Carry You

by Beth Thomas

  Ten minutes later we’re queuing up to get into the Big Pink Tent. It wasn’t difficult to find. Firstly, there’s a swarm of pink flowing constantly towards it; and secondly, it’s a fuck-off mahoosive tent in the middle of Hyde Park. And it’s pink. By now it’s almost eight o’clock and the sun is just about gone. It’s not cold – yet – but there is a slight chill in the air. We’re still wearing tee shirts and hoodies, and I have no idea how I’m going to cope in just a bra at two a.m. I presume we’ll be walking quite briskly and will keep warm that way.

  ‘Can I borrow your phone a minute?’ Abby asks as we finally get inside the tent. I was hoping that with this many people here, it would be steamy and hot inside and get us all warmed up before we launch our woefully underclad selves on the chilly night air in four hours. But it isn’t. The thing is like an aircraft hangar inside, with what looks like a few dozen underwear-clad people milling around on the floor.

  ‘Course.’ I rummage my phone out of my giant bum bag and hand it to her. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wanna text Tom, make sure he’s on his way.’

  Of course he’s on his way. In fact he was probably on the same train as us. Or the one before us. He’s probably invested in a pink hat from somewhere to help him blend in. Since they got engaged he hasn’t wanted to be any more than five feet away from her. And that sounds creepy, like he doesn’t trust her or wants to keep an eye on her or has suddenly got massively possessive and insecure. And to be honest, under the circumstances, who could blame him? But it’s not like that, not at all. It’s like he feels he’s been graciously granted a second chance. And now all he wants to do is make sure Abby has got everything she needs to be happy. Which is, basically, just Tom himself.

  She grins as she’s typing the text, her eyes sparkling with delight. Something naughty in that one, by the looks of things. I take the opportunity to check out my surroundings.

  The Big Pink Tent is divided up into regions, depending on how long you anticipated you would take to complete the walk when you registered. There’s a pink area, an orange area, a green area and a yellow area. Abby told me that she’d put down seven to eight hours as our time, so that puts us firmly in the pink group, which is far and away the largest. The serious athletes in here all have green or yellow walker numbers, and they will be the groups that leave first. They’re planning to take between five and six hours to get round. Our walker numbers are pink, and we will be leaving bang on midnight, with the pink herd. Having not noticed the benefit of any shared bodily warmth in this cavernous tent, I’m losing hope that all the thousands of walkers that will start with us will help keep me warm either. I’m starting to wish I’d brought a hot water bottle. Or a sleeping bag. Mmm.

  ‘Here you go,’ Abby says, handing me my phone. ‘He’s nearly here already, silly fool. I’ll text him again later, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘No probs.’ I tuck my phone away. ‘Why don’t you ever text from your own phone?’

  ‘I do!’

  I shake my head. ‘You don’t. Or at least, you don’t text me from it. You always contact me by Facebook message. What’s wrong with your phone?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She huffs out through her nose. ‘I just always run out of texts.’

  ‘How? Haven’t you got unlimited?’

  ‘No, Dozy, it’s impossible to run out of anything if it’s unlimited. I only have a thousand a month.’

  ‘A thousand?! How the hell do you run out then?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘I use them all. Foam-head.’

  ‘Oh, well thanks for clearing up my confusion. Except, oh, wait. I’m still confused. You always use Facebook. So how do you use them up if you don’t use them?’

  She studies me a moment. ‘I used to use them all up texting Sean. OK? Now enough about that stupid boring stuff, please? I wish it had never happened and the sooner we can all forget about it, the happier I’ll be. Please?’ She raises her eyebrows at me in a pleading expression and my heart tugs with affection.

  ‘I love you, Abs,’ I say spontaneously.

  Her expression changes instantly from sad and pleading to warm, wide grin. ‘I love you too, Daisy Duck.’ She wraps her arms round me and we hug each other tightly. Then she draws back, looks me in the eye and says, ‘Get your top off.’

  It’s starting to warm up slightly in the tent so once we’re down to our bras and have tied our tee shirts and hoodies round our waists, I actually feel OK. Better than OK, in fact. All around us are hundreds upon hundreds of people of all different shapes, sizes and colours, in nothing but bras. Tall women with tiny boobs; short women with huge ones; fat women with wobbly ones; skinny women with non-existent ones. Even a few men with tissue paper ones, sparkly bras on over hairy chests. We all grin at each other as we mill around, feeling united in our chilly embarrassment, and therefore not embarrassed at all. This is the strongest feeling of sisterhood I’ve ever known; a feeling of belonging, of communion with these other women, an intimacy and understanding that almost borders on actual love for them. If someone told me now to throw my arms around the next random person I meet and give them a giant hug, I wouldn’t find it difficult. In fact, I would struggle to limit myself to just one. I want to fling my arms around everyone in this tent and hold them tightly with my eyes closed. I want to stand on a podium and give a rousing speech about comradeship and solidarity and girl power, and finish talking with a giant fist pump while the audience starts cheering before I’ve quite got to the end. We are in this together; we will experience this and endure this and enjoy this together. We will triumph. Together.

  ‘Toilet,’ Abby says suddenly, and marches off.

  And this moment, right here, in this fantastic inspiring place, surrounded by people willing to put themselves through quite an ordeal to stop more women going through what Mum did, is the right moment to read the letter that she left me. I have been waiting for a good time to read it because I know it will defeat me, so I’ve been carrying it around with me everywhere for the past week, hoping the perfect moment will arise at some point. It’s been in my bum bag since this afternoon, before we left. Right now, I could ride a tsunami; fight a bear; brave an inferno; lift a car. I doubt very much I’ll ever feel stronger, so I unzip my bum bag and pull the envelope out. There’s my name in Mum’s distorted writing, but instead of just staring at that as I have done since Naomi gave it to me, this time I turn it over, open it and pull out the letter inside. My throat clenches instantly and starts aching when I see more of Mum’s handwriting, spidery and scruffy like on the envelope. I can see the effort it cost her to write this, and I have to close my eyes for a moment before I start reading.

  My darling darling darling girl,

  I’m so incredibly proud of you, my Daisy Duck.

  Immediately I have to stop again as everything in front of me goes blurry. I look around me at the heaving crowds and spot an area just behind me against a pillar where I can sit down. It’s not far from where I’m standing so Abby should easily find me when she comes back. I untie my hoodie from my waist and bundle it up to make a cushion then sit down on it. A few more deep breaths, a couple of painful swallows, then I resume reading.

  I hope you know that. You’re mature and strong and independent and so much like me when I was your age. I couldn’t have hoped for a better daughter. Don’t you ever change, my beautiful angel.

  There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you for years now, but I’ve never had the strength. Or maybe it’s not strength I needed. Maybe I’ve just been too scared to talk about it because it hurt me so much and I can’t bear to go through even a small part of that pain again. But that was very wrong of me, my darling. I’ve seen you in pain too, I’ve seen you torturing yourself and I’ve done nothing to help you. I’m so very sorry, Daisy. When you ran away to Brighton all those years ago, I wasn’t sure I could carry on living. I was terrified, sad, upset, hurt, worried, anxious, unhappy. Everything I’m sure you’ve imagined I was feeling. I missed you so intensely,
every day, every second. I hated not knowing where you were or what was happening to you. It was such an overwhelming feeling, nothing else in my life seemed to matter for that short period. I’m not blaming you, angel. You were sixteen, you were an idiot, it’s expected. Especially you, with your independence and strong will. But when you came back and I was already ill, I was distracted by that and I didn’t speak to you properly about it. It’s my biggest regret, and I’m writing this because I think I only have a few days left and I don’t want to bring this all up again now. This way, it will be afterwards, a few months afterwards, and hopefully you will be getting used to things and getting better.

  What I neglected to tell you back then, darling girl, is that I forgive you. No, that sounds pathetic and doesn’t even begin to convey what I feel. But I need you to know that I forgave you back then, as soon as I knew you were safe. In fact, I wasn’t ever angry, not really. I knew you had a free spirit, I wanted more for you than what you could find here, so I had been expecting you to fly away sooner or later. All right, maybe not when you were fifteen, but still!

  I know you felt terrible when you came back and saw me like that, and that you blamed yourself for some reason because you weren’t here when it all started.

  I have to stop again and raise my head. Through the blur I see Abby, some distance away, her back to me, watching the crowds and the various activities going on. What an amazing and wonderful person she is. I experience a strong feeling of love and belonging when I look at her, a sensation I haven’t really felt properly since Mum died. But here is my family now. I wipe my eyes to clear them and go back to reading.

  Graham was certainly angry with you for not being here. I think he felt that your absence made the whole thing worse for me. I can’t deny that I wished you were there with me. But at the same time I was glad, in some ways, that you weren’t, that you weren’t dragged down with me, that you were out there somewhere, living your life, happy. At least, that’s what I thought.

  But when you came back, my beautiful girl, that was when the sun came out again for me. That was when everything looked up and I finally began to feel whole again. That was when I really started out on the road to recovery. It was having my whole family round me, feeling the love that I have for you all, so deeply, that helped me get well, and gave me these extra years with you, and for that I am grateful.

  So that’s what I wanted to say, sweetheart. You and Naomi have been and will always be everything to me and I will miss you more than you can possibly imagine. But it gives me comfort to know you will benefit in a small way from this. I’m leaving everything to Graham to make things easier for him after I’ve gone, but don’t worry, I know he loves you and will make sure you get your inheritance. You and Nomes will be quite comfortable for the rest of your lives. It’s reassuring to know that.

  It’s hard for you now, sweetheart. I know that. And I know you are going to bear the brunt of looking after him in the coming months. I am so grateful to you, my darling. You are the strong one, remember. You are the selfless one. Be strong for me now, gorgeous girl. You will always be my inspiration.

  I love you, love you, love you.

  Mum xxx

  A few people stop and ask if I’m OK as they pass, but I can’t answer. I just nod through my sobs and lay the letter down on the floor beside me. Someone stops and gently presses my shoulder, and when I look up I see that it’s Abby. She gets down on the floor beside me and I wordlessly hand her the letter. She reads it quickly and when she looks back at me I see she has tears in her eyes too.

  ‘Oh wow,’ she says breathily. ‘That’s lovely.’

  I nod and smile a little through my tears, then Abby leans forward and embraces me again and we sit and hold each other and cry together, in the middle of a Big Pink Tent.

  After a few minutes, she pulls back from me and holds up the letter. ‘I love the bit where she says he was angry with you for not being there.’ She shakes her head as she says those last words. ‘Makes it sound so … inconsequential.’

  ‘I know. I guess she didn’t really know just how much it affected him.’

  ‘And she certainly didn’t know he would do what he did. With the will and everything.’

  ‘No. And I’m very glad she doesn’t know about that. At least she died believing that Naomi and I would be set up for life.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She hands me back the letter and I fold it up and put it away. Then we both wipe our eyes and sniff. ‘Who needs money,’ she says, ‘when you’ve got friends?’

  I grin. ‘Abso-bleeding-lutely.’

  ‘Tattoo?’ she says after a pause.

  ‘You what?’

  She points to a long table at the other side of the tent. ‘Over there. We can have a tattoo done. What do you think?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Oh, not a real one, dough head. It’s a stick-on. Christ alive, can you imagine walking twenty-six miles in the freezing cold with the searing agony of a new tattoo to deal with as well?’

  So we queue up and get a stick-on tattoo – mine’s a glittery pink bra on my shoulder, Abs has gone for a pair of pink footprints – then we queue up and get our free pasta meal and toffee muffin; and after that we queue up and have a lovely shoulder and back massage, courtesy of all the hundreds of volunteers who aren’t walking but who are here to give up their free time too.

  Then, suddenly, it’s eleven o’clock and things start happening. Music plays and there’s an announcement for those with yellow numbers to make their way to the start line. Everyone looks around in awe as yellow-stickered people start to thread their way through the crowd towards the exits and I wonder if I could hide myself among them and start now too. I turn to Abby to suggest it, but she’s already solemnly shaking her head.

  ‘What?’ I ask her. ‘You don’t even know what I was going to say!’

  She raises her eyebrows in an ‘oh really?’ expression. ‘No, Daisy, we are not going to hide ourselves among these athletes and start now. OK?’

  Yet again I’m defeated before I’ve begun. But it doesn’t matter, I’m in a top mood again and nothing can diminish it. Energy is flowing through me, I’m buzzing with it, and I can’t stand still. Fortunately at that moment, someone on a stage at the front of the tent announces that we’re going to do a short aerobics session to warm up, and I start jumping.

  At eleven twenty, the music stops and all the green starters are called to the line. The pinks and oranges step aside reverentially to allow them through; then when they’ve gone we go back to leaping about and clapping.

  At eleven forty the oranges leave us, which is quite frankly a relief as they were starting to get a bit superior. The rest of us, all the pinkies, finally have enough room to perform the aerobics manoeuvres properly.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I say to Abby at eleven fifty.

  ‘I know!’

  Finally the pinks are called to the line and we all file out silently. We’re warm now, but as the freezing night air hits us, everything shrivels.

  ‘Remember to wear your plastic capes,’ an announcer is saying. ‘It may only be a thin sheet of plastic but it will provide valuable insulation.’

  ‘Where the fuck are the plastic capes?’ Abby snaps. I spot someone handing them out at the exit and grab two. As quickly as we can with shaking hands, we unfold them and put them on. Aaah, toasty.

  ‘No fucking difference,’ Abby mutters.

  ‘Come on, let’s jump up and down.’

  There are so many people in the pink group, we have to shuffle along shoulder to shoulder towards the start line. Bouncing up and down as we move is proving effective, and gradually people around us start doing it too. Pink-hatted heads all around us spontaneously start bobbing up and down, like atoms vibrating in a heating liquid. It’s a Mexican Bounce.

  At eleven fifty-eight, my phone beeps with a text. It’s from Felix.

  Good luck Queen Daisy of the ducks. Remember: left, then right, then, and this is crucial, left again. Stic
k with that and you can’t go wrong. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it. I will be with you in spirit and I will see you for a foot massage tomorrow. Very much love, your Felix xxxx

  I giggle and it buoys me up as our pink herd amasses by the gates. My phone beeps again.

  PS Please avoid touching between my toes; I can’t bear it. xxxx

  ‘Who’s that?’ Abby asks.

  ‘Felix.’

  She smiles. ‘He’s coming after all?’

  ‘I don’t know, he won’t say.’

  ‘That means he is. Lend me your phone, will you?’

  I hand it to her. ‘Why do you still need it, now you’re not texting Sean any more?’

  She shrugs and grins at me. ‘Used mine up texting Tom.’

  I gape. ‘A thousand texts?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She shrugs exaggeratedly. ‘What’re you gonna do? OK, he’s going to meet us at the finish line. He says he’ll follow our progress around the streets and will be at mile twenty-six from seven a.m. onwards. We’re going to have to get a wriggle on, Daisy Doo. Otherwise he’ll be hanging around in the cold for hours.’

  ‘God, yes. Don’t want him turning into an ice man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  A giant digital clock above our heads flashes into life with the number 30 on it. Immediately it starts counting down. The crowd chants with it.

  29! 28! 27!

  ‘Here’s your phone,’ Abby says loudly over the chanting.

  26! 25! 24!

  ‘Thanks.’

  23! 22! 21!

  ‘Daisy, can you tell me something?’

  20! 19! 18!

  ‘What?’

  17! 16! 15!

  ‘Well, it’s a bit odd …’

  14! 13! 12!

  ‘What is it, Abby?’ I’m getting agitated and feel penned in by all these other women. Why are they here? They’re just in the way.

  11! 10! 9! 8!

  ‘Well, it’s something I noticed earlier …’