by Eva Woods
“What, the Shard?”
“I have some tickets I bought a while back for me and George and his boyfriend and...anyway, he split up with his boyfriend, thank God, because Caleb’s awful, so we never used them. Fancy it? Another happy thing? Bring your flatmate, too.”
“Costas?” She got enough of him singing Mariah Carey in the bathroom and melting cheese all over everything. “I suppose I could see if he’s free.”
“George thinks it’s tacky.” She smiled. “Annoying my brother is another thing that makes me happy, I have to say. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Annie?”
“Not that I know of,” she said. She might have any number of half siblings, of course.
“Oh, right, you said your dad wasn’t about. Where is he?”
“I’ve no idea. As far as I know he buggered off when I was two days old. Couldn’t handle it, the whole family thing.” Leaving Maureen Clarke, twenty-four and broke, alone with a new baby in a drab council flat. Stunned, lonely, wondering what happened to her life. It was all so different from this family, with Polly’s successful father and stylish mother, her confident clever brother, this beautiful house, like a sagging-down wedding cake, the garden full of fruit trees.
“That’s rough.”
“Not really. You can’t miss what you never had, after all. I hardly think about him.”
Polly gave her another irritating inspirational look. “Life’s too short for regrets, Annie. Maybe you should try to find him?”
“I did the happy-days stuff,” Annie said, changing the subject firmly. “I wrote down some things, anyway.” Swimming, walking, visiting her mum—it didn’t seem a lot. “How’s yours going?”
Polly didn’t answer, and Annie saw she’d stopped swinging, her face pale. “Are you okay?”
“It’s just... Oh, crap. I shouldn’t have had that pudding.” And she lurched forward onto her knees and threw up on the grass with a retching sound.
Annie ran to her. “Polly! Are you all right?”
Polly sat up, shaky, wiping her mouth. “It’s just Bob. It happens all the time. Sorry you had to see.”
Annie helped her up, feeling how hard Polly was trembling. “Why don’t you go and lie down? I’ll see myself off.” It was easy to forget how ill Polly was, but underneath all this cheer there was no escaping the fact that the tumor was gnawing away at her, a little bit every day.
DAY 8
Walk to work
No. No, please. He can’t be. He can’t be—
Annie sat up in bed, panting, her body clammy with cold sweat. It was the dream again. That morning, back in the old house. The slice of sunlight across the floor. The brief second of happiness before it all shattered, Mike’s footsteps in the hallway, and then his terrified voice shouting for her. Annie! Annie, call an ambulance!
But it was just a dream. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t now. She got her breathing under control, slowly bringing herself back to the world. Monday morning. She was sorely tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but she dragged herself up, listening carefully at the door to make sure Costas was out. It was irrational, but bumping into him in her pajamas could make her want to explode with rage. She’d once had her own lovely home with its spare room and window seat and garden full of flowers, and now here she was flat-sharing again. She washed in the moldy shower, brushed her teeth in front of the toothpaste-stained mirror and got dressed in her usual black attire. The dream still clung to her like cobwebs, an under note of panic in her breathing that she knew made no sense. It was years ago. It was far, far too late for panic.
Since she was up early, Annie set out to walk to work. At the last moment, feeling how cold it was when she opened the front door, she almost balked. But she thought of the packed bus, and remembered that she’d have to have something to write down in her notebook. So she went. One foot in front of the other, walking away the past, step by step, until her breath came quicker because of the exercise rather than the dream, and her head had cleared. The walk was perhaps not the most beautiful in the world, but the morning sun was pink on the concrete, and when she arrived at the office she was slightly puffed and glowing. She was even early, since she hadn’t been stuck in traffic on the bus. Sharon helpfully commented that her face looked “all red and sweaty,” but Annie barely even cared.
DAY 9
Write down your thoughts
Annie sucked the end of her pen as she regarded the blank page of her notebook. On the other side of her bedroom wall, she could hear Costas talking on the phone in loud Greek. Another person who could just ring their mother up for a chat whenever they felt like it, without worrying whether said mother would know who they were or not. She tried to block out the noise.
So far, in just over a week, she’d made a new friend—or a new whatever Polly was. She’d got naked in front of people for the first time in two years. She’d exercised. She’d taken a lunch break. It wasn’t much in the scheme of things—no dancing in the rain or trekking the Inca Trail—but it was more than she’d done in a long, long time. But what could she put for today, and tomorrow, and the next day? Hearing a loud clattering noise from the kitchen, she opened her bedroom door to find Costas washing up, clanking and splashing.
“Annie, hello, I do the washing like you ask.”
“Great. Thanks. Um...” She could have asked him not to spill water everywhere, but instead she said, “Listen, do you want to come up the Shard with me?”
“The big building?”
“Yeah. My friend has some tickets. There’s a nice view or something.”
“I would love to, Annie! Thank you! Thank you so much!”
“It’s not that exciting,” she muttered, withdrawing to her room again. She’d broken the precedent of chatting to him now, so she’d have to stay in there all night unless she wanted to hear all about his mother’s ear syringing and his cousin Andre’s goat business in Faliraki. But at least she had asked, and that made her feel just marginally like a slightly nicer person. Perhaps that would do as a happy thing for today.
DAY 10
Make tea for your office
“Did you put sugar in it?” Sharon sniffed suspiciously at the cup Annie had offered her.
“Two sugars. Is that right?”
“I only have one now. I’m on a diet.”
“Right...the sheet in the kitchen still says two.”
“Fine, I suppose I’ll drink it.”
Annie didn’t rise. She passed a coffee to Syed, their hipster social media officer, who was wearing a cricket jumper and yellow cords. He removed his large headphones and she heard banging music leak out. “Wicked, thanks, Annie.” Thumbs-up.
“Green tea for you, Fee.” Annie sat the cup on the office manager’s desk, and she looked up with a start.
“Oh! Thank you.”
Fee didn’t look good, Annie realized (though she knew this thought was somewhat hypocritical). Her lips were chapped and her hands shook as she lifted the cup.
“Um, everything okay?” Annie hoped it was so they wouldn’t have to have an uncomfortable conversation about emotions. In this office it was okay to talk about TV, beverages and the failures of the IT system, and nothing much else.
“Oh! Yes, yes. All fine. Totally fine.”
Annie took a seat at her own desk, with the mug Polly had bought her. Unlike the other office ones it wasn’t yet irreparably stained with tannin. She tipped a little water onto her narcissus plant, and ran a finger along her computer stand. No dust. And although she was still stuck in the office and hating pretty much every second, she found that with a clean desk and not feeling like quite so much of an antisocial troll, she hated it just a tiny fraction less.
DAY 11
Give someone flowers
“Aren’t they pretty! Peacocks
!”
“Peonies, Mum,” Annie said gently. “Do you like them?”
“They’re ever so nice, dear.” Annie felt a lump rise in her throat. Her mother had always loved flowers, scrimping to buy a bunch from the market on payday. When Annie used to bring Jacob around to visit, every Friday, she’d always taken a big bunch of flowers, too, grown in her own garden. She hadn’t done that for a long time.
Her mother spotted Dr. Quarani coming across the ward, crisp and clean in his white coat. “Look, Doctor. This nice lady has brought me some peacocks.”
He didn’t smile. “I need to take your pulse, Mrs. Clarke.”
“She seems a little better,” Annie ventured as he stood with her mother’s thin wrist in his hand. “Calmer, anyway.”
“Her mood was stabilized somewhat, yes. As I said, it’s important not to get your hopes up.”
“I won’t.” And yet despite this warning, despite herself, despite two years of misery having stamped on them in steel-capped boots, Annie could feel that her hopes were ever-so-slightly up. Like a drooping flower when you put it in water. She had to be careful with that. She knew only too well that hope was not to be trusted.
* * *
“Annie!” On her way out of the hospital, she turned at the sound of her name. A man’s voice.
“Oh! What are you...? Are you all right?”
It was Polly’s brother, George. Sitting in the ER holding a bandage to his face. He grimaced. “It’s nothing. Banged my head at the gym. What are you doing here?”
“I’m seeing my mum. You know, she’s been ill.” She stared at him. There was a spot of blood on his white shirt.
He stared back, coolly appraising, taking in her cheap scuffed bag, her straggling hair, the polyester slacks that were making her sweat. “Listen, Annie. My sister’s very sick.”
“I know that.”
“And she’s also kind of...magnetic. She collects people. Waifs and strays.” Annie bristled. “She was always like that, but now she’s sick it’s even worse. They sort of latch on. She thinks she may as well give away everything she has, since she has ‘three months to live.’” He scowled. “We don’t know that, okay? People live for years sometimes with cancer.”
Annie was so tired. Tired of this hospital, tired of her mother not knowing her, tired of her pokey little flat and tired of her life. “Look. I didn’t ‘latch on’ to Polly. She was the one who literally turned up on my doorstep. But she was nice to me, and she asked me to help with her happy-days project, and—well, I don’t see how I can say no. Okay?”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. I believe you.”
“I wasn’t asking if you believed me. Who would try to con a woman with cancer, for God’s sake?”
“I’d have said that, too, before all this. Honestly, Annie, we’ve had to stop her giving her money away so many times. She just doesn’t believe people lie. Even her friends—this girl she was at school with tried to get her to invest in a jewelry business, which basically doesn’t exist, and one of our cousins wants funding for a charity that is pretty much just them going on safari in Africa, and God, people really suck, you know?”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” said Annie.
“All right. Well, I’m sorry if I was a bit—”
“Rude? Unwelcoming?” She was too tired to be polite anymore.
To her surprise George smiled. “I was going for ‘icily enraged,’ like an offended Southern belle. I should have thrown a drink in your face.” He moved the bandage, gingerly. His left eye was purple with bruising.
Annie winced in sympathy. “That looks sore.”
“It’s okay. It’ll mean no auditions for a while, though. Not that I’m exactly inundated.” He glanced up at her. “Listen. Would you please not mention this to my sister? I don’t want her worried. I just had a stupid accident.”
Annie shrugged. “Sure.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry I was a twat. I’m just so angry, you know? Like all the time. I should be sad and supportive and all I can feel is totally and utterly enraged that this happened to Poll.”
“I understand,” said Annie, who knew that feeling well.
“I’m really sorry. I’ll see you for this supertacky trip up the Shard?”
“I guess so. Well, bye, then.” She stopped in the doorway. “Cucumber slices,” she called.
“What?” George had his eyes closed.
“It helps with the swelling. Freeze them, then put them on the eye. Just a tip.” Something you discovered when you spent most of your time crying.
At the bus stop, the homeless man—Jonny—was there again, reading a paperback with the cover missing. Annie waved at him, tentatively, feeling embarrassed when he smiled back. His teeth were terrible. What was the point in waving if she couldn’t do anything to help him? The bus came and she got on it, feeling vaguely that she had failed, but not quite knowing why.
DAY 12
Tidy up
She was naked. Every bit of her on show, stripped down, displayed for all the world to see.
Annie sat on her sofa, a cup of tea cooling in front of her. Her nude drawing was propped up on the chair, brown paper wrapping hanging about it like the folds of a dressing gown. It had been waiting for her when she came home.
For a long time, she just stared at it. It was her, unmistakably her—the scar on her stomach, the mole on her shoulder—but at the same time it wasn’t. Somehow, the curves and folds of her body, which caused her such angry tears when she looked in the mirror, had been transformed into something different.
This was her, Annie Hebden, ex-wife of Mike, ex-friend of Jane, mother of Jacob. She could never stop being that. Daughter of Maureen—something else she would always be, no matter how far into the darkness her mother disappeared. There was no one like her on the whole of the planet, no one who had ever lived or ever would. There was not a single other person with her fingerprints, with her memories, with the blood beating in her veins. She was herself, and she was alive right now, despite everything. This picture proved it.
Annie got to her feet, restless. What could she do? She’d let her friends drift away, turned down offers from colleagues, stopped going out, and gardening, and making her home nice, and even washing her hair. She stayed in every night with TV and sugar for company. It was time to stop. In fact, it was time to start.
In a burst of activity, she tore the ratty blanket from the sofa, exposing the ripped pleather underneath. A shower of pistachio shells clattered out. Bloody Costas. Next the sofa covers, then the shabby rug on the floor. All of them dusted in crumbs, splashed in ketchup and tea. She bundled them into the washing machine and set it going. It occurred to her this was a small, happy thing—the sound of clothes spinning, getting clean. It reminded her of Mondays after school, when she’d come home to find the machine whirring and her mother watching Countdown with a cup of tea and packet of orange Club bars. And they’d sit together, working out answers on the back of the Radio Times. Her mother, who loved word puzzles, had always beaten her hands down, calling up words from the depths of her memory. Adamant. Vivacious. These days, she often couldn’t remember her own name.
Trying to stay one step ahead of grief, Annie flung open her fridge and larder, blitzing the out-of-date food, the peppers with mold sprouting on them like hipster beards, the ready meals that were iced into the freezer, the packets of pasta and rice spilling all over the shelves. Soon she’d filled a huge bin bag. She started making a list. Wash windows. Re-cover sofa. She took all the cups out of the cupboards and scoured the insides clean. Polly was right: her taste in crockery was truly abysmal. She filled another bin bag for the charity shop, putting everything in except her mum’s nice china. She added to the list: Buy new spoons. Get a spiralizer. Ask landlord to have walls painted in color that doesn’t look like dog poop.
>
Next, the bathroom. She looked with distaste at the old moldy shower curtain. She’d buy a new one, in cheery colors, that didn’t wrap around your legs like a slimy alien ghost. She’d get a new bath mat and some nice towels. She threw out dried-up lipsticks, flaky mascara, bottles of shower gel with only an inch of scum in the bottom. God, it was moldy. How had she let things get this bad?
By the time Costas came back off his late shift, he could barely open the door because of the pile of bin bags blocking it. He looked around, confused, and cocked his head at Annie singing along to Magic FM as she scrubbed the hob. “Annie! Is this because I leave cheese on the dish? Because I promise, I wash! I wash them good! Do not kick me out, please?”
Annie burst out laughing. “Oh, bless you, no, I’m not throwing you out. I’m throwing myself out. Or at least, some of the mankier bits of me.”
Costas looked puzzled.
“I’m sorry it hasn’t been nicer for you here,” she said. “I promise, from now on, I’ll make this a better place for both of us to live. I mean, we could both do that. Keep it a bit tidier? What do you say? Not so many pistachio shells in the sofa? Grease the dishes before you bake cheese in them?”
He knit his brows, frowning. “Annie? You are feeling okay?”
She considered it. She hadn’t cried in the shower for almost two weeks. Her flat was cleaner than it had been when she moved in. Her mum was getting better. And she had actual social events, with actual people, in her diary. “Actually, Costas, you know what? I’m not too bad. Not too bad at all.”
DAY 13
Take a higher view
“He’s delicious,” Polly said, peering at Costas’s bum as he read the display on the wall. “Tastier than a whole box of baklava.”