My new novel, Probably Nothing, is published TWO WEEKS TODAY, which means we are entering the ‘caps lock’ phase of book promotion, I HOPE THAT’S OK.
In the spirit of recycling – but also enticing – I’d love to share a little amuse bouche today in the form of an EXCLUSIVE extract.
Some people might share the first chapter. Some might say that’s logical. But instead here is chapter three, ‘A remarkable man’, because at this establishment you’ll get what you’re given in whatever order it comes out. I am, though, going to endeavour not to serve it in the way I serve actual food, which is with a flurry of apologies and pointing out all ways things went wrong in the kitchen.
All you need to know is this: Bryony has been casually and sporadically hooking up with Ed, a pleasant but unremarkable man she met on a dating app. Feeling lukewarm about him, she had decided not to see Ed again – which has just been made significantly easier by a phone call telling her that he has died.
PLEASE ENJOY. I’ve scraped the burnt bits off x
A remarkable man
‘I’m sorry, he’s passed what?’
‘Away,’ repeated the voice on the other end of the phone. ‘He’s passed away.’
The voice sounded uncertain itself. Hesitant, as though reading from a script it had never seen before. Bryony hesitated too. Nobody had given her lines.
‘He’s left us,’ the voice (male) tried again. Then, because she still hadn’t spoken: ‘Passed on. Um, deceased?’
‘Y- yes, thank you—’ she replied, before he launched into the full Monty Python parrot sketch. ‘I— . . . wow. Oh god. Oh my god. I’m sorry . . . I can’t quite . . .’
She was standing in the queue at Sheifale, a new restaurant attracting rave reviews for its tahini-drenched sharing plates, and contempt for its stubborn no-booking policy. Bryony was always the person who volunteered to stake out a table.
She didn’t have a big social group, but rather a galaxy of individual friends who didn’t know, or didn’t particularly like, each other. She was required to have brunch or dinner with each of them separately on a regular basis, which was fine, but exhausting. Any attempts to combine her friends for efficiency’s sake had always failed, leaving Bryony feeling like a six-year-old trying to smoosh her Barbies together to make them kiss.
Tonight she was meeting Noémie, a Parisian in pharmaceutical PR and one of her most exacting friends. Soho thrummed around her, the noise of a thousand work weeks being washed down with pavement beers. And on the other end of her phone, a voice was telling her that Ed was dead.
Bryony’s first thought was, should she leave the queue?
It seemed disrespectful not to. Sociopathic, even. To hold out for sesame-crusted Brussels sprouts while there was death on the table.
But then, what was there to be achieved by leaving it? Really? She’d been here twenty- five minutes already, was only another – she glanced up to check – twenty minutes away from the front, at most. And she would need to eat dinner anyway, wouldn’t she? Her stomach growled in the affirmative.
So what difference did it make if she ate it here or in the Five Guys by the station? If anything, Sheifale, with all its dim lighting and charred vegetables, had the more funereal air. Yes, she reasoned, this made sense. This was fine. Probably? Fine. She could weep discreetly in a corner, while Noémie patted her hand and paid for the wine.
‘I’m so sorry, I know this must be a massive shock,’ the voice said now.
Bryony stammered out another thanks. Ahead of her, she could see a server handing out pillowy flatbread and little paper pots of hummus to the waiting hordes.
‘Take your time,’ said the voice.
But there is only so much time a person can reasonably take on a phone call with a stranger, especially under the imminent threat of free dip. So after a pause of a few seconds – was that enough? How long was she supposed to need? – she asked the question she always needed answered when somebody died, whether it was a long-forgotten celebrity or a man who had been inside her less than twenty-four hours earlier.
‘How did it happen? I mean, if it’s okay to ask.’
Bryony’s mind leapt immediately to the bar snacks they’d both eaten the night before. Buffalo wings, padron peppers and pallid halloumi fries. Salmonella usually took about eight hours to present itself, but Listeriosis could take days, even weeks to kick in. What about Campylobacter? She mentally scrolled the NHS webpage from memory, sweat pricking at her temples. Was that definitely hunger gurgling in her gut just now, or—?
‘Wasp sting,’ came the reply. ‘Anaph-phylax-tic shock.’ He stumbled over the word, then added clarification. ‘He was really fucking allergic.’
Bryony relaxed a little as the voice went on.
‘But you probably knew that, right? Always was . . . few bad reactions when we were kids, swelled up like the red Teletubby . . . supposed to take an epi-pen everywhere . . . still is – was – well, I’m sure you know – but didn’t have it on him today, the stupid pillock . . .’
She concluded that the voice was not an undertaker, nor a medical professional.
‘S’pose he’d got relaxed about it in recent years, it’d been so long since it had happened . . . and nobody expects wasps on the first of October, do they?’ The voice caught a little on this last part. ‘Fucking climate change,’ it said, on a shaky exhale.
‘Terrible,’ she murmured in assent.
The server had reached her in the queue now. She took a piece of flatbread but wordlessly waved on the hummus. The least she could do in the circumstances.
‘Happened this morning on his run – dog walker found him collapsed and wheezing in the park but by the time they got him to the hospital it was . . . y’know. Too late. Just like that.’ The voice coughed gruffly. ‘Gone.’
‘I’m so sorr—’ she began, but the voice cut across her with a more forceful wave of emotion.
‘Bryony, I am so sorry. I can’t even imagine . . . I mean, I loved him too, ’course I did. But – well, please just let me say: I know what you guys had was special. He talked about you all the time.’
This was confusing. If the voice hadn’t just used her name she might have trilled, ‘Whoops! Wrong number!’
Instead she said, ‘Did he?’
‘Course. Absolutely smitten. I’m just gutted we never got those drinks in the diary while we had the chance. Never saw him as happy as he has been since meeting you, honest to god.’
Bryony’s stomach lurched as though she’d missed a step on the stairs, or several. Her head felt swimmy. She made a few noises; noises that she hoped sounded like strong, but unspecified, sentiment.
Absolutely smitten?
‘I told his mum I’d be the one to break it to you, Bryony, I hope that’s okay – she would have called herself of course, but she’s in a right state truth be told, I think they’ve had to give her a sedative or something . . . well, you know Ann!’
She did not know Ann.
‘And his family are all in total shock, of course . . .’
‘Of course,’ she said.
The queue had moved up considerably in the past five minutes. Bryony panicked a little, wondering what would happen if she got to the front of the line before getting to the end of the phone call. She nibbled, silently, on a corner of flatbread. It was good. Smoky. Her appetite returned.
‘. . . but they wanted me to apologize that it’s taken all day to let you know. Everyone feels bad about it – you should never have been left in the dark for this long, obviously, it’s just the hospital took a while to trace them and get him identified, they’re so understaffed, sounded like total chaos to be honest – not that it’s their fault obviously, NHS cuts, fucking Tories . . .’
‘Fucking Tories,’ she echoed.
‘. . . and then we had to go pick up his phone and find your number, and it’s all been . . . well, you can imagine. Obviously they’ll be reaching out to you themselves, really soon – Ann said you should go straight to their house if you don’t want to be alone tonight, Leo can pick you up from the station. But then Annie thought that might be too overwhelming for you, and you’ll have Marco for company tonight, won’t you?’
This must be how it felt to wake up from a coma and find out there was a new Prime Minister. Leo . . . Annie . . . was Annie different to Ann or were they the same person? Bryony racked her brain frantically for details on Ed’s family. Siblings? Two, she recalled dimly. Where did they live? Norfolk, was it – or Northumberland? He must have mentioned during one of those perfunctory drinks or polite, post- coital breakfasts. And Marco. The familiar name of her flatmate sounded alien in the context. How did this man know who Marco was?
‘Yes, I’ll have Marco,’ she replied firmly, determined to grasp what little control she could of the conversation. ‘I think it probably would be, ah . . . a little overwhelming – not tonight – but thank you, thank you so much to . . . um, Ann, and of course please send her my—’
‘Oh, you’ll have plenty of time to tell her. Obviously they want you to be involved, really involved, take a big role in planning the funeral and everything. Don’t you worry.’
Bryony worried. A rogue crumb of flatbread went down the wrong way and she began spluttering into the phone, eyes streaming.
‘It’s okay Bryony, let it all out,’ the voice said gently, interpreting her gasping and retching as an outpouring of grief. ‘I’m so very sorry for your loss. He’ll be really, really missed. By me and, well, everyone who ever knew him. Ed was,’ the voice was thick with tears again, searching for the perfect word, ‘a remarkable man.’
‘Yes,’ she rasped in agreement. ‘He was.’
Noémie’s halo of soft curls appeared in the distance, then Noémie beneath it, waving and looking cheerful – as well she might, for Bryony was now at the front of the queue. The scent of burnt spices crept out of the restaurant door, enwreathing her head like incense.
‘Bryony, I’m so sorry to do this but I’d better go, I’ve offered to phone a load more people as I’m the only one who seems to be able to hold it together. Just!’ The voice cracked again. ‘But look, do you have someone with you right now?’ he asked. ‘Will you be okay?’
Noémie was at her side now, quizzical, widening her eyes and eating the rest of the flatbread. Bryony grimaced at her and motioned an apology.
‘Yes, I have a friend with me,’ she replied. Her voice was still hoarse from the choking, which sounded appropriate. ‘I’ll be okay. I mean, not okay,’ she added hurriedly. ‘Obviously I’m absolutely . . . you know . . .’ she grasped for something poetic, romantic, profound, and landed instead on the truth. ‘I just don’t know what to say.’
‘Of course, mate. Of course, you poor thing, it’s been a big shock. I can’t believe it myself, honestly can’t believe it’s true. Fucking surreal. I’ll let you go for now, but you’ve got my number so just call me any time, any time at all. I mean it. We’re all here for you.’
‘I really appreciate it,’ she replied, and in the moment she really did appreciate it. Just before the voice hung up, she asked: ‘Who are you, by the way?’
‘Oh! Sorry, just assumed you knew. Didn’t I say? It’s Steve.’
‘Steve,’ she repeated. There was an expectant pause.
‘Ed’s best mate? From school?’ said the voice. ‘Steve-Steve.’ As though this cleared it up.
‘Ah, of course. Steve!’ she said, because it seemed rude not to.
‘Just two?’ asked the hostess on the door, far louder than was necessary.
‘What’s that?’ said Steve, as Noémie charged in hungrily ahead of her.
‘Just too, too awful,’ Bryony replied, hiccupping softly.
‘Look after yourself,’ he told her.
‘I will,’ she said. ‘And you.’
Bryony taking the bread but not the hummus out of respect was so real lol 😆
Passing on the hummus - at least she could do in the circumstances 😂 brilliant. On my to order list!