by Eva Woods
“He’s twenty-two,” Annie whispered reprovingly. She wished Polly would lower her voice. “Also, pretty sure he’s gay.” He’d never actually told her this, but the fact he went all-night clubbing in Vauxhall three nights a week was a fairly strong indicator.
Polly sighed. “I should have known. Nobody straight has eyebrows that neat. Ah, well. Maybe George and he will hit it off.”
Annie doubted it—George hadn’t addressed a word to him since he mentioned what he did for a living. She’d seen him wrinkle his nose as Costas enthused about all the different drinks he could make. “Latte, skinny latte, flat white, not-flat white...”
“How long is this going to take?” George complained now. “We’ve been waiting for, like, an hour already.”
“We’ve been waiting for ten minutes,” Polly scolded. “And it’ll be worth it.”
“I can’t believe you’re making me a do a tacky tourist thing. What next, Madame Tussaud’s? The zoo?”
“The zoo is a great idea! Let’s do that next week. I could even adopt an animal, name it after me. Something to live on when I’m gone. Unless it’s a mayfly, I guess.”
Costas was staring around him, rapt. “In Greece we have nothing this big. We lost all our money instead and set fire to our capital.” He said it cheerily.
“That’s the spirit, Costas,” Polly said, rubbing his shoulder. Annie tensed. She really had no sense of personal space. “It’s a modern marvel. You can see all the way to Kent on a good day.”
“The question of why we’d want to see Kent remains unanswered,” George muttered. The bruise on his eye was still livid, but he’d shaken off Annie’s attempts to ask about it.
They were now in the lift, alongside a tubby family in tracksuits, who all gawped at Polly’s choice of ensemble—a red ruffled skirt showing her long frail legs, a pink sparkly cowboy hat, such as might be worn by drunken hen-do attendees, and a jacket made of purple sharkskin. Annie would have looked like a clown in it, but Polly was drawing admiring stares along with the puzzled ones. “Isn’t she that one off that telly thing?” Annie heard one of the Tracksuit Family hiss.
“Going up high has always inspired people,” Polly declared. “Look at Wordsworth. Coleridge. They used to wander in the Lake District, high on nature, spitting out poetry.”
“High on opium more like,” said George. “Is there any of that up here?”
The lift stopped, and they got out into a wide expanse of glass, filled with people milling around. Annie blinked as light flooded her eyes, London spread out beneath them. Like a Lego town, with green patches and boxes of buildings and houses and little cars meandering along. A real-life Monopoly board.
Polly had barged her way to the concession stand. “No opium, but pink champagne all around!”
George tutted. “Cheap pink fizz? Are you serious?”
But Polly was already carrying a tray of four glasses. “Shut up, George. You’re the most god-awful snob, you know. I remember when your favorite food was spaghetti hoops. Just drink it.”
“As long as no one finds out,” he said. “Is Costas even old enough to drink?”
“I am twenty-two,” Costas said reproachfully. “Thank you, Polly. This is very kind of you. Thank you for the pink champagne and the trip in the big lift and the view of your lovely city.”
“You’re very welcome,” she replied, once again patting him. “It’s nice to be here with someone who isn’t a snobby misery-guts, frankly.”
“Pink fizz up the Shard,” muttered George, who was nonetheless tossing his back. “What next? You want to go around M&M’S World wearing a Union Jack hat?”
“There is a world of M&M’S?” Costas took a sip and sneezed.
Polly ruffled his hair. “Adorable.”
Annie reached for her drink, tentatively. It was a plastic flute, filled with bubbling liquid, the color of old pinky-gold. She’d seen a dress that shade once, in a ball gown shop, when shopping for her school prom. It was expensive—a hundred pounds, nearly—but she’d saved up from her Saturday job in Boots and dropped loads of hints, and her mum had been giving her lots of coy smiles and it was her birthday coming up, so on the morning she turned eighteen Annie had rushed downstairs to find a dress bag hanging over the door. It had to be it. The dream dress, lace and silk, with a long swishy skirt and a bodice that somehow held in Annie’s wobbly bits and made her chest look like a glamour model’s.
When she’d opened it, she’d thought it was a joke. “What’s this, Mum?”
“Oh, I went to see that dress you wanted, but it was far too expensive, so I made you this one on the sewing machine. It’s exactly the same.”
It wasn’t the same at all. It was the color of gone-off salmon, and the lace wasn’t lace at all but scratchy polyester, and the bodice had boning that stuck into Annie’s ribs, and she looked like a giant blancmange in it, and in the end she’d gone home early from the prom and watched Frasier instead. Another not-so-happy memory. But now here she was, drinking champagne up the Shard. She lifted her plastic flute to Polly’s. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” Polly took a gulp. “Dr. Max will kill me. I’m not supposed to drink before my MRIs. I spend so much time in that machine I’m thinking of having it wallpapered. Come on, let’s go up to the outside deck.”
Outside, the wind was stronger, the sun dazzling in Annie’s eyes. Deciding now was not a good time to mention her mild vertigo, she stayed as close to the wall as possible, while Polly spun off toward the railing, pointing out landmarks below. “Somerset House! The London Eye! Big Ben!”
“British Museum,” Costas said happily. “Where you are keeping all the priceless statues you stole from my country’s Parthenon and you refuse to give back!”
“I suppose it’s not so bad up here,” George said grudgingly.
Annie looked at him from the corner of her eye. “How’s your face?”
He squinted against the sun. “Fine. No harm done.”
“I’m sorry about your boyfriend.”
“What?” George scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just meant...you were supposed to come here with him, weren’t you? Caleb?”
“Caleb and I are just friends.” The tone was light, or aiming at light, but Annie recognized the difference between pretending to be over something and really being over it. Sometimes she thought she’d never manage the latter. She let it drop.
Annie looked out as the wind blew her hair in her face. From up here, it wasn’t the London she knew, of dog poop and roadworks and damp, expensive flats. It was a shining city, full of millions of lives, every single person thinking they were the most important in the world. A city where hundreds of people slipped away every day, dying in hospitals or nursing homes or even on the street, and hundreds more arrived in maternity wards and birthing pools and sometimes accidentally on tubes. So what did it matter if, among all that, Polly was going to die, or Jacob already had? She felt the weight of it crush her, all those dreams being shattered and hearts being broken.
“I feel so small,” George said, almost to himself.
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“I mean...all these people, who don’t even know I’m alive. How the hell will I ever be an actor when there’s so many other people out there wanting the same? I may as well just give up.”
“But on the other hand,” said Annie, “at least if we really screw up our lives, probably no one will ever hear about it or care. We could just die, peacefully unknown.”
George looked at her. “I like you, Annie. You’re a good antidote to my sister’s irritating positivity. I mean, when she got cancer I was prepared for depression and crying and awfulness, but instead she’s become some kind of walking self-help bible.”
Annie didn’t quite get it. “You’re all so kind of...
matter-of-fact about it.”
George shrugged. “The show must go on, right? You’re still living right up until you die.”
“I guess.”
“This is what she wants. No moping, no misery. And Mum and Dad... I don’t think they believe it’s going to happen. I can’t blame them, really. I mean, look at her. You see why we think there must be some hope?”
Annie did. Polly was smiling, happy, her face flushed with the heat of the sun and the wind on her face. Yes, she was thin, but that wasn’t unusual among London women. She didn’t look ill at all. She looked radiant.
“Come here,” Polly called, beckoning them over. The sun was piercing through the clouds, warming Annie from head to toe. “Look, there’s London Bridge. Have you any idea how many hours I’ve spent there, freezing my arse off on the platform, cursing and complaining? But look how peaceful it is from up here.”
And it was. Trains looped into the station on their interweaving tracks, like ducks gliding over the water. Tiny people, with all their tiny worries and dreams and hopes and fears. Polly said, in hushed tones, “I bet this is how God sees us.”
“God veto!” shouted George. “You don’t even believe in God, Poll, you massive hypocrite. You can’t start just because you get cancer, that’s cheating.”
Polly was sticking out her tongue. “Okay, okay. Whatever you want to call it, then. The universe. The great spaghetti monster. Maybe that’s how I’ll see you all from heaven.”
“Optimistic,” said George. “I remember what you were like as a teenager. You might not get in.”
“If there is an afterlife, I’m going to tell God about the time you cut all the heads off my Barbies and tied them to my bunk bed.”
“He’ll understand. He’ll have seen how annoying you were.”
“She, please.”
“Do you believe in God, Annie?” Costas asked quietly as the siblings bickered. He did, she thought. She’d seen his crucifix and bottles of holy water. She’d never wanted to broach the topic—because how could a gay man belong to a church that hated who he was?—but she knew he sometimes came in from clubbing on Sunday mornings, dance music still ringing in his ears, and went to the Orthodox church in Camberwell. One of the many ways she would never understand people.
“Um, I don’t think so.” Otherwise, she’d have to believe in a God who let Jacob die and allowed her mother to waste away. “You’re religious, right?”
He shrugged. “In the Bible, it says that what I am is sinful. To be...gay, you know.” He looked at her shyly, to see if she’d known or minded. Annie arranged her face in an expression of complete tolerance. “But then I see things like this—” waving to the sky above, streaked blue and silver and peach “—and I meet such kind people who take me to the tall buildings and give me pink drinks, and I think, there must be something. Just something more. Even if it is not a person or a thing or a place. Do you know what I mean, Annie?”
“I think so, yes,” she said. She’d lived with Costas for a year now, and this was the most they’d ever talked. He’d never even told her outright that he was gay. They’d slept with only a wall between them, virtual strangers, and now here they were. And they stood and watched the sun blaze out over London, and it was as beautiful as pink champagne and prom dresses and new friends.
“Polly! For Christ’s sake.” She looked up from her reverie, startled, to see Polly climbing on the railing around the viewing platform. George was grabbing her around the waist as a security guard rushed over. Annie’s own heart lurched, vertigo making her head swim.
But Polly was laughing. “Oh, don’t be so boring, George. I want to see farther!”
“Ma’am, you can’t climb on that. It’s too dangerous.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s dangerous, I’m dying!” She was laughing, but Annie saw her face was also streaked with tears, and as George got her down, jerking his head to the lifts to indicate it was time to go, she realized he wasn’t just grouchy all the time—he was really, really scared.
DAY 14
Do nothing
Annie! Annie, call an ambulance!
Annie was in her old house, the sun coming in the white curtains of the bedroom. She held Jacob in her arms, but then she looked down and he was blue, his skin almost translucent, a web of veins showing through. He was so cold, and he was so still—a wax doll that looked exactly like her baby. It was a dream. She knew it was just a dream, and she struggled awake through the layers of sleep that held her down. Not real. It’s not real.
She sat up in bed, looking at the clock. Sunday again. Costas hadn’t come back from clubbing, and the flat was quiet. Annie made herself tea and a poached egg on toast, arranging it on a nice plate, bearing in mind Polly’s comments on her dishes. She sat on her now-pistachio-free sofa, noticing that the fall of sunlight no longer illuminated dust and crumbs everywhere. That was something. A small something, but something all the same. She admired the food on the plate, which was edged in lilac flowers. The yellow of the yolk, the pale green of the avocado. Before she knew it, she’d picked up her phone and snapped a photo, stopping herself as her finger hovered over the Facebook button. No way. She could not become the kind of person who posted pictures of her breakfast.
There was a message from Polly, cheerful and upbeat, about going to the National Gallery that week. Annie still felt troubled by what had happened at the Shard, the way she’d climbed so recklessly on the railings, reaching for the sky. Polly was clearly more sick than she’d realized, taking risks, going too far. With anyone else Annie might have tried to dodge the meet-up, replying with something vague about work. But Polly didn’t have time for a brush-off. If Annie postponed her, there might not be any time left. So she said yes, despite her misgivings, and then settled back to enjoy the peace of her Sunday doing nothing.
DAY 15
Finish a task
“And so, to celebrate the completion of the fly-tipping fines project—finally!—we’re going for drinks at the Shovel after work,” Jeff said, trying to sound natural while reading off index cards. “I must stress that in accordance with council diversity policy these will have to be self-funded and attendance is not compulsory. If you have any special dietary requirements, please let us know and we’ll try to move the venue. This project was a real team effort, with everyone contributing to its success and...” Annie tuned out. She’d already spent much more of her life thinking about fly-tipping than she could ever have imagined. She was surprised they were going to a pub—the council were so keen to avoid possible cultural offense they’d moved the Christmas do to January, when no one felt like celebrating at all.
“Are you going?” Fee was standing in front of Annie, whispering over Jeff’s drone.
“Oh! I don’t know.” She’d routinely avoided all work events for years now. “You?”
Fee had dark circles under her eyes. “Well, I suppose...if you were going...”
Annie thought about having to make awkward conversation with Jeff, who only talked about going to the gym and work, and pretend she didn’t loathe Sharon, and veer away from Tim’s halitosis. But on the other hand, she had no other plans. “I suppose we could. Just for one.”
“Just for one,” Fee agreed. She smiled, the strain on her face melting away. “It’s worth celebrating the end of it. I don’t know about you, but if I never hear the phrase fly-tipping again, it’ll be too soon.”
DAY 16
Take in some culture
“I love this,” Polly said, bouncing up the steps of the museum. Today she wore a lemon-yellow summer dress, in honor of the sun that was bathing London, turning the Thames to a slick of silver. Because it was March, she wore it with purple tights, green snakeskin stilettos and a vintage coat with a fur collar. People gazed at her wherever she went, and no surprise, because she spoke at stadium volum
e at all times. “I did my degree in art history. What did you do, Annie?”
“Nothing,” Annie said, whispering to compensate for Polly’s loudness. “I went straight into work.” There hadn’t been much money about, and her mother had convinced her she’d be better off getting a job, some security in life. Don’t wish for the moon, Annie. Sometimes she wondered if there was another Annie out there in a different world who’d sat in libraries and discussed literature and politics while wearing knitted scarves, kicked up autumn leaves under the spokes of a bike.
“I guess it was kind of a joke degree, mine. I just looked at beautiful things all day. I have this theory that if you only look at nice things, and smell nice things, and hear nice things, you’ll always think good thoughts and be happy.”
Annie was doubtful. It wasn’t possible to only surround yourself with nice things. There would always be grimy buses, and the shriek of a pneumatic drill like the one digging up Trafalgar Square outside, and there would always be death. It was impossible to make death lovely. “How much will it cost—the gallery?” Her monthly budget wouldn’t last long if she kept going along with Polly’s schemes. She’d had to take the afternoon off work for this, and Sharon’s eyebrows had plenty to say about that.
“It’s free! Haven’t you ever been before?”
“I can’t remember.” In the old days, she and the girls—Jane, Miriam, Zarah; the fantastic foursome as Jane tried to get them calling themselves—used to come into town every Saturday. An exhibition, or some shopping, or a meal out. Since they were no longer speaking, Annie had let the habit lapse. She felt vaguely ashamed. Here she was, with so much culture on her doorstep, and all she ever did was watch TV.
Polly seized her arm again, dragging her in. “Come on, I promised I’d show you some nudey ladies.”
Annie trailed behind Polly, cringing wildly as she shouted, “And here’s Degas, such an old perv, but look at these lovely redheads. I wish I’d been a redhead, don’t you? I feel I just would have had more adventures that way. Look at the beautiful way he drew their backs—so vulnerable. And look, Rubens—that’s what I wanted to show you.”