Carry You. Beth Thomas

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.

       THREE

       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 full of stuff and my blotchy tear-stained face, Tom was amazing. I mean, you know, in a Taj-Mahal-ish kind of way. He’s got that sort of face that makes you think of churches. I don’t mean literally churches. Not the actual building. That would be ridiculous, if he had a face like a church. What I mean is, his face makes me think about the pictures you see in churches. Those blokes with shiny light round their heads. Saints and holy people. And when we got to the flat and Abs opened the door, he came out into the hallway with his hands clasped, as if he was just about to deliver a blessing, or marry us, or something. He gave a sad smile to the air somewhere near my head, pressed his lips together, then helped us carry the boxes from the car and into the spare room. Then he made us both a hot chocolate with a generous splash of Baileys in it, and cleared off. He did give another sympathetic smile to the room I was in, and touch my shoulder, but he could have been touching a rack of tracksuit tops for all we both cared. Lovely guy, though. How many boyfriends would happily let their girlfriend’s slobby, depressive friend move into their spare room indefinitely? Abs is so lucky. They’re always kissing, or just touching each other’s hands or arms when they pass each other. He’s so affectionate and sensitive. It’s very moving.

      Ooh, this is the bit where Julia Roberts turns up at Hugh’s place looking for a haven. That’s where I would go if I could. Not that I’m not grateful to Abby and Tom for providing a roof over my head in my hour of need, but there’s no way Hugh would have dragged me reluctantly round a load of shops the day after moving in like Abs did. He would have doubtless brought me some croissants in bed, with orange juice and coffee, kissed my head really tenderly, then left me alone to wallow in my misery. Or made energetic love to me all afternoon. Either one would have been good. Frankly, all I wanted to do at that point was lie in bed under a duvet, with or without a naked Hugh, but Abby wasn’t having any of it.

      ‘Get up,’ she said, yanking the curtains back at something like five a.m. ‘I’ve made a plan.’

      I pulled the duvet up over my head. ‘Jesus, Abs,’ I whined. Yes, I know I was whiney, but I was dog-tired, I couldn’t help it. ‘It’s the middle of the night. You know I’m not sleeping well at the moment, seriously. I didn’t get off until gone two, and five or six hours’ sleep just isn’t enough. I can’t get up yet. Call me in a couple more hours.’

      ‘It’s midday.’

      I didn’t move for a second or two, then took hold of the edge of the duvet and dragged it slowly down, gradually exposing my entire pale face. ‘What?’

      She nodded. ‘Yeah, for someone who’s not sleeping well at the moment, you sure do sleep a lot.’

      I stared at her a moment, making the extremely rookie mistake of engaging in direct eye contact with her almost straight away. She raised her eyebrows and put her hands on her hips, and I felt that oh-so-familiar feeling of resignation.

      ‘Come on, Daze, you need to get up. We’ve got things to do.’

      I knew resistance was futile, but I gave it one more try anyway. She would not have respected me if I hadn’t. ‘Yes, I know I’ve got things to do. It starts with “s” and ends with “leep”. Or “ob”. Or maybe “igh”. All three of which require that I remain horizontal, right here.’

      ‘Oh no you don’t, young lady,’ she said, snatching the duvet off my cold miserable body, leaving me curled up in the foetal position, trembling. ‘Come on, get up.’ She strategically positioned herself two millimetres from my face. ‘We’re going shopping.’

      ‘Abby, I don’t want to go shopping. You know I don’t. There’s no point anyway. I’ve put all this weight on and I’m not buying anything until I’ve lost it all.’

      ‘I don’t care about that. Come on, get up, we’re going out like it or not. You’ve got half an hour.’

      I have no idea how it is that Abby manages to make me do things I absolutely do not want to do. When she starts talking, I have that feeling in my head, that absolute granite determination, that no matter what she says, I will not do it. I am in charge of me, not her; I can simply refuse. Like those people who go to presentation evenings for the free champagne, sniggering to each other about the poor saps who get taken in by it all; and then come away with two weeks a year in a flat in Beirut. They’re scratching their heads, thinking ‘How the fuck did that happen?’ No one else in my life has ever managed it with me. Not Mum; not Naomi; not even my dad, when I saw him (and, being less familiar with him, he was always more scary). Naomi once tried so hard to get me to do something – lend her my denim jacket for a date, I think – that she lost her temper and kicked a hole in her bedroom wall. But I didn’t relent. Actually, that just made me more determined. I didn’t need the jacket that night, wasn’t going out and never wore it much anyway. But if she thought she could get me to do what she wanted, just because she went red in the face and performed an impressive karate kick, she was wrong.

      I