Beth Thomas - Carry You

Daisy Mack OK, horrid winter’s afternoon. Definitely not walking weather. What’s your point?

Abby Marcus It’s the 11th of April.

Oh, God, yes, of course it is. How did I forget that? I was still stuck in November for some reason. Well, not for some reason. I know the reason. Everything stopped for me in November, and I often forget that for other people time has carried on ticking, events have kept occurring, and everyone else has continued to experience things.

I suppose I’d better actually look out of the window then. She’ll never shut up otherwise. She does love to talk, Abby. She’s a driving instructor and her life is one long hilarious series of adventures, with dual control pedals. They should make a film about it. It could be called, I don’t know, Driving Games , or Driving Down , or, no, no, wait: Drive Hard . Brilliant.

I move the laptop off my lap and put it carefully down on the sofa next to my mobile phone, then push the duvet back, pull my feet up and roll unsteadily sideways onto my knees. I let my face drop into the fabric of the back of the sofa. Feel a bit dizzy suddenly. I grip the back of the sofa for a few seconds until I’m steady, then turn myself round slowly so my back is to the telly and I am facing the closed curtains behind the sofa. I wonder why Abby is so desperate to get me to look outside. I reach out and pull the curtain back a crack and am instantly blinded by the bright sunshine streaming in. My pupils practically scream out in agony and immediately shrink to the size of single atoms, which is still not small enough to stop the searing white-hot rays from burning into my retinas, leaving a trail of blackened, scorched tissue and permanent damage. I squint a bit and shield my eyes with my hand. That’s better.

‘Open the bloody door, you numpty!’ a cheerful voice shouts, and I make out at last that it’s Abby herself, waving on the lawn.

‘Oh my God, Daisy, look at the state of this place!’ she says as she strides purposefully in a few seconds later. She glances quickly around, then throws me a sidelong look. ‘Daze, it’s very smelly in here.’ I’m retreating to the comfort of the sofa and my duvet, while Abby moves around my darkened living room, scooping up the McVitie’s boxes, as well as one or two Twix wrappers, dirty coffee cups, tissues and, embarrassingly, a half-eaten cheesecake with hardened edges that I think was from yesterday.

‘One or two Jaffa Cakes you said,’ she’s muttering as she cleans. ‘God, have you been on that sofa all weekend? Have you actually had any nutrition at all since Friday lunch time?’

I’m not answering. It’s all rhetorical anyway. She knows what I’m like. Plus at this moment Bridget is running through the streets in her underpants and cardigan, about to snog Colin. I snogged someone called Colin once. Not a very enjoyable experience. We both had braces at the time and some kind of unpleasant electromagnetic force was caused by the presence of all the steel.

‘Are you even listening to me?’ Abby’s voice breaks into my thoughts and I make my eyeballs rotate towards her blurry shape. She’s standing in the middle of the floor, hands on hips, frowning hard.

‘Oh, yeah, course I am. I’m sorry, Abs.’

She cocks her head. ‘So what are you sorry for?’

I shake my head and shrug. ‘You know. All this.’ I move my hand generally in the direction of the world. ‘I’m so hopeless.’

A small beam of sunshine breaks through the thunder clouds on Abby’s face, and she moves over to where I’m huddled. ‘No, Daze, you’re not hopeless. You’re depressed, disorganised, lost, confused and … well, a bit malodorous.’ She sits down on the sofa by my feet, picks them both up by the socks and lays them gently in her own lap. ‘But you’re not hopeless. You have hope. We always have hope, don’t we?’ She rubs my shin affectionately. ‘And you’ve got me. I mean seriously, what more could you possibly need?’

Ah, she really is great. I make my face smile because I know it’s what she’s hoping to see, but I’m still not feeling the smile brewing up from inside me. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get that back. ‘Abby, you’re the best friend a girl in this mess could possibly want. Or be lucky enough to have. I don’t deserve you.’

‘You’re so right. Now get upstairs, get your teeth cleaned and get some trainers on. We are going for that walk. You’ve got ten minutes.’

I haven’t always been one of life’s smelly, shambling drop-outs. As I trudge reluctantly upstairs, my knuckles practically dragging on the carpet, one of the framed photos on the wall catches my eye, and for a moment the image there expands and brightens and fills every molecule of my mind and all the spaces in between. It’s me and my sister, Naomi, shoulder to shoulder, laughing hysterically at my graduation party. I can almost hear us, screaming drunkenly, the sounds of chatter and music from the party loud in the background, a crowd of friends and family mingling, enjoying themselves, having a fantastic night. Our heads are tilted towards each other, foreheads almost touching. I must have been twenty-one, Naomi about twenty-three, and we had our whole lives ahead of us, with nothing but fun, success and joy to look forward to. Abruptly the image greys out and shrinks back, the party noises fade away, and once again I am left floundering in silent desolation, the contrast of me then and me now almost knocking me to the floor.

It takes a bit longer than ten minutes for me to get ready. More like forty in the end, mostly because I didn’t have any clean clothes. Or partly because of that, anyway. It was an issue for a while. But also I was moving pretty slowly because I’m so not motivated to get myself ready for a walk, or a drive, or a skip – or any kind of interaction with the outside.

‘Come on, Daisy!’ Abby shouts up from the hallway. I pretend I can’t hear, and continue listlessly kicking the piles of clothes heaped around my bedroom floor. Eventually I manage to disinter a reasonably clean yellow tee shirt with a big round smiley on the front and match it with some old tracksuit bottoms that were screwed up on the floor of my wardrobe. They’ve got a couple of lilac paint splashes on them. Probably from when I was painting in here, all those months ago.

‘ Beckham’s arse, Daisy, what the hell are you doing up there ? ’

Oop. Right. ‘OK, OK, I’m coming now.’

When I come back down the stairs, Abs is standing in my hallway holding out a pair of old trainers she’s unearthed from the hall cupboard. She’s holding them out to me with both hands and with the light behind her she reminds me so powerfully of my mum, impatiently urging me to get my shoes on when I was about five, that it takes my breath away. Then she moves and her face comes back into the light. I carry on slowly down the stairs.

‘Here you go,’ she says, thrusting the shoes at me. ‘Get them on.’

The trainers don’t look familiar at all. They’re white with a very nice metallic lilac stripe down the side, and close up it’s obvious that they’re not an old pair that Abby has unearthed. They look brand new. I must say it’s a relief to see that, although I’m currently failing at life, I’ve still had the presence of mind at some point to go out and buy myself a pair of good trainers. I’m picturing myself, making a mental list of what I needed in town: bread, milk, Jaffa Cakes, nice trainers, toilet roll, soap. Odd that I don’t remember doing it, but it wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve forgotten doing. Or forgotten to do. Or just plain forgotten. I take the trainers and sit on the bottom stair to put them on. Apparently I have very good taste in trainers. They’re incredibly light and spongy, and so comfortable that when I stand up I feel like I’ve forgotten to put anything on my feet. I glance down quickly but no, there they are, gleaming away at the bottom of my legs.