Authors: Danny Wallace
“But why not just
tell
me you were on to me? Why all this Challenger business?”
“You’d never have stopped if I just told you! And this way, it was like … a prank or something.”
“A
prank?
You were going to send me to bloody
Texas!”
“Texas? No, I wasn’t!”
“You said, ‘Go to Stonehenge 2’! That’s in Texas!”
“No, I wanted you to go to Stonehenge—for the
second time!
I wanted you to go to Stonehenge,
twice!
When I texted you and you were in Singapore, I thought, right, well, for some reason he obviously wants to bloody travel. So I was going to keep sending you to Stonehenge until you’d had enough! It was going to end up like
Groundhog Day!
It would’ve been ‘Go to Stonehenge 3’ in another few weeks!”
“But why
Stonehenge’?”
“Because you hate theme parks. You always have.”
I put my head in my hands.
“Stonehenge is
not
a theme park! Shelf Adventure—
that’s
a theme park! Stonehenge is a … you know … a …
thing
. A monument. An
attraction
. But it’s not a
theme park!
I could understand if you thought I hated
druids!
Or
big stone circles!
But …”
Something else flashed into my head.
“You set me up on a
date
, Hanne!”
“And again I didn’t expect you to actually say yes! It was a blind date, Danny! Set up by your ex! How much more creepy did you want me to be? Or did you expect me to gatecrash
your
date, like you’d gatecrashed mine? You should have just said no!”
I didn’t say anything. I was still reeling slightly from my lucky escape. I didn’t want to think about how close I’d come to booking a ticket to Texas; about sinking even deeper into debt. And all because I’d got carried away with this evil Challenger figure. The evil Challenger figure, sitting before me now, looking not particularly evil at all. I had invented a motivation for them. My mind had exaggerated their intent … but why? As another way of making life more exciting? I had become a fantasist.
“I thought you were a bloke called Jason,” I told her, for what I can only hope was the first time in our relationship. “I thought
he
was the Challenger.”
“I didn’t want to call myself that,” she said. “That wasn’t my idea.”
Hang on.
“Well, whose idea was it, then? Seb’s?”
She started to backtrack.
“No, what I mean is …”
Something started to dawn on me.
“You had
help
, didn’t you? You weren’t doing this alone, were you?”
“No, no, I …”
“You didn’t get all this from fish at all! That
wasn’t
the starting point! You made that up!”
“I was worried about you! I thought I was helping!”
“And the T-shirt—the ‘Just Say No’ T-shirt—it’s a little convenient that that arrived just when I was thinking how much I missed the word ‘no’ …”
“We were trying to help. We were both trying to help….”
“Who’s ‘both’? Where were you getting your information from?”
But she didn’t have to tell me. Because instantly I knew.
“It was … my God, it was
Ian
, wasn’t it?”
Hanne looked at the table and nodded silently.
Treachery!
Ian had
betrayed
me!
“He said he just wanted you to stop,” said Hanne. “We felt it was our fault. You were going mental, Danny. Ian told me. He said we had to break your new habit. He said it was important that we got you to say no.”
My eyes nearly popped.
“He thought it was important I said no? Well, of
course
he did! He wanted me to say no, so he could punish me! He’s wanted that all along!”
“Punish you? No …
help
you …”
My head was spinning. All this time I thought I’d been battling a dark, brutish presence, a challenger intent on my demise. I’d blamed it on a man I hardly knew, when in reality the enemy walked alongside me. Two mates. Playing a trick on me. A trick they thought would
help
me! I needed to calm down. Maybe she was right; maybe I’d been taking this far too seriously, attaching too much importance to it all. Maybe I’d been doing that all along, right from the start. Maybe all this was the greatest waste of time ever committed in the name of self-help….
“I’m sorry, Danny … It was just supposed to be a bit of fun….”
“But it’s …
devalued
everything somehow …,” I said. “All my efforts!”
“It was only supposed to be a bit of revenge for all the stupid boy-projects you put me through when we were going out. But you know what? I got quite
into
it.
It was like a stupid
girl-
project. I used to go to sleep at night, giggling about all the things I could make you do! I’m sorry, Dan. I can kind of see what you saw in those projects, now….”
I looked Hanne straight in the eye.
“That is highly immature,” I said. “I am glad I am past all that, and I hope that one day you grow up as I have.”
Hanne watched me as I started to stand up.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“Don’t tell Ian about our meeting, okay?” I said. “I have to go and think of a suitable punishment for him. I am sure that he must have contravened the rules set out by the Yes Manifesto in
some
way …”
Suddenly there was a none-too-subtle cough from my right, and I remembered something I’d completely forgotten to do.
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Hanne, this is Paul. He’s a new friend of mine. I gave him a lift here. We have polite conversations.”
Paul had been sitting there in confused silence for the last fifteen minutes. In the rush to expose Hanne, I’d forgotten to introduce him, and as I’d already said yes to having a drink with him, I’d had to bring him along.
“Hello, Paul,” said Hanne.
“Hello, Hanne,” said Paul.
“Hey …
Hanne’s
got a dog,” I said, a thought suddenly coming to me. “Don’t you, Hanne?”
“Er, yes …,” she said. “A poodle.”
“A
poodle?”
said Paul, and he let out a little laugh. “I can tell you a thing or two about
poodles….”
And, much to Hanne’s horror, I left them to it.
As I drove through London, I laughed. I was relieved. There was no one after me anymore. There was nothing anyone could do to stop me. The Challenger had challenged. And the Yes Man had prevailed.
I would get Ian back for this—make no mistake about it. But that would come later. Later, when I’d thought of something suitable. Something that would
really
make up for the deceit and the pranks … but not today.
Because today I had to get home and clean the flat for Lizzie, happy in the knowledge that life was now a good deal simpler.
December was going to be
easy
.
I was content
.
Lizzie was asleep in my flat.
I’d picked her up a few mornings after my victory over the Challenger, sleepy and fragile, a little the worse for wear after twenty-four hours on a plane. I was in the kitchen, making a cup of tea, when I heard her wake. Moments later I turned around and there she was: a brunette ball of hair and sleep.
“Hello, you,” she said.
For a second we just smiled.
“Tea?”
“Be rude not to,” she said. “You can’t go turning tea down the minute you arrive in England.”
I flicked the kettle on again, and her eyes scanned the flat.
“Nice to see the place again,” she said. “You’ve tidied up for me, haven’t you?”
“No. It’s always like this. It is always very tidy.”
“Mm-hmm, I’m sure it is. And you always have fresh flowers on the table, do you?”
“I walked past a stall on Roman Road. The man was shouting out loud about how it was a bargain not to be missed, so I …”
“Sure, sure.”
She smiled and started to slowly walk around the flat, looking at my shelves studying my books. I made the tea while she peered out of the windows at the trains going by outside. It felt good to have her around again.
“What’s that thing?” she said, pointing at something odd and plastic in the corner.
“That,” I said, proudly, “is the new Easy Steam Cleaner. It is both brilliantly simple
and
simply brilliant.”
“Have you used it?”
“Twice. The first time I nearly scorched myself. And the second time too as it happens.”
She raised her eyebrows and continued her casual meander. She picked up a book that was facedown on the table and studied it.
“You’re learning Flemish?”
“Fa.”
“Why
Flemish?”
I shrugged.
“Spreekt du Engels!”
I said with some degree of jollity.
She looked impressed.
“What does that mean?”
“It means ‘Flemish is a complex and enigmatic language.’”
It doesn’t mean that at all. I don’t know
what
it means.
She smiled, and said, “Is it okay if I have a shower?”
“I’ll get you a towel.”
Twenty minutes later, with her shower over, she walked back into the living room, drying her hair and smelling of mint. She looked lovely. And she was carrying something.
“What on Earth
is this?”
she said.
It was a neatly framed certificate. One of three I’d hung up in my bathroom.
“That’s my nursing degree from the University of Rochville,” I said.
“Rochville? Where’s
Rochville?”
Good point. I had no idea.
“It doesn’t matter where Rochville is,” I said with all the authority of a man who’d bought his degree off the Internet. “All that matters is that I am now a fully qualified nurse. Based on my life experience and television-viewing habits.”
“Full of surprises. What are the other ones on the wall in there?”
“One is my certificate of excellence, the other is my certificate of distinction. I did very well. I imagine I was probably top of my class.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a nursing degree?”
“I am not a boaster.”
She started to walk backward. I assumed she was going to put the certificate back, but she stopped and pointed down the hallway.
“There was something else I noticed. In the hallway?”
I wasn’t sure what she meant.
“You appear to own a large portrait of yourself with a dog.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“So?”
“Um … well, y’see …”
I didn’t really want to tell her about my psychotropic mindbomb. It might give her the wrong idea about me. But how else to explain it?
I know!
“I entered my local newspaper’s pet-personality contest, and the prize was a lovely portrait of me and my dog.”
“But you haven’t got a dog.”
“That’s right. I actually entered Stuart, my cat, but the artist got it wrong.”
“But you haven’t got a cat, either.”
“No. Correct. Look … it’s probably best if we don’t discuss that portrait.”
This was all getting too weird for her. I could tell. I took a step closer to her. “But it’s probably best if we
do
discuss something else….”
She looked concerned. So did I.
“Sounds a bit serious,” she said. “If you don’t want me staying here, then it’s cool, I can—”
“No! No, it’s not that. It’s something else. Something about me. And I think I need to tell you sooner rather than later, because I’ve made that mistake before, and I’d rather not make it again. Maybe you should sit down….”
It was time to tell her. To get it out in the open and out of the way. To reveal my hidden identity.
And so she sat down. And I told her. I told her what I’d done. I told her everything, right from the start, the whole story. The man on the bus, the Yes Manifesto, Ian’s threats of punishment, my determination to succeed. I told her about Jason, and about Hanne and Seb, and about hanging out in Wales with a hypnotic dog that I thought could cure all my worries. And she nodded, and she smiled and frowned and nodded some more, and she looked like, despite it all, she understood. So I told her more. I told her about how sometimes it had all gotten too much for me, that sometimes I thought what I was doing was pointless and worthless and stupid, and how for a moment I’d looked for meaning in the arms of Maitreya until I realised that
I
was to blame for all this, and how when I thought I’d just had enough, something else would happen to pull me back in. And then I held my breath as I told her about Edinburgh—about how buying her a ticket was something I never would have had the confidence to do, but how by blaming it on Yes I’d made it okay somehow. And she nodded quietly again, but I couldn’t gauge her reaction this time, so I just pressed on and told her about Ian and Hanne conspiring against me, and how I’d defeated them, and how now, here she was in London, in front of me, and maybe if
I’d never said yes to a ticket, and she’d never said yes to that ticket too, we wouldn’t be where we were now. In short I told her everything. Or
nearly
everything. The only thing I left out, in fact, was my time with Kristen.
It was a lot for her to take in.
Eventually she collected her thoughts and exhaled heavily.
“Well, thank
God,”
she said.
It wasn’t quite the reaction I’d been expecting.
“Eh?”
“Well, I’m hoping that you saying yes explains the Amazing Penis Patch I found in your bathroom.”
I went a bit red. Shit.
“No,” I said. “That’s Ian’s.”
As it turns out I was pretty pleased that I’d told her about the whole Yes thing.
We were in the Royal Inn on a cold and dark winter afternoon, and I was telling her more about what I’d done. She loved the sound of Marc and said she too wanted to be stalked by lizards on Pulau Ubin and expressed amazement that I’d dropped the Geese for Peace campaign so early in its development. Part of her was humouring me, sure. But another part of her seemed genuinely intrigued by the idea. The Yes idea, I mean—not the geese one.