One Day

by David Nicholls

He wanted to live life to the extreme, but without any mess or complications. He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

‘Just the whole of our lives, stretching ahead of us,’ she said sleepily, taking in the wonderful warm, stale smell of him and at the same time feeling a ripple of anxiety pass across her shoulders at the thought of it: independent adult life.

but you should still get out of there because while it’s good for gags it’s definitely bad for your soul.

and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of Confidence. Either that or a scented candle.

and had that feeling, halfway through the sentence that she would have been better off not starting it. Did she imagine it, or did he roll his eyes a little?

‘What shall we do instead then?’ ‘I know it sounds weird,’ he said, looking a little sheepish. ‘But I wouldn’t mind a game of Scrabble.’

There was a time, it must have been in the early nineties, when they were barely able to pass a photo-booth without cramming inside it, because they had yet to take each other’s permanent presence for granted.