Carry You

by Beth Thomas

  ‘Um, sorry, I think you’ve got, um, got more than, er, ten, yeah, ten items there,’ he nervously stammered out.

  I raised my eyebrows and he flinched. His name was Spencer, I remember that. I hadn’t had a good day so far – I’d had to take Mum to the hospital that morning for some reason, can’t remember what it was that day – and I think Spencer could tell in my eyebrows that things for him had suddenly taken a downward turn. ‘And?’ I said, not moving.

  A smile appeared on his face the way you sometimes catch a fleeting flash of sun reflected on someone’s glasses across the street. Then it disappeared. ‘Well, um, this is the ten items queue …’

  His voice tailed off as I started shaking my head. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said confidently. Actually I said it a lot more confidently than I really felt. I was fairly sure the sign said ‘Baskets Only’, but at this point I suddenly experienced a lurch of fear dropping in my belly. The queue behind me was starting to shift its weight from foot to foot and heft baskets of shopping around needlessly. I sensed that it wouldn’t be long before they were dropping their baguettes in favour of pitchforks and lanterns and driving me out of town. Mentally I picked up a cudgel, squared my shoulders and turned round slowly and threateningly to face the restless villagers. In actual fact I was hunching a bit while checking behind me nervously. ‘I think you’ll find,’ I cringed, ‘that this is the “Basket Only” queue.’

  Spencer gave the fleeting glimpse of teeth again, only this time with less conviction. ‘Noooo …’ he started, but then there was a rustling sound and a low, menacing voice behind me said,

  ‘Some time today.’

  The queue shuffled its feet in agreement and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My animal instincts were sensing approaching danger, and I felt trapped, like cornered prey. I glanced around me nervously, assessing my exit possibilities, but there wasn’t much choice. Walk slowly and with dignity, head high, towards the exit; or leg it? Oh but I really didn’t want to do that. Maybe I had another option. Maybe I could stand my ground, have the courage of my convictions, like Mum had always told me. ‘Have the courage of your convictions, Daisy Duck,’ she said. ‘Stand up for what you believe in, be strong, no matter what anyone else thinks.’ I know, it’s incredible isn’t it? Still calling me Daisy Duck well into my adulthood.

  ‘I will, Mum,’ I thought to myself fervently now, pressing my lips together. ‘I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Spencer.

  ‘Huh? Oh, no, nothing. Um …’

  I was stalling and he knew it. One of us was going to have to concede, and we were both starting to believe that it was going to be me.

  ‘You’ll have to … move your things,’ he said very quietly, avoiding eye contact at all costs. ‘You need to use the trolley tills.’

  I lowered my head towards him. He visibly flinched. ‘Spencer,’ I said, using my mum’s voice that was in my head, ‘you don’t honestly think it’s going to take less time for me to pack all these things back into this basket, than it would for you to run them quickly through the till, do you?’

  ‘Um,’ Spencer began helplessly, doing an ‘I-don’t-make-the-rules’ face, ‘actually …’

  ‘I’ll take half the items,’ the girl behind me – Abby, it turned out – piped up suddenly at this point. Spencer and I exchanged a glance, then turned in unison to look at her. She was dark haired – it was almost blue-black – and wearing a denim mini skirt, stripey footless tights and flip-flops. As we stared at her, she scooped roughly half of my things back down the conveyor towards her, then stuck the ‘Next customer please’ sign in the middle. ‘Pay me back later,’ she said to me, and winked. Actually winked, perfectly, without accidentally closing both eyes or screwing up her mouth or grimacing in some other gauche way. I thought that was so incredibly cool.

  ‘Christ, it was like a stand-off between the country’s two biggest jessies,’ she said in the car park a few minutes later. ‘Not so much which one of you was going to hold out the longest, more like a race to see who was going to cry first. I couldn’t stand to watch it continue for another second.’

  And we’ve been friends ever since.

  OK, so maybe it’s not a very good story. No actual violence and mayhem. No bloodshed. Not even a raised voice. But the potential was there. Simmering.

  Daisy Mack

  On my knees like Cinderella. Literally and figuratively.

  Georgia Ling OMG that’s a big clean lol! xoxo

  Nat ‘Wiggy’ Nicholson come and do mine after xx

  ‘Right,’ Abs says now, and levers herself back onto her feet. She puts her hands on her hips and raises her eyebrows. I know exactly what that means. It’s a gesture I’ve seen Abby do countless times in the last four years, usually when she’s trying to get me to do something I’m not one hundred percent keen on. Or focused on. One or the other. Basically it means ‘Come on, Daisy, sort yourself out, now is the time to face the thing you’ve got to do and there’s no point trying to argue with me because I won’t stand for any nonsense.’ Whenever I see her hands go to her hips, I get a resigned feeling, like Pavlov’s dog getting hungry when the bell rings. Or was it ringing the bell when it was hungry? No, that wasn’t it. That was probably rats, wasn’t it? Going round exciting mazes and over ramps to get a treat. I got lost in a maze once. Naomi told me to keep on turning left every time I came to a junction but it didn’t work. I went round and round in circles for over half an hour before Mum shouted to me over the fences to stop being such an idiot and walk towards her.

  ‘Daze,’ Abs says, using the particular tone of voice that goes with the gesture.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’ I push myself up and stand, ready to move on to the next dirty mark or pile of crap, but when I look round I see that there aren’t any more dirty marks, or piles of crap to be dealt with. While I’ve been listlessly rubbing away at the chocolate Hobnob/lasagne mark, Abs has done all the rest of the cleaning. Which means …

  ‘Time to go,’ she says softly.

  So. This is it. We take our cloths and the bowl of warm water solemnly back to the kitchen and dump everything in the sink. The kitchen looks amazing – all the sides are clear and wiped and the floor is spotless. I can’t remember the last time I saw it looking this good. Some time in the early part of last year, I expect. I’m walking around it slowly, running my hand along the sides, touching the knobs on the hob, stroking the dent on the fridge door where Mum threw a tin of custard powder at Graham one Christmas. This is the spot where I was standing when she told everyone about the cancer coming back. Over there on the windowsill was the plant I bought her for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago. I think it’s died now. Actually I have no idea where it is. One minute it was there, dropping brown leaves and generally shrivelling up; next minute it was gone. When was that? Must be at least a week ago. I can’t believe I let that plant die. I watched it, every day, curling up, needing my attention, crying out for help to relieve its suffering, and yet I did nothing. I didn’t even try. Maybe there was something I could have done. Maybe I could have saved it, if I’d only been a bit more … a bit more … careful.

  Inexplicably, I’m starting to cry, standing there in Mum’s kitchen, staring at the empty spot where a dying plant used to stand. It starts with an ache in my throat and heat in my eyes which quickly spills over into hot tears and choking cries, and before long I’m sobbing so hard I’m bent over, one hand pressed on the counter top, the other clutching my stomach, shaking, and little drops of salt water are splashing onto the tiled floor by my feet. On some level far removed from where I am I feel hands go around me and I’m vaguely aware of the warmth of a person nearby. We move together, jerking, through the kitchen, down the hallway and out of the front door, and then I look up and find that we are standing outside. I rub my face and see that Abs is there, her hand on the door, which is still open. She looks at me intently as she gently pulls the door closed. I heave in a breath. Is that it? Is that really it? All
the years of my life lived in this house, all the happy moments, all the sad ones, the laughter, the tears, over and done with, just like that? Ended by the closing of a door? It can’t be that final, can it? It can’t be so … complete?

  But Abby isn’t moving, and is still looking at me meaningfully. I raise my hand and drag it across my sniffly nose, and as I do I realise that I’m still holding the front door key. Abby’s eyes focus on that, and she raises her eyebrows again. I move the key from my palm to my fingertips and stare at it for a moment. I press my lips to it once. Then I step forward, open the letter box with my other hand, and drop the key inside.

  THREE

  Daisy Mack

  is making a multidimensional cosmological model using superstring theory, entanglement theory, and papier mache.

  Jenny Martin Wtf???

  Suzanne Allen Sounds like you have way too much time on your hands, my friend. I’m sure you must have something else you could be doing????

  Daisy Mack Suze, yes I have, but this is metasystems modelling, it can’t be done quickly.

  Georgia Ling Give me a call, hun? Xx

  I’m not really doing that. Failed science, remember? I’m on Abby’s sofa, under my duvet, watching Notting Hill on Abby’s DVD player. How cool is Hugh in this one? Not geeky at all. Supersmooth, even when he meets a superstar. Makes me fall in love with him all over again. And that makes me feel guilty about Colin, which means I’ll have to watch a couple of episodes of Pride and Prejudice afterwards. That’s OK, I’ve got loads of time before Abs or Tom get home from work.

  Tom is Abby’s lovely boyfriend. He’s some kind of regional manager for a brand of sportswear I think. I know it’s sportswear, and I know he’s quite high up, but that’s about all I do know. Oh, no, I also know that he feels it’s his duty, being in the sportswear line, to keep himself incredibly fit and well-toned; and I know he walks around the flat without a shirt on sometimes. But it’s OK. I’m so flabby, white and spotty at the moment that his being here, looking like that, doesn’t do anything to me. It’s a bit like what it would be like to be a little pebble looking up at a daffodil. Or a lump of mud looking at the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is not in a million years ever going to look back, so the lump of mud doesn’t pay much attention to the Taj Mahal either. At this point in its life, it’s not even looking at other lumps of mud to be honest, let alone stunning white marble Indian temples.

  When I first got here a week ago, with my cardboard boxes full of stuff and my blotchy tear-stained face, Tom was amazing. I mean, you know, in a Taj-Mahal-ish kind of way. He’s got that sort of face that makes you think of churches. I don’t mean literally churches. Not the actual building. That would be ridiculous, if he had a face like a church. What I mean is, his face makes me think about the pictures you see in churches. Those blokes with shiny light round their heads. Saints and holy people. And when we got to the flat and Abs opened the door, he came out into the hallway with his hands clasped, as if he was just about to deliver a blessing, or marry us, or something. He gave a sad smile to the air somewhere near my head, pressed his lips together, then helped us carry the boxes from the car and into the spare room. Then he made us both a hot chocolate with a generous splash of Baileys in it, and cleared off. He did give another sympathetic smile to the room I was in, and touch my shoulder, but he could have been touching a rack of tracksuit tops for all we both cared. Lovely guy, though. How many boyfriends would happily let their girlfriend’s slobby, depressive friend move into their spare room indefinitely? Abs is so lucky. They’re always kissing, or just touching each other’s hands or arms when they pass each other. He’s so affectionate and sensitive. It’s very moving.

  Ooh, this is the bit where Julia Roberts turns up at Hugh’s place looking for a haven. That’s where I would go if I could. Not that I’m not grateful to Abby and Tom for providing a roof over my head in my hour of need, but there’s no way Hugh would have dragged me reluctantly round a load of shops the day after moving in like Abs did. He would have doubtless brought me some croissants in bed, with orange juice and coffee, kissed my head really tenderly, then left me alone to wallow in my misery. Or made energetic love to me all afternoon. Either one would have been good. Frankly, all I wanted to do at that point was lie in bed under a duvet, with or without a naked Hugh, but Abby wasn’t having any of it.

  ‘Get up,’ she said, yanking the curtains back at something like five a.m. ‘I’ve made a plan.’

  I pulled the duvet up over my head. ‘Jesus, Abs,’ I whined. Yes, I know I was whiney, but I was dog-tired, I couldn’t help it. ‘It’s the middle of the night. You know I’m not sleeping well at the moment, seriously. I didn’t get off until gone two, and five or six hours’ sleep just isn’t enough. I can’t get up yet. Call me in a couple more hours.’

  ‘It’s midday.’

  I didn’t move for a second or two, then took hold of the edge of the duvet and dragged it slowly down, gradually exposing my entire pale face. ‘What?’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah, for someone who’s not sleeping well at the moment, you sure do sleep a lot.’

  I stared at her a moment, making the extremely rookie mistake of engaging in direct eye contact with her almost straight away. She raised her eyebrows and put her hands on her hips, and I felt that oh-so-familiar feeling of resignation.

  ‘Come on, Daze, you need to get up. We’ve got things to do.’

  I knew resistance was futile, but I gave it one more try anyway. She would not have respected me if I hadn’t. ‘Yes, I know I’ve got things to do. It starts with “s” and ends with “leep”. Or “ob”. Or maybe “igh”. All three of which require that I remain horizontal, right here.’

  ‘Oh no you don’t, young lady,’ she said, snatching the duvet off my cold miserable body, leaving me curled up in the foetal position, trembling. ‘Come on, get up.’ She strategically positioned herself two millimetres from my face. ‘We’re going shopping.’

  ‘Abby, I don’t want to go shopping. You know I don’t. There’s no point anyway. I’ve put all this weight on and I’m not buying anything until I’ve lost it all.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. Come on, get up, we’re going out like it or not. You’ve got half an hour.’

  I have no idea how it is that Abby manages to make me do things I absolutely do not want to do. When she starts talking, I have that feeling in my head, that absolute granite determination, that no matter what she says, I will not do it. I am in charge of me, not her; I can simply refuse. Like those people who go to presentation evenings for the free champagne, sniggering to each other about the poor saps who get taken in by it all; and then come away with two weeks a year in a flat in Beirut. They’re scratching their heads, thinking ‘How the fuck did that happen?’ No one else in my life has ever managed it with me. Not Mum; not Naomi; not even my dad, when I saw him (and, being less familiar with him, he was always more scary). Naomi once tried so hard to get me to do something – lend her my denim jacket for a date, I think – that she lost her temper and kicked a hole in her bedroom wall. But I didn’t relent. Actually, that just made me more determined. I didn’t need the jacket that night, wasn’t going out and never wore it much anyway. But if she thought she could get me to do what she wanted, just because she went red in the face and performed an impressive karate kick, she was wrong.

  I felt instantly sorry for her of course. As soon as she’d done it, she froze, clapped her hand to her mouth, then sank to the floor and started sobbing. I got down there on the floor with her and cuddled her for ten minutes until she’d calmed down. Didn’t loan her the jacket though.

  It took me just over an hour to get ready for Abby’s shopping trip, which is probably my personal best for extremely slow and reluctant preparation for an outing I have no interest in and don’t want to be a part of. Twenty minutes after that, we were walking across the car park in town, heading towards the main shopping precinct.

  ‘Trainers?’ I was saying, trailing a good four or five
feet behind her.

  ‘Yes.’ She turned her head to the side as she spoke to me, in recognition of the fact that I was behind her, but she refused to turn all the way round to face me. ‘You liked those trainers of mine, didn’t you? The ones you wore last week when we went out for that short walk?’

  I shrugged. She couldn’t see me. ‘Mnyer,’ I said – the audio equivalent of a shrug.

  ‘Good,’ she said decisively, interpreting – no doubt deliberately – my indeterminate sound as a positive. ‘You need some proper trainers for the MoonWalk, and you need them straight away so that you can train in them. Tom’s told me what to look for, and where to go, so it won’t take long.’

  ‘Oh.’ Insanely, I actually felt a bit disappointed. Then I realised I was insane, and cheered up.

  We found my perfect pair of trainers in the first sportswear shop we went in. Thank God. I had never been in a sportswear shop before then, and I felt about as comfortable in there as a flabby, spotty lamb in a slaughterhouse full of fit, attractive lambs. The salesman – Martin – made me get up on a treadmill right there in the middle of the shop, in front of absolutely everyone, then turned it on and made me walk on it while he filmed me. I felt like I was somehow starring in my very own porn film. No doubt the footage will find its way onto YouTube eventually. Truly horrific. I actually lost the ability to walk sensibly. I’m twenty-eight, for God’s sake, and have been able to walk competently on and off for the past twenty-six years; but when that rubber surface started to move, I was Bambi on ice. My feet went behind me before I had even worked out what was happening and my body stretched out until I was almost horizontal. ‘Move your feet, Daisy,’ Martin said helpfully, nodding to encourage me. ‘Try to walk normally.’ Abby clapped her hand to her mouth at this point, and said nothing.

  ‘How fast is this?’ I panted, desperately dragging my feet forwards in a pseudo-run as fast as I could to bring my body back upright.