‘Hi,’ I say weakly, as a man in tight black Lycra shorts and a clingy vest top jogs easily past me. As he passes, he turns slightly, makes eye contact and gives a little smile. His blond hair is falling beautifully across his forehead in a floppy curl, and the eyes that meet mine are clear and crystal blue. My knees, already dangerously weak, practically give out at this point. ‘Come on then,’ he says, and makes a forward sweeping gesture with his arm, as if he’s moving over to allow me to go past.
I shake my head. ‘N’th’nks,’ I manage to croak out, the combination of the footbridge and his thighs making me virtually unintelligible. Oh God, I used to be good at this. And I don’t mean walking.
‘Come on!’ he repeats, turning again and grinning more broadly. Then, to my utter horror, he actually runs backwards on the bridge for a few steps and I almost vomit. I have to look away as my heart stops dead in my chest and even though I’ve turned away, I squeeze my eyes shut too. He’s going over, he’s so going over, he’s definitely going over. I cringe and tense, clenching my fists and my jaw, my whole body a taut muscle waiting for the trip, the shout of terror, the scream; and after two or three seconds of heavy anxious breathing, I don’t hear it. I crack one eye open. Sunny day; bridge; man jogging lightly away. Now I’m just a very tense woman watching a fit man jogging. With effort I relax my shoulders and loosen my fists, turning to face forwards again and straightening up a little. Thank God he didn’t see that.
He’s almost at the other end of the bridge now. If I’d been jogging like him, I might have reached the other side too. I might also have caused a deep, ancient fault in the concrete finally to splinter under the thud of my feet, and have tumbled to my death in a sickening avalanche of twisted metal and rock. I shake my head and accidentally catch sight of a couple of cars and a lorry speeding past below me, which makes me gasp and wobble. I have to stop and grab hold of the handrail quickly and bend my knees. Somehow getting my centre of gravity six inches nearer the ground seems to help, even a million feet up in the air.
‘See you again!’ the runner calls back to me from the safety of the path on the other side. I’m frozen here, thanks to him, and I realise as his beautiful buttocks bounce out of sight that I had been kind of hoping he would come back and rescue me, like Graham did for Mum more than twenty years ago.
‘I don’t need any help.’ Her voice between gritted teeth sounds in my head, and I remember that once Graham offered to help her, she managed to stand up and get moving without once taking his arm. She was such an inspiration to me: so incredibly strong and capable. Even when sheer, undiluted terror had her in its grip and reduced her to a gibbering jelly, she was still able to make herself get up and get moving because she had had to learn to rely on no one but herself.
I’m nothing like that. It is totally unnatural for this bridge and this path to be up here in the air. It defies gravity and surely can’t hold out much longer. I feel so exposed and unstable up here, as if the whole thing is about to disintegrate beneath my feet and send me plummeting the two hundred thousand feet to the motorway below, where I will be smashed and broken before being pulped under the wheels of a ninety-ton lorry, five cars and a camper van. I curl my fingers more tightly around the railing and lower my body further towards the path. I’m rigid with fear now, completely unable to think about moving, or think at all, and there’s only one thing I can do. I reach round behind me very slowly and pull my phone out of my pocket; then, keeping my entire body absolutely still apart from my left hand, I write a text.
Abs, I need help
Seconds later, the phone vibrates in my hand as the reply arrives.
Daze, I’m wrking. Client in 15. You gotta get yrself across on yr own.
I can’t.
NO SUCH WRD. Just do it.
Am paralysed. There is no ‘just do it’.
Nikes sake, stfu. NOT paralysed. Get on with it. It’ll mak you strnger.
What a great friend she is.
Ten minutes later I reach 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