Last Year's Worry, Underlined Three Times
"Ring him back about the thing."
That was the note, in my own hand, underlined three times. I found it on Saturday, in the pocket of my brown coat.
I was getting the bus to my sister's for tea at five, out past the ring road. It looked like rain, so the brown coat came out of the hall cupboard and onto the stand by the door.
I was thinking about the car. It had started making a small dry click when I turned left, and by Wednesday I'd decided it was the expensive kind, and all week I'd heard it in my head, even at my desk, where there isn't a car.
Before I put the coat on I went through the pockets. In one there was a bus ticket and a conker. In the other was the note. The ticket had last year's date on it, the ninth of October. The conker had gone hard and wrinkled.
So the note was a year old. Last October I'd written it, then gone over the line twice more so I couldn't miss it.
I had no idea who him was. Maybe the man at the garage. Maybe my landlord. Not the man next door. I've never once rung him. He's over the fence.
And I had no idea what the thing was. Big enough to underline three times, and it hadn't lasted till the coat came out again.
I kept the note. I lost the thing.
I don't even know if I rang him. If I didn't, he hasn't rung to ask why. I put the coat on and went for the bus.
My sister met the bus at her stop. She's the worrier in our family. If I'm ten minutes late, she's about to ring the hospitals. At her kitchen table I showed her the note. She turned it over, in case the back said who.
Then I asked her what she'd been so worried about this time last year. She put her cup down and thought, frowning at the sugar bowl. "Something," she said. "Something big." Then, "Probably you," and we both laughed.
Neither of us could remember last year's big worry, and it had felt every bit as big as this year's. So the odds are this year's is smaller than it looks from inside it. Some things you do remember a year on, but you never needed a note for those.
My sister said she was keeping the question for the next time I'm ten minutes late. I said she'd ring the hospitals anyway. She said yes, but slower.
You don't need a coat for it, or a note. When today's thing gets loud, ask it: what was I worried about this time last year? If you can't answer, that's the good news.
On the bus home the click started up in my head around the ring road. So, with my hand on the note in my pocket, I asked myself what I'd been worried about this time last year. I still couldn't say.
At home the coat went back on the stand by the door. The note is in the pocket with the conker, and this year's bus ticket is in there beside last year's.
