All the best...

11.07pm

I am in Sammy’s Convenience Store four miles from home, buying Sea Salt & Crushed Black Pepper Kettle Chips. I really wanted barbecue flavour, but they only have these or cheese and onion.

I’m the only one in the store, apart from Sammy, who is watching something on his phone while also checking the overhead monitor, perhaps to make sure that I am not shoplifting. He doesn’t know me: I’ve been here before, but not for almost a year. I don’t really understand why I have chosen to drive for more than a ten minutes to buy a £2.29 bag of potato chips. 

Of course only Sammy’s is still open around here, apart from the pubs of course. I pay with my card and he hands me the receipt. I wish him a cheery “Happy New Year”, although actually that is the last thing I am feeling. I move to the door and catch a glimpse of myself, distorted and pale grey on camera. Do I really look like that I wonder as I slip out quietly into the winter night, fumbling for keys.

11.35 pm

I’m back home, making a cup of tea, two sugars, which tastes odd alongside a mouthful of salty-peppery crisps. I’m still puzzled by why I felt I had to buy them at this time of night! The radio is playing hit music but I’m not really listening. It is just on for company. Montmorency, my cat, is looking at me strangely, as well he might, since normally I’m in bed at this time. It is as if he can’t make up his mind if this means I will fill his bowl with even more GoCat or whether he might as well head out and see what gives. We’re in the same boat there.

11.38 pm

I pick up my phone with the idea of ringing Curtis, who I know is at home with Janine, just to wish him well for the coming year. But as I am scrolling through the numbers I think better of it. He will either be in bed, or be celebrating with friends. Either way he will not want to talk to his older brother ‘til tomorrow, or perhaps the day after.

This is the first New Year’s Eve that I have been on my own since… well maybe since ever.  I have not really got used to it and I don’t like it.  Shapeless days. Some weeks I don’t meet anyone else apart from the lady with the crooked nose and the red-streak hair in the Spar whom know by sight but not by name. She looks at me with a small smile of recognition but we hardly speak. I think she knew Megan better.

11.54 pm

We are either at war with the Russians or someone’s letting off fireworks. I hope it is the latter. So does Montmorency, who comes back in through the cat flap like a greyhound-track-hare.

I go upstairs into the bedroom and peep out round the curtain. I’ve not put on the light so I hope no one can see me looking out. Yes, it’s two houses down. They are letting off fireworks round the back. I know them to speak to but we are not really acquainted so they wouldn’t have invited me anyway. I think I can see Graham and Sarah from next door, but it might not be them.

I watch for a while. There are children outside, too. Quite young. They’re up late. Megan probably knew all their names. She was good like that. I turn to go back downstairs just as the light from the fireworks illuminates the whole room and I realise how odd our double bed now looks with only pillows on my side. I don’t think I’d really noticed that before.

00.11am

The radio is still belting out music, so I don’t realise that it is after midnight. I was in the front room, sitting for a while, lost in thought. My tea is cold. Last new year Megan and I drank prosecco, or it might even have been champagne. She wasn’t well then, but I didn’t know it at the time. She did. She’d known for a while. It was February when I found out, and by then it was too late. She passed in March, three days before her sixty-seventh birthday. A month or two earlier than they predicted. That’s no age these days, is it. I still have the silk scarf, all wrapped, that was my present to her. I think she’d have liked it.

The fireworks have just stopped as far as I can tell, and I put the cup in the sink. I leave the door ajar so that Montmorency can come upstairs and join me if he wants. I consider having large glass of whisky, but for the last nine months I have been conscious that this might be a slippery slope to somewhere. Tonight is no different really. New Year resolutions are supposed to work the other way.

00.57 am

I am drifting off to sleep when the phone rings. I have left it downstairs, and I put on my dressing gown and slippers and pad down. It stops ringing before I can get to it. The screen tells me I have to put the phone on charge so I plug it in to the cable. Now my fingerprint is not recognised so I have to use my pin. Thank you. It tells me that January 1 is a public holiday in Belgium. I don’t think I need to know that just now. Thank you again.  I manage to negotiate to the list of missed calls and discover that it was Justin in California. We haven’t spoken since his mother’s funeral. I ring him back.

“I just wanted to get in before your midnight to wish you best of luck for next year,” he says with noise in the background making him hard to hear.

“That’s very kind of you. And the same to you, Justin,” I say as an opener. I’m going to tell him he’s not quite got the time difference right, but he’s rung off. I leave the phone on charge and turn out the kitchen light, noticing that Montmorency is curled up on whatever is in the laundry basket.

I go back to bed, turn on the bedside lamp, and start reading. I often read in the middle of the night now. I couldn’t do that before, because the light would disturb Megan.

06.12 am

I wake with a start. The lamp is still on beside me and my book has just fallen to the floor with a bit of a bang. These days I often fall asleep while reading.

I realise it is still quite early, but I don’t think I will go back to sleep, now.  I turn on the radio and hear Tony Blackburn or someone who sounds a bit like him. I was going to make myself a special breakfast today, scrambled eggs with the bit of smoked salmon left over from a couple of days ago. But not before 7 am. I get up, shower and go down. My phone tells me it is 100%, which is a lot more than I am. I give Montmorency the smoked salmon which he sniffs suspiciously before deciding that it is edible. I stick to my usual cornflakes. Megan liked Special K before she fell ill. I go through the ritual of making real coffee in the hissy-thing. That’s what she called the stove-top percolator.

Tony-Blackburn-sound-alike is still introducing old records. It is not yet light outside and I think it is raining slightly.

It’s the first day of a whole New Year and the emptiness of my new calendar fills me with dread.

They call it Happy New Year – but I’m not so sure that’s appropriate in my case.

I can just about manage ‘All the best’…