Giant Days

by Non Pratt

Daisy pointed to where the two friends who actually knew her name were seated. “Susan’s the scruffy one in the checked shirt. She does Medicine. And there’s Esther?” She looked at Jonathan for some sign of recognition. Everyone knew Esther. She was hard to miss. “Esther de Groot? Usually wears black. Very pretty . . . ?”

  “Oh, her—the Vampire Princess! Goodness.” An unreadable look passed across Jonathan’s face before he turned to address the approaching barman. “All right, mate. Andrew from the Union said to leave some of these with you.”

  The barman looked at the posters he’d been handed, far from enthused. “I’ll put them up later.”

  “Andrew said I had to watch you do it now.”

  Daisy followed the conversation somewhat helplessly. She’d been there before Jonathan; couldn’t he at least let her order? But after a silent battle of wills, the man behind the bar sloped off with a grudging “Fine . . .” toward the back wall.

  “You and Sophie—”

  “Susan.”

  “—and Gothy the Hottie. What on Earth do you have in common with people like that?” Jonathan’s voice was loud, and Daisy hoped they were far enough away that “Sophie” and “Gothy the Hottie” couldn’t hear.

  “Umm . . . we all live on the same corridor?” Which sounded rather feeble.

  “Ha!” When Jonathan clapped Daisy on the back, her glasses slid down her nose. “See what I mean? You need to get out there, Pops. I know!” He took a poster from the top of his remaining pile and bestowed it upon Daisy as if it were the Holy Grail.

  “Activities Fair?” Daisy read aloud with a frown. “Wasn’t that weeks ago?”

  “They had to move the date because the old venue had black mold and had to be quarantined. Come along and say hi—I’ll be there with the rugby lot.”

  The bartender returned and waved grudgingly at the posters he’d tacked up. “Satisfied?”

  “Perfect, my man. Right!” Jonathan turned back to Daisy. “Must get on. See you at the fair . . .”

  Once he was gone, Daisy folded the poster into quarters and handed it to the barman to put in the recycling. There was no need for her to “get out there” when she could stay in with Esther and Susan.

  “Who was that you were talking to?” Esther began her interrogation before Daisy had even set the drinks down. If it hadn’t been for Susan restraining her, she’d have barged up to the bar already.

  “Jonathan.”

  “And what were his intentions?”

  “To put up a poster advertising the Activities Fair.”

  But Esther waved this answer away. “I meant his intentions toward you.”

  “I don’t think he had any.” Sitting down next to her on the sofa, Daisy adjusted her cardigan, which had slid off Esther’s knees and exposed goose-bumped porcelain skin.

  “Oh. Well. Good. I didn’t like the cut of his jib.”

  “I’m surprised. Thought a basic model like that would have you wooed from fifty paces, Es,” Susan chipped in.

  Ignoring her (even though Esther did have a fondness for boys at the blander end of the spectrum), Esther continued, “Don’t trust anyone in a rugby shirt, Daisy. His sort view women as conquests, like pints to be downed, not savored. You’re too precious a vintage to waste on the likes of that.”

  Daisy smiled, her glasses steaming a little as she blew across the top of her hot chocolate. “I think I’m immune to whatever charm Jonathan possesses, but it’s very sweet of you to look out for me.”

  As Esther gave Daisy an affectionate little shoulder bump, Susan raised her glass as if in a toast.

  “Here’s to watching out for each other.” She took a sip and grinned. “We’re your family now, Daisy. No getting rid of us.”

  Before the words were even out, Esther met Susan’s gaze and watched her friend’s eyes widen in horror. What would have been a perfectly innocuous thing to say took on a different meaning when addressing someone who had been raised by her grandmother because her parents had died. As in: Daisy.

  “Well, make sure you watch out for me!” Esther said too loudly, trying to plaster over the moment with bluster and cheer and self-deprecation. “We all know I’m the liability here.”

  Susan let out an unnecessarily loud bark of fake laughter. “Our Esther—face so pretty, standards so low. I’ll drink to that.”

  And she tossed back her whisky so fast that she nearly choked. Which Esther considered fair retribution for being so rude about her taste in men.

  Disaster dodged, the three of them reverted to safe territory, discussing the other occupants of the bar, trying to guess which course they studied based solely on their clothing. The only one they agreed on was that the student dressed entirely in black except for a scarf, sipping an espresso, must be a Philosophy student. It helped that he was lounging back, making sure the cover of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was on display as he read.

  When Susan returned with the next round, the three of them decided they had enough change to spare for the jukebox, thereby putting an end to what appeared to be an endless rotation of Tom Jones songs.

  “So, what are we going for?” Susan asked, change in hand, peering into the bowels of the jukebox.

  “Ooh. That one.” Daisy pointed. “The artwork looks really pretty . . .”

  “Daisy!” Esther was horrified. “That’s not how you choose music!”

  “No, Daisy,” Susan muttered. “One must make a selection inversely proportional to the music’s appeal. Let me demonstrate . . . Look, some Metallica. That’s up your street, isn’t it, Esther?”

  Mortified, Esther hissed, “What? Those sellouts? How dare you.”

  “There’s some Deftones?”

  “I mean, the early stuff’s the best.”

  “Black Veil Brides?”

  “Mm.” Esther wrinkled her nose. “Getting a bit mainstream.”

  “Twenty One Pilots are alternative, aren’t they?”

  Esther’s involuntary gasp of horror was so forceful, she nearly asphyxiated. As she coughed and spluttered, Susan thumped her gleefully on the back.

  “See, Daisy, this one is a connoisseur of the darkest gift humanity has given us: music that is impossible to listen to.”

  Esther was used to people mocking her taste in music—after all, she’d had a lifetime (well, six years) of being misunderstood. The way of the goth was a dark and lonely path, one only trodden by those driven from a heartless society, united by a love of obscure music, the allure of the grave, and the eternal problem of dealing with deodorant stains on black clothes. Esther didn’t need her new friends to love the same things she did. Nevertheless, Susan’s mockery was a puff of air extinguishing the little candle of hope that burned in Esther’s blackened heart.

  Buying three tickets to see Necrotizing Swamp next term had been a bit optimistic.

  Halfway through her second drink, Susan sensed a shift in the atmosphere. Her back was to the door, but the identity of who’d entered was written in glee across Esther’s celestial visage and punctuated by an alarmed flare of Daisy’s nostrils.

  “Ed Gemmell’s here!” Esther waved far too enthusiastically.

  It seemed Ed Gemmell had returned from the library with more than reading material. He had returned with a friend. Just like that, his inexplicable shiftiness toward Susan became entirely explicable.

  Susan stood up. “Time to go.” No explanation, no empty excuse. Susan made straight for the door as if there was nothing in her path.

  “Good day, Sus—”

  She flashed a hand up, cutting the platitude short.

  The point of coming to Sheffield had been to leave the past where it belonged—in Northampton. It wasn’t supposed to follow her 134 miles up the M1 and transfer into the same university.

  There were too many people who’d crossed Susan for her to whisper their names before sleep, like a prayer, but each one was carved into her heart and pumped through her body like blood. A towering cowboy who’d once stood in front of her for t
he entire set of a bluegrass cover band. The girl from preschool who’d eaten the banana onto which Susan’s mum had lovingly drawn a princess riding a dragon and clearly labeled with an arrow that said Susie P. Her first boss, who had made the mistake of thinking that to be outside the law was to be above it . . .

  Enemies were easy to accrue, but Susan had only ever had one nemesis, and his name was McGraw. Ed Gemmell’s new best friend.

  McGraw’s presence had a very different effect on Esther. Ever since this mahogany-voiced vision of mustachioed manliness had transferred to Sheffield a couple of weeks into term, Susan had refused to reveal exactly how it was the two of them knew each other. Despite begging, bribing, pleading, and prompting, Esther had gleaned nothing more from Susan than a hint at shared “history.”

  While Esther was an open book, Susan was a locked vault, and here was the handsome, laconic key.

  “Hi, well, fancy seeing you here!” Ed Gemmell popped up in Esther’s vision with a double-handed wave hello.

  “Actually, we’re really sorry, but we’re leaving.” Daisy lifted Esther up off the sofa, completely disregarding the fact that Esther had yet to make significant progress with her mulled cider or her interrogation of McGraw. “Susan’s right. Esther really needs to change out of her pajamas.”

  “What? Susan never—” But Esther could only impart a somewhat apologetic wave in Ed Gemmell’s direction before Daisy frog-marched her away.

  “Was it something I said?” Ed Gemmell asked, looking down at the table of half-finished drinks.

  McGraw clamped a hand onto his friend’s shoulder. “I suspect it’s something you brought with you to the bar.”

  After the briefest of pauses, Ed Gemmell looked up for confirmation. “You’re talking about you and not making some oblique reference to extreme body odor or an overabundance of social insecurities. Right?”

  “Two out of three. You smell lovely, Ed.”

  Susan’s rage-fueled steps had propelled her almost to J-block by the time the others caught up.

  Within three seconds, Esther said, “Soooooo . . . you and McGraw?”

  “Nope.” Susan wasn’t in the mood.

  “Fine. If you’re not going to tell us, then we’ll have to draw our own conclusions, won’t we, Daisy?”

  “We will?”

  There was nothing that could stem the tide, and Esther dogged Susan’s every step with wild and inaccurate theories about the nature of Susan’s history with McGraw. Trudging up the stairs, Susan was bombarded with speculation. They were ex-lovers whose passion had been torn asunder by a misunderstanding. Their families were engaged in a blood feud so ancient, none knew where or when it had taken root. McGraw was a hapless, lovelorn sap who’d followed his indifferent object of affection all the way to higher education. He was a robot sent from the future . . .

  And on. And on.

  But the harder Esther pushed, the tighter Susan’s lips drew. Her mouth had narrowed to a short, tense, little line by the time they reached the fourth-floor fire doors, which were adorned with a certificate declaring the corridor safe.

  “This is me.” Susan pushed open the door to number 13, walked inside, and locked it behind her before her friends could follow. She couldn’t take any more. Not now. Not ever. Past and present were two different countries, and she’d burned her metaphorical passport the second she’d set foot on the train.

  Homeschooling had prepared Daisy for a lot of things. She knew everyone in her village by name and could do all kinds of things that the national curriculum never thought to address, such as tend a vegetable patch, change the oil in a car, and reprogram a broken Freeview box. But being practical in these areas didn’t help when it came to solving people problems. You didn’t need to talk to vegetables, cars, and Freeview boxes to work out what was wrong with them. (Although Daisy often did.)

  There were some things that only mass exposure to one’s peers could prepare you for, and the vagaries of friendship were among them.

  “Do you think Susan’s all right?” she asked Esther.

  “No. I think she’s pathologically secretive.” Esther sighed. “And it’s killing me.”

  Daisy folded Esther into a gentle hug. It must be hard for someone who wore her giant, generous heart on her sleeve to understand why anyone would want to keep her own counsel.

  “People are different,” Daisy said.

  “But we’re her friends. She should tell us everything. All in one go. Like transferring all your photos to a new phone.”

  Daisy hugged Esther a bit more, not quite sure what to make of this metaphor, since all her photos were stored in the cloud.

  “Come on, let’s go see how bad the kitchen is . . .”

  The kitchen at the end of their corridor was small but functional. Or it had been until Esther had decided to cook everyone lunch, only to fall down a BuzzFeed quiz hole, lured in by a quiz that promised to tell her which Romantic poet she should date, based on her favorite cooking utensil. By the time she’d ascertained the answer to this (Byron, obviously) and what type of pasta/deep-sea creature/interstellar vessel/Sam Raimi film she was, the potatoes she’d put in the microwave had burst into flames and tried to take the kitchen with them.

  Despite the faint, lingering odor of scorched earth and hot metal, the kitchen seemed relatively unscathed. Whiteboard, breakfast bar, oven, and sink looked no different, and apart from some smoke stains, the cabinets had survived intact.

  There was, however, a note on the fridge, signed by the site manager.

  All foodstuffs have been removed to avoid the risk of contamination.

  Esther opened the fridge and took out another note.

  (Yes. Even the stuff from inside the fridge.)

  It was hard to see how the smoke was supposed to have contaminated any of the food inside a sealed metal box or, indeed, any of the unopened tins that had been in the cupboard above the toaster. Well, at least, where the toaster had been, because there was a note there, too.

  All electric appliances have been removed for testing. (Except the fridge. Fine, be pedantic.)

  A very un-Daisy-like growl issued from her throat as she pictured the site manager sitting in his office, boiling endless cups of tea and toasting the crumpets she’d been planning on having as an afternoon treat.

  “Come on . . .” Esther gave her a rallying hug. “Let’s work out what we need and treat ourselves to ordering it online—that’ll cheer you up.”

  Cocooned in her duvet, Susan stared long and hard into the eye sockets of the skeleton propped drunkenly on the floor next to her.

  She could hear the others in Daisy’s room next door. The walls in J-block were thin, and Esther was loud. Really, Susan should be in there ordering the online shopping with them, insisting on food that could be eaten straight from the package to avoid future calamity and dissuading Daisy from paying for everything because she felt responsible for what had happened just because she’d let Esther cook.

  “I need a cigarette,” Susan told the skeleton.

  There was a mostly empty pack in her hand and a mostly full ashtray on her pillow. Paying scant regard to the risk, Susan lit up and bathed her lungs in blissful death.

  The skeleton watched her through tendrils of smoke.

  “Stop judging me.”

  You’re only judging yourself.

  “Susan Ptolemy judges no man.”

  That is a woeful lie. Besides, you’re a woman.

  Susan scowled. “Sod off.”

  They stared at each other a while, the cigarette burning lower as ash dropped onto the pillowcase.

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  Fine. See if I care.

  “It’s none of your beeswax.”

  You’ve made your point.

  “So stop looking at me like that.”

  I have no eyeballs. I’m not looking at anything.

  “Am I supposed to be impressed by such arrant pedantry?”

  Susan, I’m a skeleton onto whi
ch you are projecting your own internal dilemma. Any pedantry is your own.

  Susan twitched her eyebrows in concession. It was probably time for her to get up before this got any more Lord of the Flies.

  The question was, how insatiable was Esther’s need to pry? Before McGraw arrived, there had been no need to worry. But now, if Susan remained silent, there was another source to whom her friends could turn. A source that Susan needed to shut down.

  Susan flexed her fingers before curling them into a fist and rapping twice on the door. At the sound of footsteps beyond, Susan took a step back from the threshold, crossed her arms, and adopted the look that had forced confessions from criminals before they’d even contemplated the crime.

  The lock snicked, and the door opened, the hinges making a barely audible squeak of protest. There, stooping slightly as if too languorous to hold his own body weight, was her nemesis in all his mustachioed glory. Susan forced herself to meet his eyes. A dark, muddy green to match his sweater.

  The scent of sawdust wafted gently into the hall.

  “Susan.” McGraw opened the door a little wider, and she caught sight of a workbench in the middle of his room, wooden planks of various lengths propped up against his bed. “Would you like to—”

  “None of that,” Susan growled, and McGraw looked a little taken aback. “I’m here to talk terms.”

  She produced a sheaf of papers from her back pocket. After a brief hesitation, McGraw accepted it.

  “Terms of conduct agreed between the undersigned and Susan Ptolemy . . . What, no middle name?” The look McGraw swung her was tinged with amusement. A challenge.

  Without hesitation, Susan snatched back the paper, scrawled a barely legible addendum, and handed it back.

  “Such a pretty name, Xanthipe . . .” McGraw murmured, reading on.

  1) J-block, Catterick Hall, is considered out of bounds to the undersigned at all times.

  2) Information relating to all events outside the space and time of university is to be revealed on a strictly need-to-know basis to no more than two personal friends accrued in the last month. Names to be cited below. Any transgression of this clause will be considered “gossip” and will be dealt with accordingly.