Wish You Were Here Read Free

come off), a bookshelf in the living room and a few other items as well but these were all things that, like me, either no longer worked or were no longer needed.
    Back to the suitcase. I had always hated packing. Always. This was mainly because I don’t understand how it all worked. How was a person supposed to guess what they might need for every single occasion that might come up when visiting a foreign land? For instance, I have a band T-shirt that I bought when I was at college that says ‘Death To The Pixies’ on the front of it. Back in my college days I used to wear it all the time but now I don’t wear it that often. That said, however, there are still times when I wake up at the weekend and think to myself, ‘I really want to wear my “Death To The Pixies” T-shirt,’ and I’ll rummage through all the clothes in the ironing pile until I find it. And even though it’s now grey (where it once was black and is now much tighter than it used to be), frayed on the neck and with loose stitching underneath one armpit, I’ll put it on and wear it all day. And I’ll be happy. And at the end of the day when it has fulfilled its function, I’ll take it off and throw it in the dirty laundry basket where it will slowly make its way through the decommissioning process (dark wash clothes pile on kitchen floor to washing machine to tumble dryer to ironing pile in spare bedroom – where it will remain unironed until the next time I need it). Now, multiply the problem I have with my ‘Death To The Pixies’ T-shirt with a pair of favoured jeans, a white shirt that I think I look good in, trainers that are good for walking in (but not necessarily all that good to look at) and various assorted other clothes and accessories for which I feel various degrees of attachment and it becomes easy to imagine the problems I had with packing to go on holiday.
    So how did I manage in the past? The quick answer is Sarah. She always did it. She’d get sick of me standing there slack-jawed with a ‘Death To The Pixies’ T-shirt in one hand and a pair of threadbare-in-the-crotch faded Levi’s in the other and she’d kick me out of the bedroom and sort it out herself. And the funny thing is, even though I hadn’t had anything to do with the packing of my suitcase, once we’d reached our holiday destination I would always (without fail) find absolutely everything that I needed for every occasion. The right shoes for the right kind of bar. The right shirt for the right kind of restaurant. The right shorts for the right kind of beach. Everything. And on the one occasion (a holiday to Turkey in year five of our relationship) when I needed the right T-shirt for a day of wandering round a local market I opened the case and there it was: ‘Death To The Pixies’ in all its faded glory, neatly ironed and folded right in front of me. Right there and then I took off my hat to her (she had packed that too). No one could pack a suitcase like Sarah. No one. I can’t really remember what I did about packing suitcases before Sarah came into my life. I suppose that back in those days I had a lot less stuff so it was an awful lot easier just to pile everything I owned into one suitcase and close the lid.

    As the afternoon began to slip away from me and the suitcase remained empty I came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do would be to leave packing until later in the day. Retiring to my now sofa-less living room I sat down on one of two old dining chairs Sarah had left behind and turned on the TV. An old episode of Murder She Wrote was on one of the cable channels but despite being drawn into the plot I switched it off after ten minutes because I was unable to adopt my usual slouching position. As I debated in my head whether it was too late to drive into town and order a new sofa from Argos (possibly something in black leather?) the phone rang. It was Tom.