You Are Here

by David Nicholls

taking in how far they’d travelled,

watershed,

Irish Sea,

North Sea.’

‘And where do you stand to end up...

A moment passed, and then they were embracing, his chin on the top of her head just as when they’d danced last night, and in return she patted the sides of his rucksack, a little drum riff. A close embrace...

‘Let’s keep going, s...

Swaledale,

flagstones

Barbara

their eyes red-rimmed,

Brian’s

protruding

she stood alone in the glare of the sun.

They all seemed in a state of shock.

he realised that the instinct to comfort and assist was no match for a compulsion to get very far away and to demote these people, whom he had spent time with, whom last night he might have called friends, back to strangers.

though you could sense the rumble of terrible grief rolling towards her.

The day had become vicious and bleached out, the promise of the morning discarded, the beauty of the scenery dishonest.

To remark on the view as if it were some consolation would have been trite and so they descended through boggy ground to a lane then a river, the Swale.

Dad’s frailer now,

She tilted her head back to the hill.

He looked for the word.

how moony he used to get, all tongue-tied.

‘Did you dread it?’ ‘By the end I did.’

‘No, I know. But living alone for the rest of your life, being alone when you die, d’you think about that?’ ‘No, course not.’ They walked on. ‘Every now and then.’

but what had happened last night, and not just last night, the last few days, some acknowledgement and discussion, kind and honest, about what might happen next.

In the Lavender Suite she had felt like a teenager but also exactly her own age, and that combination was thrilling and rare, lust and experience, together at last.

segue

Something about seizing the day? Life’s short and painful, so let’s make the most of it and with that in mind . . .

Will I die alone? Well, maybe, but don’t we all? ‘For company when I die’ was a terrible reason to want a relationship, an even worse reason to have kids – good luck with that.

Besides, look at where we are right now. We’re not alone, so can’t we talk about the present instead?

The walk stretched long into t...

the river always ...

they’d squeeze through a new stile

fleeces

the frisking, the baby-talk bleating,

Instead they spoke about their childhoods and their parents’ marriages, which were similar in their constancy and restraint.

that if you wanted to get a man to talk with real emotion, you should ask him about his father.

in this shaking something had come loose.

The first, ‘At least he died doing what he loved’, had always seemed a poor consolation.

for it all to be,

The second thought was connected to the first and it was this: in the brief time she’d spent with Brian and Barbara, they had seemed very happy. The phrase ‘love of her life’ occurred to her, a phrase that had always made her wince a little.

Marnie certainly didn’t have a love-of-her-life and neither did she expect to fulfil that role for anyone else, and that was fine too.

Many people live full and happy lives without making that much of an impression, and even if someone were to say it of her, she would probably frown and ask, Really? Are you sure? Have another think.

What she hoped for was to be liked very much by someone for a certain period of time. That seemed achievable.

But the couple they’d sat with for a few hours had seemed very much in love and it seemed natural to envy that a little. What she didn’t envy was the look that Michael had spoken of on the hillside, the widow’s shock at the sudden absence, and perhaps solitude is more frightening when something is snatched away.

She puffed her cheeks.

‘I’ll leave you to think about it,’

swaddled in red fabric,

on the dale’s northern flank.