I looked down at my chest and realised that I was wearing the stupid My Little Pony T-shirt that he had encouraged me to buy on a late-night shopping trip in Belfast. Everett was an enabler when it came to ludicrous fashion choices. And, at last, I felt something and started to cry. Not the wracking sobs or high keening that the situation warranted but my face contorted and tears leaked out. It was a relief to feel sorrow, to know I wasn’t completely dead inside.
When Mischa’s message had appeared on my phone I’d had that “What now?” sinking feeling. I was already stressed out and stretched thin by a dozen competing priorities, just keeping my head above water. It was a Facebook Messenger notification - who even uses Messenger anymore? But, of course, it was the only way she could find me. Old Facebook connections. We weren’t proper friends - she was Everett’s friend, I’d only met her a handful of times and it had taken me a moment to even remember who she was.
“I’m sure by now you’ve heard about Ev…”
Heard what about Ev? What sort of trouble had he got himself into now? Messages from Ev gave me a sinking feeling these days. Messages suggesting a catch-up on the phone - but that catch-up would be short-lived before he segued into the usual request. If he wanted a catch-up, it meant he was coming over to the Big Island and what he really wanted was a place to stay. I’d feel the inevitable, anxiety-drenched, three-day hangover before he even finished the sentence. I don’t have the constitution to drink like that anymore but I’ve never had the willpower to say no or the wisdom to know when to stop. His annual visit had become a burden, even though I adored his company. It would take me a fortnight to feel right again after he left.
But this wasn’t a message from Ev, it was about Ev. And there would be no more of those gargantuan hangovers ever again.
And, it’s awful, but my first response was to relax. Because he wasn’t about to arrive and wreck my head with rosé.
I’d exchanged messages with Mischa and she’d given me the scant details she had - we could only speculate as to what sad circumstances that had ushered our friend off the planet. “Found at home” was all we knew. And then I’d just sat there waiting to feel something but there was nothing. It wasn’t that numbness that comes with shock, it was just an absence of emotion. Minutes ticked by. And that’s when I’d noticed the T-shirt.
“I don’t know what you're crying for, I’m the one who’s dead.” Ev said.
I opened my eyes but I already knew the voice was only in my head. I spluttered a half-laugh half-sob and wiped my face with my sleeve.
I looked around for my cigarettes and flung the lounge window wide. I never smoked in the flat. Unless Ev was there, of course. By 11pm, the interval between cigarettes would have shortened considerably and it was too much effort to go up and down stairs to the back yard. No doubt the neighbours were grateful when that point in proceedings arrived. Nothing’s louder than two drunk people trying to be quiet.
“Stupid bastard,” I said aloud.
“What?” said Ev, sounding hurt
“You stupid bastard.”
“Well that’s nice, isn’t it?”
“How could you?” We both knew what I was hinting at - that his death was by his own hand. With his cause of death still unknown to me, the thought was gnawing at my brain. Yes, it would have been wildly out of character but isn’t that so often the way? I knew it was my own sense of guilt going into overdrive - I hadn’t been in touch for months, I’d been a bad friend. Round and round the spiral looped.
“What?” he said, and then caught on. “No, Christ, no! It was completely civilised.”
Civilised. The word we used to trill at each other when we had to pretend to be sober after one too many in the pub. Nipping back into the office at night to collect our laptops. Joining someone’s parents for Sunday lunch. Tottering into a mini-cab office. “Civilised!” we’d remind each other in sing-song voices before making our entrance.
“Oh?” I said, hopefully.
“I can’t believe your first words to me were ‘stupid bastard’.”
“Can’t you?” I smirked. “Well, if it helps, I stole the line from some fan-fiction that I’m currently completely obsessed with. It’s taking over my life - honestly, I need help.”
“What’s the fan-fic?” he asked, enthusiastic. This was very much his area. He was a fan-fiction pusher and I had always resisted, my withering assessment of it all being ‘....and then they had sex’.
“Doesn’t matter, “ I said. “We’re doing you right now, not me.”
“And that,” he paused for effect, “is a line of dialogue from that book you’re supposedly writing.”
“How do you know?” I was entirely busted.
“I know everything now!” he boomed theatrically. He tried to add a demonic laugh but it sounded more like The Count from Sesame Street.
“You don’t know what fan-fiction I’m reading,” I pointed out.
“I know some things now!” he corrected himself but with no less melodrama.
Even if it had been a “civilised” death, it didn’t make me feel any better. The thought of him being alone. Had he known what was happening? What were his last thoughts?
“Ow?” offered Ev. “Ow, that really hurts?”
“Don’t.” I flinched. “Please don’t say that.” I knew it was just his usual dark humour but I couldn’t stand that to be the truth.
“I wish I had a nice story for you,” he said.
“What if I’d texted you, or called you? Some small change could have made a difference.”
“Only for that night though.”
“What if I’d been there?” I hadn’t been to visit him in years. “I might have noticed something, made you go to a doctor.”
“I don’t see how - nobody else saw it coming.”
“Or if I’d been there that night. I’d have called an ambulance.”
“You wouldn’t have known anything about it - they found me in my bedroom. Mischa already told you that.”
“I might have heard you fall.” I imagine a muffled crash - the sound of half a dozen used tea mugs and assorted wine glasses being swept off the bedside table.
“NOTHING!” said EV, snapping me out of my morbid visualisation. Nothing - that’s what we would always shout whenever either of us dropped something, preempting the other yelling “Are you alright? What have you broken?” from another room.
I laughed, picking up on the bit: “Ev, you’re not dying in there, are you?”
“No…” he replied innocently, “just doing something… be out in a minute… don’t come in!”
I laughed again, I couldn’t help it. I shook my head, marveling at the self-deception. His death still didn’t feel real to me and this wasn’t helping.
“What’s it like? After you die?”
“Right now, it’s like being in your lounge.”
“Shit, sorry. I’d have tidied up if I knew this was going to be the venue for your afterlife.”
“Will you come to get me when it’s time?” I asked sincerely.
“Natch.”
“How is it possible that I won’t ever see you again?” I said. It wasn’t an emotional plea, more of a statement of fact.
“You’ll move on.”
“Not with you on my laptop wallpaper, I won’t” I glanced at my open computer, I’d been searching for cheap flights to Belfast while I was messaging Mischa. On the screen was a holiday picture of Ev and me, grainy from over-enlargement. I’d meant to change it hundreds of times but never got around to it and I knew that now I never would - I’d never be able to bear putting him away. We’d be there, frozen in time forever, lolling about in a train carriage, young, chaotic.
No more chaos now though.
“You thought it though, didn’t you?” said Ev. “When you heard, you thought: ‘One less thing to deal with, one less time-thief.’”
“You are a time-thief.”
“Well, you won’t have that problem anymore.”
“Except you’re going to be here all the time now.” I made it sound peevish, but I was actually more hopeful than anything.
“You can get rid of Remembrance of the Daleks, finally,” he observed.
I looked up at the shelf of DVDs. There it was - that stupid Doctor Who series he’d bought me. I'd had no idea why at the time, I’ve never had any interest in the show. It wasn’t even the new version or an iconic Doctor - Sylvester McCoy, something of a footnote in the Doctor Who universe, as I understood it. Later, it transpired that he’d bought it for me because it featured the Doctor’s assistant ‘Ace’ - a tomboy-ish girl who wore a bomber jacket and was handy with a baseball bat in a fight. Apparently, I’d once said she was my favourite assistant when I was a kid. Ev had remembered. He always remembered things you said.
Sadly, he hadn’t remembered that I didn’t really care about Doctor Who. But I’d held on to the DVD all the same. Partly because it had been bought with love but mostly because I thought he’d notice it was gone if he came to stay.
“Well, obviously, I’ll never be able to get rid of it now, will I?” I sighed “I’m lumbered with it. There’s a lesson: get rid of shit you don’t want before the person who gave it to you dies and you’re bloody stuck with it for life.”
I considered Ev’s love of sci-fi and fantasy. “Can’t you come back? They always bring the good characters back. They’re bringing back Donna on Doctor Who and you’re going to miss that now.”
“I know. Fuck. It’s alright, I’ll come round here to watch it,” he decided.
“Oh great. Hang on, ‘come round’? So, you’re not staying permanently?”
“I can’t be here all the time, can I?
“Where do you go?” I asked. I supposed I should take the opportunity to ask some big questions. “Have you met God yet? Is there any sort of god?”
“God’s a manmade construct.”
“You always say that,” I laughed. It was what he always said. And ‘you always say that’ was our standard response whenever either of us made some ludicrous, philosophical or existential pronouncement.
“Should I ‘get god’?” I asked. I’d never been religious but maybe...
“No spoilers!” he admonished.
“What about famous dead people? Have you met anyone good”
“Like who?”
I considered recent celebrity obituaries. “Chas from Chas ‘n’ Dave?” Every year, we’d watch an old recording of Chas ‘n’ Dave’s Christmas Special from the 1980s. It was an extraordinary time capsule - the TV studio made up to look like an East End boozer, the audience dressed accordingly but, crucially, also drinking and smoking like it was going out of fashion. And while we’d never had a shared taste in men, we had always agreed that young Chas was really rather hot.
“I have met Chas, actually,” Ev said nonchalantly.
“What’s he like?” I gasped.
“Lovely, and he looks just like he did in the 80s.”
I rolled my eyes. “You really must be in heaven then. Unless… hey Ev, you haven’t gone to the wrong heaven, have you? Are you in the nightclub Heaven? I don’t think that guy you’re with is really Chas.”
“What? Oh nooooo….” he feigned horror.
I laughed so hard, and I could hear Ev laughing until it turned into the usual coughing fit that blights smokers. I recovered myself and the blanket of sadness settled over me again.
“Bloody hell, Ev. How could you go?”
“And leave all this?” he finished my sentence sarcastically. It was exactly what I’d said to him in jest when he decided to quit London.
“Don’t quote me at me,” I said irritably.
On and on, the conversation went. Ev’s voice by turns soothing me, making me feel cross or guilty, making me laugh. In the early hours of the morning, I put out my last cigarette and shut the window. Then opened it a crack again in the vain hope of airing the room overnight.
“I keep expecting some huge burst of energy,” I said. “To suddenly get on with everything I’ve put off because I realise that life is short. Like people do in films.”
“Give it a minute, eh?” Ev placated me.
“I’ve been giving it a minute my whole life.”
“It’ll come, it’s in the post.”
“You always say that,” I said.