Lifesaving for Beginners

going.
    It’s the strangest thing.
    I disembark at Gatwick. I look at Minnie’s instructions and follow them to the letter. Now I’m on a train to Brighton. When I get there, it’s lunchtime, just like Minnie said it would be. I get into a taxi and say, ‘Take me to the Funky Banana, please.’ It sounds even weirder when you say it out loud.
    The taxi driver puts the car in drive and moves into the lunchtime traffic. He is taciturn and therefore unlike any other taximan I have come across and I have come across a fair few in my time, being a great believer in drinking and not driving. At least I was until the bloody Ed situation. Day eight. Three hundred and fifty-seven days to go.
    I clear my throat. ‘The traffic’s pretty bad, isn’t it?’
    ‘Could be worse.’
    Silence again. I’m twitchy as a pulse.
    I wish Minnie were here. It would be . . . nice, I suppose. To have someone here. With me. Someone in my corner, so to speak. I haven’t thought about what I’m going to say. I just got on a plane and a train and now here I am, in a taxi with a non-verbal taxi driver, and suddenly the back seat of the cab feels enormous, with just me here. And I’ve nothing prepared. No lines to say.
    It’s only when I see the café from the top of the street that I realise I was hoping it would be closed. The awning in front of the café is one of the brightest yellows I’ve ever seen, and I’m delighted that I don’t have a hangover because this yellow is so bright it would surely take the sight out of your eyes if you weren’t in the full of your health.
    The sign that pokes out at a right angle from the café is in the shape of a banana. A fairly ordinary-looking banana, to be honest.
    The taxi driver pulls up in front of the café. It’s packed with people in good form, eating and talking and smiling and even laughing. There’s a lot of joviality, which is weird when you remember it’s Christmas Eve.
    The taxi driver puts the car in neutral and sits back, without saying anything. The meter reads twelve pounds forty-five pence and I give him twenty pounds. I don’t even say, ‘Keep the change.’ I just get out of the car. It seems like the least I can do.
    The café is quirky by accident rather than design. There’s quite a bit of yellow. There’s a sizeable amount of banana-inspired food. Banana and chocolate-chip milkshakes I can understand, but most people would have to draw the line at banana-infused tea, wouldn’t they? Minnie would tell me to think outside my box of Lyons teabags, but I don’t think even she or Maurice would have the stomach for it. There is not one matching chair in the place but because they’ve been painted such bright colours, it works somehow. I sit at the only vacant table. It’s the one nearest the door, which means there’ll be a draught and I’ll catch my death of cold, on top of everything else.
    I sit down. There’s a hint of Ireland about the place. The clock, for instance. Green and shaped like a shamrock. And the dish of the day is Irish stew. The weird thing is that, even though I’m not crazy about stew, when the waiter comes to take my order, I say, ‘Stew, please,’ and he says, ‘Good choice,’ as if he has sensed my hesitation and wants to assure me that I’m doing the right thing.
    The Christmas tree in the corner is real, hanging with all manner of wooden fruit, among which bananas feature prominently. Oddly, I’ve ordered a glass of milk with my stew, as if I’m six and not so close to forty I can see the whites of its eyes. Well, I can’t drink a proper drink like wine because of the deal I made with God, which is crazy when you consider that I don’t even believe in God. But something won’t let me disregard the promise. Just in case.
    I don’t think Faith is here. In the café. There’s just the waiter, who is a Maurice Minor, which is Minnie’s name for not-quite-a-man-not-quite-a-boy, and a fully grown man I can see in the kitchen every time the Maurice Minor opens the door. He’s got long dark hair, which is in a high ponytail and tucked neatly inside a hairnet. He’s chopping shallots with one of those gigantic, shiny blades that could separate a head from a body with a single swipe, if you were in that humour.
    It’s only when I realise she’s not here that my shoulders descend from around my ears. In fact, it’s only when I realise she’s not here that I notice my shoulders are up around my ears in the first place. I