One Day

by David Nicholls

The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at … something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible. Eat sensibly. Stuff like that.

I’m not going to scribble it out because it’s politically incorrect to call someone ‘sexy’ because it is also TRUE. You’re gorgeous, you old hag, 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.

Call me sentimental, but there’s no-one in the world that I’d like to see get dysentery more than you.

‘What now?’ she said. ‘Whatever you want.’ ‘Game of Scrabble?’ ‘I have my limits.’

‘I got to know you. You cured me of you.’

I love him, she thought, I’m just not in love with him and also I don’t love him. I’ve tried, I’ve strained to love him but I can’t. I am building a life with a man I don’t love, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead?

Isn’t she beautiful? Just like Audrey Hepburn. Or is it Katharine? I can never remember the difference.’ ‘Audrey. She’s definitely an Audrey.’

The moment held, a kind of glorious confusion.

She looked up at him. ‘I thought I’d finally got rid of you.’ ‘I don’t think you can,’ he said.

‘We grew up together.’

These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through.

Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you.