Carry You

by Beth Thomas

  Ah, there’s a woman standing on the driveway of the house with the lovely lawn. Is she tending it? I’d love to know how she gets her edges so crisp. I turn the music off but leave the earphones in, as a kind of disguise. It’s a great way to look like you’re deaf to your surroundings, while straining every nerve to hear what’s going on, just in case something interesting happens. Also it tends to stop weird strangers from talking to you. Having said that, wearing earphones has on at least one occasion actually encouraged one of the weirdos out there to approach me. It was while I was walking along the canal bank a couple of days ago, and there was no one else around. This particular weirdo was shirtless and carrying a lager can in one hand, two factors that immediately made me feel apprehensive. I dropped my gaze and moved quickly to the extreme edge of the path, employing my standard tactic for avoiding any kind of contact with weirdos: the old classic ‘if I don’t see them, they can’t see me’ manoeuvre. In my peripheral vision I could see that he was lurching towards me, looking directly at me, and that his mouth was moving. He was clearly slurring something to me. There was absolutely no way I wanted to engage in any kind of interaction with this grinning freak, so it was crucial to make not the slightest eye contact, even accidentally, and to maintain the stance of being completely oblivious to his presence in front of me by shunning him in every way possible.

  ‘Pardon?’ I said politely, stopping and taking one earphone out of my ear. Oh damn, shit, bugger and balls! My good manners, bred into me relentlessly by my mum, had kicked in automatically – testament to her top notch parenting. Thanks to her, I was completely unable to ignore another human being when he was clearly addressing me, even though he was half naked and wholly drunk – exactly the sort of stranger Mum would have wanted me to avoid at all costs. Great. Now I had engaged him in conversation. Thanks, Mum.

  ‘I said, can I press my cheek against yours and listen to your music with you?’ he repeated, coming even nearer and smiling still more broadly. He swigged from his can enthusiastically. For one alarming moment I thought he was going to embrace me.

  ‘Um, no,’ I said, stopping myself at the last minute from adding ‘thanks’. I don’t have to be polite to this one, I kept telling myself. You can ignore him, just get away from him as quickly as possible. I resumed walking and plugged my earphone back in as I did so. But not before I heard him call after me, ‘Will you have an affair with me?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m all set,’ I called back, then kicked myself again for responding. What was the matter with me? Why couldn’t I just be rude?

  ‘Good manners at all times,’ Mum’s voice said in my head. ‘Remember, girls, it’s what sets us apart from the ill-mannered.’

  Yes, well, my involuntary good manners could end up being my undoing one day.

  Abs is waiting in the kitchen when I get home, kettle boiled and two mugs on the side with tea bags in them.

  ‘Thank God,’ she says, coming towards me. ‘You’ve been gone ages. I’m gasping for a cuppa. Where’s the milk?’ I say nothing. She jerks her head forward and raises her eyebrows. ‘Daze?’ She grabs my rucksack and pulls it off my shoulders. ‘You did get milk, didn’t you?’ Still I say nothing. She’s rummaging through the bag now and pulls out the carrier bag with the Jaffa Cakes in it. It’s clearly far too light and cardboardy to contain a large carton of milk. Or a small one. She opens it anyway and peers inside, then looks up at me accusingly. ‘You didn’t get any, did you? Oh for fuck’s sake, Daisy.’ She dumps the carrier bag on the counter, snatches up her handbag and marches to the hallway.

  ‘Abs …’

  ‘Save it. I’ll get it myself.’

  So she goes and gets the milk, while I make myself comfy on the sofa once more.

  Daisy Mack

  On the sofa, feet up, relaxing after walking 500 miles. And soon I’ll have tea to dunk the Jaffa Cakes in. Couldn’t ask for much more.

  Sarah White Wow, youre so lucky, wish I could, I gotta take mum shopping, gonna be such a joy lol xxx

  Suzanne Allen I thought you’d finished doing the whole tea and Jaffa Cake adventure by now Daisy???

  Georgia Ling PJ day for me to lol xxx

  Sarah White omg daisy I’m sooooo sorry, didn’t mean that to be so insensitive, I’m such a dick just ignore me xxxxxx.

  When Abs comes back fifteen minutes later she bustles around in the kitchen for a few minutes then comes through to the living room with the two mugs of tea. She hands one to me, hesitates by the sofa for a second, looking at me, then moves to one of the arm-chairs and sits down. It’s totally obvious she’s got something to say to me, almost definitely something bad, but apparently I am going to have to coax my reprimand out of her. It’s almost overwhelmingly tempting not to bother.

  ‘Nice tea,’ I say casually, by way of an opener.

  ‘Mmm,’ she says, giving me nothing. She’s produced a magazine from somewhere and is leafing through it lethargically.

  ‘Sorry about the milk,’ I attempt, fairly confident that this is why she’s annoyed with me and that it will prompt the looming lecture.

  She shrugs. ‘Forget it,’ she says without looking up. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  Hm. Now I’m stumped. Didn’t think I’d have to work this hard for a telling off. Right, I’ve got two choices here. I can give up, offer to make dinner, watch a bit of telly and get an early night; or I can ask her outright what’s bothering her. One of these two options will give me a peaceful and relaxed evening over a nice meal; one of them will probably result in an argument, but in doing so will get to the bottom of Abby’s mood and hopefully make amends for whatever I’ve done wrong and resolve it once and for all.

  ‘Want me to make dinner tonight?’ I venture.

  She shakes her head. ‘Nah, it’s OK. Tom’s getting Chinese.’

  ‘Oh. Great.’ Damn. I sip my tea, knowing that I’ve got no choice now but to tackle option two. I put the mug down on the floor, look up at her and say, ‘Abs.’

  At this moment her pocket plays the opening bars of McFly’s ‘Star Girl’ and she slaps her hand to her hip and jumps to her feet. I think it means she’s got a text message. She pulls out her phone and reads the new message, a small frown flickering across her face.

  ‘Right,’ she says, still staring at her phone. ‘Apparently he’s not getting the Chinese now.’

  ‘Oh. Why not?’

  She shrugs and drops her phone carelessly onto the sofa. ‘Who knows? Or cares. Come on, let’s sort something out ourselves.’

  So we go into the kitchen and make spaghetti bolognaise together. Tom doesn’t turn up and Abs doesn’t mention him again. The strange woman from the hallway two days ago flickers at the periphery of my memory, but then Abby asks me to open a tin of tomatoes and she’s gone.

  As the evening moves on, I realise that her strange mood is probably more to do with Tom’s non-appearance than anything else. Which I have to say is a bit of a relief for me as it means I’m off the hook lecture-wise. I didn’t realise how tense my shoulders were until they start to loosen up a bit. We eat our spag bol on trays in front of America’s Next Top Model, and I finally relax in the contented togetherness of good friends sharing a meal. There’s no taciturn Tom to bring us all down, and the sermon I was anticipating is obviously not now going to materialise. I beam over at Abs affectionately as she drops her fork onto her empty plate. What a wonderful, generous and sweet friend she really is.

  ‘Stop gawping and get on with your food,’ she says. ‘You know we’ve only got about a month left before the MoonWalk?’

  ‘Bloody hell, I’d better eat up.’ I bend low over the plate and spade quantities of food rapidly into my mouth repeatedly. Abs rolls her eyes. I chew and swallow exaggeratedly quickly before loading my fork up again, ready to go. ‘Anyway, it’s at least two months, Abs. Honestly, you’re panicking over nothing.’

  She leans forward and fixes me with her voodoo stare. My fork freezes mid-air between plate and mouth, but I am powerless to
do anything. My mouth is open, waiting to receive the food, but I can’t even close it to preserve a milligram of dignity. It’s like looking at Medusa. Except, of course, Abs really has got the most gorgeous hair. Very thick and lustrous, and at the moment a beautiful shiny mink colour. I think this might actually be her natural shade, but I could be wrong – I haven’t known her long enough.

  ‘One,’ she says, in a voice that reminds me of cudgels with bits of broken glass sticking out of them, ‘I am not panicking. This is not me panicking, Daisy, believe me. If I was panicking, you would most definitely not be relaxing comfortably on the sofa in front of a giant plate of pasta, watching some trashy crap on my telly.’

  ‘Wh—?’ is all I manage to say with locked jaw muscles. My mouth is filling with saliva in anticipation of the forkful of food that is tantalisingly close, but it might as well be a million miles away. I wish it was – I probably wouldn’t be able to smell it.

  ‘You would be out there right now, pounding the pavement. You would have been out there for four hours already. And you would have covered fifteen miles in that time. At least.’

  I manage to nod my head a millimetre, to demonstrate my understanding. ‘Uh-huh.’ That at least is easy to say with an open mouth.

  ‘But I’m not panicking, so here you are, stationary and peaceful.’ She stops and eyes me thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Thinking about it, maybe I should be panicking. I mean, your walk today, all nine miles of it, took you almost four hours.’

  ‘Uh …’ I interject, to remind her succinctly that I did have to detour into Sainsbury’s for the milk today, which must have added at least half an hour onto my time, if not more.

  ‘Fifteen minutes tops,’ she says, ‘and you didn’t even get the milk so it was a wasted journey anyway. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about now.’ She glances abruptly at her watch and stands up, collecting the empty plate. ‘OK, secondly,’ she says, turning to face me, ‘the walk is not two months away, it is exactly four weeks. It’s the second of May today, and the walk is the thirtieth. Four weeks, Daze. You’re doing well, but we need to intensify your training now. You’re going to have to step up the pace, otherwise we’ll still be trudging round London at eleven o’clock in the morning, hours after everyone else has finished.’

  ‘What?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘God, don’t you ever listen? The MoonWalk starts at midnight, remember? When I put our names forward, I said that we would complete it in between six and seven hours. That means we have to finish by seven a.m. At the latest.’

  At last she releases her mental hold on me and I am able to lower my fork back down to my plate. I don’t though. I drop it. It clatters noisily and spectacularly on the china, and bolognaise and spaghetti fly off it in little orange splatters on the plate, my lap, the sofa and, in one case, the floor. There’s a second’s hiatus as Abby and I stare at it all, then we both start talking at once.

  ‘What are you doing …?’

  ‘What were you thinking …?’

  ‘That’s so careless of you, look at the mess …’

  ‘That’s so rash of you, look at me …’

  ‘It’ll never come out …’

  ‘I’ll never be ready …’

  ‘So get practising then!’ she shouts finally, before storming out of the room dramatically and slamming the door. I have time to draw breath once before she bursts back in, damp cloth in hand, and drops to her knees, where she starts rubbing at the orange stain on the carpet and the sofa cushion next to me. For a few moments the only sounds in the room are the desperate friction noise of J-cloth against velour, and her own angry grunting. I watch her as she works, not really knowing what to do. I feel I should help in some way, but it’s a one-person job and she seems to have it covered. Eventually she sits back on her haunches and puts her hand on her forehead.

  ‘Shit,’ she says, which I do think is a bit of an over-reaction. The stains are gone, there’s no harm done. She’s got her eyes closed and is frowning really hard and shaking her head. ‘Oh shit it all, shit to everything, it’s all just complete shit.’

  ‘Oh Abs, I’m really sorry …’

  She opens her eyes. As she looks at me her frown smooths out and she gives me a weak smile. ‘Oh, no, it’s not you, Daisy, don’t worry. It’s fine.’

  ‘But I feel awful, Abs. I didn’t get the milk, I’ve dropped food everywhere, I’m not training hard enough …’

  ‘No, honestly, don’t worry. Seriously. It’s really and truly not you.’ She reaches up and gives my knee a little squeeze. ‘You’re great, Daze. I mean it. Sometimes I just don’t know what I would do without you.’

  She smiles weakly again, then gets up and goes back to the kitchen. And suddenly I wonder, somewhat belatedly, if she’s a bit more upset about Tom’s whereabouts than I first realised.

  EIGHT

  Daisy Mack

  has got plenty of other things to be getting on with. Like slumping. Why doesn’t anyone ever slump any more?

  Jadeyy-Jo Armitage Heyyy Daizy, jus got bak from LA! Met Robbie williams – fan-fuckin-tastic! Looool! Hows everytin wit yu?

  Daisy Mack Much the same as you actually Jade.

  Georgia Ling Love yu babes x

  The next day is Sunday but there’s no rest for me. Or for anyone, apparently. Abby bangs on my bedroom door at half past eight with the affectionate and time-honoured greeting ‘Get up, you lamo.’ An hour later we’re tramping along the misty canal bank together. That’s slumber to saunter in sixty minutes – my personal best. I’m really pleased.

  Abby doesn’t seem impressed, though. She’s unusually quiet for the first fifteen minutes of our walk, no doubt dwelling over something to do with the late arrival of her lover last night. I’m not even sure that he came home at all, but then again, I wasn’t lying awake in my bed all night waiting for him.

  ‘Do you know what time Tom came in last night?’ Abs says suddenly, not slowing her pace at all. I’m distinctly out of breath and my calf muscles feel like they’re about to explode in a ball of fire out of my skin, but I’m determined to keep up with her. Tom’s very fit, of course – he has to be, in his line of work (whatever it is) – and they’re always off doing something together. Playing squash, riding bikes, jogging, that kind of thing. Although come to think of it, I haven’t seen much of that since I’ve been living with them. Wonder why that is. But Abs is still pretty fit, so she’s confident she doesn’t need to do all that much training for this simple little walk we’re planning. Looking at her now, striding along like a furious teacher, I have to say I agree. She’s not panting, her face isn’t red, she hasn’t even broken into a sweat. Miss Chambers, my old art teacher, was more out of breath after a short march back to the staff room from the art block. Mind you, she may have been breathless with fear at the time; Stewart Dawson had just threatened her with a craft knife.

  Abs has turned her head and is looking at me expectantly. She’s waiting for an answer. I was hoping her question was rhetorical. ‘No,’ I gasp. Luckily I can get away with just the one syllable.

  ‘Two o’clock,’ she spits, flaring her nostrils. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear him. He made the most godawful noise coming in. Tripped over something, let the door slam, didn’t even bother to lower his voice.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘He was pissed, of course. Completely shit-faced. Fell into bed and breathed alcohol fumes all over me. Just as well there were no naked flames in the room – we would all have gone up.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ she says, finally noticing how near to death I am. I shake my head and stop at last, then bend over and put my hands on my thighs. ‘Oh, sorry, Daze,’ she says, walking over to me. ‘I was forgetting you’re not as fit as Tom.’

  ‘S’OK.’

  We stand together for a few moments while I claw my way back to life. Abs has her hands on her hips and is looking at me the way my granny used to look at her dog Tina while she waited fo
r her to ‘do her duty’. When I’m no longer in cardiac arrhythmia we set off again.

  ‘You really should be able to handle this pace a bit better than that by now,’ Abby says as we approach The Footbridge. My heart starts quivering again.

  ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ I pronounce, in a feeble, shaky voice.

  ‘What’s up?’ She turns to look at me full on and I can just about make out in my peripherals that her eyebrows have shot up. ‘Oh my God, no way! Daisy come on! You’re not still scared of this tiny little bridge, are you?’ I look up. I’m certain I can see the remains of a crashed aeroplane caught up among the bridge’s topmost cables. Abs folds her arms. ‘Seriously, how many times have you been over it these past few days?’

  I try to answer but there’s a mysterious boulder in my throat making all speech impossible. Abs isn’t really interested in the answer anyway. Any number more than one would mean I was being pathetic.

  ‘Morning, ladies,’ a voice says suddenly behind me and I jerk up to see a man jogging lightly towards us, turning as he reaches us to smile. As he makes eye contact with me I realise with a start that I recognise him – it’s the same runner that came past me on Thursday, in this exact same spot. When I was looking like a pale, pathetic, terrified, wobbly jellyfish, crossed with a sweaty hippo. A jell-ippo. Either way, I wasn’t at my best. God, what must he have thought of me? But Abs is with me today, and I’m not quite as terrified with her here as I was alone, which means I probably look quite different. Quick mental rundown of how I look now: pale, pathetic, terrified, wobbly jellyfish. Great. Well OK, maybe not pale. The pace Abby has had us at this morning has at least made me red in the face, so I’ve got some colour in my cheeks other than grey. It’s a start. With a conscious effort I stand up straighter and smile calmly, assuming the appearance of someone who is totally fine with walking across footbridges over motorways. I even take one hand off the railing and lean a bit. I look right at home. To see me there now, you would probably think I’ve just got back from a bridge holiday in Nepal, crossing gaping chasms on a rickety rope bridge every day like Indiana Jones. I’m strong, confident and relaxed. There’s absolutely no way he’ll recognise me.