one you wanted. Once you’re settled down, it’s unsayable. It’s expressed in our music, books and films instead.
What’s that quote? Ninety-nine per cent of the world’s lovers are not with their first choice. That’s what makes the jukebox play.
There’s a nice lie that the world likes to tell us all, which is: it’s never too late. It’s too late, all the time, for loads of things. We should all be hurrying like the rabbit with the pocket watch in Alice In Wonderland.
I think the truth is: opportunities in life are like doors flashing open and slamming closed, for good. You won’t necessarily notice when they’re open, or get any warning they’re going to close. If you don’t bolt through them when you can, then that is that.
But no one wants to hear that your chance at happiness is time-sensitive. There’s very little interest in handling the truth that, sometimes, the diem is no longer the right one to be carped. There’s no inspo meme value to that, nobody’s going to put it in a curly font next to a soaring eagle.
The story of myself and Ed Cooper is a door opening and closing.
Susie and I were newly minted sixth formers, loafing in the common room. He and Justin wandered in during a free period, one sunny afternoon. I’d only been ever vaguely aware of them as presentable members of the male species, in our large comprehensive.
I was curled up with my Doc Martens carefully dangling off the upholstery, trying to concentrate on Tuesdays With Morrie. Susie was lying with her back against me, reading her horoscope out from Heat magazine. It was an auspicious day for Aries.
‘Hi. We don’t know you, but you both seem significantly less noisy than everyone else here. Mind if we sit with you?’ Justin said. ‘I’m gay so I’m no threat. He’s not gay,’ he gestured at Ed, ‘but let’s face it, he’s no sexual threat either.’
Susie and I guffawed, and space was made. We didn’t know it yet, but in a single moment, our two double acts had merged forever.
Justin and Ed were good together, Ed as straight man, but both of them very droll in that way boys are when they’ve spent a lot of time practising.
Ed said, pointing at my book: ‘Are you enjoying that?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, it’s sad, but it’s interesting.’
Susie rolled her eyes and said: ‘Eve has a morbid nature. She likes songs without choruses, all hole-dwelling, vole-like creatures, Mafia-widow fashion, wet weather and books about people dying of rare illnesses.’
‘It’s not depressing, it’s full of uplifting wisdom about making the most of your time!’ I say.
‘I said I felt depressed once and you said I wasn’t a deep enough person to be depressed,’ Susie said, and everyone howled. I said: ‘Oh God, sorry.’ (This was a good explainer of why Susie and I work: pithy in our different ways, but we never took the other one’s mockery seriously.)
We had a conversation about middle names and Ed’s was ‘Randall’. I said: ‘Edward Randall Cooper. You sound like a 1930s newsreader.’
I mimicked a stiff, buttoned-up posh male voice: ‘Hello we are in crisis, the King has abdicated, long live the King I am Edward Randall Cooper good night, God bless you all.’
‘Didn’t I say the one who looks like a cross between Little My from The Moomins and Winona in Heathers would be sassy?’ Justin said to Ed, and Ed grinned at me.
I’d never heard myself described before. Assigned a character, as if we were in Cluedo. I liked it.
‘What do I look like?’ Susie demanded, with the nerve-free confidence of the terminally photogenic.
‘Hmmm,’ Justin narrowed his intense, pale grey eyes. Justin himself had a buzz cut and a rascally-handsome face, like a charming Victorian pickpocket. ‘Jane Austen’s Emma meets the Laura Palmer they couldn’t kill.’
Susie screeched with mock-outrage and joy and I swear I saw her fall in platonic love in a single second.
We spent much time laughing in the following hour, our first encounter with four personalities that tessellated perfectly as an ensemble.
‘Hey, this works. Ally Sheedy,’ Justin said, pointing at me, ‘Molly Ringwald’ (pointing at Susie) ‘Anthony Michael Hall’ (pointing at Ed) ‘and me. Queer Judd Nelson. The Dog’s Breakfast Club.’
I remember tripping off to my sociology class with a foolish grin on my face, thinking that making friends in adult life was clearly a piece of piss. The thing about being young is, you don’t have much else to compare anything to.