Harry said nothing as he dipped the roller into the tray of white paint. He felt an urge to stride up to his mother and roll it over her face. In his mind she morphed into his ex-girlfriend, Julie, and he felt disgusted at himself because the whole thing seemed a bit too sensual. In fact, Julie’s figure had started to resemble his mother’s since she’d put on weight and thankfully he was no longer attracted to her in the slightest. That was why he now considered her New Year’s invitation as a serious possibility. He was passed the phase of believing himself still in love whenever he got drunk.

Another option was Stuart’s party. Up until this morning he’d been almost certain that was where he’d end up. They’d known in each other since university. Stuart was a party animal and brought out the party animal in Harry. All cares were flung to one side when they got together, which seemed like the right sort of attitude to have on New Year.  Harry wouldn’t have thought it twice if he hadn’t been called to do this job for his mother.  Confined to a living room to paint over endless yellow was conducive to reflection and Harry found himself starting to doubt his choice.

The truth was that Stuart was an obnoxious prat.

This had never stopped him meeting Stuart before, but then Harry had never been subjected to painting a bedroom before meeting him either. Normally they’d meet spontaneously after a long day’s work and one pint of lager would turn into a messy night out. That’s what he’d come to expect and on the whole he’d always welcomed the drink because after Julie, and even with Julie, he’d never felt like rushing straight home anyway. Meeting Stuart on New Year's Eve would’ve been a normal continuation of things; the usual getting plastered by twelve o’clock, the spiral into unconsciousness by three and the paralytic hangover the next day that trapped him somewhere between the telly and the toilet.  

But now the thought of beginning the New Year doing as he’d always done made Harry feel anxious.  He felt he wasn’t the same person anymore and that something inside him had woken up. He was frightened that he might lose whatever it was that had come to life on that Tuesday evening when the driver had chucked everyone off the bus because he’d had a flat tyre.   

Harry had got off three stops early. He’d walked past the church hall and had stopped, surprised by the bright lights and the amount of activity taking place behind the huge bevelled glass windows. It was a men’s group and they were standing or sitting around wooden fold-up tables, making model trains. He’d watched a man with heavy wrinkles and thick brown glasses carefully sticking a set of windscreen wipers to a tiny windscreen.

He could’ve quite easily walked on by and left those memories behind in the dark, icy shadows of that December evening but he didn’t. Instead he got home and without even taking off his coat, he sat down on the sofa and wrote all over the back of that day’s post, because he didn’t have any other paper in the house. He could remember it all as if he was still a small boy sitting under the kitchen table, driving trains and lorries around the table legs while his mother chopped vegetables to make soup. 

The next day he’d tried to tell Julie. 

“Kids books? You’re not serious?” she’d said. “Why not write a proper book if you feel you’ve got to write something?”

The conversation had ended abruptly because some important e-mail had popped up in her inbox.

Harry wouldn’t have told anyone else if he hadn’t got stuck in the lift with Gemma, the pretty temp from reception.

“Lobby is the realist; he doesn’t think they can drive up curtains for instance. Tommy is the dreamer who turns everything into an adventure.”

He’d felt his ears turn red.

“You mean, like a kid’s Don Quixote?” she’d said.

“Exactly.”

And Harry had made a mental note to google Donkey Wotsit if he ever got out of the lift.

Gemma seemed genuinely thrilled with his idea. She said it was just the sort of thing her six year old nephew would love to read. She then told him she was only temping because she was writing a novel. By the end of their twenty minute ordeal she’d invited him along to her writers’ group. He would’ve gone if Julie hadn’t called back in floods of tears because the boss had told her off.  She said he was the only person she wanted to see because he was the only person that really understood her.

Harry had felt wretched after that evening with Julie, as if he’d missed something important. On his way home he kept seeing how he was with her; how he nodded his head at everything she said. He wondered why he couldn’t just tell her she was being a drama queen.

He got down from the ladder to refill his paint tray. 

Perhaps he would go to Stuart’s party after all. 

Stuart had the plush bachelor pad, which would’ve appealed more if it wasn’t for the toilet. Harry couldn’t stand the toilet. Stuart was so obsessed with keeping everything open-plan he’d considered removing the bathroom walls altogether.  

“It’ll be cool,” Stuart had insisted, after the third pint, “it’ll be like that artist, ‘Du’ something.”

“No, it won’t. It will be like having a toilet in the middle of the living room.”

Harry had persuaded him to leave the walls and settle for a glass door. It still felt too open though and he hated having to use it. Harry knew well enough that even after a solitary beer he had a tendency to have terrible wind.

“Everybody farts,” Julie had said, which would have been fine if it hadn’t been that it was the first time he’d ever met her parents.    

At least Julie’s toilet was tucked up on the second floor; a safe, cosy corner.

Harry blinked at the wall. He couldn’t make a decision solely based on their toilets. These were his friends. New Year was about celebrating friendships not toilets.

But instead of feeling excited, Harry felt tired. It was a feeling he’d come to associate with being with Stuart.

It always felt like they were trying to crawl back to their student days when they’d eat a fried breakfast late in the afternoon. In one sense, that hadn’t changed; Stuart still didn’t get up until late afternoon.  The only difference was that instead of falling sleep in a corridor and missing a lecture, Stuart had taken to crashing out on Harry’s sofa and missing work.

The last few weeks had been particularly bad as Stuart didn’t even need to be out with Harry for him to think it was alright to turn up, swaying violently, at his doorstep. Harry was getting fed up of it. He’d bought himself a thick A4 notebook and had taken to doodling ideas in the evenings. He hated being interrupted and having to sweep his cartoon sketches off the coffee table so that Stuart could spread out his takeaway or drop tobacco everywhere as he made a clumsy roll-up. 

Stuart had mentioned he’d had a warning at work but when Harry had pressed him to know more Stuart had got bad tempered and said Harry was supposed to be the one person he could relax with. So Harry let him be and just drank and made jokes. And that’s why Stuart liked him, because he saw him as the fun guy from university who couldn’t say no to anything and didn’t judge Stuart for cocking up so badly every night and said nothing the time he peed on the sofa.  

Harry’s mother stood in the doorway holding a piece of chocolate orange.

“Peace offering,” she said, and popped it in his mouth.  “I can still see yellow.”

“This is my second coat.”

She nodded

“So where did you say you were going tonight?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Well you’re always welcome to stay here.”

“Maybe.”

“I’d love to have the bathroom painted apple green. What do you reckon?”

But if not Stuart’s party, then it must be Julie’s.

Harry had known Julie almost as long as he’d known Stuart. The three of them never met up together because Stuart and Julie couldn’t stand each other. Stuart thought Julie a bossy, self-centred cow that had nagged his best friend to death and had been unsympathetic to his needs of male-bonding. Julie despised Stuart and blamed him for turning her witty, measured boyfriend into a drunken lout with no sense of responsibility.

Harry wiped his hands on his trousers and got back up the ladder.

Perhaps they didn’t like each other because they loved each other. All he needed was a master plan to bring them together; that way they’d be so absorbed with shouting at each other that they wouldn’t notice he’d slipped off to another party where he didn’t have to be the joker or the sweet ex-boyfriend.  

His phone vibrated in his pocket.  He dug it out, smearing the screen with paint that then transferred to his ear.

“Harry, what are you doing?”

Julie always sounded like she was being chased.  

“Painting.”

“Can you bring some snacks? I thought I had loads but I completely forgot the olives. Can you believe it? I’ve got loads of white wine but no olives! It’s been so hectic! But I’m really excited about this New Year, aren’t you? Mel’s coming! Do you know Mel? No you probably don’t, do you?  Harry?”

“Yes.”

 “You sound husky. Are you ill?”

“Uh, maybe a little bit...”

“Go and get some Vitamin C now. I suggest you go and take a nap and wrap up!”

Once he’d found her excitement endearing. She was alive, he’d thought, she loved the little things. But then he realised she didn’t love the little things; she just liked to make a fuss of the little things. It’d been nice when he’d wanted attention and she’d been vigorously attentive when he’d been ill, making him chicken soup when he had a cold and lacing his drinks with vitamins. But he’d only had a cold and he realised he didn’t want to be with someone who took a cold that seriously.

But Julie was his best friend and best friends were what you celebrated in the New Year. These great, enduring relationships that made you the person you were.

Harry felt his vision blurring as he followed the white tracks of his paintbrush. He felt strange. He wondered if he should stop painting and sit down for a while. Maybe he was ill after all. His head was starting to ache with all this thinking and one question wouldn’t leave him alone. 

Did he like who he was when he was with them? 

They were the closest friends he had. At least they had been, up until now.   

His phone was vibrating in his pocket again. It was Stuart.

“Are you ready for the PAART-EEY!”

 It sounded like he was already in a pub, which was a bit premature since it was only 3 o'clock and a good twelve hours of drinking lay ahead.

“Hi Stu...where are you?”

“Home. I got music on.  When are you coming? Can you bring some CD’s?”

“No, they’ll get scratched like last year.”

“Okay bring some girls.”

“Like who?”

“Not Julie.”

“Julie’s alright.”

“Your mum’s alright.”

“Yeah, whatever Stu...”

“ARE YOU READY FOR THE PAART-EEY!”

Harry hung up.

His mum was in the doorway again.

“I’m feeling bad now,” she said. “You don’t have to finish it if you want to go out.”

Harry slid the phone back in his pocket.

“No, I really think I do,” he said.

“Have you decided where you’re going?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll make you a cup of tea then.”

Harry dipped the roller back in the paint and confronted the last wall.  

He thought about staying in for his Mum’s party. He thought about Stuart and Julie. He thought about getting stuck in the lift with Gemma and he thought about the train books he wanted to write. He thought if he didn’t make up his mind soon, he could always paint the bathroom apple green.

                                                                                                   The End