Increasingly, on nights like this, James felt as if Adam and Carl and Alice and everyone else were the adults, and that he was no more than their teenage nephew. They had grown up in ways he never had, and maybe, he was now beginning to fear, never would. It was more than simply wives and careers, money and mortgages – they had mastered the very principles of adulthood, while he was still watching, learning, aping them. Having an informed position on the economy was part of this, and James was frantically trying to think of something wise and insightful to say, but it was no good – anything he could come up with would either be truthful and naive, or else false and pompous. It was so much hard work, having to pretend he understood what was going on in the world, to have a view on what was going to happen next. And God, hadn’t it been so much better when all that anyone ever did was get pissed and talk about girls?
The race of life, so people were often saying, is a marathon and not a sprint. But if that was really the case, why was everybody else sprinting? None of the others seemed to be pacing themselves, taking it easy and slowing down a bit. They had come flying out of the blocks immediately upon graduating and now, ten years later, seemed to be going faster than ever. Even the recession didn’t seem to be holding them back. James had had high hopes for it, he had watched banks implode and stock markets fall with mounting excitement, but incredibly – and this was scarcely believable – it now seemed to be affecting him more than any of the others. It was Southwark Council that had frozen salaries, instigated redundancy programmes and now wanted to renegotiate his pension plan. And it was his landlord who had announced that his monthly rent would have to go up, while everyone else kept marvelling at how low their mortgage repayments had become.
It was a sorry state of affairs – James wasn’t just lagging behind his peers, he was in danger of getting lapped. Other people were dismantling their marriages, resigning from executive management positions, going back to college to study non-vocational subjects and embracing ancient and exotic religions. A colleague of Adam’s had given up being a director in a law firm and was currently doing the pilgrimage to Santiago on his knees, Alice’s brother was training to become a violin maker. Their cleverest friend at university had sold his digital marketing business and then drowned himself in the river Nile. But James could take little solace from any of this. All he could do was wonder at the exciting and expensive ways in which people were now able to make themselves unhappy.
‘I really have to be going,’ said Alice. ‘I’m horribly late, but it’s been completely fabulous. Huge fun.’
Alice was leaving. It was almost midnight but, not actually all that amazingly, she had another party to go to. A party in Notting Hill that sounded dispiritingly good and which she hadn’t invited them to. It seemed that for Alice, the days of turning up at parties with unannounced guests were over – particularly if none of them were well known or powerful. In the meantime, and this wasn’t really any help at all, Carl had ordered the rest of them a round of brandies.
Alice kissed them all on the cheek with great enthusiasm, but as far as James could tell there was no more tenderness in his kiss than any of the others. In fact, she seemed to linger for at least three seconds longer with Felix.
‘Have fun,’ said Adam. ‘We mustn’t leave it so long next time. Apparently there’s a fantastic new Vietnamese restaurant your way. Justine keeps badgering me to take her there.’
‘Oh, the Lemon Grass. Do you know, it’s just round the corner from me, and I still haven’t been. The food editor at work won’t stop talking about it. Let’s fix something up. I’ll email. I’ve got to go. Bye! Bye! Bye!’
Part of the problem was that James had left London. Or rather, that he had come back. For nearly three years he had worked as a junior planning officer in Nottingham. A perfectly cheerful and well-functioning town with planning issues that challenged rather than overwhelmed. Those had been what Adam had called his lost years, but which now seemed more like a golden age. He had walked to work in the mornings, he had spent a small proportion of his income on rent, he had prospered at work in undemanding circumstances and been promoted twice. He had captained his pub quiz team. For six months he had gone out with a maths teacher. And he had left all of this to move back to London, to work in the borough of Southwark, live in Crystal Palace and to spend evenings with friends from university who earned five times more than him.
‘I’ve decided that your friend Alice is a good-looking girl,’ said Felix.