BETH THOMAS
Carry You

Copyright

Avon

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Beth Thomas 2014

Beth Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007544813

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007544820

Version: 2014–12–15

Dedication

For my Beano. Are you still doing all your walking?

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

ONE

Daisy Mack

is reclining on the sofa eating Jaffa Cakes watching Hugh Grant punch Colin Firth. Could life get any better?

Jenny Martin Ever thought about going out occasionally? Life can get a LOT better.

Daisy Mack Thanks Jen. Great tip.

Nat ‘Wiggy’ Nicholson Aw Daze that sounds miserable. Want me to come over?

Daisy Mack Thanks Nat, but it’s OK. Gonna get an early night.

Georgia Ling Hope your ok hun xx

Ah, the fight scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary. This calls for another cake, to maximise the enjoyment. I pull the edges of my dressing gown round me a bit more tightly and snuggle down further into my duvet. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen this, it always cheers me up. Well, it makes me smile, anyway, which in my life is as close as I’m going to get to actual cheer. It’s not the sight of two inept men fighting like nine-year-old girls who don’t know how to fight that makes me smile. It’s the fact that there are two men left in the world to fight over one woman. I know, I know, it’s not real, it’s just fiction. But that’s the thing with fiction – anything can happen. Boys turn out to be wizards; vampires fall in love with human schoolgirls; husbands travel through time; men hit each other with dustbin lids.

I dunk my Jaffa Cake into my hot chocolate as I work hard on suspending my disbelief for a bit longer. It’s an effort but so worthwhile. The disbelief thing, I mean. Not the dunking; that’s no effort at all. Dunking these delightful spongy confections in hot chocolate is one of God’s best and yet simplest ideas. If you get it right, the cakey bit soaks up hot chocolate without falling apart, and the chocolate and orange bit on the top goes all warm and soft, so they just melt in your mouth. Too long in the heat, though, and it’s gooey mush at the bottom of the mug. Timing is everything; it’s a lot like life. Ooh, that sounds good.

Daisy Mack

is dunking Jaffa Cakes in hot chocolate. The timing is everything: it’s a lot like life.

My laptop makes an electronic popping sound, and I glance down. It’s an instant message from my best friend Abby.

Abby Marcus Hey, what you doing?

Oh God. Quickly I grab my mobile phone on the sofa next to me and switch it off, dropping it back on the cushion. But I’m still not safe. I reach up to the landline on the wall next to me and break through the dust and cobwebs on the handset. Abby is the only actual human dogged enough to ring it, and she will when she finds my mobile switched off. I press the ‘Call’ button so the dialling tone is audible. Colin lays Hugh out on the road with one good punch. Colin and Hugh really aren’t very good names for two drop-dead-gorgeous, Hollywood A-list actors, are they? They sound more like a pair of nerdy IT geeks in specs. It’s not exactly Brad and Matt.

My laptop pops again.

Abby Marcus Just tried to ring you but mobile on voicemail and landline engaged. Are you actually talking to another human being???????

Daisy Mack Hey! Yeah, on phone. Speak later x

Abby Marcus No, speak now. Wanna go out?

Daisy Mack Can’t. Am tucked up in PJs, and on phone. X

The landline phone is starting to make that multi-tonal alarm noise that lets you know when you’ve accidentally left it off the hook. I’ve heard it so many times these past few weeks, nee-nawing away in the background like an emergency siren, it’s become the sound track to my life. I end the ‘call’, then start another one immediately. Better actually make a call now, I suppose; guilt is encroaching. I press 4 on the memory list and it connects me through to Oxfam, where I make a ten-pound donation. Immediately I feel better. I genuinely am in my PJs, and on the phone, so I have not lied to my best friend; and now I’ve made a donation to charity. I’m a saint.

Pop.

Abby Marcus It’s half past two in the afternoon.

I love Abby. I do. She doesn’t take any crap. Sometimes I wish she would. Just once or twice. Actually, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being in your PJs on a Sunday afternoon, enjoying a film with a Jaffa Cake or two. And if I stare hard enough at the telly and maintain the suspension of my disbelief – and move my head so the armchair is blocking the view – I can’t even see the three empty McVitie’s boxes on the floor. If no one saw me eat them, no one will ever know.

Abby Marcus Are you eating Jaffa Cakes?

Daisy Mack Just a couple. Watching a film. See you tomorrow. X

Abby Marcus No, now. Come on, come out for a walk.

Oh God. A walk. I so don’t want to go out for a walk. It’s bloody miserable weather today, which is exactly why I’m bundled up on my sofa with Col and Hugh, and the world’s best ever dressing gown, instead of tramping the streets in freezing fog.

Daisy Mack Too cold. X

I, on the other hand, am toasty warm, and very snuggly. I’m staying put.

Abby Marcus Get your arse off your sofa and look out the window.

Daisy Mack OK, OK, I’m up.

Abby Marcus No you’re not you’re still typing. Come on Daze, do it.

Abby really is a fantastic friend. She’s the best. So caring, so thoughtful. So … tenacious. Bridget is embarrassing herself at a party now. Not so keen on this bit.

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.

Abby is peering at me a bit oddly, her eyebrows lifted expectantly. It makes me think I’ve forgotten something else, so I check discreetly from my neck down, but it seems every item of clothing is in place. ‘I’m ready,’ I say, just in case she’s thinking I’m about to go and get some leg warmers on.

‘Don’t you want to, I don’t know, put some make-up on, or something?’ She peers at me from her flawless face and Barbie eyes.

‘Oh.’ I think about that for a moment. She’s obviously worried that I might scare children and old people as I tramp round the neighbourhood, arms swinging, in my baggy, paint-spattered outfit, glowing trainers and pasty face. I shrug. ‘Nah.’

‘Ohhh-kaaay.’ She opens the front door and the whiteness of the outside makes me blink rapidly. Good job I didn’t bother to get all mascara-ed up. ‘Let’s do this,’ she says, in an exaggeratedly dramatic American accent, then ushers me outside like a primary school teacher.

As we walk up the path to the pavement, I accidentally catch a glimpse of the ‘For Sale’ sign that’s still stuck in the front lawn, and quickly avert my eyes. Doesn’t matter how hard I try not to see it, it still punches me in the face every time I walk past. Maybe it’s because it’s bright blue, white and yellow and the size of Mum’s dining table. And now there’s red on it too, of course, with the arrival of the little ‘Sold’ sign that has been slapped on at what no doubt someone thought was a jaunty angle over the original wording. I catch sight of Abby glancing at it, then looking at me, but I’m making no comment. She knows what’s what already.

After we’ve been walking for about seventy-five seconds, we’ve completely filled each other in on what we’ve been doing over the weekend. That is, Abs has told me about the club she was in last night and the sleazy fifty-year-old guy who was there rocking his corduroy trousers and bushy sideburns. Why, I wonder, does brown corduroy appeal only to those over fifty? On second thoughts, why does it appeal to anyone at all, ever? It must be the single most drab, unattractive substance known to man.

She’s glancing at me repeatedly. I mean, more frequently than someone just out for a stroll with someone. It’s as if she’s worried I’m going to spontaneously combust in a minute. ‘What is it?’ I say eventually, after discreetly patting myself down.

‘Well, aren’t you even going to ask about the trainers?’

I glance down at the glowing trainers. ‘Um, yeah,’ I say, nodding vaguely, ‘I was kind of thinking about them. I didn’t even know I had any like these.’

‘No, you haven’t. They’re mine.’

I nod. That explains it then. It did seem a bit weird that I’m pretty much unable to function on any level except the most basic – foraging for chocolate cake, keeping myself sheltered, selecting DVDs – but still managing to buy trainers. ‘Right. I thought it was odd that I’d bought them.’

‘Odd? When you haven’t been out of the house for more than a few minutes for weeks?’

‘Yeah. Exactly.’

‘Daze, how could you have thought they were yours, when you have no memory of buying them?’

‘Um, yeah, that is odd too. I suppose I thought I’d just forgotten buying them.’

Her eyes widen further. ‘Oh dear,’ she says, in exactly the same way as Mrs Matthews did, when I was eight and had a childish accident in the toy cupboard.

‘What does that mean?’

She stops walking, turns to face me and takes both my arms. ‘Daze, come on. You’re in a state. No, don’t shrug, we both know it’s true and we both also know that it does matter, even though you’re trying to convince yourself that it doesn’t. I’m worried about you. Seriously, I am.’

‘Ah, Abs. You don’t need to. I’m fine.’

She nods, exaggeratedly. ‘Oh, yeah, sure you are. Spending days on the sofa? Living on Jaffa Cakes? This whole “trainer” thing, for God’s sake?’

‘The orangey bit makes one of my five a day.’

Her chest jerks with a tiny laugh. ‘No, Daze, it doesn’t. You …’ She stops and shakes her head. ‘You’re … You’re killing yourself.’

‘Oh what crap.’

‘All right, maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration. But if you carry on like this, you will get rickets. Or scurvy.’ She pauses. ‘Or you know, zits. At the very least.’

I’m smiling again, making my lips curve up. ‘Zits are the least of my worries, Abs.’

‘I know that, but you need to start somewhere. Your appearance seems like a good place. I’ve been talking to Suzanne on Facebook, and when I told her what’s been going on, she was as worried as I am. And she’s come up with a really good idea. She suggested that …’

Wow, Suzanne Allen. I haven’t heard from her for a while. Suze and I used to work together, years ago when I first left school. It was some kind of terrible call centre, selling pet and home insurance. We had to make disastrous phone call after disastrous phone call, being roundly abused and insulted by virtually everyone. Hard to imagine really how we managed to forge any kind of friendship, as there was absolutely no conversation permitted during call hours. Or tea breaks. Even toilet breaks were closely monitored.

‘… so I’ve signed us up. What do you think?’

Abby looks excited. She’s grinning at me with her whole face, waiting for me to react to something she’s just said. Quickly I cast my mind back a few seconds and try to re-hear whatever it was. Oh, there’s a lovely thick band of daffodils all the way along the grass verge at the side of the road, waving gently in the breeze, their little yellow bells knocking together. Of course, it’s April already. I keep forgetting.

‘Daze?’

‘Yeah, sorry, Abs, I was just thinking about …’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t matter. Can you just say it again, please?’

She stares at me a moment, lips pressed together. Then she says something that completely changes my life. ‘Daze,’ she says, grinning in spite of herself, ‘I’ve signed us up to do a MoonWalk.’

TWO

Daisy Mack

is feeling a little perturbed. Is this a good sign?

Lou Stephens Depends what it’s about!

Jenny Martin Can perturbation ever be good?

Suzanne Allen Yes, that is definitely good. Perturb away – it will help.

Daisy Mack Great, thanks Suze. Now I know it’s good to be perturbed, I am less perturbed. Is this a paradox?

Georgia Ling Everything ok hun? xx

Five months ago, my mum died. It was her second outing into breast cancer, and unfortunately it didn’t go as well as the first. But isn’t that always the way with sequels – never as good as the original, are they? Look at Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Still a great film, don’t get me wrong. Col and Hugh are still geeky sex gods, they still fight like inept girls and Bridge gets to snog both of them again. But … We’ve seen it before, haven’t we? We know she’s hopeless, and can’t stop smoking and wishes she was thinner. And as much as we love her, in the end we’d have preferred to watch the first film again. It had a much better ending.

I’m watching Love Actually in my silky dressing gown now. Second time today. I’m supposed to be cleaning. Better get on with it, I suppose.

Daisy Mack

Gloves, actually.

Suzanne Allen OK, I’m deciphering that to mean you’re cleaning.

Daisy Mack Wow, you’re good!

Suzanne Allen Elementary. It’s spring so they’re not woollen gloves. You don’t own a motorbike. You don’t like gardening. You don’t work with radioactive material or infectious diseases. Oh, and puppets scare you. Ergo, cleaning. Well done! X

Daisy Mack Mind = blown.

There, that’s that done. Abby’s coming round in about half an hour so I may have to finish the film off later. She wants to talk about the MoonWalk. When she told me she’d signed me up for that, I have to say I panicked.

‘Shit, Abby, you haven’t!’ I yelled. ‘I can’t do it! I failed science, remember? And I hate heights, and fast things. Remember Alton Towers? I nearly passed out on that Nemesis thing. And that’s only, like, a hundred feet off the ground. I can’t go ten million miles up, I’ll die! And look at me – I’m so unfit, you said so yourself. I’ll never get through the training programme …’

I stopped there because she was already laughing. I mean really, really laughing. She actually bent over and put her hands on her knees. Then she stood up, took a deep breath, looked at my face and started laughing all over again.

Turns out she didn’t actually mean a walk on the moon. Apparently they don’t offer that to members of the public. Well, how was I supposed to know?

‘It’s a night-time walk, Daze,’ she said, wiping her eyes.

‘Huh?’

‘It’s called the MoonWalk because it’s at night. It’s a twenty-six-mile walk round London, starting at midnight, for charity. Nothing to do with Michael Jackson, and we don’t have to walk backwards.’ Her face calmed at this point and her smile faded. ‘It’s for breast cancer.’

Which meant of course that I couldn’t say no. I don’t think Abs would have let me say no even if it had been for Homeless Llama relief, or something. Anyway, how hard can it be? It’s only walking.

Back on the sofa now, my instant messenger pops.

Abby Marcus All right you, I’m leaving now. Get off your computer and clean up a bit. This is important.

How did she know I was on my computer? I might have been doing the hoovering.

Abby Marcus Don’t try and convince yourself that you might not have got that message. I can see your name on my screen and it says you’re online. You’re always online. Get offline NOW.

Daisy Mack OK, I’m going …

She wants to talk to me about training today. Apparently she’s got a plan. No doubt it will involve a lot of walking. I’m thinking, the walk itself is just under two months away, on May 30th, so we should get a couple of good walks in a week or so beforehand. No need to go mad. I’ve been walking for years – piece of cake. I can do it almost without thinking now. I glance at the film. Hugh has just seen Billy Bob Thornton trying to kiss Nathalie. Ooh, he’s mad about that.

Abby Marcus Get offline, numpty!

I close my laptop and put it down on the sofa, then pause the film on Liam Neeson’s face. Abby’s right, I don’t really have time for this any more. Time is running out.

I have already picked up all the rubbish and dirty crockery from the living room floor, so it looks a lot better than when Abby arrived yesterday. And I’m dressed, in jeans and a clean-ish hoodie, so she won’t hassle me. Not that she judges me, I know she doesn’t. She’s been so fantastic since Mum died, I don’t know what I would have done without her. For the first couple of days I just lay on the sofa under a blanket and Abs stayed, rubbing my back, bringing me food and drink, stroking my head. Nagging, eventually. It’s what she does best, love her. Get out of bed, change your clothes, clean your teeth, all that. Of course, I didn’t really have the luxury of lying prostrate with grief for very long. Mum’s husband, Graham, my stepdad, ill with emphysema, still relied on me then to look after him, which Abby knew. He of course was grieving too and didn’t come out of his room for a week, so could have starved or shrivelled up to a dry old husk in there for all I knew. I was so consumed by my own wretchedness, I didn’t even think about him. I was unbelievably selfish, and Abby let me be. She took over the job of looking after Graham until I felt up to it again. And then two months ago, three months after Mum, Graham died too. As if he’d looked at living without her, given it a try, but didn’t like it. Nah, it’s not for me, he thought, and jacked it all in.

Oh, she’s here.

‘Well, this looks a lot better,’ she says when I let her in. She walks around the room like Mary Poppins, checking the floor for wrappers, looking between the chairs for tell-tale socks or plates. Then she gives a Poppins-esque nod. ‘Well done.’

‘Do I get a treat?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Right.’

‘OK. Sit down.’ I do. It’s like a kind of mind control thing she’s got. She says sit, I sit. She says clean up, I clean up. She says we’re walking twenty-six miles round London during the night, I’ll even do that. I am powerless against her penetrating stare and firmly set jaw. I think she can speak to snakes too. She’s rummaging through her bag now, and eventually pulls out a piece of folded-up paper, which she spreads out on her lap. ‘Daze, we have got our work cut out for us.’

I nod. ‘Right. Uh-huh. Yes. Sure. What do you mean?’

‘I mean the guidance says that to walk a marathon it takes at least twelve weeks’ training. We have seven. It’s going to be tough, but it’s do-able.’

Twelve weeks’ training! For walking? Who writes these guidance things? Some eighty-year-old granny with arthritic ankles? No, no, actually I bet it’s the trainer manufacturers. Of course. They’re onto a winner there. Put it out that walking twenty-six miles will require three months’ training, national panic ensues, trainer sales hit the roof. Classic herd mentality at play. They must think we’re such brainless idiots who can’t think for ourselves, while they rub their hands together and count their ill-gotten gains. They didn’t reckon on me though: I see straight through their wicked plans.

‘OK,’ I say, nodding.

Abs looks up from the sheet of paper on her lap and eyes me seriously. ‘But before we start training,’ she says ominously, ‘there’s something else we need to tackle.’ She raises her eyebrows, apparently waiting for me to fill in the missing blank. I don’t want to though. I’d quite like that particular blank to stay missing. I look away quickly before her eyes compel me to do her bidding, but I’m just a fraction of a second too late. ‘Daisy,’ she says, as if she’s trying to get me to own up to smashing something. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’

I do. She’s right. Of course. As if to reinforce the message – as if it needed reinforcing – I catch a brief glimpse of the ‘For Sale’ sign through the window, the small ‘Sold’ panel in its centre drawing the eye like a blood stain. The house is sold. I have to move out by Friday. It’s Monday.

‘Yes,’ I say quietly.

‘Yes,’ she agrees, more forcefully.

But that’s easy for her to say. It’s not her that’s got to do it. And it’s a complicated business. She doesn’t understand that you can’t simply pack all your belongings away and move out; there are things that need to be done first. I mean, I haven’t got any of the stuff I’ll need – cardboard boxes, marker pens, tape …

‘I’ve got a load of boxes, pens and tape in the car,’ she says helpfully.

‘Oh that’s helpful. Thanks.’

‘Right. Let’s do this.’ She slaps her hands on her thighs and stands up. ‘I’ll get the bits from the car, you get upstairs and start sorting out your stuff.’ She performs an elaborate comedy ‘I’m-about-to-dash-off’ move, swinging one arm and leg backwards across herself, holds it, then trudges off slowly.

I raise myself off the sofa, feeling as if there are suddenly a million tons of air pressing down on me. It makes moving around unimaginably difficult.

‘What the hell are you still doing standing there?’

Ah, she’s back already, staggering into the room under a giant stack of flat cardboard boxes. She’s peering at me round the side of them, and even though more than half her face is obscured by ‘Young’s Frozen Fish’, she still manages to look disapproving.

‘Get upstairs and start getting your clothes out.’

‘OK.’

When Mum and Graham both got so ill at the same time, Naomi and I decided that I would move back in with them, to help care for them both. Of course it should be me; Naomi was living in domestic bliss with Russell, I was sharing a rented house with three other girls. It made sense. I packed my stuff up into boxes then and made myself at home in my mum’s spare room. It was only ever a temporary set-up, but it was horrific knowing it was only temporary. Knowing why it was only temporary.

Upstairs in my room I start pulling all my clothes out of the drawers and wardrobe, but most of them are on the floor so I just scoop them up and dump them on the bed. Then I stare at them. Then I sink down onto the edge of the bed. There isn’t much there, not really, not for three years of my life. Tee shirts, jeans, socks, pants. Swimming costume. Not that the length of time you live somewhere should have any bearing on how many clothes you have. But three years I’ve been here, and all I’m taking with me are a couple of boxes of clothes and some toiletries.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t like to take more. Right here on the dressing table is a gorgeous photo of the whole family – Mum and Graham and all of their combined children – on their wedding day. I’d love to take that with me, but I can’t. I’m not allowed. I pick it up and move it reverentially towards the pile of clothes on the bed, holding it as if it were a photo of Elvis reading The Times on the tube in 2001. Perhaps I could just squeeze it in, between my knickers? Who would ever know? But then the thought of my stepbrother Darren’s face in between my knickers makes my lip curl and I replace the picture on the dresser. It’s just not worth it.

A few minutes later Abs appears with a newly three-dimensional box in each hand and we spend the next hour or so filling them with my things and carrying them out to her car, then starting again. There are a few things downstairs too that are mine – laptop, some CDs, all my DVDs – and once they’re in, and the bathroom is cleared, we’re done.

‘That was quick,’ I say, as we stand together in the hallway. She squeezes my arm, and I look at her gratefully. Then I realise that she’s not squeezing my arm to say, ‘I know, this is really hard, but I’m here for you, my friend, and I will help you get through it.’ This particular arm-squeeze means

‘We’re not done yet, Daze.’

Turns out she thinks we need to clean the entire place, really thoroughly, before I quit it forever. She says it will put me in a good light. She says I owe it to my mum. She says I can’t ever let anyone find out what a complete and utter disgusting slob I’ve been for the past few months.

‘Oh my God, Daze, that girl is such a terrible slob,’ Naomi’s scandalised voice comes back to me, in a conversation we had about a girl called Heidi who flat-shared with her for a while a few years ago. ‘There’s always at least two pairs of shoes left in the hallway, letters on the bread bin, a knife in the washing-up bowl, and she never puts her jacket away in the cupboard. Always leaves it on the sofa!’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’ I was as appalled as her at these disgusting character flaws. ‘What does she expect to happen to it there? The cleaning fairy will put it away?’

‘Huh, yeah, no doubt. I’m not sure how much more I can stand. May have to burn it.’

‘Bring it on!’

Somewhere along the road, my exacting standards for cleanliness have taken a bit of a nosedive. ‘You’re not a disgusting slob,’ Abs says now, ‘but people will think you are when they see …’ she indicates the entire house with a wide sweep of her arm ‘… this.’

Twenty minutes later I know she’s right when I find what once was either a chocolate Hobnob or lasagne in a mottled beige arc by the dining room door. I glance over at Abs, currently positioned rump-end towards me as she scrubs at some other disgusting bit of filth on the carpet, and I feel glad that she can’t see the disgusting bit of filth over here. Because I’m definitely going to keep my dignity as long as she doesn’t see this particular stain. The fact that she’s already seen the mouldy coffee cups, the stale pizza crusts, the coffee spills and the unopened post will have no bearing on her opinion of me.

Actually, knowing Abs, it won’t.

I met Abby just over four years ago in a queue in Tesco. It’s an electrifying story. I only had a basketful of items, although I might have had one or two more than ten items in there. It’s a possibility; they were all small. They all fitted in the basket, so I definitely qualified to go down the basket queue. I was perfectly justified. Abs was behind me with a carton of orange juice and a bottle of tequila and some limes. Goodness knows what she was up to with that strange combination. Anyway, it was all going very well – the person in front of the person in front of me had paid and left; the person in front of me put his basket on the little shelf thing to unload it; and the rest of us all shuffled forward silently without making eye contact with anyone or actually looking at anything. Eventually the man in front of me took his dog biscuits and meal for one and left, and I moved forward and unloaded my basket onto the conveyor belt. Then suddenly, it all kicked off. Quick as a flash, the bespectacled boy behind the till anxiously eyed my line of shopping and didn’t start swiping it.

‘Um, sorry, I think you’ve got, um, got more than, er, ten, yeah, ten items there,’ he nervously stammered out.

I raised my eyebrows and he flinched. His name was Spencer, I remember that. I hadn’t had a good day so far – I’d had to take Mum to the hospital that morning for some reason, can’t remember what it was that day – and I think Spencer could tell in my eyebrows that things for him had suddenly taken a downward turn. ‘And?’ I said, not moving.

A smile appeared on his face the way you sometimes catch a fleeting flash of sun reflected on someone’s glasses across the street. Then it disappeared. ‘Well, um, this is the ten items queue …’

His voice tailed off as I started shaking my head. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said confidently. Actually I said it a lot more confidently than I really felt. I was fairly sure the sign said ‘Baskets Only’, but at this point I suddenly experienced a lurch of fear dropping in my belly. The queue behind me was starting to shift its weight from foot to foot and heft baskets of shopping around needlessly. I sensed that it wouldn’t be long before they were dropping their baguettes in favour of pitchforks and lanterns and driving me out of town. Mentally I picked up a cudgel, squared my shoulders and turned round slowly and threateningly to face the restless villagers. In actual fact I was hunching a bit while checking behind me nervously. ‘I think you’ll find,’ I cringed, ‘that this is the “Basket Only” queue.’

Spencer gave the fleeting glimpse of teeth again, only this time with less conviction. ‘Noooo …’ he started, but then there was a rustling sound and a low, menacing voice behind me said,

‘Some time today.’

The queue shuffled its feet in agreement and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My animal instincts were sensing approaching danger, and I felt trapped, like cornered prey. I glanced around me nervously, assessing my exit possibilities, but there wasn’t much choice. Walk slowly and with dignity, head high, towards the exit; or leg it? Oh but I really didn’t want to do that. Maybe I had another option. Maybe I could stand my ground, have the courage of my convictions, like Mum had always told me. ‘Have the courage of your convictions, Daisy Duck,’ she said. ‘Stand up for what you believe in, be strong, no matter what anyone else thinks.’ I know, it’s incredible isn’t it? Still calling me Daisy Duck well into my adulthood.

‘I will, Mum,’ I thought to myself fervently now, pressing my lips together. ‘I’ll do it for you.’

‘Pardon?’ said Spencer.

‘Huh? Oh, no, nothing. Um …’

I was stalling and he knew it. One of us was going to have to concede, and we were both starting to believe that it was going to be me.

‘You’ll have to … move your things,’ he said very quietly, avoiding eye contact at all costs. ‘You need to use the trolley tills.’

I lowered my head towards him. He visibly flinched. ‘Spencer,’ I said, using my mum’s voice that was in my head, ‘you don’t honestly think it’s going to take less time for me to pack all these things back into this basket, than it would for you to run them quickly through the till, do you?’

‘Um,’ Spencer began helplessly, doing an ‘I-don’t-make-the-rules’ face, ‘actually …’

‘I’ll take half the items,’ the girl behind me – Abby, it turned out – piped up suddenly at this point. Spencer and I exchanged a glance, then turned in unison to look at her. She was dark haired – it was almost blue-black – and wearing a denim mini skirt, stripey footless tights and flip-flops. As we stared at her, she scooped roughly half of my things back down the conveyor towards her, then stuck the ‘Next customer please’ sign in the middle. ‘Pay me back later,’ she said to me, and winked. Actually winked, perfectly, without accidentally closing both eyes or screwing up her mouth or grimacing in some other gauche way. I thought that was so incredibly cool.

‘Christ, it was like a stand-off between the country’s two biggest jessies,’ she said in the car park a few minutes later. ‘Not so much which one of you was going to hold out the longest, more like a race to see who was going to cry first. I couldn’t stand to watch it continue for another second.’

And we’ve been friends ever since.

OK, so maybe it’s not a very good story. No actual violence and mayhem. No bloodshed. Not even a raised voice. But the potential was there. Simmering.

Daisy Mack

On my knees like Cinderella. Literally and figuratively.

Georgia Ling OMG that’s a big clean lol! xoxo

Nat ‘Wiggy’ Nicholson come and do mine after xx

‘Right,’ Abs says now, and levers herself back onto her feet. She puts her hands on her hips and raises her eyebrows. I know exactly what that means. It’s a gesture I’ve seen Abby do countless times in the last four years, usually when she’s trying to get me to do something I’m not one hundred percent keen on. Or focused on. One or the other. Basically it means ‘Come on, Daisy, sort yourself out, now is the time to face the thing you’ve got to do and there’s no point trying to argue with me because I won’t stand for any nonsense.’ Whenever I see her hands go to her hips, I get a resigned feeling, like Pavlov’s dog getting hungry when the bell rings. Or was it ringing the bell when it was hungry? No, that wasn’t it. That was probably rats, wasn’t it? Going round exciting mazes and over ramps to get a treat. I got lost in a maze once. Naomi told me to keep on turning left every time I came to a junction but it didn’t work. I went round and round in circles for over half an hour before Mum shouted to me over the fences to stop being such an idiot and walk towards her.

‘Daze,’ Abs says, using the particular tone of voice that goes with the gesture.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’ I push myself up and stand, ready to move on to the next dirty mark or pile of crap, but when I look round I see that there aren’t any more dirty marks, or piles of crap to be dealt with. While I’ve been listlessly rubbing away at the chocolate Hobnob/lasagne mark, Abs has done all the rest of the cleaning. Which means …

‘Time to go,’ she says softly.

So. This is it. We take our cloths and the bowl of warm water solemnly back to the kitchen and dump everything in the sink. The kitchen looks amazing – all the sides are clear and wiped and the floor is spotless. I can’t remember the last time I saw it looking this good. Some time in the early part of last year, I expect. I’m walking around it slowly, running my hand along the sides, touching the knobs on the hob, stroking the dent on the fridge door where Mum threw a tin of custard powder at Graham one Christmas. This is the spot where I was standing when she told everyone about the cancer coming back. Over there on the windowsill was the plant I bought her for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago. I think it’s died now. Actually I have no idea where it is. One minute it was there, dropping brown leaves and generally shrivelling up; next minute it was gone. When was that? Must be at least a week ago. I can’t believe I let that plant die. I watched it, every day, curling up, needing my attention, crying out for help to relieve its suffering, and yet I did nothing. I didn’t even try. Maybe there was something I could have done. Maybe I could have saved it, if I’d only been a bit more … a bit more … careful.

Inexplicably, I’m starting to cry, standing there in Mum’s kitchen, staring at the empty spot where a dying plant used to stand. It starts with an ache in my throat and heat in my eyes which quickly spills over into hot tears and choking cries, and before long I’m sobbing so hard I’m bent over, one hand pressed on the counter top, the other clutching my stomach, shaking, and little drops of salt water are splashing onto the tiled floor by my feet. On some level far removed from where I am I feel hands go around me and I’m vaguely aware of the warmth of a person nearby. We move together, jerking, through the kitchen, down the hallway and out of the front door, and then I look up and find that we are standing outside. I rub my face and see that Abs is there, her hand on the door, which is still open. She looks at me intently as she gently pulls the door closed. I heave in a breath. Is that it? Is that really it? All the years of my life lived in this house, all the happy moments, all the sad ones, the laughter, the tears, over and done with, just like that? Ended by the closing of a door? It can’t be that final, can it? It can’t be so … complete?

But Abby isn’t moving, and is still looking at me meaningfully. I raise my hand and drag it across my sniffly nose, and as I do I realise that I’m still holding the front door key. Abby’s eyes focus on that, and she raises her eyebrows again. I move the key from my palm to my fingertips and stare at it for a moment. I press my lips to it once. Then I step forward, open the letter box with my other hand, and drop the key inside.

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