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No, it doesn’t make any difference. I still don’t want to work. I don’t want to do anything at all. If I’m honest, all I really want is to be left alone.
And so I keep quiet and she keeps quiet too, until we use up all the quiet in the room so that finally one of us has to say something.
While I’d been fully braced to see disappointment in my girlfriend’s eyes, I’m taken aback by the depth of it. It’s as if I’m looking into two vast tawny reservoirs of disillusion and regret.
She thinks that somehow she’s letting down the version of her that first fell in love with me.
but she’s wrong about me having anything to offer the world.
What she doesn’t understand is that even if I got a job tomorrow, one that paid well, engaged me on every level and handed me back my self respect, nothing about me is ever going to change, not now, not ever. Some people are simply beyond redemption or salvation or whatever, some of us are simply stuck being what we are.
Maya realises that working hasn’t changed me, that I’m still broken inside, that there really is no hope for me.
It’s the best feeling in the world knowing there’s someone in your corner. That no matter what and no matter how badly you mess up, they will always be on your side.
If she were, I would never have got myself into this mess in the first place. I would’ve been somewhere else, someone else, living the life I’d been meant to live, instead of the flimsy imitation I’d scraped together over the years since she’d gone.
Without her there was no one I could share this tiny achievement with, no banners, no hugs and no smiles. Without Helen, there was no one in my corner at all.
I know all this and yet it is still funny.
I’m still far too self-involved to give any of the residents more than a second thought. Though I see their pain and can even empathise with their troubles, no matter how sad the story, in the end nothing sticks. It’s as though I’m Teflon coated.
looking for the memory containing the man I think I know.
Looking at Danny Allen, I say in my clearest voice so that I can be sure he will understand me, ‘Sic parvis magna.’
“Look, how do I know his name if I don’t know who he is?”’
To have told a barefaced lie that causes a disabled man to be dismissed as a delusional nutter is at best despicable and at worst outright appalling. But that’s exactly what I’ve done.
To have told it any other way would’ve meant answering a question I had no interest in: what went so wrong that you ended up here?
But for me it has been three years and I do not seem to be getting any better. I still get tired very easily. I still get confused sometimes. My speech is still slurred. I still have problems walking.’
My legs are beginning to ache and I feel really tired but I do not want to say anything because I am enjoying being with Danny. I cannot remember the last time I had this much fun but I know that it has not been for a very long time. I feel as though I have gone from boring real life to being in a comedy action film where Danny and I are the stars. I feel like I am alive.
‘I’m just shocked that’s all,’ says Danny, ‘not by you but by the situation. It seems like madness that this happened. Unreal. How long did he get in the end?’
I say this because part of me is a bit scared. Part of me thinks it is probably best not to have a lager just to be on the safe side. Part of me does not like the idea of being any worse than I am now.
It feels relaxed and easy. No one is telling me to take my elbows off the table. No one is cutting up my food. I am just being me. I cannot quite believe how happy
Despite the danger involved in such a confession, by the time I reach home not only do I feel like it’s still a good idea but that it’s perhaps the greatest idea I’ve ever had. I really do feel like this could be the biggest change to happen to me in years.
In fact, if I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that I was kidding myself when I thought things could be different. Even if I had told her everything, it’s clear to me now that it wouldn’t have changed anything. I’m alone in this,
I learned that if someone tells you to be on the safe side lots of times then after a while they do not need to say it. After a while you just say it to yourself in your head like, ‘I had better not do that, just to be on the safe side.’
One day I would like to have a head full of thoughts that are just mine.
These were the friends who were with me when The Incident happened. I used to think that we would always be friends. I used to think we would be friends forever.
They did not know then that I was not me any more. They thought that if they just gave it lots of time then one day I would be back to normal. They did not know that for me this was normal. They did not know this was the new me.
‘I am not going to move back into my old apartment on my own. I am going to move back into my apartment with Danny Allen.’
event could have transformed someone so radically, that one day he was himself and then for no other reason than bad luck he woke up as someone else entirely.
My mum gasps when I say this. I am not sure where these words are coming from. They do not feel like they are mine. They feel like they belong to someone else. I am not really sure who I am any more but the one thing I am sure of is that I do not feel like who I was before I met Danny Allen.
As I fall asleep, I think how this was supposed to be my new beginning. My new start. But that will never happen because I will always be afraid of Kyle Baylis. I will always be afraid that one day he will come and find me and finish what he started.
And for a moment it feels like we’re glimpsing who we were meant to be before life went and got in the way.
The one thing they weren’t, however, were James’s clothes: clothes that in any way at all represented his personality or how he wanted to present himself to the world, a task which is all the more difficult when you no longer know precisely who you are.
So many unlived lives. So many choices left untaken. I should have protected her. Nothing bad should have ever happened to her on my watch.
yet to arrive is Martha and so when the intercom buzzer sounds again, it’s no surprise when I answer to see her smiling face beaming at me from the tiny black-and-white video screen. As I wait at the front door to meet her at the lift, it occurs to me that I’m actually quite looking forward to seeing her after such a long time.
So actually, even though having a seizure was not very nice, everything that happened after it was lovely, so it was sort of okay.
cannot,’ I explain, ‘because I have got Danny Allen to look after.’
But Danny does not have anyone. And he is really sad too. You would not see it if you did not live with him like I do, but Danny is sad through and through. So, you see, I really am his carer, and it really is a very kind offer you have made but I have got to go home and look after Danny because, well, he might not know it but he needs me.’
What could I say? In the game of real-life Top Trumps the brain-damaged guy who overcomes his depression beats the able-bodied guy who squandered his opportunities and never made anything of his life hands down.
They might think he has wasted his life. But Danny Allen has not wasted his life. He is doing something good. Something that is more important than showing off how much money you have made. He is helping people who cannot help themselves. And that is not just a good thing to do with your life. It is the very best thing.
I do not think people like it when bad things happen to young people. I do not think people like the idea of people not living the lives they were supposed to live.
I used to be in them all but I am not any more. They have gone on making stories without me.
for it. I feel like I have been through the worst and now I am getting back to my best. I want to feel like this forever.
‘If I’ve learned anything it’s that we’re all paler versions of our past selves. But the people we used to be are still in there somewhere.’
With just a few words he destroyed all the hopes and dreams we’d had for Jamie – all the hopes and dreams Jamie had for himself – and left us devastated.
I look over at the frozen screen again. At the image of me climbing the rope wall. At the image of me doing something that I cannot do any more. At the image of the man I used to be. I press the off button and the image disappears. No trace left behind. As if it had never existed.
When life was so easy that I had to look for hard things to do. I think that is why for a long
while I never felt like doing anything much. My whole life feels like a challenge now so there is no need to go looking for more.’
