Carry You

by Beth Thomas

  I shake my head. ‘No, no.’ My breath is coming in gasps. ‘How could they, Abby? Why would they?’ I’m sobbing but I also know the answer.

  ‘Ah Daisy, I know it’s disappointing. But money isn’t everything. You can still get a place with what you’ve got, and now that you’re earning …’ She stops because I’m shaking my head against her shoulder. ‘What?’

  I lift my head to look at her, and wipe my eyes. ‘It’s not the money, Abs. Yes, it would have been lovely to get it, to be able to buy somewhere, even if it was just a deposit on a place.’ I wipe my nose with my hand. ‘The money’s upsetting. Mostly because I know Mum wanted me to have it. You know, she was almost happy at the prospect of us both getting it. She knew it would set us both up. But it’s only money, isn’t it? Doing the ashes without me …’ I shake my head. ‘That’s something else altogether.’

  She nods slowly. ‘Ah. Yes. You’re right. That is incredibly hurtful. Spiteful, even.’

  ‘And irreversible. It can’t ever be undone. I’ll never get that back.’

  She rubs my arms. ‘But, Daze, why would you want to do it with them anyway? You’ve never liked Darren and Lee much, wouldn’t it be better to do it this way, on your own, rather than with …’

  ‘My sister? My own flesh and blood?’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t care a bit about those two. I don’t care if I never see either of them again. But Naomi … We grew up together. We should be close now, shouldn’t we? We should be looking out for each other more than we used to before. She’s the one other person in the world who knew our mum like I did, who loved her like I did. Who misses her like I do. Isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘But she’s let me down. She went with Darren and Lee to do the ashes ceremony and grieved for Graham and Mum with them instead of with me. How could she do that? How could she let me down like that? How could she not tell me?’

  Abby is shaking her head. ‘I don’t know …’ She pulls away from me and looks closely at my face. ‘She did say something about how you must have been expecting Graham to disinherit you, so I’m guessing everyone knows why he did … Could that be anything to do with it? Do you know why he did it?’

  I shake my head. ‘Don’t …’ I close my eyes. That’s the one part of this that I can’t bear for my wonderful friend to know about. I look at her. ‘I’m going to have a lie down, Abs. Do you mind? I’m shattered and I’ve got work in a few hours.’

  She shakes her head. ‘No, no, of course I don’t mind. Good idea. It’s probably what you need right now.’

  In my room the first thing I see is the bloody ‘TO DO’ list. I walk towards it and stare for a few moments at the frenzied crossings out from this morning. Hard to believe that was only a few hours ago. I can see by the repeated pen strikes and the crinkling, even slight tearing in some places, of the paper around them that when I made those marks I was energised, animated, active. Looking back now, I see that I was facing forward then, finally moving towards the future instead of away from the past. I wanted to get out, get the walk done and get back as quickly as I could so that I could cross some more things off the list, move my life on a bit more. And then I rushed out like a white rabbit and experienced the most mystical walk of my life. Everything took on a surreal, dreamlike quality, and nothing was as it had been. It was as if my head had opened up and life could get back in. I wasn’t scared of heights in that universe. I noticed things there. Flowers smelled good and Felix and I were friends. We even flirted a little and had lunch together. Or nearly did.

  But now I just want to lie down and stare at the ceiling. This ceiling is greatly in need of a really good stare. It hasn’t had one for a couple of weeks and it’s very overdue. So that’s what I do. I’m not going to sleep before my shift in the pub. I’m probably not going to sleep ever again. My world has not changed back to what it was before this morning. My world has been taken away all together.

  Daisy Mack

  Is the saying ‘what goes around comes around’ good or bad news?

  Suzanne Allen likes this

  Georgia Ling Aw hunni

  Nat ‘Wiggy’ Nicholson Its good Daze. Unless you got some skeletons in your cupboard lol

  Abby Marcus It’s always good. It means people get what they deserve. You gotta want that, right? They’ll get theirs one day. You mark my words.

  I stare at those words from my bed and know that Abby must never, ever understand that it’s me who has got what I deserve.

  I also resolve never to let her say ‘mark my words’ again.

  As I’m lying here, a large part of me is thinking about not going to work later. Or ever. I very much don’t want to move. I could just lie here for the rest of the evening, and the night, and all the days to come. That sounds lovely. Nothing to think about, nothing to do. Abby could bring me food to keep me going. Or not. Actually she probably won’t as I can’t see her supporting this new direction my life’s taking. But never mind, I’ll just exist here as long as I can. Descend slowly into blissful oblivion and not think about anything or anyone. Should only take about three or four days before dehydration gets the better of me. And being on a soft comfy bed is a hell of a lot better than in a canyon somewhere with my arm trapped under a heavy boulder. I’ll just drift off to sleep and simply not bother to wake up again. Sink right down deep into the dark that’s been pressing in at the periphery, give in to it finally after all these months of resisting. Let go at last and fall for eternity into the cool, soothing blackness of …

  ‘Right, come on, you lamo, you’re not going to lie here wallowing for the rest of the evening, you’ve got work to go to.’

  OK, maybe not.

  Once I’m at work aching from the knees down, bleeding from the fingers thanks to two broken glasses and soaked from wrist to belly button in lager, things start to look up. Being a Saturday night the place is even more packed than last night so I’m dishing out drinks at the intense rate of two a minute, which is a steep learning curve – more of a learning line really – but I’m picking it up. Millie is telling me in forty-five second bursts about the film she watched this afternoon and Barry is chatting up anyone in the room that has, or appears to have, a pair of breasts.

  My current customer gives me a ten-pound note and I go and meet up with Millie at the till.

  ‘So then,’ she says immediately, as we ring up our orders, ‘he signs the covenant thingy that binds him to say yes to every opportunity that comes his way, and the first thing that happens is …’

  We both turn back to the throng at the bar and there in front of me is Danny. Sexy Danny with the fair hair and Lycra shorts and shapely thighs. He beams at me.

  ‘Hey, Daisy! Wow, I didn’t know you were working in here.’

  ‘Danny!’ I smile back, trying to look immaculate and sophisticated. The toilet paper wrapped round my cut fingers uncurls itself and falls onto the bar. We both eye it uneasily for a second, then I grab it and drop it on the floor. ‘Great to see you. Did you have a good holiday?’

  He looks edgy for a second, then nods. ‘Yes, fantastic, thanks. Um, can I get three pints of lager please?’

  ‘Sure.’ I reach below the bar for the glasses and start pulling the pints. I want to speak to him more; to lean my elbows on the bar (after giving it a thorough wipe, obviously) and gaze into his eyes; to tuck ourselves up in a corner somewhere and talk about the world while a lone jazz trombone plays sad songs until morning; but a tall, wide man with an orange face is crushing in over his shoulder, his arm out with a twenty-pound note on the end of it.

  I put the drinks on the bar. ‘Here you go. Eight pounds seventy please.’

  Danny hands me a tenner. ‘Have a drink on me,’ he says. Then he gathers the three drinks together, winks at me and is immediately absorbed back into the mêlée. I turn reluctantly back to the till.

  ‘… so he drops the homeless dude off in the woods somewhere, and you really think he’s going to get murdered or something, but then he meets th
is beautiful girl on a moped …’

  ‘Malibu and Coke and a Bulmer’s please, love.’

  Oh God. I deal with the next customer and the next and the next without really paying proper attention, constantly searching the crowd and the room beyond for a glimpse of that beautiful blond head. Once or twice I thought I saw the top of it, but then it was gone again. Millie and I meet at the till and she tells me the rest of the story, but I lost interest ages ago. Eventually, after about two hours, there’s a moment’s lull at the bar and Millie and I take a step back and lean against the wall for a few seconds.

  ‘Bloody hell, I can’t believe–’

  ‘Oh my fucking God,’ Millie cuts me off. ‘Fucking fucking fucking fucking hell.’ Her voice starts to crack.

  ‘Jesus, what is it?’

  She’s covered her mouth with her hands, then quickly turns her back. ‘There’s a dude over there, don’t look now, over there, by the quiz machine, no don’t look now, leather jacket, black jeans, see him? I said don’t look. Fuck!’

  I try to glance surreptitiously over to the machine and just catch a very quick flash of black leather. ‘OK, yeah, got him. What about him?’

  Millie has picked up a prop – it’s a damp cloth, so she starts furiously cleaning the optics. ‘Who’s he with? Can you see? Don’t let him see you looking. Fuck, did he see you? Just try and look without looking like you’re looking.’

  ‘I’ll go and collect the glasses,’ I venture. She nods so off I go over to the quiz machine, and check out the dude in the black leather. He looks nice enough, probably about nineteen or twenty, same sort of age as Millie, trying to grow some stubble to look older, crease down the front of his jeans where his mum’s ironed them. He’s leaning against the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game, chatting to a deeply tanned blondie in a vest top with more lip liner than actual lip. Her boobs look suspiciously round too. I pick up a couple of glasses at the nearest table, then call back loudly to Millie, ‘So, what’s Harry Styles like, Mills, you lucky bitch?’

  She looks round at me quizzically, so I give her a meaningful stare, flicking my eyes to Leather Jacket and back. She cottons on.

  ‘Aw, Harry was totally gorgeous. Really good company and dead sexy too, you know?’

  We are rewarded by Jacket looking up suddenly from Boobs and glaring over towards Millie.

  ‘You seeing him again?’ I go on, walking back towards her. She shakes her head, thank goodness. The story would have lost any faint credibility it had if she’d come up with a white picket fence and two point four kids.

  ‘Nah. I’d love to, but it’s Harry fucking Styles. You know? It was massive fun and so exciting at the time, but I’m not kidding myself. I was lucky he picked me at all.’

  I suppress a smile as I walk back to her carrying the empties.

  ‘Well?’ she hisses as soon as I arrive. I start stacking the glasses in the dishwasher.

  ‘Looks like a complete tramp,’ I whisper. ‘Fake tan, fake hair, fake boobs. Not a patch on you.’

  Millie turns and looks at me as if I’ve just saved her cat from a burning building. ‘Really?’

  I nod decisively. ‘Without a doubt. And she laughs like a lawnmower.’

  She sniggers out loud and gives me a quick hug. ‘Thanks, Daisy.’ Then she’s back at the bar taking orders with renewed energy, chatting to the punters, flicking her hair, enjoying the attention. Her cheer rubs off on me and I start to smile too, feeling the warmth of doing something nice for someone. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that.

  Next time I glance at the quiz machine, Leather Jacket has gone, but in his place is a beautiful blond head, one arm raised and holding the edge of the screen, two darker heads holding pint glasses flanking him. I feel a swoop of excitement and quickly wash my hands.

  ‘See the blond dude over by the quiz machine now?’ I whisper to Millie when she comes near enough. She looks over blatantly, peering so hard at his back I’m sure he’ll feel it and turn round.

  ‘Fuck yeah!’ She nods at me approvingly and raises her hand for a high five. Sadly I don’t realise that was what she was doing, so she picks up my hand and bangs it against her own. ‘Lucky bitch, Daze. He’s well fit.’

  I put my hands up in a shushing gesture. ‘No, no, nothing’s happened yet.’

  ‘Ah. I see. But you’d like it to, am I right?’

  I nod. ‘Well, yeah. Duh.’ Although right now, as much as anything, I’m thinking about how great it will be to walk with him again. Calm, clever Danny with his fixed route and set warm-up routine. He took me by surprise one morning, actually, when he turned right on the canal bank instead of left. ‘Oh, are we doing a different route today?’ I’d asked.

  He smiled as he did his lunges. ‘No, same route. Only today we are walking away from the sun.’

  ‘Right.’ I was imagining this was essential to maintain good fitness, something about the rotation of the earth or its magnetic field or some other scientific reason.

  ‘We need sun on the backs of our legs today,’ he’d explained.

  Yes, well. It was still going to be more beneficial than walking with Felix, wasn’t it? Felix knew nothing about training or fitness or muscle development. He just wanted to admire the wildlife or smell the flowers.

  ‘Well then you go, girl,’ Millie says now. ‘I can manage here.’

  ‘OK.’ I look over at Danny’s head. ‘Do you think I could borrow your lip gloss please?’

  It’s Peachy Passion, which feels somehow appropriate as I think about Danny’s tight Lycra shorts. I sashay over to the quiz machine to collect more glasses, then suddenly notice him there.

  ‘Oh, hi again. You winning?’

  He frowns. I flick my eyes at the quiz machine, which is currently flashing as it waits for a response. ‘Oh, right, yeah, doing well. So how long have you been working in here?’

  ‘Not long. You’re back from your holiday then?’

  He performs a sweeping gesture down the length of his body. ‘It would appear so.’

  ‘So when are you free for another training session? The walk’s coming up really quickly now so I need to get as many miles in as possible …’

  He turns back and says over his shoulder, ‘Just put Beethoven, it’s bound to be that.’ Then he looks back at me. ‘No one ever knows those classical music ones, do they?’

  ‘Ha ha, no. So, about walking …?’

  ‘Oh, look, sorry, Daisy, I can’t … I’ve got …’ He shakes his head and downs the last of his pint. ‘I gotta go. Sorry.’

  I frown as he starts to turn away. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s … I’m not supposed to … Look, speak to your friend. Abby. She knows everything. I’m sorry, Daisy.’ And he pushes back into the crowd.

  EIGHTEEN

  Daisy Mack

  Feeling like I’ve missed something. More than one thing. Lots of things. Again. Over and over. Anyone know what’s going on??

  Jenny Martin Well first the earth cooled, and then an amoeba sprouted legs and crawled out of the slime and became a maths teacher ha ha!

  Jane Miller and 2 others like this

  Mike Green What you got against maths teachers, Jen??!

  Suzanne Allen Sounds to me like you need to do some investigating Daze! Xx

  Georgia Ling Hope u wrk it out hunni xxxx

  Abby’s not waiting up for me when I get home from work tonight, which is a shame because I really want to ask her a couple of questions about Danny, and then rip her face off. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow, after my walk with Felix. I get a little flutter of – what is that? Pleasure? Excitement? No, anticipation, that’s all – at the prospect of meeting him again tomorrow. He’s a cheerful bloke and interesting to talk to. There are definitely worse ways of spending my time. I climb into bed, hesitating as I always do before turning off the light. As soon as the darkness wraps around me again I’ll have nothing to do except lie motionless and think. Tonight it will be about Naomi, and Graham’s ashe
s. Or possibly Danny’s defection. But as I close my eyes I find myself thinking about tomorrow’s walk instead. Felix’s brown eyes and impish grin flash into my mind. I open my eyes again straight away and now it’s daylight. For a brief moment I am pinned to the bed, utterly convinced I’m either dead or have been abducted by aliens, held captive for forty years and then deposited back on earth six hours after I went to bed. But then I realise I’ve just been asleep. I check the time and find I’ve been lying in my bed unconscious for over six hours. My God! It’s almost harder to accept than the alien story.

  There on the wall is the ‘TO DO’ list and looking at it reminds me suddenly that I haven’t crossed off ‘Call Naomi’. I get out of bed and go over there to do it, arming myself with a pen on the way. I know I didn’t technically call her, but I’ve spoken to her and that counts. As I approach the list, my eyes flick down to the ‘Call Naomi’ entry and I ready myself with the pen, but when I’m nearer I notice that someone has scrawled something else in biro alongside the thick black marker pen entry. It now says ‘Call Naomi a selfish bitch’. It actually makes me laugh out loud, even though I don’t get to cross it out after all. Yet. And maybe there’ll be slightly less ripping off of faces when I speak to Abby later.

  Felix is already waiting for me on the canal bank and breaks out into a broad smile when he sees me. I grin back spontaneously, without even thinking about it, and speed up a little. He takes a couple of steps towards me as I draw nearer, swinging his arms.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Daisy,’ he says cheerfully as I reach him. We turn and start out along the canal bank. ‘I’m very glad to see you looking so … what’s the word? Jolly. After yesterday and your reaction when you saw that car outside Abby’s, I did wonder whether you would show up today. Was everything all right? Did she have a visitor?’

  I look up at his face, wondering if I can trust him. Well, no, it’s not exactly trust I’m wondering about. It’s whether or not he’s really interested, or just making conversation. I can’t bear the thought of confiding in him – or in anyone – just because they were hunting for something to talk about. I am certainly not going to tell him about Mum and Graham and the will and the ashes – there would no doubt be endless questions like ‘Why would your sister have done that?’ and ‘Why would your stepfather have done that?’ and I’m not answering those kind of questions. Ever. But I am starting to feel as if Felix and I are actual friends, not just exercise associates, so he kind of deserves a little bit of information.