How Not to Die Alone

by Richard Roper

but that didn’t stop him from feeling an angry stab of self-loathing.

schadenfreude.

where he would feel it stir at his core and start to spread out, thick and cold, making it feel like he was walking through quicksand. There was nobody for him to share the story with. No one to help him laugh his way through it. Loneliness, however, was ever vigilant, always there to slow-clap his every stumble.

Lancastrian with a “hug first, ask questions later” approach

He was about to launch into an explanation of his Tupperware system when he faltered,

Sitting on the train to work (wedged into the armrest by a man whose legs were spread

far apart Andrew could only assume he was performing some sort of interpretive dance about what a great guy he was),

and they’d chalk the whole thing up to one of those white lies everyone told in interviews.

As is dictated by UK law, Andrew had said a brief hello to his new colleagues before immediately locking himself out of his e-mails and sitting in silence for an hour because he was too embarrassed to ask for help.

He was just planning a witty opening gambit about his current admin crisis when Cameron,

And that was that.

but he knew he needed a more long-term strategy.

The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that Meredith seemed to exist on a diet of nosiness and gossip, constantly pressing Andrew for more specific information. A case in point had been

when she, Keith and a nervous graduate called Bethany were talking about weddings.

glo...

“My dad thinks it’s a bit namby-pamby for men to wear a wedding ring,” Bethany said in her quivering voice that made her sound like she was perpetually being driven over a cattle grid.

“You seeeee?”

Keith said, spreading his arms wide to make his point and revealing the sweat patches under his arms. “...

feel his neck starting to burn with embarrassment.

She asked scarily intelligent questions in public, which often left them embarrassingly stumped.

but nothing too avant-garde, because they’d decided their time and money were too precious to fritter away on something without at least one of the leads having been in a Sunday night costume drama.

It just means you’re on edge rather a lot. Especially when it comes to nuts. With Chris we just have to be extra vigilant, you know?”

The fact that the detail had appeared so easily left him deeply unsettled.

It may have helped his cause overall, another little piece of information to put meat on the bones, but

Something about the way she was flicking it back and forth reminded Andrew of a cat toying with a mouse.

The woman had dark, rusty red hair that was piled high on top of her head with what looked like a pencil poking through it, as if to pull it out would make her hair cascade down like some sort of Kerplunk Rapunzel.

“Well, Pegs, Peggy—the Pegster!—you’re going to be shadowing Andrew for a while just to get you up to speed. I’m afraid you’re rather in at the deep end this morning as I believe Andrew has a property inspection. But, well, no time like the present to get stuck in, I suppose.”

Andrew might have welcomed a bit of gallows humor, though

When Peggy had asked him about the smell, he was glad he’d managed to censor himself. Truthfully, what she was about to experience would change her forever. Because, as Andrew had discovered,

The truth was that it had made him see that everyone who died alone had their own version of that chair. Some drama or other, no matter how mundane the rest of their existence was. And the idea that they’d not have someone there to be with them at the end, to acknowledge that they’d been a person in the world who’d suffered and loved and all the rest of it—he just couldn’t bear the thought of it.

manic glint in her eye, windmilling her arms at

but when she looked back at Spike writhing on the ground, Andrew was sure he saw concern tempering her triumph.

mother, whose torpor Sally took for laziness. But she would always apologize afterward, and of her own volition.

like captured spies being exchanged across an exclusion zone.

Mary swiftly interrogated him, at one point leaning close and taking a tentative sniff.

It was almost as if she’d planned to die before the three of them were together, just to make things extra painful.

nothing. There it was again, that old anger flashing in her eyes.

Sally said through gritted teeth.

and already it felt like an unbridgeable gap had opened between them.

Carl—who had entered his fifties in disgustingly healthy and stylish fashion, all salt-and-pepper hair and wristwatch the value of a small market town—spent

It was a thought too painful to even consider.

and all the while he’d be hating them for saying such things and hating himself because he didn’t deserve their sympathy.

My daughter Maisie wanted me to rescue it so she could ‘invent it a new leg.’ Ambitious, eh?”

batting a fly out of his face.

especially given that Jim Mitchell’s house was in an even worse state than Eric White’s.

Jim had died in bed, on his own, at the age of sixty. The

flat’s kitchen, bedroom, and living room were all in one, with a separate shower room choked with mildew, its floor boasting an impressive range of stains wh...

That was before he discovered pork pies and procrastination.”

who’s the baddie

Reckon you’ve got a touch of the Sean about you.”