Danny Planetarium?

Ted Dan, what the fuck are you doing here?

Danny What?

Ted Sat here in the same old fuckin’ caff again.

Danny Up until a minute ago, mate, it was good enough for you.

Ted Go and find her, Dan. If that’s what you want. Make the decision, and go for it.

Danny I don’t know, Ted. I don’t know. I’m alright, don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing. You want another pill³⁰ ’fore you get to IKEA?

Ted What? Nah, I’m done mate. I’m fuckin’ done.

Danny Suit yourself.

Ted Later on then, Dan.

Danny Later on, Ted.

Sits there for a moment, staring ahead, sounds of the café get really loud. Grease frying and the radio and people talking. He drops a pill. Winces.

Danny You’re lucky really.

If you’d have lived ’til now you would have just got fat and boring like the rest of us. You wouldn’t have been no different.

You never got old enough to see your mate become the weirdo with a drugs lisp, looking like he’s just found fishbones in his mouth, nodding to himself. In a Slammin Vinyl³¹ bomber jacket.

It used to feel like we was doing something that no one else had ever done. But really we was just getting fucked. And all them other kids that weren’t cool enough to hang about with us, them ones we sold screwed up bits of clingfilm to for a

tenner a go, they all grew up nicely, didn’t they? They went off to uni and reinvented themselves and now they’re doctors, replacing people’s limbs in war zones, or they’re professional cricketers, or they’re working in the fuckin’ city, blowing a ton on coke every night and fuckin’ women that wouldn’t even look at me if I was hanging in a gallery.

So you’re lucky. Coz if you was still here, you’d have a habit, or depression, or anxiety attacks, or all three, and you’d be making secret plans to run away and start again in a new fuckin’ country where no one knows how much of a fuckin’ wreck you are, or, you’d be up to your neck in debt, fuckin’ a bird that thinks you’re a dick and checking your Twitter³² every twenty-two seconds to see if anyone’s said anything about your fuckin’ shit band. We used to be the fuckin’ boys, mate. Now, the highlight of my day is taking a good shit.

I miss her already. I never meant to take her for granted, Tony. But you do, don’t you. It’s like air. You never know

how much it means to you till you’re drowning. And then it’s too late.

If I could turn around and be the Danny that I want to be, the Danny that lives in my head, then shit, she’d never stop smiling. But the thing is, mate, I ain’t that guy, I’m this guy. Alone in the caff with the horrors coming on, still ain’t come up off the last pill I done, wishing I could be braver and just sweep her off her feet. But she’s gone, ain’t she. She’s had enough, off she fuckin’ trots. She’s the only person that ever made me happy, Tony, the only person that ever really knew me, and she thinks I’m a cunt.