zachary

“not sure this is the best idea in the world but I'm in london briefly next wednesday am and for once have a few hours not crammed with a list of things to do - will be around liverpool street/cornhill/city area - want to meet for coffee? would be weird but hopefully nice to see you again xxx

for sure... what time... i gotta be in chalk farm for 5.30 is all xxx

ok - here is timetable - get to liverpool st at 10.46 got to be at dentist in cornhill at 1.30 and then got to be back at liv st at 4.32. is there still somewhere you can smoke and drink coffee in london - does that exist anymore? also can we do mutual pact on no fuck me you look twenty years older than when I last saw you comments? don't laugh - I already have irrational dread of dentist and would like the seeing you part of the day to be a good one
xxx

you can smoke indoors but not exhale. otherwise outdoors if the weathers fine... i will scope out somewhere to meet at say 2.30 near liverpool street station. AS for the rest it is probably best if we can remain back to back.
Also we could mmet in the morning... i suppose... up to you...

love from meeeeeee”

That was hardly the most gracious invitation I’ve ever written to anyone. However Zachy seemed not to mind, and our arrangement making continued in the same half-joking way until I was feeling much less nervous about seeing him again.

My invitation had been an impulse; a part of a bigger plan to go back into the world again after hiding away for a long time in the country. I’d been in touch with Zach for six months but we hadn’t met or spoken. I was very wary of the whole idea. Some days Zachary could say the most cutting things but at other times he could be the nicest person in the world; the thing was that you never knew which way it would go until you got there.

Two months ago I was feeling pretty fragile and not sure I was in the best state to take chances. T understood when I told him. He said I was brave beyond all reasonable expectations under the circumstances – he knew Zach quite as well as I did.

So it was the dentist and Zachy – on a chilly day in May. I was most nervous about Zach to be honest. Waiting at Liverpool Street, outside Starbucks, smoking a million cigarettes. I couldn’t find him for a while. He called, I missed it, I called, he missed it. I was beginning to think I ought to just hop on a train and forget the whole thing, when my mobile rang and there he was. We stayed on the line until we found each other. I saw him first, walking towards me. God was that really Zach? Jesus he was so grey – not the hair so much as the face, and he stooped slightly as he walked. He was so thin and ill looking.

We hugged. He had the same half-embarrassed, half-pleased laugh that I remembered. It was just so strange to hear it come from the mouth of this grey ghost man. He’d been so tall and good-looking when I’d last seen him twenty years before. I wondered briefly how he thought I looked, and partly I was dying to ask, but in the end our pact stood and I was glad. It removed the need for polite lies on either side and made it possible to rediscover the parts of us that really mattered.

It didn’t take long to readjust after the shock of the new old Zach – I think I was over it by the time the traffic lights changed and we crossed the busy road. Then it was exactly as it had been when we used to stroll along to English lessons together at Kingsway – two sixteen year olds, both with sharp tongues and a grudge against everything.

We found a table outside the shiny new Valerie’s Pattisserie in Spitalfields, a total aberration compared to the lovely original in Soho, and chatted about how ugly the area had become since it had been sanitised by money. I let Zach do most of the talking at first. I couldn’t stop smiling. I had forgotten how wonderful it was to feel this relaxed with someone. There aren’t many people with whom I feel completely at home, but with Zach, despite all the sadness of that day, I bathed in the luxury of being with someone clever and funny and instantly understandable. It was such a relief not to have to explain myself all the time – he just knew. I never feel like that where I live now.

Decades of heroin hadn’t dulled his intelligence; it had just made him leap oddly from one tangent to another. You had to concentrate or you’d lose the very tenuous thread. Inside I was laughing gently as he jumped in one breath from his hatred of his ex-wife who he’d left after finding letters from some old flame, to his string of immensely complicated affairs, sometimes more than one at a time, clearly quite of few of which predated his walking out on her.

Suddenly he was talking about dentists. His new girlfriend was wonderful. She lived in Belsize Park for a start – so much nicer to wake up in than the grim Hackney estate where he had a flat. She was a part-time artist/musician he worked with but she had also promised to sort his teeth out – she was a dentist too - a miracle combination! And then he switched to a description of the dippy American artist he’d just split up with.

He didn’t push me to tell about myself, just small nudges here and there, and he gently sympathized with me over the man I’d married; “oh god he made a film in Laos? “ Another gentle laugh and a slow head shake. “I can see what you mean. Astrid was the same. They’re all mad like that in the States.”

He was full of disjointed plans – a summer season in Ibiza “need to be somewhere warm”, a tour of the States, a move to the country “but I would miss the people here”. I told him about T. I didn’t say much but I think he knew from my face how I felt. Zach’s eyes lit up at his name – he looked so happy to hear how well he was doing.

Another sudden switch; perhaps he would go to live in the same city as T – “I went there before on tour – it’s really nice – perhaps I’ll go there”. It was funny but also so sad, listening to this stream of ideas that would never come to pass.

I was amazed at how much he remembered from our past – more than me in some cases. Underneath the thin grey frame was a much stronger Zach than I had at first assumed. You could see it sparkling from his eyes even though the rest of his face was so old and tired looking. I could happily have sat there all day, listening and laughing, but I had to go. We walked back to the station together, making rude comments about the city workers heading home.

As the train pulled away I plugged in my headphones and looked out of the window. My head was spinning with thoughts. I felt overwhelmed by sadness. God knows what the commuter opposite me must have thought. I glared at him when I saw him looking at me, and I tried to stop crying, but I didn’t do a very good job of it. I hoped he would put it down to hayfever or something, and I turned my face to the window and pretended to be interested in the Olympic village building site we were passing.

Seeing Zach like that made me wonder if he would be around much longer. He looked so sick. He told me he’d given up smack when his children were tiny - a long time ago now, but then I remembered how he’d constantly scratched as we’d sat opposite each other that day; it was such a giveaway. Now that I’d found him again I didn’t want to lose him so soon.

I thought of all my friends who were dead – almost all my best friends. It was just him and T left of the ones that really mattered. I was so angry with myself that I’d left it so late to get back in touch. I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten how precious he was to me for all those years. How could I have been so stupid? I felt sick at the thought of all that time gone to waste.

And he was even better than before. His hard edges had softened. There’d been no need for all the worry before meeting. He’d been a full-on new, gentle, caring, understanding Zach. Now he even uses terms of endearment to me when we talk on the phone – darling and dear – it’s so weird – I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to that.

I smiled to myself at the memory of his chaotic life as he had described it to me. The many, many girlfriends, the art, the music, the horrible estate he lived in, the poverty. We joked about how he’d been mugged but they’d given him back his phone, it was such a crappy one.

Inside he was alive and strong and full of ideas and plans and energy, but outside he was grey and thin and stooped and oh so fragile looking, as if the wind might blow him over. When we hugged I felt as if I might crush him by accident.

He sounded so fiercely proud when he described his children, pulling the battered photos from his wallet to show me how beautiful they were. We laughed at the unusual names we’d both given our children. I didn’t understand how he could have left them – run away to San Francisco for three years when they were small. A record deal he’d said – and a girl, and drugs.

I wondered if I had left it too late, if I would have enough time left to do all the things I wanted to do. I wondered if I’d stayed in London, whether I’d have done the same as Zach. Like T said – we are all so bad at limits. I was glad I’d switched myself off. I was pleased I’d been able to give my children a stability his had clearly not had, but it didn’t stop me regretting the personal, selfish cost, just for the train journey and maybe a little beyond that.