How We Met by Katy Regan Page B

she
was
there; he could hear her voice in the writing and yet he also felt disloyal, as though he was snooping. They always discussed everything. Liv couldn’t go for a wee without informing him first. How come she’d never discussed making this List with him?
    He read on: Sleep with an exotic foreigner (in an ideal world, Javier Bardem). He smiled, whilst vigorously fighting a niggling dent to his ego.
What’s so special about this Javier Bardem character?
He sounded like a knob.
And what did he have that Fraser didn’t? Besides an international film career and millions in the bank?
    Learn how to make a Roman blind. Fraser frowned, genuinely puzzled. She’d never shown any interest in home furnishings when she was around, hence the disastrous wallpaper choice with the embossed bunches of grapes all over it – a sort of wine-induced migraine in wall-covering form.
    Climb Great Wall of China and learn a bit of Chinese (should be able to do this whilst climbing the Great Wall).
    Fraser sniggered at that one. He could really hear Liv now. Her very specific breed of deadpan, random humour.
    Vegas, baby! Swim naked in the sea at dawn … A picture of Liv and her phenomenal legs and her glorious boobs was just coming into view when Mia appeared with the buggy.
    She looked up at him, shielding her face from the sun.
    ‘You OK?’
    Fraser nodded, sheepishly.
    ‘Yeah, just about.’
    ‘Give us a drag on that, will you?’
    Fraser did as he was told and Mia inhaled, blew the smoke sideways, then stubbed it out.
    ‘Oi, I hadn’t finished that!’
    ‘You gave up,’ she said. ‘I’m helping you.’
    A group of five or six teenagers – almost certainly students – arrived at the café, chatting and laughing. They went inside and Mia and Fraser looked at each other, both knowing instinctively they were thinking the same thing.
    ‘Anyway, what you up to?’ said Mia, eventually.
    ‘Oh, just reading this …’ Fraser folded the piece of paper up self-consciously. ‘It’s that List that Liv wrote, the one Norm had last night?’
    Mia knew exactly what it was. She’d already had an idea about what to do with it, too. Looking at Fraser’s face now, she was even more convinced it was a good one.
    She put the brake on the buggy and went to stand next to him, leaning against the wall, lifting her face to the sun.
    Fraser sighed.
    ‘It’s just shit, basically, isn’t it? All these things she’ll never do. All this life she’ll never live.’
    ‘The world is certainly going to be a much darker place without Liv’s perfect Victoria sponge and her homemade porn video, that’s for sure,’ said Mia, and Fraser couldn’t help but laugh, although Mia inwardly chastised herself. She was doing it again.
    Fraser said, ‘I just think … I think we were robbed. Life’s just not the same any more, is it?’
    ‘No,’ shrugged Mia. ‘And yes, we were robbed, course we were, but without sounding harsh, nothing’s going to bring her back, Frase, is it?’ She looked across at him. ‘So what are we going to do about it now?’
    It was a suggestion rather than a statement, since she had one idea about what they might do.
    For a moment, Fraser said nothing. There was the sound of plates clattering inside the café, orders being called from the kitchen. Life. Then he slowly unfolded the List again and read it through.
    ‘It’s not exactly, get married, get a pension, get a Tesco’s Clubcard, is it?’ he said.
    ‘What do you mean?’ said Mia.
    ‘I mean these ideas are Blue Sky, ambitious.’
    ‘It’s like the annual schedule from Red Letter Days.’
    ‘Well exactly,’ said Fraser. ‘And yet it’s all I can do to get up in the morning.’
    The idea nagged urgently in Mia’s head. Would he just think it was silly and pointless? Or naff, even? Nothing would bring Liv back, that was true, but at least this would be a project and a distraction, something for them all to focus on. She could definitely do with some focus in