The Third Person

I looked down at the paper in front of me, which was nearly full. He must have followed my gaze and realised what I was thinking because he placed another one down in front of me and said:

‘Let’s have a nice clean break, shall we?’

There was a playground near where Graham and Jason grew up, formed in a concrete bubble on the edge of this park that wasn’t really a park at all – just grassland, really, with a couple of chalk-white pitch shapes stained thoughtlessly into it, and the ring of a path for older people to stroll around in summer. There was a maze of trees and bushes which people from the nearby pubs would lose themselves in on an evening, in order to fuck drunkenly. The playground was at the top.

Graham had had his first beer there, and smoked his first joint. He didn’t lose his virginity there, shivering and cold, although he would have liked to.

They shared the place out between about thirty of them, mixed in every way, and they didn’t exactly mingle but they all put up with one another’s presence without much confrontation. Graham’s group consisted of Jason and about five or six other friends from school. One of those was Emma Lindley. She had messy blonde hair that she wore half tied back, and she was always smiling, and she was slim from all the football she played with the boys. Graham thought she was beautiful, and had done for nearly a year. He’d managed to speak to her a couple of times, but the conversation had never done more than skim the surface. In their circle of friends they were at opposite sides, which meant Graham was always looking across at her while she was always turned one way or the other, talking to someone else. But it was okay. He’d accepted that, generally speaking, that was the way things always were. It was certainly how they always had been. He didn’t get the girl. Maybe he was being overly optimistic, but he thought that one day he would. It couldn’t stay like this forever; he was a nice guy.

That night, Graham and a boy called Jonny were sitting side by side on the mound of concrete at the top of the playground. They were next to the slide that curved down its surface, and another boy – pissed to high heaven – was sliding down it, and then clambering up the wedged steps to the top, and then sliding down again, over and over. In about ten minutes he would lean on his knees and be sick in front of them, but for now he was happy.

Across the other side of the playground, Emma was talking to Connor and Jason. They were by the swings. Graham looked from them up to the night sky. It was very dark blue, not black, and the stars were full of colour.

‘Here.’

Jonny passed Graham the bottle of whisky they were sharing. Graham took a swig and winced. It hurt, but it made his head warm and the night hum. Alcohol shaved the edges off. When he was drunk, which he was getting towards being now, he felt a lot more positive about things. Not that they were closer to being within his reach. It just mattered less that they weren’t.

He took another swig, and then said, ‘Here,’ and Jonny took the bottle back again.

Graham looked around. The playground was quite busy tonight, but the groups were as segregated as ever. It was mostly boys and girls he knew from school – people he knew but didn’t know – and none of them really wanted to mix. Occasionally someone would come over and beg a cigarette or beer or rolling paper, and there’d be some perfunctory friendly conversation. It was always amiable, never convincing.

Graham knew he was just one of those guys: background people. He was very smart, but not irritating enough to be a target. He didn’t have that many friends, but enough to coast by, and he was never invited anywhere, but nobody was surprised or annoyed when he tagged along with people who were. He’d never had a girlfriend, but he’d been turned down by a few high-profile players way above his station, and so nobody thought he was gay. Nobody really thought much about him at all. That was all okay, too.

One of the reasons he came here was because it made him feel accepted, but it was weird. In many ways it just underlined how much he wasn’t. For him, it was all kind of an act. Whereas Jason was the real thing.

Graham looked back just as Connor joined them. He took the whisky from Jonny and said, ‘Three’s a crowd tonight.’

Jonny laughed, but not much. Graham’s attention returned to the swings across the playground. Now, Emma and Jason were on their own over there, sitting side by side on the hard rubber seats, twisting gently against the strength of the chains. Just talking, but quietly, without really looking at each other.

‘I know when I’m not wanted,’ Connor said.

Their feet were scraping the tarmac beneath them.

Graham looked away and gestured for the whisky off Connor.

‘Here.’