by Rosie Blake
Daisy had always encouraged Eve to draw more, fascinated by Eve’s ability to translate what was in front of her onto the page. While Daisy stabbed desperately at a sheet of paper, the shapes and colours clashing hopelessly, Eve had always managed to make things look absolutely right. Daisy had exclaimed over hand-drawn birthday cards, the little sketches Eve produced on occasion.
Eve went to dismiss the idea with a hand but paused. Something within her was sparked.
The ground was rock solid and Greg ran a slow circuit in his hoodie, his breath a cloud in front of him as he skirted the pitch. In the middle of the Astro the last game was playing, the clash of hockey sticks at the other end now, the goalkeeper sliding into a dive, one enormous padded leg down on the ground to stop the ball going in. A whistle blew, the ref’s arms went up, voices, another whistle, and Greg paused to watch the short corner.
Danny arrived as the teams were jogging back to the centre and Greg met him at the gate, a brief one-armed hug.
‘Hey, bro,’ Danny said, still wearing his overalls from the garage.
‘You going to play in that? It’s a bit Bob the Builder, mate,’ Greg said, grinning as Danny rolled his eyes and unzipped the front, a grubby T-shirt underneath.
‘I still play better than you in it.’
‘Harsh.’
‘True.’
Danny balled up his overalls and took his T-shirt off, his skin instantly covered in goosebumps. ‘Holy shit, it’s freezing,’ he said before diving into his hockey shirt.
‘It’s November.’
A wolf-whistle from behind made them both turn round and half the team ambled through the gate onto the pitch, nodding at them. ‘Looking good, Daniel,’ Andy shouted, his hair sticking up, an orange mouthguard already in.
‘I need to keep in shape for your mum,’ Danny called back.
A lame jeer from the others.
Greg felt better already, sliding the ball across the ground with the others, talking about nothing as they warmed up. He took off his hoodie, rearranging the collar of his hockey shirt as he jogged into a huddle before their game began. Looking round at the faces of the other players, he felt his breathing calm as he listened to Andy’s voice calling out the positions. They were a good team; no individuals and most of them had played together for a season already so they knew each other pretty well. As the other team trailed on in red and white striped tops, Andy tapped his hockey stick on the ground.
‘Let’s do it,’ he said.
Greg lost himself on the hockey pitch, focusing on the ball zipping across the pitch, the ache in his legs, the burn in his lungs as he breathed in, his ears numb, his nose running with the cold. If he could put all his energy into the game he wouldn’t have to think about anything else. It was the first time that week that he’d started to relax; unable to check his mobile or sit and mull over things, he felt free. Making a run up the left wing, he passed it quickly to his brother in front of goal, who swept it in; a satisfying clack on the wooden boards behind the goalkeeper. Greg jogged over, high-fiving Danny.
They were up by a goal at half-time and Andy talked them through a short corner they had practised in training. Greg held out his water bottle to Danny, who never remembered to bring his own. The other team were big lads but many of them slower, less athletic. There were a couple of skilful guys to watch in the middle but, if they stayed focused, they could win the game. Greg felt a surge as the whistle for the second half went.
He didn’t know how it happened; time seemed to be running at high speed. It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d been hit. His opposite number had been hustling him all game, cannoning off him to make a run, breathing down his neck when he had possession. It was a bad tackle, there was no doubt about that, but normally Greg would hop about, rub at the spot he’d been hit, nod at the player and take the free pass. When the stick went into his leg, he could feel it despite wearing shin pads and he just saw red. He didn’t remember what he’d shouted, but remembered the expression on the other guy’s face as he launched himself on him. Then it was just white noise in his brain and shouts from the other players.
He was pulled off him by Danny. ‘Greg, hey, Greg.’ It was usually the other way round, him sweeping in to fix his little brother’s mistakes. Not tonight. He felt the rage soaring through his body, like he just wanted to pound the ground, the fence, anything, and roar, mouth open into the night. His breathing was thick, heavy; he stood planted to the ground, his chest rising and falling, the team scattered around the pitch staring at him, Andy, face in a frown, the other team muttering and looking put out.
‘Have a time out,’ Andy said, walking over, his voice not unkind as he beckoned the sub on.
Greg couldn’t speak. He could still see spots in his eyes, words coming at him, slower, harder to distinguish; his knuckles were white on his hockey stick. His opposite number had backed off, straightening his shirt as he talked in a low voice to a teammate. Greg didn’t even have the energy to feel bad, thrown by the sudden rage that had swept over him, that still seemed to be stamping around in his head.
Danny patted him on the back, no more the cheeky cherub, his face serious. At any other time this would have been enough to make Greg laugh. Not tonight, though. He held his gaze and then turned and left the pitch, feeling the throbbing anger in his head, everything he was trying to forget crowding in, knowing the guys in his team were watching him leave, wondering what the hell had happened.
They were standing in a vintage clothes shop, holding various items up to the mirror as they chatted. Eve was clattering across the wooden floorboards exclaiming at every pair, trying to squeeze her size eight feet into dainty Jimmy Choo heels, pretending they fitted.
‘I can see your heel hanging over the back,’ Daisy pointed out. She was wearing a brown suede leather jacket that she’d shrugged on moments before.
‘That really suits you,’ Eve commented, noting how Daisy’s hair seemed even more prominent tumbling over the jacket. ‘You are like a Titian biker. It’s a hot look.’ Not for the first time, Eve regretted chopping off her dark-brown hair, lifting a hand to touch it absent-mindedly.
Daisy blushed and took it off, putting it back on the hanger and causing the shop assistant’s shoulders to fall. ‘We’re meant to be after something from the eighties.’
‘I know.’ Eve’s nose wrinkled as she selected a pink-sequinned ra-ra skirt with no less than three layers. She checked the tags. ‘Ooh, size twelve, I might actually be able to get one leg through this.’
‘You’ll get more than one leg through it,’ Daisy protested.
‘How about this to go with it?’ Eve held up the most monstrous yellow zipped shell-suit top.
Daisy shrugged. ‘It’s certainly the right decade.’
Eve giggled and popped it on, parading in front of the mirror as if she were on a catwalk, spinning round with her hands on her hips. ‘I’m soooo sexy for this jacket, soooo sexy for this jacket, so sexy it hurts…’
Daisy was hiding her flaming cheeks in her hands. Eve laughed, knowing Daisy would be embarrassed at her performance. She wouldn’t get Daisy dancing around with her in a shop in the middle of the day. Somehow it always made Eve behave even more appallingly, enjoying watching Daisy squirm. Then suddenly Eve stopped, aware that Daisy was looking at her in the strangest way, a sort of nostalgia on her face, tears filming her eyes.
‘Hey,’ she said, face full of concern, a frown forming between her eyebrows. ‘You okay?’ She touched her arm and Daisy brushed her off.
‘Of course! Hey,’ she said, by way of distraction, ‘you missed the trousers that go with that.’
Eve let herself be distracted, pushing the thought that Daisy was hiding something to the back of her head. Sighing, she turned round. ‘I knew you would see them. I can’t… don’t make me…’ she said, holding one hand to her forehead in true Drama Queen fashion.
‘They are a set.’
That had Eve nodding solemnly. ‘You are right. T
hey need to stay together and I can totally rock this look. And look Dais’… this is perfect for you.’
She revealed a stonewashed denim dress with so many pockets and embroidered flowers Daisy didn’t know where to look. ‘You can wear it with these pixie boots that nearly fit me.’
Daisy took them and rolled her eyes. ‘They’re a size four.’
‘I said nearly, didn’t I?’
They left the shop with their bags, Eve linking her arms through Daisy’s as they weaved back to her flat to get ready, a bottle of Prosecco chilling in the fridge. It was Rachel’s hen do that night. Or Ro-Ro, as her friends called her. Aside from Eve, who once announced that if she had to call her Ro-Ro in public she would never see her in public again. She relented, of course; people always relented in the face of Ro-Ro.
The hen do was in a jungle-themed restaurant in Clerkenwell. Lots of women stood round glass-topped tables, next to enormous drooping ferns and large squishy armchairs covered in tropical birds. The room looked to be nestled on the floor of a rainforest. Eve and Daisy had known Ro-Ro since schooldays, when she had hair to her bottom and thought attaching sequins to clothing made them infinitely cooler. She’d taken a year off to ‘find herself’ and had quickly found herself on a fashion course in central London. There, she had suddenly chopped all her light-brown hair off into a sharp crop, lost two stone and started wearing prescriptive sunglasses everywhere. She was now pretty high up in the magazine world, attending catwalk shows and writing articles about the latest trends.
A lot of Ro-Ro’s friends were so thin that they almost disappeared when turning sideways.
‘One might be hiding behind a fern and we would never know,’ whispered Eve to Daisy, who instantly heated up as a girl emerged from behind one of the plants.
Eve opened her eyes wide to indicate ‘I told you so’. Daisy snuffled into her hand.
Eve glided over across the room to kiss Ro-Ro on both cheeks, cheerfully calling her ‘Rach’, which earned her a thin smile. She looked over-the-top absurd in her bright-yellow shimmering shell-suit and massive plastic hooped earrings. Daisy and she had thrown a load of blue eyeshadow onto their eyelids and their lips were streaked with the same dreadful hot pink.
‘Hi, Ro-Ro,’ said Daisy, kissing her on both cheeks.
Ro-Ro threw two matchstick arms round her. ‘Gorgeous girl,’ she said as one of the stick insects took a photo of the three of them. ‘Eve, you look…’ She trailed away as another stick insect arrived in a tiny leather miniskirt and wedges. Another, wearing a body over sheer black tights and leg warmers, looked like a very beautiful girl in an exercise video. She confided in Daisy that she’d spent £120 having her hair permed for the occasion. Together they looked like a fashion spread in eighties Vogue. Daisy tugged on her denim dress.
Eve had ordered a jug of Singapore Sling and had befriended Ro-Ro’s bridesmaids at the bar. Hugo’s sisters were both looking relieved to have an arm flung round their shoulders, both perspiring in matching lilac shell suits. Eve was now offering them a straw from the jug, the zip of her yellow jacket pulled down to reveal a massive photo of Jason Donovan’s face across her chest. Eve had pretty big boobs so Jason looked quite wide-eyed already. ‘To Ro-Ro and Hugo,’ she shouted.
Ro-Ro beamed at her and jumped in for another selfie. Eve felt a flood of affection for her old friend and winked at her. She could be sharp but Daisy and Eve had known her for years. That meant something. She sometimes missed their old friendship; Rachel was always a little bit tense nowadays, the muscles in her neck on show, always looking like a greyhound straining to be released down the track. There were glimmers of the old days, though, when it was just the three of them hanging out – Eve, Daisy and Rachel on a tartan rug in Primrose Hill, listening to Nina Simone and painting their nails.
Tonight Eve felt better than she had in weeks. She was on her schoolfriend’s hen do, she was dressed in something she could dance in (no matter the flammable nature of it put her at risk every time she braved a flaming Sambuca) and she finally didn’t feel like her heart was full of holes. She might be a bit drunk, but she felt a warm, fuzzy feeling sneak over her. She loved her friends, and London, and dressing up and drinking. She could stay out as late as she liked and no one would tell her off for eating a kebab at 3 a.m. Standing up, she raised a glass to Rachel. ‘To Ro-Ro and Hugo, may you have plentiful sex, wonderful children and… to Ro-Ro,’ she said, before hiccoughing and sitting back down. Yes, maybe a teeny bit drunk.
She was probably more than a teeny bit drunk three hours later when she was bouncing around a red padded room in a purple curly wig and comedy-sized sunglasses, singing into a microphone. Her yellow jacket had long gone and Jason Donovan looked to have developed a terrible bloody facial injury from some red wine. She had screamed at most of the hen do to get out of the private karaoke bar so that she and Daisy and Ro-Ro could ‘do justice to ‘A Whole New World’.’ ‘Some of you keep ruining Jasmin’s part and it upsets me.’ She had bought the whole room shots of tequila to make up for being a bitch and then proceeded to scream at them to get out again when ‘I will Always Love You’ came on, so she could be Whitney ‘in peace’.
She and Daisy finally left arm in arm, throats hoarse and outfits in tatters, as they weaved out of the bar and into the nearest cab. The hot-pink lipstick had long since faded and patches of blue eyeshadow clung stubbornly to their lids. They sank together into the leather, propping each other up as the driver asked for instructions, one weary eye on them from his driving mirror.
‘I love my friends, I love you, Daisy,’ said Eve, hugging Daisy to her so that her ginger hair tickled her nose.
‘I love you too, Eve,’ Daisy replied, in a voice that made Eve look up at her.
They lurched through the flat door and Daisy looked around the living room, her face morphing into bemusement as she took in the splayed photos on the floor, the empty wine glasses, crumb-covered plates.
‘Need to tidy,’ Eve mumbled, dropping inelegantly onto the rug, legs stuck out in front of her, yellow shell-suit trousers rolled up.
She idly scooped up a pile of photos under the pretence of moving them and then felt her shoulders droop, her eyes deadening as she stared at the images, numerous: her smiling on holidays, her and Liam wrapped round each other, the Eiffel Tower behind them, them scrawling names on a padlock, them in Rome raising glasses to the camera, heads bent over the most enormous pizza. Them building a snowman in the garden of Eve’s parents’ house.
‘So what are you going to do about Christmas?’ Daisy asked, picking up another photo; both of them all flushed and excited, tumbling off a sledge.
‘Christmas? Oh yeah.’ Eve had vague memories of her previous dilemma over her Christmas plans. It all seemed less important right now. Then she picked up another photo of them. They were wearing matching Christmas jumpers. They thought they’d been hilarious, marching out of dressing rooms to show them off to each other, giggling as they unveiled them to the family when they appeared for lunch on Christmas Day. The jumpers and the diamond ring. This had been the first photo taken after he had proposed. Eve could see how happy she was in the crinkle of her eyes, the lightness in her smile.
She found herself reaching across to take the lighter from the coffee table, flicking it determinedly beneath the photo.
‘He proposed at Christmas,’ Eve said, solemnly holding the flame beneath the photo until the corner started smoking, an orange flame slowly nibbling the corner.
‘I know he did,’ said Daisy, who looked so sad for her that Eve leant across to give her another hug, almost sending them both up in flames.
‘Not near those trousers,’ Daisy said, taking the lighter from her and dropping it in the ashtray.
Eve’s energy went, her body slumped forward, her hair hanging down in a sheet, obscuring her face. Daisy tipped her head and sighed. ‘Come on, Eve. Bed.’
They dropped down onto the double bed. Daisy made her laugh, reminding her about their schooldays
when she and Rachel had nearly been suspended for smoking grass from the school playing fields because they thought it was marijuana. ‘Thanks, Daisy,’ Eve said, smiling into the dark, grateful to her friend for distracting her.
Just before she closed her eyes, it occurred to her that Daisy had seemed quieter than usual that night, the odd furtive look her way, an absent expression on her face when Eve had turned to ask her what was wrong. Eve promised herself she would ask her about it tomorrow. She would be a better friend; she had been so self-absorbed recently. She would focus on Daisy. She opened her eyes in the dark, giggling to herself as she realised she couldn’t focus on anything.
‘You okay, Eve?’ slurred Daisy.
‘I’m focusing on you,’ Eve slurred back.
‘Sounds scary,’ Daisy said. And then there was breathing and then Eve was asleep.
She didn’t know why she answered the call. She could see his name in big bold letters. Each one like four nails piercing her skin. L for LOVE BROKEN. I for I AM HURTING. A for AGGGGHHHH and M for MAN WHO BROKE MY HEART. It was too late, she had pressed it and now she was lifting the phone to her ear, and for a few seconds she knew she was excited about hearing from him. As if she could scrub the last couple of months from her mind for a moment and pretend she was going to answer a call about the milk he had picked up, or whether they should go out for dinner that night (yes), or was she aware that another Transformers sequel was out in the cinema and could they go (no).
‘I want my dog back.’
His voice didn’t sound like she remembered. He was abrupt, harder. Cold almost. It made her own replies sharper sounding.
‘He’s not your dog.’
‘I paid for him.’
‘And you paid for my tampons, but you never claimed ownership of them.’
‘What?’
She regretted the tampons line, tried to get back on track. ‘He’s not YOUR dog, Liam. He was our dog. But now he is my dog because… because…’