Page 67 of Wish You Were Here
Another beat.
‘I’ll miss you, Sas.’
‘You too, Beno. I can’t believe this is it.’
‘Me either. It feels surreal.’
‘It does. Are you sure this is it?’
‘I think it has to be or my relationship with Jemma is over.’
‘I guess this is goodbye then.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Goodbye, Saskia Conway.’
‘Goodbye, Ben Armstrong. It’s been bonzer, mate.’
‘You’re such a dag,’ I say in my best Australian accent, and she laughs.
‘Bye,’ she says, barely keeping herself together.
‘Bye.’
Then she is gone, and I want to cry. This is horrible, and as soon as she is gone, I feel an awful pain in my chest, a deep gnawing ache in my heart that for a moment consumes my entire body. It feels like a death in the family. I think back to that moment inGail’searlier, when I thought how lucky I was that Jemma was my girlfriend. I have to cling to this thought with everything I have because she is my future, and I have to stop making the same mistakes of the past. I am lucky. Jemma is perfect for me. However, even as I think this, there is a small voice somewhere at the back of my mind that is saying: But what about Saskia?
28
Saskia
When I was eleven, I was in a musical version of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ at school. I was so nervous, and right before I was about to go on, I told Miss Wootton that I couldn’t do it. I was too scared, couldn’t remember a single line, and I just wanted to go home. Poor Miss Wootton didn’t know what to do. Her Snow White was in floods of tears, crippled with stage fright, when who should appear but my dad, who knelt beside me.
‘Hey, Sassie, what’s going on?’
‘I can’t go on, Dad. I’m too scared,’ I blubbed, tears cascading down my face.
‘What? Why? You are by far and away, and I mean by about ten squillion miles, the best actor and singer I have seen in my entire life.’
I looked at my dad, wiping my snotty face with the sleeve of my Snow White costume.
‘Squillion isn’t a word, Dad.’
‘Sure, it is. I’ll use it in a sentence. You are about ten squillion miles the best actor in this play, and I love you a squillion times more than anyone else in the entire world.’
‘What about Mummy?’
‘Obviously, I love your mum the same.’
‘What about Frank?’ At the time, we had a rabbit called Frank Peter Johnson.
‘I love Frank, of course, but not as much as you or your mum. Look, love, you have no reason to be nervous because every single person out there, sitting in that audience, is going to be blown away by how amazing you are because you are, Sassie.’
‘But what if I make a mistake or forget my lines?’
‘Then find me in the audience, look at me and pretend it’s just us, and we’re doing all the lines just like we did at home.’
