Staying Alive. Matt Beaumont

my (very, very hot) bath runs I go to my wardrobe to choose some clothes. I pull out a mid-grey suit—one of several mid-grey suits I possess. I hold it up and wonder if it’s suitable attire for the kind of appointment I’ve got in less than three hours. It looks a little formal for a cancer verdict. It’s more the other kind of verdict—you know: ‘And how do you find the defendant?’ It will have to do, though. I’ve got a meeting in Croydon this afternoon. I shouldn’t think I’d get past Schenker security in anything other than mid-grey. At the height of post-9/11 fever they had a walk-through metal detector in their foyer, but now they’ve replaced it with a spectrometer.

      Needless to say, Niall Haye loves it there—Croydon is his spiritual home. He needs only the flimsiest excuse to board a train for the Schenker Bunker. This afternoon’s is a slimmer-than-slim excuse for a meeting—we’re presenting draft thirty-two of the script, which is all of three words different to thirty-one—but I’m duty-bound to attend.

      I lay the suit on my bed and go to the front room—I need to call Barclaycard, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Morgan Stanley and Goldfish to tell them I’ve lost my cards. (To which they’ll doubtless reply, Good—it’ll save us the bother of calling on you to seize them and then casually beat the shit out of you as a warning to other piss-takers.) I sit on the sofa and as I reach for the phone I see the red light on the answering machine blinking at me. I press play.

      ‘You have—one—new message—’ the familiar synthesised voice announces, ‘left—yesterday at—eleven—thirty—seven—p.m.’

       Beep!

      ‘Murray, it’s me,’ says another familiar though less robotic voice. ‘I was really hoping you’d be home, because it’d mean that what I just saw was an hallucination…Obviously not. I think we’d better talk…Oh, and by the way, don’t you think it’s about time you took my voice off the answering machine?’

      Funny that. For weeks I’ve been desperate for Megan to call.

      Now that she finally has my heart…s

      i

      n

      k

      s.

       eleven: three words

      friday 21 november / 9.52 a.m.

      Like A&E last night, Outpatients is quiet.

      As a morgue.

      But, hey, maybe they’ve cured everyone; the London Borough of Waltham Forest is now a tumour-free zone…Oh yeah, and it’s twinned with Never Land.

      Actually, given that this is my first ever trip to a hospital where the news could be truly dire (as opposed to being dire only in my paranoid fantasies), I’m coping pretty well with my nerves. Keeping a lid on things.

      I look at the only other patient. He’s a ginger nut, about my age. Needless to say he isn’t wearing a mid-grey suit. He’s in faded black jeans and a red and white Arsenal shirt that clashes disastrously with his hair.

       Should have worn the away strip, matey.

      Even so, he isn’t wearing a mid-grey suit. Lived-in jeans and favourite team shirt seem suitable wear in which to receive possibly life’s final piece of significant news. Not a suit in which your own mother would have trouble picking you out in a crowd.

      But as I said, I feel pretty good. I’m not expecting the worst. As the pixie doctor assured me, testicular cancer isn’t that common, and far be it for me to do anything uncommon. Being the original Mr Average, departing from the norm isn’t my thing and I’m wearing the mid-grey suit to prove it. Last night’s panic attack was silly, irrational, and totally induced by (other people’s) drunkenness.

      Ginger nut isn’t alone. A woman is with him, her arm linked comfortingly through his. She turns to him and says, ‘Fancy some tea, Mark?’ He nods and they get up. I watch them amble off hand in hand. Love’s young-ish dream. I wish someone had come with me. (Purely for company—I am so not worried.)

      Obviously not Megan. Not now.

      I almost returned her call before I left, but I chickened out. What was I going to say? Let me get this straight, Meg. A man who looks exactly like me was seen in your road trying to punch in the window of your boyfriend’s car? That is incredible! But what a sick bastard—going round impersonating women’s exes. Some sort of weirdo vigilante for jilted blokes. Have you ever heard of such a thing?

      Somehow I didn’t see that convincing her, a lawyer.

      ‘Mr Collins?’

      I don’t even bother to correct the receptionist this time.

      ‘Doctor Morrissey is ready for you. It’s the third door on the left.’

      Her tone is far more sympathetic than the last time I was here. Does she know something?

       Don’t be daft—hospitals, paranoia and all that.

      I walk down the corridor and tap quietly on the door.

      ‘Come in,’ Morrissey’s voice calls out. I ease the door open and step inside. The elfin one isn’t alone. A nervous grey-haired man is sitting beside her. He’s wearing half-moon glasses and he peers over them at me with moist, kindly eyes.

      Wait half a bloody mo—…I’ve seen that look before. Vets in Practice—they save it especially for dogs that they’re about to dispatch to doggy heav—

      For Christ’s sake CUT IT OUT. Remember: HOSPITAL plus MURRAY COLIN equals gibbering PARANOIAC.

      ‘Please, take a seat,’ Morrissey says with a smile.

      I smile back.

      Go on, give me your worst, which I know for a fact isn’t going to be bad at all. And make it snappy, because I’m a busy man—I’ve got three words to discuss in Croydon.

dec.

       one: thoffy, thakki

      wednesday 3 december / 10.16 p.m.

      I’m flying.

      (Metaphorically, of course. I don’t like flying flying.)

      ‘It’s really good to see you smiling again, Murray,’ Jakki slurs, leaning her head on my arm.

       Amazing, isn’t it? I am flying, girl.

      I nod vigorously. Since I’m simultaneously draining my glass, most of my drink ends up on my shirt.

       So what? I’ll buy another…beer…shirt…whatever.

      ‘I mean, you’ve been so down since.. .’ She mouths the unutterable M-word. ‘I thought you’d never get over her.’

      I am so over her. I am more over her than any man has ever been in the millennia-long history of jilted blokes. Want to know just how over her I am? She could—even as we speak—be having deviant, unprotected sex with the entire Bar Council and I really wouldn’t give a damn.

      ‘I’m doing OK,’ I say.

      ‘So why all the time off lately? You haven’t really had the flu again, have you?’

       Course not. I have the constitution of an ox; an exceptionally big and strong ox; Super Ox. Disease sees me walking down the street and hides in a shop doorway.

      ‘Not…exactly…I just needed a break.’