Читать книгу Carry You - Beth Thomas, Beth Thomas - Страница 11

Daisy Mack

Sometimes, acceptance is just easier. In fact, all the time. Every day, at every possible opportunity. Accept, and find happiness.

Abby Marcus Stop complaining, it looks lovely.

Georgia Ling Aww bless yah un xxx

Jenny Martin You had a marriage proposal, Daisy??? xxx

Abby thinks I’m talking about my super-duper new haircut. She’s right, annoyingly. I wanted to sound intriguing and deep, so that people would think I was, you know, intriguing and deep, while actually I was just talking about a haircut. Although there are one or two more things it applies to of course. My life in general, to be more specific.

After Abby inadvertently rubbed the hairs on my legs up the wrong way two days ago then frowned at me with her perfectly sculptured eyebrows, I secretly decided it was high time I gave my whole body a bit of a de-fuzz. The local paper had already started running stories about glimpsed sightings of an escaped bear, complete with close-up photos of residents looking concerned, so I knew it was time to dust off the razor and tweezers and put everyone’s minds at ease.

It’s amazing really how smooth legs and shaped eyebrows can make you feel kind of invigorated. I actually felt a bit like I was on the periphery of the human race, rather than out in the field miles from anywhere. I wasn’t back in, but I was approaching the steps to the porch. Maybe it was the fresh air finally touching my bald skin after all these weeks.

After it was done, I took another long look at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and decided that my head hair would also have to go. Or the ends of it would, anyway – this was only about grooming, not aero-dynamics. It was generally up in a ponytail these days, but when down had started to look like a frayed rug: fairly smooth and straight three-quarters of the way down, then the final quarter exploding outwards in an indistinguishable blur of light brown fluff. That part was no longer welcome at the Daisy Macintyre establishment.

‘Just take off the ends, please,’ I said to the hairdresser. Stacy, I think she was called. She had the most ruthless eyebrows I’ve ever seen, plucked to a line no wider than a centipede. I couldn’t take my eyes off them in the mirror as she examined my head.

‘Ooh isn’t your hair lovely, hun,’ she said, trying to jerk her fingers through the tangle at the end. She leaned forward and put her mouth right next to my ear. ‘Just sooo gorgeous.’

‘Oh, really? Thanks.’

‘Oh yeah, it’s really stunning, so silky and lovely.’ In the mirror, a snarl appeared on Stacy’s face as the brush got stuck again. ‘You’re very lucky, I’m so envious actually.’

‘She’s patronising you,’ Mum’s voice said in my head. ‘Look at her hair, thick, smooth and glossy. It’s insulting, Daisy. Tell her to stop.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but a sudden searing pain from the back of my head told me that clumps of my hair were being torn from my scalp by their roots. ‘YOW!’

‘Oopsie daisy, sorry, sweetpea, my fault.’

‘Of course it’s her fault,’ Mum whispered furiously. ‘She’s yanking your hair with the brush, you’re not yanking her brush with your hair. Say something!’

‘Oh, er, heh heh, that’s OK. Made me jump a bit, that’s all.’

‘Yeah, it will do m’darling. Just a teensy weensy little knot or two, all riii-iight?’ By now, the muscles were standing out on Stacy’s jaw and a vein was pulsing in her neck. A collection of metal bangles on her wrist were crashing repeatedly into my head and ears and her enormous tanned cleavage was squishing hard into my back. She worked the brush roughly through to the ends, then gave up on it and picked up a comb. I eyed it nervously, then gripped the arm-rests of my chair and braced.

‘So how’s life treating you, sweet?’

My head was being yanked back then pushed forwards repeatedly in a kind of giant exaggerated nod. I tried to relax my muscles and go floppy to avoid whiplash. ‘Life is shit, actually, Stace. My mum died, then my stepdad, my real dad’s in America, my sister and stepbrothers hate me and I’ve got nowhere to live and no job, thanks. You?’

I didn’t say that. No one ever wants to hear it. I said, ‘Fine, thanks. How about you?’ Mum tutted loudly in my head.

‘Aw, I’m good thanks, sweet. Off to Tenerife next week, can’t wait actually!’

‘Oh really? That sounds nice.’

‘Yeah. One week all inclusive, sun, sea and sangria, three stars. Really really looking forward to it.’

‘Wonderful, lucky you.’

‘Yeah, I know. We go back there every year, me and Steve. They absolutely love us there ’cause we’re always so up for it, ja know what I mean?’

‘I think I do …’

‘We really go for it, me and Steve. We’re always messing around, having a laugh, life and soul of the party, it’s a proper giggle. Last year I won the Loveliest Jubblies competition and Steve glassed the judge.’

‘Shit!’

‘Oh my God it was soooo funny. People shouting, tables going over, Miguel running around waving his arms, total carnage! We were in complete stitches, actually.’

‘Jesus …’

‘I laughed so much, well, everyone did, afterwards, you know, once we knew he wasn’t really hurt. Hysterical.’

‘Sure.’

‘Yeah, holidays are brilliant. You got anything booked then?’

‘Um, no, not yet.’ Absolutely no need for her to know I was currently unemployed.

‘Aw, bless. You gotta have something to look forward to, sweetie.’

At that moment, I was looking forward to gently stroking my head with my hands and telling it everything was going to be OK.

Twenty-five minutes later, she held a mirror up behind me while I examined the damage in the one in front. It was a hideous disaster. She’d taken at least three inches off the length, cut some layers in around the sides and shortened the fringe. The lack of weight from the shortened length was making the whole thing more curly and little tendrils of hair were sticking up randomly at the sides and bobbing under. The overall effect had taken fifteen years off me. I was now thirteen.

‘Is that all riii-iight?’ Stacy asked, although she wasn’t really asking it, she was reciting lines. Her attention was fixed on an elderly lady wrapped in a towel who was being brought over from the sinks. ‘Be with you in a minute, Ada, all riii-iight?’ She made reflected eye contact with me again and smiled encouragingly as she picked up random sections of my hair and pulled it through her fingers. ‘I’ve just put a couple of long layers in there, to give it some softness and definition.’

‘How can it give softness and definition?’ Mum demanded, but I was mute.

‘Is it okaaa-aaay for you?’

‘Say something!’

I nodded. ‘Yes, yes, it’s lovely. Thank you.’

Stacy smiled and put the hand mirror back down on the counter. ‘Fantastic. If you’d like to go and see Debra at the desk, she’ll sort you out.’

I paid Debra at the desk, added a tip for Stacy, then slowly walked the three miles back to Abby’s flat. It’s OK, I kept telling myself, I’ll wash it when I get in and dry it myself, that’ll make all the difference. As if washing it would help it grow the three inches back that were gone. It didn’t.

‘Oh my God,’ Abby said when she saw me later that day. She walked up to me, her eyes wide and stared at my face. ‘Your eyebrows! Oh my God, your hair! Wait …’ She flicked her eyes down once. ‘Have you …?’

‘Bugger off!’ I stepped back away from her.

‘Ooh, all right, chill. Well your hair looks lovely, anyway. It really suits you.’ She examined my head critically, peering all the way round the back, then nodded approvingly. ‘It’s lovely. Excellent.’

I’m on the canal bank now. It’s not going terribly well. I think I need some moral support.

Daisy Mack

Not approaching my nemesis. Not slowing my steps with mounting terror. Not about to die a violent and horrible death. Everything’s fine.

Suzanne Allen Good God Daisy, what on earth is going on?

Daisy Mack Nothing Suze, told you. None of that is happening. Everything’s fine.

Georgia Ling Luv it lol xxx

Susan Pimms What you up too?

Abby Marcus Brad’s balls, Daisy. Get on with it.

Immediately after I post that, my instant messenger pops. I click on the message with relief: this will be the moral support I need, thank God.

Abby Marcus Where are you?

Daisy Mack Approaching footbridge. Stop distracting me.

Abby Marcus OK. You can do it! Just keep going.

Daisy Mack Ohhhh, I never thought of it like that. Thanks Abs.

Abby Marcus Ah. Sarcasm. This is good. Things really are starting to get back to normal. xxx

When Mum was in what turned out to be her final month of life, she started to obsess about trivia. I don’t mean she was desperate to spend the last of her precious time on this earth swotting up on which country has the largest temperature range in the world, or how many drops make a dash. As if she was expecting to have to pass some kind of general knowledge quiz to get … where she was going. What I mean is she was intensely and constantly worried about what was going to happen to us all, and all her things, after she died. Which may not seem trivial, but compared to dying in a hospice it seemed pretty irrelevant to me. She talked endlessly about the things in the house that she wanted us to have: a glass punch bowl; a china set; some silk scarves.

‘Daisy, I want you to have the scarves,’ she said, trying to squeeze my hand. Her hand in mine didn’t feel real. It felt more like a collection of twigs than anything else, but I held it anyway. I held it for as long as I could stand it.

‘Mum, it’s fine,’ I said, smiling very widely. ‘Please don’t worry about it. We’ll sort it all out.’

‘No, no, you’ve got to listen. I want you to have the scarves because Naomi doesn’t suit a scarf. She’s too serious. But you mustn’t be upset if I give her the Wedgwood set. I just think it will be better for her because she’s got Russell and the house and everything.’

‘Mum …’

‘And then if she’s having that, you must have the jewellery box. It needs looking after, though, Daisy Duck. It’s over sixty years old so you’ve got to take care of it. My dad gave it to my mum on their wedding day, you know.’

‘Really?’ I did know. She’d told me months earlier. But she was on morphine by then and wasn’t always clear about what she’d already said.

‘And I need to sort out my jewellery. I need you to help me, sweetheart. I can’t ask Graham because he gave me most of it and it will only upset him to know I’m giving it away.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I don’t think he wants to face what’s happening here until he absolutely has to. Do you understand?’

I nodded. Of course I understood. He didn’t want to be reminded of the fact that she was dying. I totally got that. ‘Yes, I understand.’

‘So … will you do it for me?’

‘Of course I will, Mum. Anything. Just tell me what you want me to do.’

It turned out she had a folder in the house with photographs and a description of every item of jewellery she owned, for the insurance, and she asked me to bring it into the hospice, with Naomi, so we could leaf through it and choose what we wanted. I used my door key to visit the house when Graham wasn’t there, sneaking in and opening Mum’s bedroom cabinet. I felt like I was violating her. She lost her dignity in so many ways.

Naomi went first, while I sat on the bed with an aching throat.

‘I love this ring,’ Naomi said excitedly, pointing to a page in the folder. ‘Can I have it?’ She looked at me. ‘Daze? You don’t want it, do you?’

I shook my head. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any of it. I just wanted Mum to keep on wearing it for the next forty years.

‘Excellent.’ Naomi pulled the sheet of paper out of its plastic sleeve and wrote a large black ‘N’ on the page next to the photograph. ‘Lovely.’ She slid it back in and continued turning the pages until eventually she had labelled about ten things. ‘Here you go, Daze,’ she said, handing the folder to me. ‘You choose ten, and then we’ll fight over the rest.’

I took the folder but didn’t open it. Mum had gone to sleep and I stared at her for a few moments, watching her chest rising and falling, willing it to keep going. I started counting the seconds that elapsed between the end of an exhale and the start of the next inhale, and as it grew from three seconds to four, then five, I began wondering if today was going to be the day.

‘Wakey wakey,’ Naomi said suddenly, and I jumped a bit and turned to look at her. She wasn’t talking to Mum, though; she was talking to me. ‘Get a move on, Dozy, I’ve got to get going in a minute. We’re going to Ikea.’

So I picked my ten, and then Naomi divided the rest out between us. By the time Mum woke up again twenty minutes later, Naomi had gone and each item had either an ‘N’ or a ‘D’ next to it.

‘Oh, hi, Daisy Duck,’ Mum said, smiling at me. ‘When did you get here?’

I’m glad she did it now. It gave me a chance to wear some of it when I went to visit her, which she loved. She was so thin by this time that she hadn’t been able to wear any of it for ages, so she was happy to see it again.

‘Just don’t let Graham see you wearing it,’ she said, fingering a gorgeous aquamarine and diamond ring I had just taken off. She slid it onto her own pathetically thin finger and it dangled there loosely like a curtain ring, the heavy gem immediately sliding round to the underside. She laughed and slid it off again. ‘Here you go, it looks a lot better on you. But don’t forget, poor Graham would be devastated if he knew you had it already, before … anything has happened. Don’t let him see, sweetheart. Promise me.’

‘I promise, Mum.’ I slid the ring back on my finger, not realising how devastating that promise would turn out to be.

Of course, because she was so organised about all that, it meant she didn’t have to put any of those things in her will. Which meant the letter from Owen and Lake was about the house and whatever liquid assets Graham left. I knew that as I took it from Abby last Sunday.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Abby asked me, while I ran my fingers over the heavy paper.

‘Yeah, course I am.’ I folded the envelope in half and tucked it in my own jeans pocket. ‘Just not right now.’

‘Might be important.’

I shrugged. It would wait. Nothing was all that important any more.

This route that Abby and Tom have worked out for me isn’t too bad actually. It’s a circuit, which means I just have to keep walking until I get back again, minimal orienteering required. I start off along the road and go down to the park – one and a half miles. I skirt around the edge of the park and go through a little gap in the fence at the top end, which leads to a footpath – half a mile. I follow the footpath alongside the canal, then cross over the dual carriageway and keep on the same path all the way to the next town – four miles. Then I come back along the road for a bit, use the underpass to get back to the other side of the bypass and cut through a housing estate back to Abby’s – three miles. In total, it’s about nine miles. I know this because I have a brand new pedometer in my pocket, which counts my steps, multiplies that number by the length of my average pace, which I had to input in advance, and converts that figure to a measurement of how far I’ve walked. Also because Abby told me.

Daisy Mack

Clothed in cobwebs; feasting on flies.

Suzanne Allen Jesus, Daisy, do some shopping for the love of Gucci.

Georgia Ling LMAO! xxx

Nat ‘Wiggy’ Nicholson You sound like you need a makeover, hunni.x

I’m on the approach to the footbridge over the motorway now. I’m not happy about this part of the walk, for two principal reasons. Firstly, the path is a bit overgrown and I keep swallowing insects. They stay in your throat for ages and I never know whether to swallow them to get rid of them, or try to spit them out. I’m also finding this part of the canal path is permanently festooned with cobwebs, which of course are completely invisible to the naked eye. It’s not until you walk through one and find yourself trying to pull swathes of sticky strands off your face that you even know they’re there. And of course, as you’re trying to free yourself from their deadly little silken traps, you know that the eight-legged architect is no doubt now somewhere about your person.

Not that I’m scared of spiders. I’m not. Why would I be? They’re wonderful because they don’t live on leftovers, like some insects do, they set traps and hunt and provide for themselves without involving anyone else. OK, so they’ve got eight eyes and eight hairy legs, and let themselves down out of nowhere into your hair, and sometimes move really fast just when you’re least expecting it, but –

Shit. What was that? I think there’s one on me. I just felt something tickling the back of my arm. I swat at myself a few times, then rub my arm roughly, to make sure. Then I have to rub the other arm, just as roughly, then both my legs, the back of my neck and finally my hair, all while hopping about madly on the spot and yelping.

I think I inherited my casual indifference to spiders from Mum. ‘Spiders are fantastic,’ she used to say, letting one she’d rescued from the bath run across her hand. ‘They hunt and kill their own food. And you know what that food is? Flies. Flies eat poo and rubbish and give birth to maggots. The fewer of them on the planet, the better, as far as I’m concerned.’ She never used to hoover up cobwebs from the corners of the rooms at home either. ‘Cobwebs are nature’s own flypaper,’ she would say to anyone who questioned it. Although no one ever did, really. Only Graham. And only once.

Mum was pretty cool with just about everything. She could complain about bad service in shops. She could not tip taxi drivers. She could send food back in restaurants. She could even say she wasn’t happy with a haircut. But she was paralysingly terrified of one thing. Which brings me to the second reason why I don’t like this part of the walk. The footbridge. Mum was petrified of heights. And so am I.

When I was about eight and Naomi was eleven, the three of us went on a weekend away to London. I’m not entirely sure why – it may have been Mum’s birthday or something like that. On the first day, we checked into our hotel, before going out for dinner and a show. We had a family room, which turned out to be a quad. Mum was not happy about that at all, I remember.

‘It’s a quad room,’ she said to the receptionist half an hour after we’d arrived, ‘presumably because that is what this hotel thinks of as a typical family: mum, dad, little John and little Jane. But we are a family, and there are only three of us. Sadly our fourth member decided three years ago to follow his dream, and his colleague’s arse, to Peterborough in search of clichés.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Do you know what that means?’

The receptionist smiled. ‘Well,’ she started to say, then realised very quickly that she didn’t need to.

‘It means,’ Mum went on calmly, ‘that we only have one income. I am supporting myself and my two children here on only one lot of pay. So probably roughly half as much as the standard family that this hotel would usually put in the quad room.’

‘Madam,’ the receptionist tried, but got nowhere.

‘So although I have half as much money as the people you would normally put in that room, you still want to make me pay exactly the same amount of money as they pay, by charging me a supplement for the empty bed.’ She smiled at this point, and tilted her head on one side a little, as if she was watching a chimpanzee juggle oranges. ‘It’s hardly fair, is it, Kirsty?’

We had a slap up meal that night. They must have refunded the supplement. ‘Don’t let hotel bastards wear you down,’ Mum said to us over dinner. ‘You fight for what is right, girls, and you keep on fighting, no matter what.’ She leaned towards us across the table and whispered behind her hand, ‘I’ve never lost one yet.’

She did lose one eventually. It was her final fight, last November.

Anyway during that London trip, the three of us got stuck on a bridge somewhere. I don’t know what bridge it was, but I remember it was over water, so it didn’t feel dangerous to me. Not at first, anyway. But apparently it did for Mum. Naomi and I hadn’t noticed that she’d slowed her steps quite a lot as we set out on it, and scampered off ahead. By the time we heard her faint voice calling our names and turned round to see what she wanted, she was motionless, white and crouching. I stared at her in horror as she moved one arm about two inches away from her body and pulled her fingers very slowly towards herself twice. I looked up at Naomi, not understanding what was going on.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ Naomi said, taking hold of my arm. ‘Come on, we gotta go back.’

‘What’s happened, Nomes?’

She didn’t answer, just marched me back across the bridge to Mum’s side. When we got there, I could see that Mum’s left hand was wrapped around the lower part of the railing so tightly that not just the knuckles had gone white, her whole hand had. And, oddly enough, her face. I looked at her and was horrified by the terror in her eyes.

‘Mummy?’

‘It’s OK, Daisy Duck,’ she croaked, skinning her thin lips back from her teeth. I recoiled, and I remember wondering if this was really my mum squatting there or some other being inhabiting her body. A frightened, weak other being.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked tremulously.

‘I’m OK,’ she said, trying to smile again. I didn’t like it when she did that. I wished she’d stop.

‘Mum, you’ve got to move,’ Naomi said at this point. She put her hand on Mum’s white fingers and tried to unwind them from the railing, but Mum started shaking her head and moved her other hand on top of the first one.

‘Can’t,’ she whispered, probably hoping I wouldn’t hear her. She was very fond of telling me there was no such word.

Naomi sighed and let go, then sat down on the ground next to Mum. ‘Might as well sit down, Dozy,’ she said. ‘We’re likely to be here for a while.’

‘Why? What’s going on? Why won’t you tell me?’

‘May I be of assistance, ladies?’ a male voice broke in at this point. The three of us all turned and looked up at a man in jeans and gleaming white trainers, standing above us. I remember that his jeans had a crisp crease running down the centre of each leg.

‘We’re fine, thanks,’ Mum half-whispered immediately, trying to give the impression of strength and capability. She was pretty convincing, in spite of a bloodless face and tremors in her voice.

‘You don’t look fine,’ he said, crouching down to mirror her pose. ‘Seriously, won’t you let me help you? You can’t live here – the council won’t allow it.’

‘Thank you,’ Naomi said at this point, standing up. ‘My name is Naomi, that’s my sister Dozy, and this is our mum, Anne.’

‘Nice to meet you all,’ he said, glancing briefly at me, then focusing back intently on Mum. ‘My name is Graham.’ He extended his hand to her. ‘Take hold of my arm; I’ll help you get across.’

Daisy Mack

Getting high. Not good.

Suzanne Allen Certainly sounds good. Although, of course, I would have absolutely no idea whether it’s good or not. It’s all a complete mystery to me. Unknown territory as it were.

Jenny Martin Suzy you’re protesting far too much lol!

I’m at the footbridge now. Actually I’ve already been standing here for a few minutes, trying to get up the courage to go over it. My stomach is churning and my heart is thudding as if I’ve just bumped into Hugh Grant. I don’t know how Mum even began to cross that bridge in London back then, when she had two children with her. I feel nervous enough carrying my iPod across. For some reason it feels like everything I’m holding is in danger of going over the side.

OK, there’s nothing to be done other than put one foot in front of the other until I reach the other side. I’ve discovered that if I sing that old song ‘Help’, it really does help.

‘Why don’t you close your eyes?’ Abby said to me, the first time she walked over it with me.

‘How will that help?’

‘Well, you won’t be able to see how high up you are.’

‘Again, how will that help?’

Right, I’m on the bridge. I am not going to look anywhere except straight ahead. I am not paying any attention to the cars and lorries speeding past below me.

‘Afternoon,’ says a voice unexpectedly, and I suddenly realise that under the whoosh of the blood rushing in my ears I’ve just heard some light footsteps approach behind me.

‘Hi,’ I say weakly, as a man in tight black Lycra shorts and a clingy vest top jogs easily past me. As he passes, he turns slightly, makes eye contact and gives a little smile. His blond hair is falling beautifully across his forehead in a floppy curl, and the eyes that meet mine are clear and crystal blue. My knees, already dangerously weak, practically give out at this point. ‘Come on then,’ he says, and makes a forward sweeping gesture with his arm, as if he’s moving over to allow me to go past.

I shake my head. ‘N’th’nks,’ I manage to croak out, the combination of the footbridge and his thighs making me virtually unintelligible. Oh God, I used to be good at this. And I don’t mean walking.

‘Come on!’ he repeats, turning again and grinning more broadly. Then, to my utter horror, he actually runs backwards on the bridge for a few steps and I almost vomit. I have to look away as my heart stops dead in my chest and even though I’ve turned away, I squeeze my eyes shut too. He’s going over, he’s so going over, he’s definitely going over. I cringe and tense, clenching my fists and my jaw, my whole body a taut muscle waiting for the trip, the shout of terror, the scream; and after two or three seconds of heavy anxious breathing, I don’t hear it. I crack one eye open. Sunny day; bridge; man jogging lightly away. Now I’m just a very tense woman watching a fit man jogging. With effort I relax my shoulders and loosen my fists, turning to face forwards again and straightening up a little. Thank God he didn’t see that.

He’s almost at the other end of the bridge now. If I’d been jogging like him, I might have reached the other side too. I might also have caused a deep, ancient fault in the concrete finally to splinter under the thud of my feet, and have tumbled to my death in a sickening avalanche of twisted metal and rock. I shake my head and accidentally catch sight of a couple of cars and a lorry speeding past below me, which makes me gasp and wobble. I have to stop and grab hold of the handrail quickly and bend my knees. Somehow getting my centre of gravity six inches nearer the ground seems to help, even a million feet up in the air.

‘See you again!’ the runner calls back to me from the safety of the path on the other side. I’m frozen here, thanks to him, and I realise as his beautiful buttocks bounce out of sight that I had been kind of hoping he would come back and rescue me, like Graham did for Mum more than twenty years ago.

‘I don’t need any help.’ Her voice between gritted teeth sounds in my head, and I remember that once Graham offered to help her, she managed to stand up and get moving without once taking his arm. She was such an inspiration to me: so incredibly strong and capable. Even when sheer, undiluted terror had her in its grip and reduced her to a gibbering jelly, she was still able to make herself get up and get moving because she had had to learn to rely on no one but herself.

I’m nothing like that. It is totally unnatural for this bridge and this path to be up here in the air. It defies gravity and surely can’t hold out much longer. I feel so exposed and unstable up here, as if the whole thing is about to disintegrate beneath my feet and send me plummeting the two hundred thousand feet to the motorway below, where I will be smashed and broken before being pulped under the wheels of a ninety-ton lorry, five cars and a camper van. I curl my fingers more tightly around the railing and lower my body further towards the path. I’m rigid with fear now, completely unable to think about moving, or think at all, and there’s only one thing I can do. I reach round behind me very slowly and pull my phone out of my pocket; then, keeping my entire body absolutely still apart from my left hand, I write a text.

Abs, I need help

Seconds later, the phone vibrates in my hand as the reply arrives.

Daze, I’m wrking. Client in 15. You gotta get yrself across on yr own.

I can’t.

NO SUCH WRD. Just do it.

Am paralysed. There is no ‘just do it’.

Nikes sake, stfu. NOT paralysed. Get on with it. It’ll mak you strnger.

What a great friend she is.

Ten minutes later I reach the other side of the bridge, and stand up. Fortunately no one walked past me as I crossed, and after I’ve brushed the dirt off my hands and knees, you can’t even tell what I was doing.

When I get back to Abby’s flat half an hour later, I hear raised voices in the kitchen as I let myself in. It’s a man and a woman, although Abs said she had another client so she shouldn’t be home yet. I stand in the hallway and take my magic trainers off as quietly as possible. So that the two people arguing aren’t embarrassed about being overheard, of course; nothing to do with wanting to hear what they’re saying.

‘That’s not what I mean,’ the man’s voice says and I realise that it’s Tom. He was the obvious choice of course, this being his home, but I was thrown by the quantity of words being said.

‘Well, what do you mean?’ says a woman’s voice. This one I don’t recognise. Definitely not Abs. The kitchen door bangs suddenly and I jump as a woman, presumably the owner of the voice, marches through it and towards me. She stares at me oddly and I realise that I am standing completely stationary with one shoe on and the other one in my hand, half bent over. I drop the shoe quickly and lift my other foot to start undoing the laces.

‘Don’t leave it like that,’ Tom says, coming through the door. ‘Sally, for God’s sake.’ He reaches an arm towards the woman, then sees me and drops it abruptly back to his side. His alabaster face has a very faint pinkish tinge to it, and three or four of his hairs have become displaced. The man’s a mess. ‘Daisy,’ he says, glancing awkwardly at me, then looking away. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

I’m not used to talking to him directly and I’m not sure how to go about it. In the end I just smile and say, ‘Oh.’

‘I’ll see you soon, Tom,’ Sally says, then pulls the front door open and marches at top speed through it. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she says to the street, presumably meaning me, then disappears and slams the door.

In the ensuing silence, Tom and I stare at each other for a second or two. His face looks different somehow and it takes me a moment to realise what it is. His eyebrows have moved. They’re fractionally closer together than usual, which changes his entire appearance. He looks … pained. Distraught, almost. He stares at me with those eyebrows – there’s even a faint crease in the skin between them – and he looks like he’s pleading with me.

‘Daisy,’ he says, his voice one semitone higher than normal, unrecognisable from his usual monotone. It’s practically cracking with emotion.

‘Erm, I gotta have a shower,’ I say quickly, before he has a chance to ask me not to tell Abby what I heard. I limp past him on one trainer towards the bathroom, trying not to add it up, trying not to put the two twos together. But each time I think about it, no matter how hard I try not to, I just keep on coming up with four.