Death in the Express

On Saturday night I was out in the West End with a girl I've been seeing, and whilst contentedly eating my Sloppe Giuseppe at Pizza Express I received a call from my close friend.

This friend calls me on a frequent basis, and I had spoken to him the previous day, a conversation that I had largely forgotten, but which had culminated in a lazy agreement to meet him up over the next few days, largely to end the phone call.

I decided not to answer, as I wasn't going to be able to meet him that night, and I'm not a fan of speaking on the phone at the dinner table. He then called me again minutes later, and I was frustratedly encouraged to answer by my companion. I answered, at the table, and the noise of the room unexpectedly drowned out his voice at the other end. Something strange occured here, as I can't remember the last time I answered a call at the dinner table, and would generally have walked outside at this point due to not being able to hear anything. But I did answer the phone at the table, and didn't leave when not hearing anything.

He said something to me, and I replied "yeah", despite not knowing what had been said. He then uttered something else to me and I caught the name of a friend of ours, and assumed he was meeting that friend and wanted me to tag along, I replied "I'm out tonight mate, I'm in central London, I'll call you tomorrow", to which I heard his dejection and...what was it? shock? disgust?, no...surprise, yes surprise at my comments.

I had not been able to hear anything from his end, but yet felt his disappointment as clear as anything at the end of the call. This feeling stuck with me, it lingered uncompromisingly, pushing me to decide that I'd call him back once outside.

Once outside I was distracted by a group of men dressed as women on a stag-do asking me for a lighter, and by the biting cold that had emerged following a mild day. As I shuffled towards the tube station at a quickened pace, thoughts of speaking to my friend had been replaced by thoughts of a bottle of rioja and warm bed waiting for me on the otherside of my journey.

The following day I called my friend, and asked "What were you saying yesterday, I couldn't hear a thing", to which he replied "I was calling to let you know my dad had just died", and with that I understood perfectly a thousand things about myself and this world.