the other side of the bridge, and stand up. Fortunately no one walked past me as I crossed, and after I’ve brushed the dirt off my hands and knees, you can’t even tell what I was doing.
When I get back to Abby’s flat half an hour later, I hear raised voices in the kitchen as I let myself in. It’s a man and a woman, although Abs said she had another client so she shouldn’t be home yet. I stand in the hallway and take my magic trainers off as quietly as possible. So that the two people arguing aren’t embarrassed about being overheard, of course; nothing to do with wanting to hear what they’re saying.
‘That’s not what I mean,’ the man’s voice says and I realise that it’s Tom. He was the obvious choice of course, this being his home, but I was thrown by the quantity of words being said.
‘Well, what do you mean?’ says a woman’s voice. This one I don’t recognise. Definitely not Abs. The kitchen door bangs suddenly and I jump as a woman, presumably the owner of the voice, marches through it and towards me. She stares at me oddly and I realise that I am standing completely stationary with one shoe on and the other one in my hand, half bent over. I drop the shoe quickly and lift my other foot to start undoing the laces.
‘Don’t leave it like that,’ Tom says, coming through the door. ‘Sally, for God’s sake.’ He reaches an arm towards the woman, then sees me and drops it abruptly back to his side. His alabaster face has a very faint pinkish tinge to it, and three or four of his hairs have become displaced. The man’s a mess. ‘Daisy,’ he says, glancing awkwardly at me, then looking away. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
I’m not used to talking to him directly and I’m not sure how to go about it. In the end I just smile and say, ‘Oh.’
‘I’ll see you soon, Tom,’ Sally says, then pulls the front door open and marches at top speed through it. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she says to the street, presumably meaning me, then disappears and slams the door.
In the ensuing silence, Tom and I stare at each other for a second or two. His face looks different somehow and it takes me a moment to realise what it is. His eyebrows have moved. They’re fractionally closer together than usual, which changes his entire appearance. He looks … pained. Distraught, almost. He stares at me with those eyebrows – there’s even a faint crease in the skin between them – and he looks like he’s pleading with me.
‘Daisy,’ he says, his voice one semitone higher than normal, unrecognisable from his usual monotone. It’s practically cracking with emotion.
‘Erm, I gotta have a shower,’ I say quickly, before he has a chance to ask me not to tell Abby what I heard. I limp past him on one trainer towards the bathroom, trying not to add it up, trying not to put the two twos together. But each time I think about it, no matter how hard I try not to, I just keep on coming up with four.
Daisy Mack
Is facing a bit of a dilemma …
Suzanne Allen Anything I can help with?
Daisy Mack Not really. Thanks anyway.
Abby Marcus Whatever it is, forget it. It’s not important.
She’s wrong. It is important. Very much so. It’s so important it has been occupying my mind constantly for the past ten minutes. And it affects her directly. The question is this: should I buy Jaffa Cakes, milk, or both?
I’m in Sainsbury’s. I’ve walked here. This means of course that I will have to walk back, and anything I buy will have to be carried. This will make the walk home fairly hard work and pretty uncomfortable, unless I only buy small, light things. Round things. Spongy things covered in dark chocolate. They will fit nicely in my rucksack and I won’t even know they’re there.
That is my dilemma. Abby has asked me to get both while I’m out today, milk and Jaffa Cakes, but I so don’t want to carry the milk home.
Were you thinking that my dilemma was whether or not I should tell my beautiful, kind and generous best friend Abby about the strange goings-on I witnessed in the hallway of her home two days ago, involving her statuesque yet stilted boyfriend, and a mysterious and (if I’m not mistaken) slightly older, other woman?
No. Nothing to do with me.
‘Aha,’ a voice says suddenly behind me and I look round to find a tall, scruffy-looking bloke with messy dark hair, wearing an old grey tee shirt, frayed jeans and dusty, scuffed work boots. I don’t know him so I turn back. Maybe I could get one very small carton. They don’t weigh much at all. Ooh, wait, they’ve got chocolate flavour …
‘That’s cold,’ the voice says behind me, blatantly stating the obvious. I glance quickly to my left and right but can’t see anyone else nearby. He must be one of those losers who feels the need to commentate on everything around him, as if the rest of the world is permanently gripped by his mundane and totally apparent observations. My Aunt Hazel does that. ‘Phone’s ringing,’ she’ll say. Or ‘Car won’t start.’ When she hears a siren approaching on the street, she’ll either announce ‘ambulance’, ‘police car’, or ‘fire engine’, depending on the type of siren. I don’t really care what’s coming as I’m always far too busy panicking and trying to drive my car off the road and into a parallel dimension to make sure I’m well out of the way.
I carefully ignore the man behind me, to make it clear that he’s wasting his time with me. And everyone else, in fact.
‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ he goes on, relentlessly. ‘Perhaps if I was holding a wheelbarrow …?’ And suddenly, it clicks. This is Wheelbarrow Man from last week, the man I have been frantically trying to avoid meeting again by walking, literally, all round the houses. And now here he is, by the milk in Sainsbury’s. At exactly the same moment I am. Don’t you just love irony?
I turn slightly, not fully round this time, just enough to catch sight of him and let him know that I’m acknowledging him, and give a half-smile. ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. Hi.’ I turn back to the impossible milk choices before me.
‘I thought you were coming back with a clapometer,’ he says now, and I can hear that he’s grinning. ‘I worked so hard on some new material; never got a chance to test it out.’
What the hell is he going on about? I have no idea, so I give a meaningless ‘huh’ noise and shrug without turning. Hopefully he’ll realise that I need all my concentration to decide on the milk.
A hand reaches into the picture and closes around a four-pinter of skimmed. I only get a view of it for a couple of seconds before it retreats with its prize, but in that time I can see that it’s generally grimy all over, and there is black filth under all the fingernails. My lip curls. Right here is the reason why I’m not buying milk today.
‘See you on the tour then,’ he says to my back. I give a minimal nod without turning, and wait for a couple of seconds until he moves away. Thank God for that. Filthy people always give me the creeps. Or maybe it was just him.
On the way home, I have to walk through the housing estate. I love this bit of the walk, for two principal reasons. Firstly, it’s all good solid pavement, so no mud, loose shingle, scary bridges or eight-legged freaks. The going is good to firm, with no elevation or dangerous foliage. There are lots of large
