The Surprise

Lots of things polarize people. Politics. Religion. Marmite. But there’s something else that divides people into two camps: surprises. Either you love them or you hate them. I’m definitely in the second camp. In fact I’d go so far as to say that I live in fear of them. When people say, ‘Oh come on, who doesn’t love a good surprise?’ I would stick my hand up and argue that, by its very nature, a surprise is never good.

It’s being unprepared, it’s the loss of control, it’s the pressure to react correctly and quickly by looking thrilled and excited – and not how you might be feeling, which is most probably dazed and mortified. It’s the very publicness of it all: by its very nature, when someone springs a surprise, they want to see your reaction.

It’s everyone jumping out from behind your sofa shouting, ‘Surprise!’ when you’ve just got back from having a massage on your birthday and you’re sporting scruffy joggers, oily hair and a face imprinted from lying face-down on a massage table. That happened one year and I was mortified.

It’s finding a little red box in the back of a drawer.

Naomi, however, is definitely in the love-it camp. In fact as we catch an Uber across town to her party, she confesses to being a tiny bit disappointed that Danny hadn’t kept it as a surprise.

‘Not that I’m not really grateful to him for organizing it,’ she adds hurriedly. ‘It was really sweet of him to offer, and he’s got his band to play and everything.’

‘But that’s brilliant.’ I feel a swell of happiness, not only for Naomi, but for me too. I can’t remember the last time I looked forward to an evening out as much. Getting over the loss of my old life, and feeling happy again, has taken a long time, but tonight I feel like I’ve finally turned a corner.

‘Plus Danny is hopeless at keeping surprises, so I would’ve guessed anyway.’ She grins and turns to rest her face against the open window, wound all the way down to let in the warm evening air, as we whizz through Hyde Park.

The venue is a private room above a stylish bar in Soho. The drummer in Danny’s band is a friend of the owner, who has let them have it free of charge. It’s accessed by walking through the downstairs lounge-bar area, which is so achingly hip it makes me feel about a hundred. And so deafeningly loud that my ears are still ringing as I climb the narrow staircase that leads to the upper floor.

We’re the first to arrive and the big, empty space couldn’t be more different from downstairs: bare, worn floorboards, cathedral ceilings and large sash windows, pulled wide open to give a great view of the busy cobbled streets below; a small bar is tucked in the corner and there’s a makeshift stage at the far end.

Danny is still busy setting up and leaps over as we make our entrance. I watch him hugging and kissing Naomi, while she laughs and pretends to protest. I like Danny a lot. If you didn’t know him, you might dismiss him as some ageing musician from Newcastle; too old still to be wearing a baseball cap and playing bass in a band that was never going to hit the big time. David used to say that Danny needed to grow up and act his age – which is a bit ironic now, considering.