Theo Paphitis Outside Pret

It was like what Kate said about anxiety. You spend your whole life walking on the edge of a dark forest, trying to avoid going in. You see shadows moving between the trees and think every shadow’s a tiger – every tiger’s a shadow – about to jump out at you. I’d been avoiding the forest for a while, but that day I was walking right into the centre of it. I’d seen Theo Paphitis outside Pret, plain as A4, smiling for a selfie with a Korean family, but I was on the other side of the road. I was running late for work. It was about two weeks before I properly quit. This idea came into my head of going out with a bang. I could picture Cam and Sue at home on the sofa, switching over to see me on Dragons’ Den, and being like, well, he’s not coming into work tomorrow. You see, I’d been working on my pitch. The level was set when Jordan said ‘Tinder for dogs’. I couldn’t think of anything better and didn’t want to steal Jordan’s idea. But then Kate put her hand on my arm and asked me what I really care about, and the truth is I don’t care about dogs. Sorry, I was talking about seeing Theo Paphitis outside Pret. By the time I’d crossed the road, he was gone. I went into Foot Locker and asked if they’d seen where he went, but they didn’t have a clue what I was on about. Fuck it, I said, I’m going to go up and down this high street until I find Theo Paphitis. I started back at Pret. One woman thought I was looking for Leo DiCaprio. Another guy said his son had seen Theo Walcott at a Toby Carvery. His mate called bullshit. An old guy said to come back when I’d seen Deborah Meaden. A lot of people laughed, but that made me more confident. By the time I got to WHSmith, I’d probably said Theo Paphitis about fifty times and no one batted an eyelid. Most of them didn’t know who he was. In Boots, I bought some mouthwash and saw ten missed calls on my phone. I messaged Sue to say I had a stomach bug, and then did a shit in Wood Green Mall, which made me think I could have the rumblings of a bug after all. I’ve always been suggestible. I know that’s why I get anxious. I can’t draw a line between my own thoughts and the world. Some nights I hardly sleep at all. And after a few days of bad sleep I’ll start hallucinating. Last night, I was back on that street looking for Theo Paphitis. I had this feeling I’d been looking for him for a long time, and I might still be looking for him in another forty years. I made my peace with that, except that I felt guilty for Kate. In this dream, she wasn’t well and needed help getting up the stairs. But I kept walking from one shop to another looking for Theo Paphitis because I told myself it was important for us. In real life – you might not believe this – I found Theo Paphitis. I was walking past the Post Office and saw his reflection in the glass, wearing his shiny blue suit, arms folded. I didn’t know what to say. Do you just go up and say ‘hi, nice to meet you, Theo Paphitis’? I looked around to see how other people were reacting. They were on their phones, queuing, going about their business. I walked up to him and – you’re going to laugh – I tried to shake his hand. But as my hand went out to meet his, he fell straight backwards. He was made of cardboard. That’s when everyone looked around. A woman with a shopping trolley asked if I was alright. You alright, darling. Dad used to ask me that. He wasn’t an overly affectionate guy but sometimes when he got back home from a late shift he’d sit on the edge of my bed and ask about my day. You alright, darling. I found it hard to answer. I could tell he wanted something from me. He wanted to be reminded what the point of it was. So I lied and told him things that would make him happy. He probably still thinks I speak German. I should say that, when I said I quit two weeks after seeing Theo Paphitis outside Pret, that wasn’t the whole truth. Technically it was two weeks’ statutory notice. Sue said she was sorry to let me go, but I wasn’t. There’s some things I hold regret over, to do with Kate and to do with Dad. I wish I’d seen him more before things got bad, when he could still recognise his own front door. But I don’t regret bunking off work to look for Theo Paphitis. I remember now, it was raining that day. After a few hours, I was sodden. I jogged back through the park. The trees were dark. The leaves were vibrating with rain. I’d taken on board Kate’s story about the forest, but it was worse than that. I wasn’t avoiding the tiger in the shadows. I was waiting for it. I didn’t know how long it would be before the tiger appeared or what it would look like, but I knew I’d spent my whole life in that forest waiting for it to come. The park smelt of wet cigs and fox shit and that smell was clinging to me when I walked into the kitchen. Kate was unloading a bag of groceries and looked shocked. I was a ghost. I’d come back to her from beyond the grave. What the hell are you doing? she said. I told her that I was worried I’d left it too late. I was sorry. But I’d been walking and walking and finally I knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t too late.

Will Harris is a London-based writer. He is the author of the poetry books RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023), both published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan University Press in the US, and the essay Mixed-Race Superman (Peninsula Press) which came out in 2018. He has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. He co-translated Habib Tengour’s Consolatio (Poetry Translation Centre) with Delaina Haslam in 2022, and helps facilitate the Southbank New Poets Collective with Vanessa Kisuule. Siblings, a conversation between Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan, Will Harris and Nisha Ramayya, was published by Monitor Books in February 2024.