A Team Means No One Gets Left Behind

T.S.J Harling

            Did you sink, or struggle? Or even, for a moment, swim? Did you strive for life until finally overwhelmed by the waves, or did the water bring you peace at last at the first sudden and brutal cold shock?

~

            Crossed the river each morning, south to north, then in the evening, north to south. You were underneath my feet that evening, and for days after, somewhere in the Thames. The night it happened, I was drunk on a date in Covent Garden with a girl whose name I barely recall now. If you had called me, I could have been there in five minutes. Instead, you did what you did, and I had fun on my date, and as I came home across the bridge on the bus, texting my friends the update on my night, you were there, in the water below.

~

            Everyone told me you were missing, but I was certain you were all right. Online calls went out for your whereabouts, your close family knowing something was wrong. But I thought I knew better. After thinking about it, I was sure you were fine somewhere, being selfish. And I then thought I figured out exactly where you were.

            I took annual leave for a week and went up to Edinburgh for the festival. You had been meaning to go for years. One of your new girlfriends was a comedian, it was obvious you were there. I didn’t tell any of the others. Didn’t explain to my flatmates my real purpose and instead said I just fancied it. I booked tickets for all the trendy theatre and comedy shows. Went to your girlfriend’s comedy night and even managed to speak to her, and she said she hadn’t heard from you in a few weeks. Her mind was clearly on her own career and not a hot model she had met a month ago in a London club.

            I went everywhere, on my own, feeling sort of…upbeat, certain that the connection we had was strong enough that I would see you somewhere, ambling in affably with a girl on your arm. And you’d casually say to me, You all right, Moira, come join us as you bought drinks for me and the girl and yourself, everything easy and light and nothing to worry about. You would have just lost your phone and were elsewhere, in Edinburgh, at auditions.

            I went to three performances a day and roamed the streets and bars. I wasn’t just optimistic; I was certain I would find you. Then it was time to catch my train, and I was wrong.

            I was wrong to be so certain.

~

            We were fifteen, except you, you were seventeen and already at sixth form. Your younger sister, Andrea, was in our group of friends, and we were at Oliver’s house party, and as you got along so well with Andrea, you were here with us. I didn’t notice you at first because I was drunk and far more interested in figuring out who else was gay than noticing Andrea’s handsome older brother. Andrea did introduce you to me later when the night had died down a bit, and we were all huddled in the kitchen smoking and drinking. I was in charge of the drinking game, telling everyone what to do, and you joined in. Later, you started teasing me about my earrings, which were deliberately mismatched, and it pissed me off because it was the fashion, and you said I looked like a pirate.

~

            We never made an agreement to it, but sometime after that, we became integral to each other’s lives. Oliver would always have New Year’s parties and summer parties when his parents were away. Tash’s birthday was October, mine was November, and Dan’s was January, which we were always free for, and yours was June, which signalled the end of the school year and the start of summer. Birthdays, New Year, Friday nights, Saturday nights, end of term, Easter, Christmastime, whole days over summer spent on Peckham Common, then Wednesday nights when we all got jobs we hated. And on and on we spent our youth, doing nothing at all together.

~

            Andrea, you, and I on the bus home. Andrea complaining about the teachers and P.E. and the popular girls and you reading Camus and telling me about the cool bands, which I pretended to know already. I was in a tower block near your house, so you and I would often meet at the bus stop to meet everyone else. Wherever we ended up, you would always wait until I was ready to leave to walk back with me. Hard to remember what else we even talked about when Andrea wasn’t there. I think mostly, the others.

~

            Weirdly, I was often the advice-giver. While lounging on Oliver’s parents’ bed as we all drank and did coke together one night, Dan wheeled around to me and said, Moira, why does literally no girl fancy me, to which I said, Because you like them too much without missing a beat.

            This time, you laughed. Dan punched a pillow, crying out, That makes no sense.

            Both you and Oliver patted him on the back. Oliver said, It does, mate. If you think about it, it does.

~

            I don’t know the moment when you went from having a slightly embarrassing ambition to be a model to instead embarrassing us with your success. Someone saw something in you and promoted you, someone who knew what they were doing, and then you were there in magazines, in adverts on TV, on the internet. You were photographed and filmed as a cowboy, a soldier, a businessman, a professor, and all sorts of things men are.

            You’re there now, on Google images, on YouTube, in old copies of Elle and I-D and G.Q. And even when you were at the height of your popularity, always pulling away to take calls for more work from your agent, you never once made us feel like we were anything less than your dearest friends. You went to awards ceremonies and expensive clubs and had actress girlfriends, and then at one a.m., you’d be giving Olly a call and joining us in a shit pub in New Cross, soon buying rounds and asking us how we all were. We weren’t anything except young and bored and up for getting fucked up, and not a single one of us cared about careers, which probably explains why we weren’t too fazed by yours.

~

            We were in the East Dulwich Tavern, commiserating with Tash after she got dumped once again by some dickhead, which never made any sense because she was so objectively gorgeous and sweet and had the poise of a supermodel herself. Dan and Oliver were outside smoking.

            Tash asked me, What do you think about him? What did I do wrong?

            Without pausing to think, I said, I don’t see the attraction of men at all, let alone your bloke, and Tash and I laughed.

            You went quiet and then got up to go to the bar, getting us all a round of shots.

~

            On your twenty-first birthday, you had a big, posh party at your new roomy flat in the Docklands overlooking the river. Your parents and your sister and some of the people you worked with came, and you had catering, and everything was beautiful. It got busy. There was dancing to music that disturbed the neighbours. We were all fucked up on our drugs of choice. You had my favourite whiskey and posh gin for Tasha and an obscene number of cocktails and champagne and craft ale, before craft ale was cool. You were on harder substances, too, but so were all the boys. Even I had a bit of something, seeing as it was your twenty-first. It got smoky and fuzzy and everyone was having a good time.

            In the corridor waiting for the toilet, you and I talked, and I asked you who your girlfriend was at the party tonight.

            You looked puzzled and said, You’re my girlfriend, Moira.

            It was my turn to look puzzled, and I laughingly replied, I don’t mean your friend who is a girl, I mean your date for the night.

            And you simply said, I’m in love with you, Moira.

            At that moment, Oliver came out of the toilet. I didn’t think he heard anything, but he took one look at us standing there and with a pointing finger said, Charlie, you’re drunk, and Moira, you’re gay, and he took your arm and pulled you away back to the kitchen to do another line

~

            We were at someone’s house party in Brockley when you messaged us, and we agreed to haul ourselves across town to meet you in a Dalston nightclub. We went by public transport, which took ages because we were all smashed and Tasha was wearing phenomenally high heels, as if she needed them when she is already nearly six feet. The walk from the bus stop to the club was twenty minutes away, or would be sober.

            I was walking ahead until Tasha called out, Just go on without me, everyone, it’s my fault for sacrificing comfort for style.

            And I called back, Don’t be stupid, Tash, we’re a team. And a team means nobody gets left behind.

            After a time, Oliver ran up to you and told you to get on his back, and then Dan put me on his back, and we raced to the club in zig zags. When we got there, you’d already reserved an area for us and bought drinks, and there were two blonde women in the booth who were clearly vying to be yours.

~

            Some months after you were found, I bumped into Andrea at a gastropub in Greenwich. We talked at the bar. At first, it was polite small talk, but then I saw something dark in her eyes I’d never seen before.

            While I was talking about the upcoming election, she suddenly interrupted me. Why didn’t you? she said, apropos of nothing.

            What? I asked.

            Andrea said, Why didn’t you go out with him?  

            I didn’t know what to say. I wished Dan and Olly and Tasha were there, but they weren’t. I was with mates from work, and we were supposed to be bitching about our boss and flirting and gossiping. But instead, I was solemn as fuck with Andrea, who was losing her cool.

            How could I, Andrea? I’m gay. You know that, and he knew it, and I couldn’t just make myself.

            But if you had, if you had, he would still be here, she said, not accusing, but wistful as she sighed and leaned against the bar.

            Let me get you a drink, I said.

            I’ve already got one, she said, and she took a sip of a large glass of pinot grigio. He couldn’t love anyone but you. He wouldn’t have done it if he’d had you. He would still be here if you had gone out with him.

            I put my arm around her shoulder, and she seemed reassured somehow, and we talked softly about nothing much, and it was only when I stepped outside for a smoke that I suddenly found I didn’t know where I was. I had been on this road a thousand times, and suddenly I was lost, and I said to Gary, who was my best mate at work, Can you get me a cab?

             He could tell by my face something was wrong and didn’t say much else, and then thank God the cab arrived, and I was gone. I didn’t say goodbye to Andrea or anyone because it was if someone had written If it wasn’t for you on my own gravestone, and even though I knew Andrea was wrong, I felt like I’d had a hard, cruel slap across the face.

~

            For years, I would see men on the street and think they were you and get my hopes up. Even when they buried you, I still felt they had got it wrong somehow and refused to throw flowers on your coffin. At parties, instead of chatting up the girl I had my eye on, I instead would get chatting with men who looked ever so slightly like you. Sometimes they would get the wrong idea.

~

            Oliver got divorced by the time he was thirty and became a decent journalist. Dan, who never resented your good looks but always resented Oliver’s charm, who was single the entire time you knew him, met a woman online and fell deeply in love. You used to say that Dan was a hopeless romantic. I struggled to settle down and felt there were just too many beautiful women in the world, until I met Jenna, who didn’t care if I slept around, but did care enough to tell me in the middle of the night that what happened wasn’t my fault. Tasha worked in PR for a straight decade, then did a huge swerve, became a doctor, and married a doctor.

            Maybe you know all these things already, but then maybe you don’t. We have started getting our first grey hairs, and the first lines on our faces have started to show, and we keep making mistakes. And sometimes we’re miserable and sometimes okay, and somewhere along the line, you were left behind, stuck in your youth. You’ve fallen into the ether, and we carried on.

~

            Not one more minute, not one more breath, not one more drink at the bar.

~

            Even now, it still feels more possible that you are in Morocco, for example, with your own business, probably in solar panels or some other thing to solve the climate crisis. Or in Japan, with a tech start-up too innovative for Silicon Valley. Or something sophisticated in Scandinavia. You would suit Scandinavia. Or in New York, wearing wool coats, donning designer stubble and a tasteful, expensive watch, with a thin wife who makes witticisms and is always in black. New York would suit you. You belong there. You are more there, to me, than in the ground in southeast London.

Bio

T.S.J. Harling’s fiction and nonfiction has been published in Square Wheel Press, Porridge, Queen Mob's Tea House and XRAY, among others. Based in south-east London, England, Harling is currently studying for a Critical & Creative Writing PhD at the Royal Holloway, University of London, on the New Woman in Dracula. Find Harling on social media @tsjharling or at tsjharling.squarespace.com.