Page 4 of Counting Down To You

“I’m making us proper coffee. And then I’m going to get dressed and stop feeling sorry for myself.”

“Good. Because if anyone has the right to feel sorry for themselves, it’s me.”

“Because of the essay?”

“Exactly.”

That evening, after Robyn agreed to forgo ice skating in favor of cheap alcohol and Love Actually at home, she’d come into my small bedroom brandishing a bottle of wine in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

The bottle of wine she set down on my bedside table. The piece of paper she dropped into my lap.

“What’s this?”

Robyn only grinned as I picked it up and started to read. It was a list.

Throw out the scales.

Sign up for the netball team.

Ask out that guy from your lectures you keep staring at.

There were twenty-four things in total. Twenty-four, for the twenty-four days leading up to Christmas.

“It’s an advent challenge!” Robyn was bouncing on her toes, her heart-shaped face flushed with excitement. I loved that look. I miss that look. “You said you wanted to fulfill your resolutions so here it is. Instead of an advent calendar, I give you a resolution calendar.” She accompanied that statement with a grand gesture.

I looked back down at the piece of paper, feeling a smile pull at my lips. “You are too cute.” And, really, wasn’t she just the best friend?

“Oh, I know I am. But you have to actually do them. By Christmas. And I’ll be watching to make sure you do.”

“Well, that sounds incredibly ominous.”

Robyn flicked back her curly hair. “It’s the actress in me.”

I scanned the list. “I’m not dying my hair blue.”

“You said you wanted to change your hairstyle! And blue hair would match your eyes.”

I laughed as Robyn came to sit next to me on the single bed. “Well, if I’m doing this, then so are you. Am I allowed to come up with a list for you too?”

“Totally. Make it good, won’t you?”

From then on, it became a tradition. We didn’t always manage to complete the challenges by Christmas, but we always did them before the next December rolled round. And now, sitting on my lap is the last calendar from Robyn I’ll ever get.

Instead of opening it, I put the calendar back on my bedside table. I can’t do it. Because, if I do, it will be like the beginning of the end, and when Christmas Day arrives that will be it. There will be no more squares to open. Robyn will be really gone, and I’ll finally have to say goodbye for good.

I make myself get up, shower, and get dressed, knowing that if I stay in bed all day it will be a downhill slide. Cal “helped” me last night by coming up with suggestions of things I could do on my enforced sabbatical, making me write them on the Notes app on my phone, the ideas becoming more and more ridiculous in accordance with the number of wines we’d drunk. These ideas include:

—Rent a cabin in the Scottish Highlands for a month and write a best-selling novel

—Go to Costa Rica and learn to surf

—Get a job as Mrs. Claus in Lapland

I smile, imagining what Robyn would say. I will totally come to Costa Rica with you. I’ve always thought I’d be a brilliant surfer. Then the smile fades as I think of the many trips we’d planned to take together. Trips we’ll never take.

Stop it, Ali. I promised Robyn I wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t think of all the things that wouldn’t happen, but would focus on the things we did do. It’s easier said than done, that’s all. Especially today.

Rather than looking up cabins in the Highlands, I head out of my flat and down the two staircases to the ground floor, figuring some fresh air will do me good. The stairwell always smells a little like weed, and there is a dim light constantly flickering overhead, despite repeatedly asking the landlord to sort it out with the maintenance team. The sun is only just rising outside, and there is already a trickle of commuters making their way toward Ealing Broadway station, noticeable by their suit trousers or black tights sticking out from beneath winter coats.