‘You’re so right. Now get upstairs, get your teeth cleaned and get some trainers on. We are going for that walk. You’ve got ten minutes.’
I haven’t always been one of life’s smelly, shambling drop-outs. As I trudge reluctantly upstairs, my knuckles practically dragging on the carpet, one of the framed photos on the wall catches my eye, and for a moment the image there expands and brightens and fills every molecule of my mind and all the spaces in between. It’s me and my sister, Naomi, shoulder to shoulder, laughing hysterically at my graduation party. I can almost hear us, screaming drunkenly, the sounds of chatter and music from the party loud in the background, a crowd of friends and family mingling, enjoying themselves, having a fantastic night. Our heads are tilted towards each other, foreheads almost touching. I must have been twenty-one, Naomi about twenty-three, and we had our whole lives ahead of us, with nothing but fun, success and joy to look forward to. Abruptly the image greys out and shrinks back, the party noises fade away, and once again I am left floundering in silent desolation, the contrast of me then and me now almost knocking me to the floor.
It takes a bit longer than ten minutes for me to get ready. More like forty in the end, mostly because I didn’t have any clean clothes. Or partly because of that, anyway. It was an issue for a while. But also I was moving pretty slowly because I’m so not motivated to get myself ready for a walk, or a drive, or a skip – or any kind of interaction with the outside.
‘Come on, Daisy!’ Abby shouts up from the hallway. I pretend I can’t hear, and continue listlessly kicking the piles of clothes heaped around my bedroom floor. Eventually I manage to disinter a reasonably clean yellow tee shirt with a big round smiley on the front and match it with some old tracksuit bottoms that were screwed up on the floor of my wardrobe. They’ve got a couple of lilac paint splashes on them. Probably from when I was painting in here, all those months ago.
‘Beckham’s arse, Daisy, what the hell are you doing up there?’
Oop. Right. ‘OK, OK, I’m coming now.’
When I come back down the stairs, Abs is standing in my hallway holding out a pair of old trainers she’s unearthed from the hall cupboard. She’s holding them out to me with both hands and with the light behind her she reminds me so powerfully of my mum, impatiently urging me to get my shoes on when I was about five, that it takes my breath away. Then she moves and her face comes back into the light. I carry on slowly down the stairs.
‘Here you go,’ she says, thrusting the shoes at me. ‘Get them on.’
The trainers don’t look familiar at all. They’re white with a very nice metallic lilac stripe down the side, and close up it’s obvious that they’re not an old pair that Abby has unearthed. They look brand new. I must say it’s a relief to see that, although I’m currently failing at life, I’ve still had the presence of mind at some point to go out and buy myself a pair of good trainers. I’m picturing myself, making a mental list of what I needed in town: bread, milk, Jaffa Cakes, nice trainers, toilet roll, soap. Odd that I don’t remember doing it, but it wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve forgotten doing. Or forgotten to do. Or just plain forgotten. I take the trainers and sit on the bottom stair to put them on. Apparently I have very good taste in trainers. They’re incredibly light and spongy, and so comfortable that when I stand up I feel like I’ve forgotten to put anything on my feet. I glance down quickly but no, there they are, gleaming away at the bottom of my legs.
Abby is peering at me a bit oddly, her eyebrows lifted expectantly. It makes me think I’ve forgotten something else, so I check discreetly from my neck down, but it seems every item of clothing is in place. ‘I’m ready,’ I say, just in case she’s thinking I’m about to go and get some leg warmers on.
‘Don’t you want to, I don’t know, put some make-up on, or something?’ She peers at me from her flawless face and Barbie eyes.
‘Oh.’ I think about that for a moment. She’s obviously worried that I might scare children and old people as I tramp round the neighbourhood, arms swinging, in my baggy, paint-spattered outfit, glowing trainers and pasty face. I shrug. ‘Nah.’
‘Ohhh-kaaay.’ She opens the front door and the whiteness of the outside makes me blink rapidly. Good job I didn’t bother to get all mascara-ed up. ‘Let’s do this,’ she says, in an exaggeratedly dramatic American accent, then ushers me outside like a primary school teacher.
As we walk up the path to the pavement, I accidentally catch a glimpse of the ‘For Sale’ sign that’s still stuck in the front lawn, and quickly avert my eyes. Doesn’t matter how hard I try not to see it, it still punches me in the face every time I walk past. Maybe it’s because it’s bright blue, white and yellow and the size of Mum’s dining table. And now there’s red on it too, of course, with the arrival of the little ‘Sold’ sign that has been slapped on at what no doubt someone thought was a jaunty angle over the original wording. I catch sight of Abby glancing at it, then looking at me, but I’m making no comment. She knows what’s what already.
After we’ve been walking for about seventy-five seconds, we’ve completely filled each other in on what we’ve been doing over the weekend. That is, Abs has told me about the club she was in last night and the sleazy fifty-year-old guy who was there rocking his corduroy trousers and bushy sideburns. Why, I wonder, does brown corduroy appeal only to those over fifty? On second thoughts, why does it appeal to anyone at all, ever? It must be the single most drab, unattractive substance known to man.
She’s glancing at me repeatedly. I mean, more frequently than someone just out for a stroll with someone. It’s as if she’s worried I’m going to spontaneously combust in a minute. ‘What is it?’ I say eventually, after discreetly patting myself down.
‘Well, aren’t you even going to ask about the trainers?’
I glance down at the glowing trainers. ‘Um, yeah,’ I say, nodding vaguely, ‘I was kind of thinking about them. I didn’t even know I had any like these.’
‘No, you haven’t. They’re mine.’
I nod. That explains it then. It did seem a bit weird that I’m pretty much unable to function on any level except the most basic – foraging for chocolate cake, keeping myself sheltered, selecting DVDs – but still managing to buy trainers. ‘Right. I thought it was odd that I’d bought them.’
‘Odd? When you haven’t been out of the house for more than a few minutes for weeks?’
‘Yeah. Exactly.’
‘Daze, how could you have thought they were yours, when you have no memory of buying them?’
‘Um, yeah, that is odd too. I suppose I thought I’d just forgotten buying them.’
Her eyes widen further. ‘Oh dear,’ she says, in exactly the same way as Mrs Matthews did, when I was eight and had a childish accident in the toy cupboard.
‘What does that mean?’
She stops walking, turns to face me and takes both my arms. ‘Daze, come on. You’re in a state. No, don’t shrug, we both know it’s true and we both also know that it does matter, even though you’re trying to convince yourself that it doesn’t. I’m worried about you. Seriously, I am.’
‘Ah, Abs. You don’t need to. I’m fine.’
She nods, exaggeratedly. ‘Oh, yeah, sure you are. Spending days on the sofa? Living on Jaffa Cakes? This whole “trainer” thing, for God’s sake?’
‘The orangey bit makes one of my five a day.’
Her chest jerks with a tiny laugh. ‘No, Daze, it doesn’t. You …’ She stops and shakes her head. ‘You’re … You’re killing yourself.’
‘Oh what crap.’
‘All right, maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration. But if you carry on like this, you will get