with yourself about stuff that’s trivial and unrelated to what is actually occurring.’ Her voice softens and she touches her hand to my arm. ‘God, I know you’ve been through a terrible time lately, Daze, and I know you’re drifting and finding it incredibly hard to focus on your life again and connect with the world around you. You’re like a … a delicate little blossom flower that’s dropped from a tree and is now being tossed around in a fast-flowing stream, unable to find your way. It’s …’ She smiles at me sweetly and tips her head on one side. ‘It’s pissing me right off.’
I flinch. ‘Oh.’
‘Yeah.’ She inhales deeply with closed eyes, then lets all the breath out again. ‘I’m telling you for your own good, you know. Because I care about you so much. You do know that, don’t you?’ She pauses while I sit up a bit straighter and open my eyes wider. ‘OK. Now. I know it’s only three miles to the park and back because Tom and I have walked it plenty of times and we’ve measured it. Which means that what you’ve been doing this past week is no more than four miles a day. So you have got to increase the distance.’ She unfolds a piece of paper that I hadn’t noticed she was holding and spreads it out on the sofa. ‘So I’ve worked out this route for you. It’s about eight miles all together, and I want you to do it at least four times next week. Or every day, preferably. I will walk it with you for as long as it takes for you to learn it, OK? Then there’s no danger of you getting lost again.’
Unfair, to say the least. Makes me sound like some kind of child. Or idiot. I smile and nod, but I’m a bit put out, to be honest. And not because she’s patronising me. I’m put out because this week I have actually managed to sustain my first ever sports injury. It’s a massive achievement, and something I never thought I would be capable of, and I’m really proud of myself. It’s been making me feel like a proper athlete – pushing myself too hard, stretching myself to my absolute limits, and beyond, in order to reach my goal. If I had spoken to anyone other than Abby and Tom, they might have said, ‘Why hello there, Daisy, why are you limping?’ And I’d have said, ‘It’s a sports injury. I’ve walked fifty miles over five days.’ And they’d have nodded and said, ‘Wow, a sports injury, you say? You must have been pushing yourself far too hard. And you could have walked to Bluewater from here!’ But of course I haven’t spoken to anyone outside of this flat since I got here. Apart from Wheelbarrow Man, and he doesn’t count. Speaking of which, I have a bit of a confession to make. All this walking I’ve been doing this past week hasn’t entirely been down to the burning desire inside of me to get out there and train my bum off. There has been an ulterior motive. You may have spotted it, actually. I have been marching every which way around the park and its environs the past five days in a desperate attempt to try to avoid seeing that man again. When I finally got back to Abby’s flat the day I saw him, I was horrified when I looked in the bathroom mirror. I was an absolute fright. I had been lost for so long, my hair was a tangled mess, I was caked in mud and leaves, my clothes were torn and ragged, and I had virtually lost the power of speech. I was reduced to communicating in grunts and hand signals. I shudder now when I think about what Wheelbarrow Man must have thought when he saw me. He’s not quite so Taj-Mahal-ish as Tom is; more Machu Picchu, maybe – older and not so gleaming, but interesting to look at and very precisely sculpted – but I’m definitely still just a lump of mud. And on that occasion I was a gauche, incompetent lump of mud that all the other lumps of mud were looking down on and smirking at.
Anyway, in a determined attempt to avoid bumping into him again, I found myself walking until my feet hurt. Which would have been good, except it turns out that my feet start hurting after a total of only about fifteen or twenty miles, spread over five days. It’s humiliating, actually, considering Abby took me back to the sportswear shop where we bought the trainers and made a complaint.
‘Fifty miles, you say?’ Martin had said, holding one of the trainers delicately in his fingers, as if it were made of glass.
I nodded vigorously. ‘Yes. And now my foot is hurting. Quite badly.’
He turned the shoe over in his hands a few times, then gave it back to me with a strange smile that I didn’t get at the time. I just assumed he had a sudden wind pain or something. Now of course I realise that he thought I was lying about the number of miles I’d walked. Probably to impress him. Oh God.
‘There’s nothing wrong with these,’ he’d said, and his tone of voice was different suddenly. Deeper, more manly. As if he’d just stepped out of a 1960s public information film about safety in the kitchen. ‘You just need to build up your muscles and stamina more.’ And in the event of a pan fire, call a big strong man to sort it out for you.
‘So? What do you think?’ Abs says now. She means the training plan.
I nod. ‘Yes, OK, fine. I’ll do it.’
She grins and pats my leg. ‘Of course you will. We start tomorrow.’ She slaps her hands onto her own thighs and starts to get up, then notices my hands flapping and my head shaking. She sits back down again. ‘What?’
‘Tomorrow? Really? But my muscles are all aching and my foot hurts.’
She pulls one of those really sad faces you see people do when they’re generally pretending to be playing a violin. ‘Oh, Daze, of course, I forgot about that. Well don’t worry, you must take it easy for a while. We can start in a week or two, OK?’
I smile gratefully. ‘That would be a lot better. Thanks, Abs.’
‘No problem, sweetheart. You take all the time you need. I’m sure all the people dying of breast cancer will understand totally.’
‘Tomorrow is perfect.’
‘I know.’ She gets up abruptly, then turns to face me. ‘Have you been eating Jaffa Cakes, by the way?’
I shrug nonchalantly and shake my head. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, they’re all gone. I only had two, and Tom says he hasn’t had any since last Wednesday.’ This surprises me. I didn’t think Tom could say that many words all at once.
‘Well, I may have had one or two but I don’t think …’
‘Plus I can see that flattened empty box stuffed under the sofa cushion.’
Shit. ‘Ah. Yes. You’re right. Sorry about that.’
She steps nearer and pulls the flat carton out from under me. ‘Daze, if you finish them up, can you at least get some more? It’s the same with the milk. Tom and I would like to enjoy some of our food and drink from time to time, you know.’
‘Yes, yes, I know, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’
She nods. ‘OK,’ and walks to the door as if she’s leaving the room. Then at the last minute she turns, Columbo-style, and says, ‘Oh, there’s just one more thing.’ She reaches behind her and pulls out an envelope that was tucked in her jeans back pocket. ‘The estate agent brought this round yesterday.’ She hands me the envelope – thick and white, with my name and Mum’s address on the front. And then she hits me with something far more devastating than a heavy glass paperweight. ‘It’s from Owen and Lake.’
Mum’s solicitor.
Daisy Mack
Sometimes,
