afternoons when Ryan stayed at his mum’s, that I didn’t find myself at a total loose end. On the whole, however, my glass sat half full and I didn’t have much to complain about.
I could pinpoint three episodes when my life wasn’t so good, the most recent the discovery that my hitherto amiable colleague had been having sex with my wife. Which came as news to no one apart from me. The time before that had been sixteen years earlier, and I will always remember the exact date, as Ryan had been born the same day. What should have been one of my happiest memories was tinged with horror, because Samantha’s father, a very pleasant chap, died of a brain haemorrhage. One minute he was congratulating his daughter and celebrating the arrival of his first grandson, the next he lay lifeless on the carpet next to the crib. The rest of us got through it, of course, and life carried on, as it tended to.
Next to those two pretty awful events, the first seemed relatively minor, but took me longer to come to terms with. And now, facing Matt, wanting to drag him into my lap and bury my face in his hair, I wasn’t convinced I ever had.
Matt’s head dropped, and he wrapped his hands around his mug. When he looked up again, my teasing afternoon companion had vanished. His dark eyes glittered with unshed tears.
“I searched for you, you know,” I added softly. “For weeks.”
God, how I’d searched for him. But I’d begun several hours, if not days, too late.
A uni friend had mentioned, in passing, that my weird mate with the funny accent had left a garbled message in the middle of the night. That he’d bloody woken everyone on the entire corridor. That he’d seemed drunk and upset. I’d phoned Matt’s house immediately, only to have a rough voice at the other end of the line inform me he wasn’t home and cut me off. Later the same day, my mum had called, all bright and chatty, saying did I know a boy from my school had been killed crossing a road? Straight after that, I’d searched for Phil’s number in the phone book and his mum had tearfully explained Matt had disappeared.
“I know you looked for me.” His smile held more than a tinge of sadness. “Phil told me.”
“I only stopped when Phil’s dad told my dad you didn’t want to be found.”
Christ, it all happened twenty-five years ago, yet sitting here in this café my own tears weren’t far away. For three whole weeks, I’d driven around Stourbridge hunting for him. Knocking on doors, describing him to people working behind shop counters. I even took his usual bus route and harangued everyone on the bus. Got told to fuck off multiple times. I visited our old school. I hung around the half-demolished multistorey car park. Tracked down the peculiar girl he’d worked with at Debenhams. Made myself ill with worry and stopped eating. Stopped sleeping.
Eventually, my parents had stepped in and taken over. Phil’s dad and my dad exchanged adult conversations behind closed doors. Our family doctor, a friend of my dad’s, started me on some sleeping tablets and sternly warned I needed to focus on my future. The med school sent me some catch-up work. Lots of sensible, middle-class people did what they imagined to be best for me. When they thought I was ready, I went back to uni. Caught up. Numbed with weariness and heartbreak, I pretended I’d forgotten. And, bit by bit, my new life in a new town took over, and my grief faded into the background.
“A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about Brenner,” Matt admitted. “Even now, all these years later.”
At that moment, I didn’t care who saw me reach out and clasp one of Matt’s smaller hands in mine. I gave it a squeeze and he shook his head regretfully. “Not always in a sad way. Mostly I wonder what he’d be doing now if he were still alive. What I’d be doing.”
Matt’s voice had a rough edge to it, and he gave a quiet sniff. “Christ. You’d think I’d be over this by now.”
“Listen, Matt. Losing your best friend is a huge deal, no matter how long ago. And in such an awful way. You shouldn’t belittle how it still affects you.”
He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, then looked out of the window. “Him and Phil were like brothers to me. I know that’s a cliché, but it’s fucking true. Phil had a nice family. Supportive. A few months after it happened, he was fine. He’d got his head around it.”
A wry smile played at Matt’s lips. “I used to think my job was to look out for Brenner and protect him, because his life was so shit. You know, because he didn’t have any money and his dad had died. And he wasn’t much good at stuff at school. Whereas I realise now that those two were most likely looking out for me, just as much, if not more. And I never had a chance to say thank you, or to let Brenner know how much he meant to me. That’s what hurts the most.”
The rawness of his words stung. Tears welled in his dark eyes and trickled down his cheeks. I wanted to brush them away for him.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t come here to upset you, Matt. I have no right to ask you for answers. I know that.”
He blew out a sigh. “It’s hard to explain why I ran out on you.” His gaze dropped to his hand clasped around his drink. “And it happened ever such a long time ago. I certainly wasn’t behaving rationally. My mind kind of shut down with the shock. I think I believed that if I could lose Brenner then I could lose you too. If we became even closer to each other. And I couldn’t bear that. So I ran away.” He gave me a wistful look. “Some very fucked up logic. Sorry.”
I squeezed his hand even tighter. “You never need to apologise. You have nothing to apologise for.”
“At that age, kids are so vulnerable. All your senses—emotions, whatever, are heightened, you know? For me, everything felt so incredibly stark and bright. My tiny world—Brenner, Phil, and you—you were the only world I knew. Like the three primary colours. I didn’t have holidays. I hardly left Stourbridge. So, you all shined so brightly. Too brightly. You were all I had. Everything that happened with any of you felt huge.”
I thought about Ryan. Issues were black and white with my son. Even trivial ones. There were no shades of grey. He loved pizza and hated olives. Mike could be an utter dick or Mike was the best stepdad ever. He either played a blinder in rugby or was convinced he’d be dropped from the team. With one text exchange, Chloe could make him laugh or storm off to his bedroom for three hours. Teenage Matt and I had believed we loved one another with a passion unrivalled before or since. Teenage me could only be gay or straight.
