The End of Men(53)

I don’t know why some of us are alive and others aren’t. It’s just luck, I imagine. I was a bit pudgy when I got on the boat. Mark was a good two stone heavier than me so we’re both still plodding along. Less plodding than when we first got on the boat though. I’m much lighter in step now. He’s keeping me sane, Mark is. He’s always been the quieter one of us two and he watches people very closely.

“You all right?” he’ll ask when I’m having a bad day and I’ll go, “Yeah, been better,” and he’ll say, “What could be better?” and we’ll talk about all the things we miss, the food and the sex (me with Frances, him with Sally), the wine, the warmth, the friends. All of our old lives. And then he’ll say, “We’ll have those things again, Toby, you’ll see,” and even though we’re in the same place and he knows the same amount I do about the future, a bit of me relaxes and goes, yeah, we will.

I miss steak. So much. Jesus Christ. I would kill for a steak. Would I kill for a steak? Maybe. I’d have put the dietitian out of his misery twenty-four hours before he died for a steak. I wouldn’t kill the captain for a steak. He’s the one keeping this whole operation together. I don’t know what he does in that control room of his all day but I’m still alive and the ship hasn’t sunk so he’s still doing better than the captain of the Titanic as far as I’m concerned.

Oh God, and beer. I crave beer. I’ve never even been much of a beer drinker but the idea of a cold ale in a glass slippery with condensation, outside in the garden, talking to Frances as the grandkids play in the paddling pool makes me want to weep with need. And pick ’n’ mix. It’s weird the things your brain decides it wants. Pick ’n’ mix makes me think of the cinema, that’s it. Seeing superhero movies with Mark and watching Maisy go on her first date when she was thirteen, too young to be on their own because they couldn’t drive and the buses were a nightmare so I “dropped off” her and Ryan at the cinema and then went in and sat fifteen rows behind them. She told me years later, once her and Ryan had gotten married and had Isabel, that she had seen me at the cinema and she had liked knowing I was there. Although it did delay their first kiss by a few days. I wonder if Ryan’s still alive?

I hope I get to see them all again. I don’t pray because religion is a nonsense I’ve never had much time for and the Plague hasn’t inspired a newfound devotion. If it is some bastard up there who’s done all this then I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of praying. Wanker.

Right, I’m tired. Even writing’s tiring now. I’m going to go to sleep. Frances, you’ve heard it a hundred times before now but I can’t say it too many times. I love you more than you can imagine. I miss you. I hope I’ll see you again and even if I don’t, please know you made me the happiest man in the world.

Oh, and if you get my body back and have a funeral, make sure to enjoy a good steak in my memory. Medium-rare with béarnaise sauce. And chips.





LISA


Toronto, Canada

Day 245

Home, finally. It’s midnight, again. For the first time in years, it makes no difference to me that the long days of July are here. I never see them. I get up in the dusk, and I return in the dark. Margot, sweet wonderful Margot, has left a glass of red wine and a note in her beautiful, calligraphic handwriting on the kitchen counter.


You can do it, keep going. But first, sleep.


M x

(And some wine, just in case it was one of those days.)



No one thought we would stay together. It was the talk of the academic staff across campus. Have you heard Lisa Michael and Margot Bird are together? Yes, the science dragon lady and the beautiful history professor are a couple. Opposites attract, chalk and cheese, send your clichés here. My students were less surprised. I’m tough to please but fair. If you want an easy A, get out of here, quite literally. But good students tend to be my most loyal defenders. Margot is universally loved, of course. Her classes are so popular you have to sign up online the second they open, as if she’s a rock star selling out a stadium tour.

I leave the wine—my brain has enough to be thinking about in the morning, it doesn’t need to be foggy—and fall into bed. I cuddle into Margot’s back and feel my shoulders unwind at the warmth and comforting smell of her.

“Hello,” she says, a lot less sleepily than I had expected.

“Hello,” I reply, dropping a quick kiss on her forehead.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says. One of our many, many differences is her brain’s ability to do its best thinking at night. I avoid the lure of sleep and manage to make a questioning noise in reply.

“What are you going to do when you invent the vaccine?” I smile, widely and instantly. Her confidence in me is boundless. It’s glorious.

She sits up, long auburn hair casting a faint shadow across the bed. “No, seriously. Do you just give it to the world and then that’s it?”

“I wouldn’t ‘give’ it to anyone. I haven’t worked this hard to just let it go.” My head is starting to pound from thinking this far ahead. I have just about enough bandwidth to do my job week to week; there’s no room for anything else. “I haven’t thought about it properly.”

“Of course you have.” Margot’s tone is resolute.