September

Well, this was a bloody stupid idea. 

About two months ago, you said, half-joking I think, that I should hire a therapist. 

“Don’t be absurd,” I said. “I’m not a neurotic twentysomething brainwashed by Sex and the City. I’m a middle-aged British man and I don’t need a therapist to complain to. That’s what I’ve got you for.”

You actually rolled your eyes. “I don’t think twentysomethings have watched Sex and the City since the millennium, so if you won’t go to a therapist at least meet some new people.”

I can’t remember what I replied, but you were probably right. If I had a therapist, I’d have asked them if it was a good idea to spend my birthday going up the London Eye for a trip originally planned with my best friend. That’s you, by the way. And the therapist would presumably have replied that it might not be a wonderful idea, no, not six days after that best friend was brutally murdered. 

Well, I’m here now and this pod thing is slowly lifting into the air, so I’m stuck with my terrible idea for the next forty minutes. Time is such a spongy thing, isn’t it? Forty minutes can feel like a few heartbeats when I’m lost in a book, but right now feels like a life sentence.

The Houses of Parliament are coming into full, inglorious view now. Of course, the pods on this glorified Ferris wheel are full of tourists. There’s a large Italian family taking a selfie because, apparently, no twenty-first-century experience is real unless it’s photographed fifty times.

If you were here, you’d probably offer to take the photo for them. Well, you’re not here, and I’m not you, so bad luck for them.

You’d like the father, by the way. Tall with silver-streaked hair. Just the kind of man you’d admire from afar but never actually approach.

Oh, Daniel, I don’t know what I thought I’d achieve by coming here. I thought I was honoring you, and I’d already paid for the tickets. But I feel incredibly alone. It’s sad to be surrounded by people and feel so bloody alone. 

The whole of the South Bank is visible now, paths teeming with tourists, couples, and arty types. Your murderer could be one of them, but how would I know? I can’t imagine why anyone would kill you, so how would I know what type of person they’d be? I look at all those walkers and cyclists and realize that it’s true—life goes on. You might not be walking around on this planet anymore, yet it still spins. You’d tell me to find that comforting. Well, I don’t. I find this world sad and empty without you.

But you were right. I should have tried to meet new people. Though you know as well as I do how nightmarish it is to be a gay man slipping fast into old age. You’re invisible or inconvenient or both. You don’t have the traditional menagerie of kids and grandkids to keep you company into your dotage, there’s not exactly a queue of people wanting to get into your underwear anymore, and most of your old friends are busy with families of their own.

That was okay when we had each other. I honestly liked my life up until a week ago. A bit of light lecturing during the days, evenings spent at theaters or at home reading, and then we’d see each other every Sunday. It wasn’t the most exciting existence, but I didn’t feel lonely because I knew I could rely on you. Best friends for thirty-five years and still devoted to each other. 

But now we don’t have each other because you bloody well left me.

No. Someone took you from me. 

Oh, Lord. I must be looking emotional because that Italian’s wife just gave me a sympathetic look. I turn away. I don’t need sympathy, thank you very much.

We’re close to the top now, and London—this wondrous, teeming, bustling metropolis—is laid out like a toy town in a children’s book. It’s late summer and the light is glorious, spilling like white gold over the great dome of St Paul’s and glittering on the Thames’s expansive sweep. 

But I don’t see the beauty, not really. It looks like a discarded seashell to me, its inhabitant long gone. Brittle, empty, sad.

I know perfectly well I’m feeling sorry for myself, thank you—no need to remind me.

But I’m also feeling sorry for you, Daniel. Dead and alone in your apartment for four days before your once-a-week cleaner found you. Poor woman.

I wish I’d been the type of person who picked up the phone more easily. If I’d called you every night, I’d have known sooner. Obviously, I couldn’t have changed anything. Even if I’d been there, what use would I have been against some knife-wielding maniac? Would I have dissuaded him by quoting John Milton? Could I have soothed his raging heart by playing him Schubert?

No, I couldn’t have helped. But it hurts me to think of your body lying there alone for those four days. I suppose I should already have faced up to the fact that this was likely to be both our fates, but I thought we still had time.

This is the big human mistake, isn’t it? We always think there’ll be more time, even when life has taught us again and again that time is the one thing we never have enough of.

You know, I still remember meeting you. Vividly. I’d been in London for two years, and was still drinking, which meant I was still being sociable. My best friend then (whose name eludes me now, I realize—God but time is a cruel bitch) took me to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern to cheer me up after my latest breakup. I saw you dancing on your own to Eurythmics’ “Love Is a Stranger” and fell in love at first sight.

I did. I really believe that. 

I just didn’t know I was falling in love with a friend.

Our four months of dating were too dreary to be called a disaster. To be honest, I’ve forgotten most of it. AIDS had just hit the gay scene like a communal panic attack, so we were both scared of sex. For all that you were beautiful back then (yes you were, luminous actually, though you didn’t believe me then, and probably don’t believe me now) something between us didn’t click.

The truth is, Daniel, you weren’t exciting as a boyfriend. I still had a wild streak, and craved dramatic, all-consuming love affairs, but you acted like a forty-year-old at twenty-five. Steady and sensible—not the things passion is made of.

You were so gracious when I told you I thought we should be friends that this age-old lie actually came true. And all of those qualities that had bored me in a boyfriend made you the best friend possible. 

You were patient with me through the awful love affairs I threw myself into over the coming years and forgiving when my drinking got out of control. You even helped me stop and kept me company in those days of early sobriety, when I felt flayed, my nerves jangling.

You were always there for me. I thought you always would be.

Who would kill you, of all people? 

Enough. I can’t be caught crying in public—I’d have to leave London to get over the shame. At least this damn wheel is going down now.

But as we descend, I see your ghost everywhere. There, just by the skaters’ park, that’s the British Film Institute, where we saw a hundred films together. Beside that is the Sunday market, where that Turkish guy sells those vintage maps you loved and hung framed around your apartment. You loved the ones showing lands like Prussia, Formosa, or Ceylon, lands that don’t exist anymore. 

Like you. 

This city has become a mausoleum of memories.

I know I’m crying. Just fuck off, will you? It’s your fault.

*

Okay, I’m more composed and I’ve found a bar. If I wanted to turn this into a big drama of the kind I relished when young, I’d order a whiskey. 

The reason I don’t is not because of how disappointed you’d be in me. You’re gone and I know very well that even though I’m talking to you in my head, there’s no you actually listening. 

We agreed on this, like we agreed on so many things. Humans are lumps of meat and bone walking around with heads full of sparks and chemicals, kept in motion by heaving lungs and pumping hearts. The soul? A superstitious word for brain. And when that knife pierced your flesh nine times (nine times—who would do that?) and the blood leaked out and your heart stopped, your brain died and your soul with it. 

Now I imagine you asking why, if I’m such a convinced and devout atheist, am I talking to you? Well, who else am I meant to talk to? Give me time to break a lifetime’s habit, please.

But no, I’m not staying away from alcohol because of you. I’m doing it because I suspect that one whiskey—my first drop of alcohol in twenty-six years—would unravel me. I’d fall apart right here, and I don’t think I’d ever be able to put myself together again. Not without you to help me.

So, it’s a ginger ale for me. Sip it slowly, mustn’t get carried away. I’ve got my ageing heart to think about.

I’m not in The Dogger, our regular Thameside pub. Going up the Eye was enough masochism, even for me. I’m in some modern bar where all the staff look young enough to be the grandchildren I couldn’t have and never wanted anyway.

I watch clipper boats ferrying commuters out to parts of East London I’ve never even seen. Ah, this vast, teeming city. How is it that only one person in it really mattered to me?

If we were together, now is when you’d give me my gift. 

If you had a superpower, it was gift-giving. After my career in academia stabilized and my parents were kind enough to die and leave me half of a huge house in Northumberland, I was financially comfortable. If I wanted anything, within reason, I could buy it.

What you always managed to do was give me something I didn’t know I wanted, but which I felt instantly had been missing from my life. 

You knew I loved the photographer Guy Bourdin (years before Madonna made him famous) and somehow got hold of a limited edition book of his work which had only been released in France. On one of our twice-a-year overseas holidays, you watched me stuff my face for a whole week with Portuguese desserts and managed to find a supplier in Stockwell who wrapped a month’s worth up in a beautiful box.

I was always embarrassed by how comparatively unimaginative my gifts to you were. A book I could tell by your expression you’d already read, though you’d insist you hadn’t. A meal at The Ivy, which didn’t impress you, uninterested as you were in both fine food and celebrity spotting. Looking back now, I fear that for all our endless conversations about music, movies, and theater, I didn’t know you as well as I should have.

Who would kill you, Daniel? 

The police say they’re investigating but have little to go on. They came to my home to deliver the news. I was the first they told, named as prime beneficiary in your will. Well, we were each other’s family. All yours were gone. After your sister died in her thirties from breast cancer (and it was my turn to be there for you), your parents rushed after her into the ground. My sister and two nieces are in Glasgow, which might as well be Mars. 

A smart young woman is leading the investigation, a DC Carter. When she told me what had happened to you, I had to be quiet for a while. I didn’t cry, not then. You’d have understood. We weren’t of a generation that could cry in public about personal matters. We both wept at Pan’s Labyrinth at the Curzon, but I don’t remember you crying when your sister died or when you broke up with Brian after fifteen years.

There really is something wrong with the English, isn’t there? We sneer at the overemotional Americans, but we shouldn’t, any more than a prisoner should mock a free person for moving around too much.

DC Carter finally spoke again.

“I do have questions, but we can wait until later. I know this is a shock.”

I looked up. “Would it have been very painful?”

“I can’t answer for sure, Mr. Halligan,” she said. “But I’ve interviewed victims who’ve been stabbed before, and they often say it didn’t hurt as much as they thought. One of them chased after his attacker for five minutes before he even realized he’d been stabbed. I think shock acts like an anesthetic.”

I felt so grateful to her for saying this that I almost did cry. 

“Well, ask your questions then.”

“Thank you. I know this is a cliché, but did Mr. Jameson have any enemies? Anyone with a motive to kill him?”

I actually laughed. “Daniel? I don’t know anyone less likely to make enemies. He was kind to everyone. I used to tell him to stop it, it was ridiculous, and made me look bad in comparison.”

She smiled at that, then asked if I knew of any boyfriends. I told her that since you and Brian broke up, you’d been single.

“Did he still meet men online?”

“You mean those awful apps? Grindy and the like?” I knew the real name but didn’t want her to know that. “He never talked about it, but he might have used them. I’m sure he got lonely sometimes.”

“Would you describe him as lonely?”

A wave of sadness crashed over me. “Well, he never seemed lonely, but our situations were similar. No husbands, no children, busy friends. Yes, I suppose he must have felt lonely at times. Anyway, can’t you check those apps? Don’t you have his phone?”

“We found it, but it was password-protected, and the manufacturer isn’t very cooperative about unlocking phones.”

“Even if someone’s been bloody murdered?”

A new grudge to hold against a company that has done so much to zombify the world.

“Anything I should know about his sex life?” DC Carter asked carefully.

I thought about the gay sauna you went to sometimes. You’d invited me to come along, but the idea of wandering around a warren of cubicles hoping to find someone with a weird kink for older men appealed to me about as much as chewing my way through a plateful of cold, chopped kidney. I reluctantly gave her its name.

“This is sensitive, but did the deceased—” I winced at that word “—have any unusual sexual preferences?”

“Other than buggery, you mean?” I said, then regretted it when I saw her blush. In fact, I wasn’t even sure you went that far. You didn’t during our vanilla love affair.

“I don’t know,” I said, and realized with an ache how true that was. You’d probably changed a lot in the three decades since we fumbled around, perhaps developed exotic tastes. Maybe you spent half your evenings with a belt around your neck and your member in your hands. But I doubted it and wondered if she’d have inquired this of a straight man.

She then asked if you had any other close friends, and I had to say that I didn’t think so, not many. There was an Ajay you’d mentioned, but he was a teaching colleague, someone you’d share an occasional dutiful dinner with but probably not a close friend.

“Sorry I have to ask this, but where were you on the night in question?”

“It’s the strangest thing. I don’t remember anything about that night. I woke up with amnesia and a feeling of dread.” Her eyes grew wider with each word, and until I finally barked. “I’m joking. I was at the cinema. On my own.”

She wanted to laugh, I could tell, but kept her face stony. “Do you have a ticket or an Oyster card that you used to get to the cinema?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll check the times and rule you out.”

I asked if the police had any suspects or even any theories of what had happened. She admitted they didn’t have much to go on. They couldn’t see that anything obvious had been stolen, but that could mean a burglary attempt gone wrong and a killer who’d fled the moment he realized he’d just promoted himself to murderer. 

“Was he the kind of person who would have opened the door to a stranger?”

“Christ, yes. He was so trusting it was practically a disorder.”

“Okay. Well, we can’t see any signs of a break-in, so my best guess would be the murderer was someone he knew. Or at least someone invited. If you do think of anyone we should be talking to, please let us know. We’ll start with this Ajay you mentioned, we have his workplace details. I’ll leave you to your day, if you’re sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” I said, rather belligerently, realizing even as I said it that it was an absurd and possibly sociopathic statement. “Wait, did you say you’d searched his apartment?”

“Yes, it was the first thing we did.”

“I have spare keys. Am I allowed in now?”

“Yes. In fact, please do. You might notice things missing that we can’t.”

So that’s where I’m going after this. I suppose I’m hoping I’ll find a clue of some kind, though I can’t imagine what. I’m no Hercule Poirot. 

I’m dreading it. That poky little flat, full of your paintings, maps, and books. It will be dead as the moon without you.

I really wish you were listening, Daniel. If you are somehow out there, come and haunt me. You can make strange noises in the night, go full poltergeist and move my furniture around. I don’t care. It would be good to know my atheism was mistaken and you’re not really gone.

And I’d love the company.

*

Well, here I am, in Hendon. Stop enjoying yourself. You know I loathe this hateful neighborhood. There’s a reason you always came to my place in Clapham for Christmas. But your school teacher’s salary didn’t allow you much choice, and at least you owned it. 

I suppose I’ll have to sell it. I have a meeting with your solicitor next week to discuss the will—oh, the cheery admin of death.

Part of me is expecting yellow police tape crisscrossing the doors outside your apartment building, but it looks like it always did. But now approaching the apartment building’s main door makes my chest feel hollow where once it would have felt full.

Unlocking, I realize that though I’ve had these keys for ten years, I’ve never once used them. You’d always see me coming from your kitchen window and trot down to greet me with a hug.

Did you hug your murderer, Daniel?

I walk up the narrow stairs to your first-floor flat and let myself in with a feeling of raw dread. What if it smells of decay? You lay here four days. But it smells of… nothing. Staleness, perhaps. 

I glance at your tiny little kitchen, far too small for a violent murder.

It was the living room where it happened, DC Carter told me. If it had happened in the bedroom, that would have strongly suggested a sexual motive. 

I realize right now that I have never been inside your bedroom. Not once in the thirty years you’ve had this flat.

Do we all have mysterious rooms that few people enter but ourselves?

I step into the living room, where I see it at once. Someone’s tried to clean, but the bloodstain is still stubbornly there.

Well, I did tell you not to get a cream-colored carpet, didn’t I?

I stare for too long, and then walk around, not really knowing what I’m looking for. I’m an observant person, but everything looks like it’s in the right place. There’s nothing here for me. What did I think I would find? There was only ever one thing here for me, and that was you and you’re gone.

What am I doing, Daniel?

I’m getting ready to leave when I glance at your bedroom door. The police said the crime didn’t happen here, so I don’t have any reason to go inside. Yet I do.

It’s larger than I expected, but decorated almost exactly as I would have predicted, with your beloved maps framed on the walls. But I don’t look at those for long—my eyes move instantly to the wardrobe, its doors wide open. I barely notice the clothes because I’m transfixed by a pile of elegantly glossy gift bags, just like the ones you’d present to me on my birthday. There must be two dozen.

I approach slowly, with a kind of awe.

I can tell at once that the police have already looked through the bags, probably taking photographs. They’re piled far too messily for you.

Are these all for me, Daniel?

The first one is—my name’s on the little card attached at the top. This must be the birthday present you never got to give me. There’s something solid inside, not heavy enough to be a book. I can’t bear to look right now. 

I pick up the next gift. Also for me, with a little sticky note attached: Christmas 2024. My God, you’d already thought ahead to Christmas? Your gift-giving really was a superpower. Or a monomaniacal obsession. Take your pick.

I survey the rest of the pile and, for a mad moment, think you’ve planned five years of gifts for me. But then I see the next one is marked for a Gareth. 

I’ve never heard of Gareth.

I don’t open the gift, but do inspect the scribbled mini-card, knowing there’s probably a longer one inside. It says, “To bring you comfort whenever I get the best of you. Daniel. X.” 

I slowly lay the gifts out on your bed. There are gifts for four people in total, two each.

Gareth, who I’ve never heard of.

Ajay, who I knew about. 

Theresa, whose name I think I remember you mentioning. 

Alex, another mystery.

I don’t peek inside the gift bags. I suddenly feel very strange, like I’m teetering at a cliff edge, wobbly with vertigo.

It takes a while to sort it out in my head, even though it’s quite simple.

You had other friends you met, like you met me.

You had other friends you loved, like you loved me. 

You had other friends you thought about, like you thought about me. 

Why would I ever have thought otherwise? Why would someone like you have only one friend? 

Daniel, I’m sorry. 

I don’t think I was the friend you deserved. I didn’t ask enough about your own life, too wrapped up in my own loneliness. Even if I’d asked, I don’t think I’d have listened. I can remember you telling me about Ajay now. Theresa too. I just didn’t know how close you were.

I’m so sorry.

Yes, I’m crying. Fuck off. It’s your fault.

No. It’s mine.

But I’ll make it up to you, Daniel, I promise.

December

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m at Ajay’s house. He’s in the kitchen, helping his wife, Ishani, cook.

Bet you didn’t see this coming, Daniel.

Or maybe you did. Maybe all of this is one final gift from you to me.

I’m sorry I don’t talk to you as much anymore. God, but this healing “journey” is a rough passage. Is time a healer? Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s more like the stagehands changing the scenery during a play, distracting us with change. Either way, time always blunts pain, whether you want it to or not. Nothing—not love, not joy, not even grief—can be sustained in its purest intensity for long. It always fades to make room for something new. Day by day, I think of you a little less. And I know that you would want that, but I feel bloody guilty. 

I feel guilty about lots of things.

I did try and make things right, though, by tracking your friends down and making sure they got their gifts. Ajay was easiest because he was indeed a work colleague. I hadn’t misunderstood that, I just didn’t know how close you were. The police put me in touch with him. And Ajay knew Theresa. He’d met her in fact.

“But only a couple of times at the pub,” Ajay said, at our first meeting. “You know how Danny was—” Well, I didn’t know anyone called you Danny, so obviously not. “—one of those people who prefers one-on-one time with people. He wanted to invite you one time, but then worried about bringing you into a pub. He was proud of you not drinking, you know.”

Yes, I knew.

Incidentally, if you’d told me how handsome Ajay was, I’d have paid more attention. Though he does seem unfortunately attached to his wife and children.

When I turned up at Theresa’s house, she terrorized me with excessive Americanness and tactility. When I told her my name, she screamed she’d heard all about me and wrapped me in a bear hug. It was my most intimate experience with a woman’s breasts since I was an infant. I found her alarming and then—three hours of conversation later—charming.

Theresa led me to Gareth, whom she remembered as your tennis friend. I tracked him down when I found your gym membership card and left a note on their community board. He called me up, and we met. When I handed him your gifts, he got teary. I have no idea how you managed to play tennis with him—he looks like his body is eighty percent sinew—but he assures me you were good.

I don’t need to tell you how they reacted to your gifts. Gifts really were your superpower.

Ajay and Ishani have become friends and invite me round for dinner twice a week, though I’ve negotiated that down to once. I can’t change all these years of habit overnight. It’s slightly odd being adopted at the age of fifty-nine by a couple who are thirteen years younger. I sometimes have a guilty feeling I’m stealing a place you should be filling, but I know you’d want me to. And they really are both a delight. Ajay is as kind and warm as you. God, you must have been sickening together.

I’m spending tomorrow, Christmas Day, alone. That doesn’t bother me. I’ll spend a little time mourning you, and I’ll need to renew my social battery because the day after that Theresa is forcing me to go and see a musical with her. She’s a bit much, in all honesty, but I enjoy her company in small doses. Small, semi-regular doses.

Gareth and I haven’t met again, having little in common, though he did send a hideous electronic Christmas card yesterday. People are nicer than I remembered.

Most, anyway.

That brings me to Alex. None of the others knew who he was, either, so I decided to hand DC Carter your gifts to him. I took a look first, though. A couple of novels, both Booker-shortlisted bestsellers, which didn’t provide much insight.

DC Carter thanked me, but confirmed my suspicion that they’d already photographed all the gifts. She also told me they’d never managed to break into your phone, but they got into your emails and found nothing personal to any Alex.

They’ve fingered him as a potential suspect, but I’m not sure. You chose your friends well, I have learnt. It would be a serious lapse in taste to befriend a psychopath.

But I’ve learnt there are many things I don’t know.

So, no, we still don’t know who killed you. We’ve all helped the police, there have been news reports, and the case is “open,” whatever that means. Ajay had met with DC Carter before I turned up on his doorstep. He told them more about your social life than I could, though not about the sauna. There were some things just between us. I was wrong about many things, but I wasn’t wrong about that.

We might never know who murdered you. That’s what DC Carter admitted a month ago. How you died might end up being one of those mysterious rooms, one we can’t find the key for. 

You wouldn’t want me to feel vengeful, but I do. I’m fucking furious you aren’t here.

But what can I do?

Ishani’s calling now. Dinner’s ready. She’s an amazing cook, as you know.

We sit and “ooh” and “aah” over steaming bowls. Their youngest kid, Philip, is home for Christmas Eve and politely pours sparkling water into our glasses. Before we eat, Ajay’s expression turns unusually serious, and he raises a glass.

“To friends no longer with us. To Daniel.”

Clink.

I’m sure you’re laughing or clapping with delight if you’re out there somewhere in the ether. If you aren’t—and I still don’t think you are, not really—that will have to be okay. We’ve all kept a lot of you in our heads and our hearts. It’s the best we can do.

“Earth calling James,” Ishani says to me now, and gestures towards the food. “Eat!” That woman can’t wait to be complimented on her cooking. Fine, I will oblige.

I’m glad I came tonight. It was a bloody good idea.