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Two and a Half Years Before I Do
‘I’ve highlighted the programme, so we know what we want to see on each stage and when,’ said Josh.
‘Who brings a highlighter pen to a music festival?’ laughed Jay, as they lay on the grass, beside their tents.
‘Um, have you met Josh?’ said Clara.
Josh had also brought a blow-up mattress, a camping stove, a waterproof money belt, and flannel pyjamas. Jay had pretty much brought the clothes he was wearing.
‘I’m always up for a highlighted agenda,’ said Audrey, hugging Josh’s arm in hers.
Clara had been given free tickets for the weekend festival through work. She had proposed it as a ‘bonding experience’ for the four of them. In reality, the only people she wanted to bond were Josh and Jay. The two men had met many times before; they were civil to one another, but they’d never formed a particular friendship. Clara and Audrey were desperate for their husband and boyfriend to be as close as they were. They could go on holidays together, double date, and hang out all the time – if only these men would become friends.
One spanner in the plan was that two friends of Jay’s, Amadeus and Sadie, had tagged along at the last minute. All Audrey knew about them was that they lived on a houseboat and ran an organic fennel tea company. She wasn’t sure their presence was going to help the Josh/Jay bonding project.
‘Let’s just chill,’ said Amadeus, flicking his long auburn dreadlocks over one shoulder, then he held out his hand to Sadie, who was dancing around him in a long cotton skirt lined with bells.
Clara and Audrey went to find the loos. When they came back, they found Jay and Josh locked in a heated conversation about the monarchy.
‘But surely you at least respect the Queen – everything she’s done for this country?’ Josh was saying.
‘No,’ Jay shook his head. ‘You can’t pick and choose, they’ve all got to go. We live in a democratic society, there’s no role for a monarchy in the twenty-first century.’
‘This sounds heavy,’ Clara said, leaning her arms around Jay’s neck.
‘Josh here’s a fucking monarchist,’ said Amadeus.
‘I just said I respect the Queen,’ Josh said, a muscle pulsing in his jaw.
‘That makes you a monarchist,’ said Jay, with a smirk. ‘Do you sing the national anthem before bed?’
Josh looked to Audrey and Clara for support.
‘Ignore him, Josh, he’s winding you up,’ said Clara.
‘Shall we go see some music?’ Audrey suggested.
They didn’t see many of the bands that night. Jay distributed hash brownies that were so strong, they inhibited everyone’s ability to stand. Josh didn’t partake, claiming they had random drug testing at his work. Audrey couldn’t imagine him stoned; she didn’t think she’d ever really seen him drunk.
‘Vampire Weekend are on the main stage in five minutes, we can still make it if we go now,’ Josh said, clearly frustrated by the group’s indolence.
‘Don’t you think that cloud looks like a puppy fighting a squid, holding a watermelon?’ said Sadie, giggling.
‘Oh wow, it so does.’ Clara sighed, her head flopping backwards as she looked up, dreamy-eyed.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Audrey said, struggling to her feet. Her head was spinning, and all she could think about was finding the cheesy chips van they’d passed earlier.
‘It’s fine,’ said Josh, helping Audrey to sit back down. ‘You stay with your friends, I’ll just see you back at the tent.’
Audrey lost all sense of time after that. The sun went down, and the stars came out, and stoned stargazing turned out to be almost as fun as regular stargazing. When she and the others finally made it back to their tents, she found Josh tucked into their double sleeping bag on the blow-up mattress, wearing his flannel pyjamas. He had bought her a large bottle of water and a carton of cheesy chips, which he’d laid neatly by her side of the bed. She snuggled in beside him and loved him for being there.
Over the course of the weekend, it became clear that Josh and Jay were never going to be great friends, a source of acute disappointment for Audrey and Clara. It was like trying to get Batman to be friends with the Joker, or Kim Kardashian with Taylor Swift. It just wasn’t going to happen.
On Sunday, as they were about to leave, the atmosphere grew taut as Jay announced he was going to abandon his tent in the field.
‘You can’t just leave it here,’ Josh said.
‘Our tickets cover the cost of people collecting up rubbish at the end. They recycle everything,’ said Jay, clearly too hungover to have this conversation, let alone pack up a tent.
