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She cocks her head. ‘So what are you sorry for?’
I shake my head and shrug. ‘You know. All this.’ I move my hand generally in the direction of the world. ‘I’m so hopeless.’
A small beam of sunshine breaks through the thunder clouds on Abby’s face, and she moves over to where I’m huddled. ‘No, Daze, you’re not hopeless. You’re depressed, disorganised, lost, confused and … well, a bit malodorous.’ She sits down on the sofa by my feet, picks them both up by the socks and lays them gently in her own lap. ‘But you’re not hopeless. You have hope. We always have hope, don’t we?’ She rubs my shin affectionately. ‘And you’ve got me. I mean seriously, what more could you possibly need?’
Ah, she really is great. I make my face smile because I know it’s what she’s hoping to see, but I’m still not feeling the smile brewing up from inside me. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get that back. ‘Abby, you’re the best friend a girl in this mess could possibly want. Or be lucky enough to have. I don’t deserve you.’
‘You’re so right. Now get upstairs, get your teeth cleaned and get some trainers on. We are going for that walk. You’ve got ten minutes.’
I haven’t always been one of life’s smelly, shambling drop-outs. As I trudge reluctantly upstairs, my knuckles practically dragging on the carpet, one of the framed photos on the wall catches my eye, and for a moment the image there expands and brightens and fills every molecule of my mind and all the spaces in between. It’s me and my sister, Naomi, shoulder to shoulder, laughing hysterically at my graduation party. I can almost hear us, screaming drunkenly, the sounds of chatter and music from the party loud in the background, a crowd of friends and family mingling, enjoying themselves, having a fantastic night. Our heads are tilted towards each other, foreheads almost touching. I must have been twenty-one, Naomi about twenty-three, and we had our whole lives ahead of us, with nothing but fun, success and joy to look forward to. Abruptly the image greys out and shrinks back, the party noises fade away, and once again I am left floundering in silent desolation, the contrast of me then and me now almost knocking me to the floor.
It takes a bit longer than ten minutes for me to get ready. More like forty in the end, mostly because I didn’t have any clean clothes. Or partly because of that, anyway. It was an issue for a while. But also I was moving pretty slowly because I’m so not motivated to get myself ready for a walk, or a drive, or a skip – or any kind of interaction with the outside.
‘Come on, Daisy!’ Abby shouts up from the hallway. I pretend I can’t hear, and continue listlessly kicking the piles of clothes heaped around my bedroom floor. Eventually I manage to disinter a reasonably clean yellow tee shirt with a big round smiley on the front and match it with some old tracksuit bottoms that were screwed up on the floor of my wardrobe. They’ve got a couple of lilac paint splashes on them. Probably from when I was painting in here, all those months ago.
‘Beckham’s arse, Daisy, what the hell are you doing up there?’
Oop. Right. ‘OK, OK, I’m coming now.’
When I come back down the stairs, Abs is standing in my hallway holding out a pair of old trainers she’s unearthed from the hall cupboard. She’s holding them out to me with both hands and with the light behind her she reminds me so powerfully of my mum, impatiently urging me to get my shoes on when I was about five, that it takes my breath away. Then she moves and her face comes back into the light. I carry on slowly down the stairs.
‘Here you go,’ she says, thrusting the shoes at me. ‘Get them on.’
The trainers don’t look familiar at all. They’re white with a very nice metallic lilac stripe down the side, and close up it’s obvious that they’re not an old pair that Abby has unearthed. They look brand new. I must say it’s a relief to see that, although I’m currently failing at life, I’ve still had the presence of mind at some point to go out and buy myself a pair of good trainers. I’m picturing myself, making a mental list of what I needed in town: bread, milk, Jaffa Cakes, nice trainers, toilet roll, soap. Odd that I don’t remember doing it, but it wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve forgotten doing. Or forgotten to do. Or just plain forgotten. I take the trainers and sit on the bottom stair to put them on. Apparently I have very good taste in trainers. They’re incredibly light and spongy, and so comfortable that when I stand up I feel like I’ve forgotten to put anything on my feet. I glance down quickly but no, there they are, gleaming away at the bottom of my legs.
Abby is peering at me a bit oddly, her eyebrows lifted expectantly. It makes me think I’ve forgotten something else, so I check discreetly from my neck down, but it seems every item of clothing is in place. ‘I’m ready,’ I say, just in case she’s thinking I’m about to go and get some leg warmers on.
‘Don’t you want to, I don’t know, put some make-up on, or something?’ She peers at me from her flawless face and Barbie eyes.
‘Oh.’ I think about that for a moment. She’s obviously worried that I might scare children and old people as I tramp round the neighbourhood, arms swinging, in my baggy, paint-spattered outfit, glowing trainers and pasty face. I shrug. ‘Nah.’
‘Ohhh-kaaay.’ She opens the front door and the whiteness of the outside makes me blink rapidly. Good job I didn’t bother to get all mascara-ed up. ‘Let’s do this,’ she says, in an exaggeratedly dramatic American accent, then ushers me outside like a primary school teacher.
As we walk up the path to the pavement, I accidentally catch a glimpse of the ‘For Sale’ sign that’s still stuck in the front lawn, and quickly avert my eyes. Doesn’t matter how hard I try not to see it, it still punches me in the face every time I walk past. Maybe it’s because it’s bright blue, white and yellow and the size of Mum’s dining table. And now there’s red on it too, of course, with the arrival of the little ‘Sold’ sign that has been slapped on at what no doubt someone thought was a jaunty angle over the original wording. I catch sight of Abby glancing at it, then looking at me, but I’m making no comment. She knows what’s what already.
After we’ve been walking for about seventy-five seconds, we’ve completely filled each other in on what we’ve been doing over the weekend. That is, Abs has told me about the club she was in last night and the sleazy fifty-year-old guy who was there rocking his corduroy trousers and bushy sideburns. Why, I wonder, does brown corduroy appeal only to those over fifty? On second thoughts, why does it appeal to anyone at all, ever? It must be the single most drab, unattractive substance known to man.
She’s glancing at me repeatedly. I mean, more frequently than someone just out for a stroll with someone. It’s as if she’s worried I’m going to spontaneously combust in a minute. ‘What is it?’ I say eventually, after discreetly patting myself down.
‘Well, aren’t you even going to ask about the trainers?’
I glance down at the glowing trainers. ‘Um, yeah,’ I say, nodding vaguely, ‘I was kind of thinking about them. I didn’t even know I had any like these.’
‘No, you haven’t. They’re mine.’
I nod. That explains it then. It did seem a bit weird that I’m pretty much unable to function on any level except the most basic – foraging for chocolate cake, keeping myself sheltered, selecting DVDs – but still managing to buy trainers. ‘Right. I thought it was odd that I’d bought them.’
‘Odd? When you haven’t been out of the house for more than a few minutes for weeks?’
‘Yeah. Exactly.’
‘Daze, how could you have thought they were yours, when you have no memory of buying them?’
‘Um, yeah, that is odd too. I suppose I thought I’d just forgotten buying them.’
Her eyes widen further. ‘Oh dear,’ she says, in exactly the same way as Mrs Matthews did, when I was eight and had a childish accident in the toy cupboard.
‘What does that mean?’
She stops walking, turns to face me and takes both my arms. ‘Daze, come on. You’re in a state. No, don’t shrug, we both know it’s true and we both also know that it does matter, even though you’re trying to convince yourself that it doesn’t. I’m worried about you. Seriously, I am.’
‘Ah, Abs. You don’t need to. I’m fine.’
She nods, exaggeratedly. ‘Oh, yeah, sure you are. Spending days on the sofa? Living on Jaffa Cakes? This whole “trainer” thing, for God’s sake?’
‘The orangey bit makes one of my five a day.’
Her chest jerks with a tiny laugh. ‘No, Daze, it doesn’t. You …’ She stops and shakes her head. ‘You’re … You’re killing yourself.’
‘Oh what crap.’
‘All right, maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration. But if you carry on like this, you will get rickets. Or scurvy.’ She pauses. ‘Or you know, zits. At the very least.’
I’m smiling again, making my lips curve up. ‘Zits are the least of my worries, Abs.’
‘I know that, but you need to start somewhere. Your appearance seems like a good place. I’ve been talking to Suzanne on Facebook, and when I told her what’s been going on, she was as worried as I am. And she’s come up with a really good idea. She suggested that …’
Wow, Suzanne Allen. I haven’t heard from her for a while. Suze and I used to work together, years ago when I first left school. It was some kind of terrible call centre, selling pet and home insurance. We had to make disastrous phone call after disastrous phone call, being roundly abused and insulted by virtually everyone. Hard to imagine really how we managed to forge any kind of friendship, as there was absolutely no conversation permitted during call hours. Or tea breaks. Even toilet breaks were closely monitored.
‘… so I’ve signed us up. What do you think?’
Abby looks excited. She’s grinning at me with her whole face, waiting for me to react to something she’s just said. Quickly I cast my mind back a few seconds and try to re-hear whatever it was. Oh, there’s a lovely thick band of daffodils all the way along the grass verge at the side of the road, waving gently in the breeze, their little yellow bells knocking together. Of course, it’s April already. I keep forgetting.
‘Daze?’
‘Yeah, sorry, Abs, I was just thinking about …’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t matter. Can you just say it again, please?’
She stares at me a moment, lips pressed together. Then she says something that completely changes my life. ‘Daze,’ she says, grinning in spite of herself, ‘I’ve signed us up to do a MoonWalk.’
TWO (#ulink_07d40165-6a47-5dc2-a0f5-249337886913)
Daisy Mack
is feeling a little perturbed. Is this a good sign?
Lou Stephens Depends what it’s about!
Jenny Martin Can perturbation ever be good?
Suzanne Allen Yes, that is definitely good. Perturb away – it will help.
Daisy Mack Great, thanks Suze. Now I know it’s good to be perturbed, I am less perturbed. Is this a paradox?
Georgia Ling Everything ok hun? xx
Five months ago, my mum died. It was her second outing into breast cancer, and unfortunately it didn’t go as well as the first. But isn’t that always the way with sequels – never as good as the original, are they? Look at Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Still a great film, don’t get me wrong. Col and Hugh are still geeky sex gods, they still fight like inept girls and Bridge gets to snog both of them again. But … We’ve seen it before, haven’t we? We know she’s hopeless, and can’t stop smoking and wishes she was thinner. And as much as we love her, in the end we’d have preferred to watch the first film again. It had a much better ending.
I’m watching Love Actually in my silky dressing gown now. Second time today. I’m supposed to be cleaning. Better get on with it, I suppose.
Daisy Mack
Gloves, actually.
Suzanne Allen OK, I’m deciphering that to mean you’re cleaning.
Daisy Mack Wow, you’re good!
Suzanne Allen Elementary. It’s spring so they’re not woollen gloves. You don’t own a motorbike. You don’t like gardening. You don’t work with radioactive material or infectious diseases. Oh, and puppets scare you. Ergo, cleaning. Well done! X
Daisy Mack Mind = blown.
There, that’s that done. Abby’s coming round in about half an hour so I may have to finish the film off later. She wants to talk about the MoonWalk. When she told me she’d signed me up for that, I have to say I panicked.
‘Shit, Abby, you haven’t!’ I yelled. ‘I can’t do it! I failed science, remember? And I hate heights, and fast things. Remember Alton Towers? I nearly passed out on that Nemesis thing. And that’s only, like, a hundred feet off the ground. I can’t go ten million miles up, I’ll die! And look at me – I’m so unfit, you said so yourself. I’ll never get through the training programme …’
I stopped there because she was already laughing. I mean really, really laughing. She actually bent over and put her hands on her knees. Then she stood up, took a deep breath, looked at my face and started laughing all over again.
Turns out she didn’t actually mean a walk on the moon. Apparently they don’t offer that to members of the public. Well, how was I supposed to know?
‘It’s a night-time walk, Daze,’ she said, wiping her eyes.
‘Huh?’
‘It’s called the MoonWalk because it’s at night. It’s a twenty-six-mile walk round London, starting at midnight, for charity. Nothing to do with Michael Jackson, and we don’t have to walk backwards.’ Her face calmed at this point and her smile faded. ‘It’s for breast cancer.’
Which meant of course that I couldn’t say no. I don’t think Abs would have let me say no even if it had been for Homeless Llama relief, or something. Anyway, how hard can it be? It’s only walking.
Back on the sofa now, my instant messenger pops.
Abby Marcus All right you, I’m leaving now. Get off your computer and clean up a bit. This is important.
How did she know I was on my computer? I might have been doing the hoovering.
Abby Marcus Don’t try and convince yourself that you might not have got that message. I can see your name on my screen and it says you’re online. You’re always online. Get offline NOW.
Daisy Mack OK, I’m going …
She wants to talk to me about training today. Apparently she’s got a plan. No doubt it will involve a lot of walking. I’m thinking, the walk itself is just under two months away, on May 30th, so we should get a couple of good walks in a week or so beforehand. No need to go mad. I’ve been walking for years – piece of cake. I can do it almost without thinking now. I glance at the film. Hugh has just seen Billy Bob Thornton trying to kiss Nathalie. Ooh, he’s mad about that.
Abby Marcus Get offline, numpty!
I close my laptop and put it down on the sofa, then pause the film on Liam Neeson’s face. Abby’s right, I don’t really have time for this any more. Time is running out.
I have already picked up all the rubbish and dirty crockery from the living room floor, so it looks a lot better than when Abby arrived yesterday. And I’m dressed, in jeans and a clean-ish hoodie, so she won’t hassle me. Not that she judges me, I know she doesn’t. She’s been so fantastic since Mum died, I don’t know what I would have done without her. For the first couple of days I just lay on the sofa under a blanket and Abs stayed, rubbing my back, bringing me food and drink, stroking my head. Nagging, eventually. It’s what she does best, love her. Get out of bed, change your clothes, clean your teeth, all that. Of course, I didn’t really have the luxury of lying prostrate with grief for very long. Mum’s husband, Graham, my stepdad, ill with emphysema, still relied on me then to look after him, which Abby knew. He of course was grieving too and didn’t come out of his room for a week, so could have starved or shrivelled up to a dry old husk in there for all I knew. I was so consumed by my own wretchedness, I didn’t even think about him. I was unbelievably selfish, and Abby let me be. She took over the job of looking after Graham until I felt up to it again. And then two months ago, three months after Mum, Graham died too. As if he’d looked at living without her, given it a try, but didn’t like it. Nah, it’s not for me, he thought, and jacked it all in.
Oh, she’s here.
‘Well, this looks a lot better,’ she says when I let her in. She walks around the room like Mary Poppins, checking the floor for wrappers, looking between the chairs for tell-tale socks or plates. Then she gives a Poppins-esque nod. ‘Well done.’
‘Do I get a treat?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Right.’
‘OK. Sit down.’ I do. It’s like a kind of mind control thing she’s got. She says sit, I sit. She says clean up, I clean up. She says we’re walking twenty-six miles round London during the night, I’ll even do that. I am powerless against her penetrating stare and firmly set jaw. I think she can speak to snakes too. She’s rummaging through her bag now, and eventually pulls out a piece of folded-up paper, which she spreads out on her lap. ‘Daze, we have got our work cut out for us.’
I nod. ‘Right. Uh-huh. Yes. Sure. What do you mean?’
‘I mean the guidance says that to walk a marathon it takes at least twelve weeks’ training. We have seven. It’s going to be tough, but it’s do-able.’
Twelve weeks’ training! For walking? Who writes these guidance things? Some eighty-year-old granny with arthritic ankles? No, no, actually I bet it’s the trainer manufacturers. Of course. They’re onto a winner there. Put it out that walking twenty-six miles will require three months’ training, national panic ensues, trainer sales hit the roof. Classic herd mentality at play. They must think we’re such brainless idiots who can’t think for ourselves, while they rub their hands together and count their ill-gotten gains. They didn’t reckon on me though: I see straight through their wicked plans.
‘OK,’ I say, nodding.
Abs looks up from the sheet of paper on her lap and eyes me seriously. ‘But before we start training,’ she says ominously, ‘there’s something else we need to tackle.’ She raises her eyebrows, apparently waiting for me to fill in the missing blank. I don’t want to though. I’d quite like that particular blank to stay missing. I look away quickly before her eyes compel me to do her bidding, but I’m just a fraction of a second too late. ‘Daisy,’ she says, as if she’s trying to get me to own up to smashing something. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’
I do. She’s right. Of course. As if to reinforce the message – as if it needed reinforcing – I catch a brief glimpse of the ‘For Sale’ sign through the window, the small ‘Sold’ panel in its centre drawing the eye like a blood stain. The house is sold. I have to move out by Friday. It’s Monday.
‘Yes,’ I say quietly.
‘Yes,’ she agrees, more forcefully.
But that’s easy for her to say. It’s not her that’s got to do it. And it’s a complicated business. She doesn’t understand that you can’t simply pack all your belongings away and move out; there are things that need to be done first. I mean, I haven’t got any of the stuff I’ll need – cardboard boxes, marker pens, tape …
‘I’ve got a load of boxes, pens and tape in the car,’ she says helpfully.
‘Oh that’s helpful. Thanks.’
‘Right. Let’s do this.’ She slaps her hands on her thighs and stands up. ‘I’ll get the bits from the car, you get upstairs and start sorting out your stuff.’ She performs an elaborate comedy ‘I’m-about-to-dash-off’ move, swinging one arm and leg backwards across herself, holds it, then trudges off slowly.
I raise myself off the sofa, feeling as if there are suddenly a million tons of air pressing down on me. It makes moving around unimaginably difficult.
‘What the hell are you still doing standing there?’
Ah, she’s back already, staggering into the room under a giant stack of flat cardboard boxes. She’s peering at me round the side of them, and even though more than half her face is obscured by ‘Young’s Frozen Fish’, she still manages to look disapproving.
‘Get upstairs and start getting your clothes out.’
