Love on the NHS by Matthew Formby

You watch Lawson's Creek, you're intelligent... why don't you just give it a try and see how it goes?"
    "I might do. I wouldn't know where to start, though."
    "I'll tell you what. I'll have a look if I can find this newsletter Duldrum College produce. It has a listing of the courses on offer. They have a section with evening classes; so there's no commitment! You can just turn up  - or not as the case may be, ha ha ha! -  and they don't last long. Let me see if I can get that. I'll just write that down in my diary, just so I don't forget. Memory gets like a sieve once you hit middle age!" he chuckled.
    Luke hated thinking about age. He was twenty four. It was far too old. People always told him he was young. That his whole life was ahead of him. But to him he'd failed in life; or life had failed him - either way it was too late.
    When childhood is over, the groove of a person's life is for the most part set in. At least, that was what Luke believed. In his high school years he had wanted to live by the sea. It was his desire to be with witty friends with a mature outlook who could reference great films, plays and literature. It would have been terrific if they could have foreseen the future and not taken the obvious route of falling apart. Where were those life affirming moments when he needed them?
    How rewarding it would have been to live a youth not wasted; but alas he had been a fool. He had wanted to follow his heart - he would have liked to be able to make mistakes without being hounded. The city could be a cruel place. Surveillance cameras, community orders, overzealous police and council officers, impossibly hopeless social housing estates. Could people never just have some fun, and love, and see past all the hardship? His high school experience - wow, now that was disappointing. His friends, asinine. Their humour a cruel, hyena variant. There had been little aspiration, or time for reflection or appreciation of anything. Almost everything was geared towards keeping up with the Joneses, climbing the hierarchy of overpopulated, hyper-competitive all-singing, all-dancing corporate Britain.
    This, Luke figured, was the reason he never tired of watching Lawson's Creek. Over and over again. It had in it everything he would have liked. He could quite happily have paid someone to pretend to be another character from the show - and to act out a false life with him. That would have been infinitely more useful than living a true life of emptiness.
     
     
     
     
     

XVII
     
    When Luke called his mother to tell her how much he hated life, she would tell him to visit his sisters. For a few years he did so as much as he could. Every week he went to Lily and her husband James' house and to Adriana, and her partner Ken's, home. Both sisters were mothers to toddlers - it was an exciting new era/ The trouble was he did not get along with them like he had as a child. Adriana and Luke would watch programmes on the TV together, re-runs of paranormal drama The X Files or crime series Bones. An occasionally matching taste in TV shows was the extent of their common interests and so the conversation soon dried up. Adriana made a lot of hand movements and body language too, as well as frequent eye contact, all of which overwhelmed Luke. She was the most sociable of all Luke's siblings.
    It was hard for Luke because body language was something he could almost feel. Scientists will probably some day discover that human beings have a sixth sense and that some people like Luke are able to use it more acutely. Ripples seemed to come through the air as people moved their arms and hands - and when people made eye contact he was sure he could feel it. He could not explain it but his best attempt would be that it was the reflection of the light from the person's eyes his body sensed. Not such a crazy idea; after all almost all biological entities are attracted to light and without very few can survive.
    Meanwhile evenings at Lily and James' were