The next time we meet

A few weeks ago I got an email from one of my oldest friends, Chantelle. One of the wildest people I’ve ever known. A supernova in human form. She sent me a link to a story she’d had published online — her first piece of creative writing out there in the world.

Emails from Chantelle are rare. I left it sitting there for a while, thinking it must be a round-robin, or spam, or some Nigerian prince after my ten quid. Then I noticed it was just for me.

She’s a woman now, living in Sheffield. But when I first met her she was a girl — a cool Indie kid in London at the height of Britpop. I can still see her bursting into Ewen and Gillian’s living room in full Indie armour, giving a PeeWee wave while we slumped on a dead sofa watching The Simpsons on VHS. You knew straight away she was a star.

We ended up living upstairs from her a year later. She got me a job at the Notting Hill Housing Trust where she worked. We earned just enough to pay rent, live off pasta, and spend what was left dancing. Light on drink. Heavy on movement.

The job had nothing to do with climbing. We ran charity shops. Three tiers: expensive, medium, pound shop. One day you’d be on the King’s Road watching rock stars sift through other people’s cast-offs. The next you’d be in Clapham Junction selling three suits for three quid.

She worked the fancy shops. Chat. Charm. Flirting with granddads. Regulars who came in for her as much as the clothes. I worked the pound shop, emptying bin bags of rags onto rails as fast as I could. Labourer of the unwanted.

It wasn’t a bad job. It just wasn’t a life.

When I moved to Sheffield, I persuaded her to move too. Jarvis. Pulp. A fresh start. It seemed like a plan. Looking back, you forget the influence you have over people. You tug a root and don’t see what it lifts — or cracks.

I once told her she should go interrailing on her own. The kind of thing I wanted to do, not her. She bought the ticket. A few weeks’ wages. We all waved her off.

Two days later she was back. Smiling. But not the same smile. Lonely. Sad. She thrived on people. On connection. That ticket had been mine in spirit, not hers.

Moving to Sheffield wasn’t so different.

We drifted. Lives forked. When we crossed paths she seemed the same — PeeWee on crack. Always up. Always on the go. I didn’t see the act. Maybe it takes thirty or forty years before you see people without the glasses they hand you.

Seven or eight years ago she emailed me something she’d written. I said I’d read it. I expected light. Fun. Her.

It wasn’t.

It was dark. A confession wrapped in story. The places she’d fallen. The trouble she’d met after London. I felt, reading it, that I’d helped tip the first domino.

Everyone has problems. Some are hit harder. But when I read that piece I felt like a star had shattered and I’d played a part.

It’s easy to assume other people’s lives are paused while yours runs on. That they stay the same. A few years back I tracked down an old friend from Hull, Justina, found her in a shack off a dirt road outside Santa Cruz. I hadn’t seen her in twenty years. There was a teenager in the room with a Northern accent.

“This is Tom, my son,” she said.

It took a second to land. She wasn’t nineteen anymore. Neither was I.

That’s me all over. Head down in my own compost heap, not looking up at the garden around me.

But I’m getting better at one thing. Being brave. Saying sorry. Not creeping around on eggshells. Better to have egg on your shoes than live afraid to step.

I carried guilt about Chantelle’s piece. But also respect. She could write. Properly write. A page that could make you feel something real.

Two years ago we met again at my ex-wife’s wedding. Same old Chantelle. Captain Kirk jokes. Klingon chat. Her partner slow to warm but soon laughing. Later someone said, “You were flirting with her.”

I probably was.

How could you not love someone with that much life in them?

One thing from the old job stuck with me. Clothes had a six-week cycle. Two weeks in the fancy shop. Two in the middle. Two in the pound shop. Then the ragman took a full bin bag for a pound.

Life can feel like that if you’re not careful. Dreams bright and full of colour one minute, rags the next.

So I emailed her. Apologised. Said I should have been there more. That she meant more than most and I’d let the thread slacken.

This was her reply:

“Howdy Andy,

It was ace to see you the other night.

I’m still feeling guilty for making you feel guilty so to alleviate my guilt and to make sure you no longer feel guilty I apologise once again for writing something that caused you to feel guilty... I can only think I wrote the offending piece when I was being visited by the dirty monkey of depression who hitched a ride on my back and made me wear his shit-smeared glasses that made everything I looked at appear shit-smeared (including the past). Now he’s gone I see that actually everything isn’t shit-smeared.

I would like to thank you for being an ace kind of guy who has a special place in my heart... I love that even though you’ve done so many amazing things you’re not up your own arse... you kept that naughty sparkle... In short lovely Andy, you’re a top kind of guy whose company I always enjoy.

Now then, enough with the guilt.

I look forward to the next time we meet.”

Sometimes you carry guilt for years and the other person never packed it in the first place.