You Are Here

by David Nicholls

It’s music, but also this dream of male friendship.’

‘Do you have friends like that?’

I got beaten-up, really badly, in the street.’

‘I was. I was for a while. I don’t want to go into it but when I came out I was a bit . . . shaky. Not just physically, but nervous, around people, crowds, the kids at school. I still get it a bit. Not this second—’

but it comes and goes. The point is I had these mates, male friends, some from work, and we used to play football every week, a kick-about, middle-aged men laughing at each other, and when I was all better, I went back. And everyone was so nice. “Are you okay? You look well.” And there was no tackling and no shouting and all these pats on the back every time I touched the ball, well done, mate, well done, and it was quite touching really, everyone being so thoughtful. But it didn’t feel right. So I stopped going.’

‘Maybe. But as a pal not a fucking . . . mental patient. So.’

‘George, I think.’

Westmorland,

Ravenstonedale, Nettle Hill and Orton Scar,

so that by the time the scenery began to change, she knew about his Sunday school, his best meal and his worst hangover, the cousins in Dublin, piano lessons, his first crush and his voting history, each story inconsequential in itself but...

carried with it the danger of a sudd...

she found that she liked Michael’s picture more as it accumulated detail.

There were no political upsets, he was principled but not pompous, and she even liked most of the music,

this was the soundtrack to his life with Natasha and she was struck by the strange intimacy of listening to another couple’s music, the songs they’d cooked and eaten and made love to, as ...

For the most part, the conversation was frivolous and self-conscious, like an episode of a short-lived podcast, but she told herself that this was fine, that conversation, like music, could serve different purposes, in this case distraction from vast distances.

Eden,

Smardale Gill,

‘It’s a railway bridge.’

‘Are you getting the train tonight?’

‘Okay. One more day and I’ll leave you.’

They climbed the valley’s flank and she felt they’d found their rhythm now, in every sense.

Her feet and knees and shoulders no longer complained, smiling no longer felt unnatural and she’d abandoned her private language t...

though also thought there was a conversation t...

Sunnyview Lodge was large and handsome,

privet hedge

tra...

co...

This costume-drama atmosphere persisted

prematurely familiar

candlewick

sloe gin

And suddenly she was alone in 1942.

wrenching her mind around to Twisted Night,

illicit

Auld Shillelagh.

the only seats they could find were at the back,

who had worked through her rota of three dresses and was wearing his favourite, from the second night, the one with the roses. His favourite. Good God.

Peroxided hair

Michael felt at home but he was less sure about Marnie.

but he very much wanted her to be happy here.

Glancing back from the bar, he saw her straining to read Wuthering Heights by candlelight and noted,

What would an observer presume? That it was a date, that they were married? A couple on a night out, kids with the babysitter. Was that plausible?

And where would he be without her? He imagined a parallel evening, finding somewhere quiet, drinking alone with his book and phone and thoughts.

She was looking right at him. She smiled.

raucous,

far drunker than he’d been for many years,

He was having fun again and it wasn’t nearly as bad ...

He squeezed through t...

an old Hank Williams song, ‘Hey Good Looking’,

had a sentimental memory of