Page 2 of New Beginning

Charlie sipped his beer. “You know what’s weird?”

“What?”

“I remember all of us being convinced that by twenty-seven we’d be completely different people.”

“Aren’t we?”

“Well…” Charlie looked down. “You’re still wearing the same shoes.”

Teddy laughed. They were, in fact, the same shoes. He’d bought them aged eighteen. “Vintage.”

“I’m surprised they’re not rotting.”

“They only come out for special occasions. I can’t dance in these.”

“You think you’ll get away with that?”

“No.”

They laughed, and for a moment it was like being teenagers again, before mortgages, careers and heads filled with so many passwords they couldn’t remember, along with the creeping suspicion that everyone else had received an instruction manual on how to be a grown-up.

Then the mic screeched and someone shouted, “Year Eleven photo!”

A groan went around the room, enhanced by Teddy and Charlie. An old photograph appeared on the screen. There they all were. Sixty awkward teenagers with terrible haircuts and badly fastened ties, arranged in three rows.

Teddy stared at his seventeen-year-old wide-eyed self. He looked less like a young man and more like a Victorian orphan surprised by a flashbulb. Beside him was Charlie, grinning with the reckless confidence of someone who hadn’t yet discovered what taxes were but was out and proud. Charlie made a lot of money in the city doing something with futures. Gio was pulling a hideous face in the front row. He was now a doctor. Jon and Piotr were glaring at the camera like rival mob bosses. They were lawyers.

And right next to Teddy stood Max.

The air left his lungs. Max had died of leukaemia two years after they’d finished school. Twenty years old. It remained a cosmic, furious unfairness.

Charlie exhaled a quiet, unsteady breath. “He’d have absolutely murdered us for letting that photo go up. Look at him. His fringe looks like it was trimmed with a lawnmower.”

Teddy let out a soft laugh. Max had been the only person in the history of the school who could make a teacher laugh while being told off. On the screen, he was frozen forever: seventeen, indestructible, absurd fringe, eyes burning bright. Teddy blinked rapidly, fighting the prickle behind his eyelids.

“Strange, isn’t it?” he muttered softly. “At seventeen, all we wanted was to hurry up and be adults. Now I’d give almost anything to go back.” Except not to his mother.

“We really thought we’d have it all mapped out by now, didn’t we?” Charlie murmured.

“Don’t you?”

“God, no,” Charlie said cheerfully. “I might make a lot of money but my job is high stress and long hours. I can’t seem to get the balance right. I don’t know how much longer Mark will put up with me.”

Teddy knew Charlie was joking. He’d probably already earned enough to retire. He had a huge home in Surrey with a pool and tennis court to which Teddy was invited on a regular basis.

“If you need a house-slave…look no further.”

Charlie laughed. “How’s the job?”

“Still awful.”

“Find something else!”

“I’m going to.”

“I mean it, Teddy. Life’s too short. What happened to Max showed us that.”

“You’re right.”