Lifting | ONC 2024

We quickly settle into a pattern, the way people always do: you settle into one pattern, something changes, a new pattern. And so on and so forth. It seems to me that our whole lives are made up of patterns, each phase of our existence defined by whichever pattern we are settled in at that time.

     This particular pattern consists of Nathan waiting outside my parents' house ready to drive to work every morning, and of me waiting in the alleyway between the cafe and the gym each evening so that he can drive me back home again. We listen to Radio One, to the breakfast show in the morning and the drive-time DJ in the evening. I try to avoid holding onto the 'oh shit' handle as much as possible. I wonder whether Nathan is driving deliberately recklessly to make a point. I never invite him inside my house, and he never suggests that I go to his. I'm not even sure which house he lives in.

     The traffic is always worse on the way to work, the journey takes at least five minutes longer than the journey home again. Today, it is taking even longer than usual. I can feel Nathan bristling with impatience in the driver's seat next to me.

     "Oh, come on," he says, as we are faced with yet another red light and another queue of traffic. "Where are you all going? It's a Saturday morning, have none of you heard of a lie in?"

     I'm surprised that Nathan himself has heard of a lie in. Like me, he's been at work all day, every day, all week. Even today, here we both are, on our way back to work. No peace for the wicked, nor the minimum wage earners.

    Nathan scowls at the other cars, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. I glare at him.

     "You had better not be about to use that," I say, my tone unmistakably one of warning.

     "Yeah, because we are moving at such a high speed right now." His voice is dripping with sarcasm, and the car is not moving at any speed at all, but he hands me his phone. "Password is my birthday."

     "Wow, how did you come up with that unbreakable code?"

     "Shut up and unlock the phone."

     I do so. I only know that I still remember his birthday when I start typing in the numbers without hesitation. It's as if my fingers remember this about him before my mind does. The photo in the background of the screen is one of a beautiful sunset over the top of a brown garden fence.

     "Can you see if a detour will get us there any faster?"

     I open up a map on the screen. "There's a red line up the motorway, they must be redirecting everyone through the town," I say, and I hear Nathan groan in response. "You might be able to go back the way we came and cut through the new houses. I dunno if you can, but if so, it looks like it will be faster."

     Nathan seems to consider this. After a moment, he nods. "Yeah, I reckon I know a way." He turns down the next side street and does a three point turn, his wheels rolling over the edges of the curbs as he does so. I flinch with the rise and fall of my seat, and he grimaces. "Sorry, misjudged that a little."

     We drive back past my parents' house and into the new estate, which I have cycled past but never really explored. The houses all look the same to me, but Nathan seems to be able tell the difference between them. He speeds through the identical streets with the confidence of a London taxi cab on the tourist track, overtaking one middle aged man on a bike (not mine, unfortunately), a minivan with a bumper sticker with a family of stick figures on the rear windscreen, and — I audibly gasp and grab the edges of my seat — a bus indicating that it is about to pull out of the bus stop.

     It is the fastest the car has moved all morning, however, we soon slow down again. We end up driving behind a long and slow-moving vehicle with shiny, black paintwork and polished wood lining the wide rear window. Inside, a display of flowers surrounds a cream coffin.

     Nathan turns on his indicator. I immediately reach forward and turn it off again. He looks at me with his mouth agape.

     "What are you doing?"

     "What are you doing?" I return his question. He doesn't appear to understand it.

     "Well, I was going to overtake."

     "You can't overtake that."

     "Why not?"

     "It's a hearse."

     "And?"

     "You can't overtake a hearse."

     "Is it against the law or something?"

    "No," I say. "It's just disrespectful."

    "Disrespectful to who?"

    "To the person who died, Nathan."

    To my dismay, Nathan laughs — he actually laughs. "What? How? How is overtaking a hearse disrespectful to the person who died?"

    "I dunno, it just is."

    This response clearly doesn't satisfy Nathan. "No, really," he says. "They don't care that I'm overtaking them. They don't even know that I'm overtaking them. How could they know? They're dead."

    "Yeah, but still..."

    "What if I ask permission first? Then is it more respectful?" Nathan puts on a high-pitched voice. He sounds like he did when he played Oliver in the school play. "I'm sorry, Mr Dead Body, sir, do you mind if I just quickly nip in front of you? I hate to be a bother, but it's just that my friend and I have some place to be."

    When he gestures towards me, I shake my head.

    "You leave me out of this," I mutter. "And don't take the piss."

    "Why, are you worried they'll hear me?"

    "No, I just think that you should stop acting so callous. No, whoever is inside that coffin is not really there anymore, and the part of them that remains is only the remains, the body, the shell. But they were once a person, and that part of them still matters. Or, at least, it should still matter, don't you think?"

     "Okay, okay." Nathan removes both his hands from the steering wheel in a gesture of submission. "Fine. You win. I won't overtake the hearse."

    "Thank you."

    The hearse drives slowly, somehow both achingly and numbingly so. We crawl along behind it, Nathan leaning forwards with his forearms resting on the wheel, bobbing his head and tapping his hands in time to the music playing on the radio. He exhales long and loud through his mouth. After another two minutes, he does it again. Then, he sniggers.

    "Hey, Steph." He shifts his weight backwards and looks at me with mischief in his eyes. "Do you reckon this is why when someone's died, everyone says that they're late?"

    It's a terrible joke on multiple levels. I shouldn't find it funny. I don't find it funny. And yet, though I roll my eyes, I can't help but laugh.

    In the end, we are the ones who are late. Poor Megan has been left alone in the cafe for almost an hour.

    "You're late," she tells me, as brutally and succinctly observant as ever.

    "I'm sorry, Megan. We got stuck behind a hearse on the way here."

    She stares blankly at me as if I've just said something incredibly stupid before informing me that: "Female horses are called mares."

    With that, she turns away, leaving me to wonder what she is talking about. By the time I've realised her misunderstanding, it is too late for me to point it out. At lunchtime, however, I text Nathan to tell him what she said.

    He replies: That's honestly the best thing I've ever hearsed. And, for the second time today, I find myself laughing against my own will.