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.
Daisy Mack
is making a multidimensional cosmological model using superstring theory, entanglement theory, and papier mache.
Jenny Martin Wtf???
Suzanne Allen Sounds like you have way too much time on your hands, my friend. I’m sure you must have something else you could be doing????
Daisy Mack Suze, yes I have, but this is metasystems modelling, it can’t be done quickly.
Georgia Ling Give me a call, hun? Xx
I’m not really doing that. Failed science, remember? I’m on Abby’s sofa, under my duvet, watching Notting Hill on Abby’s DVD player. How cool is Hugh in this one? Not geeky at all. Supersmooth, even when he meets a superstar. Makes me fall in love with him all over again. And that makes me feel guilty about Colin, which means I’ll have to watch a couple of episodes of Pride and Prejudice afterwards. That’s OK, I’ve got loads of time before Abs or Tom get home from work.
Tom is Abby’s lovely boyfriend. He’s some kind of regional manager for a brand of sportswear I think. I know it’s sportswear, and I know he’s quite high up, but that’s about all I do know. Oh, no, I also know that he feels it’s his duty, being in the sportswear line, to keep himself incredibly fit and well-toned; and I know he walks around the flat without a shirt on sometimes. But it’s OK. I’m so flabby, white and spotty at the moment that his being here, looking like that, doesn’t do anything to me. It’s a bit like what it would be like to be a little pebble looking up at a daffodil. Or a lump of mud looking at the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is not in a million years ever going to look back, so the lump of mud doesn’t pay much attention to the Taj Mahal either. At this point in its life, it’s not even looking at other lumps of mud to be honest, let alone stunning white marble Indian temples.
When I first got here a week ago, with my cardboard boxes
