Carry You

by Beth Thomas

  ‘When the cheque comes through,’ Abby said gently, rubbing my arms, ‘we’ll go flat-hunting together. Don’t worry, Daze. I’m going to help you.’

  I couldn’t tell her the rest of what Darren had said. He was absolutely right, of course; I didn’t deserve anything. But I couldn’t bear for Abby to know that. She didn’t know what I had done all those years ago, and I never wanted her to find out.

  There’s a single bang on the door now and it opens immediately to reveal Abby standing there grinning happily. ‘We’re going out for dinner,’ she says. ‘And when we get back, we are going to talk about your training partner.’

  ‘OK, pardner.’

  She’d turned to walk away, but now stops dead, then turns, shoulders first, very slowly round again. She slits her eyes and jerks her chin up once. ‘Hey. Are you talking to me?’ Her voice is deep and gravelly, and faintly Americanised. She sounds like Don Corleone, only more dangerous.

  I slide off the bed onto my feet and stand to face her. ‘So whhhut if ah ayum?’ I’ve gone a bit Scarlett O’Hara, which is about as intimidating as Snow White.

  Abby’s mouth twitches as she struggles to maintain killer menace. ‘I’ll see you … later.’ She’s trying – quite successfully actually – to sound like she has a mouth full of cotton wool balls. ‘And don’t leave the country.’

  ‘Ah won’t.’

  She turns, very slowly, staring at me the entire time with narrowed eyes, and only breaks eye contact at the last minute. Then she swings round again, grinning cheerfully. ‘D’you wanna come with?’

  ‘What, and play gooseberry all evening? No thanks.’ No need to mention that I can’t afford it. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to have some toast and watch About a Boy.

  NINE

  Daisy Mack

  Chilling in the garden with a glass of wine on a rare day off. This is the life.

  Abby Marcus WTF????

  Daisy Mack Facebook rules apply, Abs, remember?

  Abby Marcus Ah, yes, now I understand. You go for it then!

  Sarah White Sounds like my kinda day! xx

  Georgia Ling Me to! <3<3

  The next morning finds me out again, sitting in the sunshine on a park bench with my eyes closed. It’s all right, calm down, I’m not idling the day away. Even if my brain, my conscience and my best friend would let me do that, my feet and legs certainly wouldn’t. They start to get a bit twitchy if I don’t take them out for a good walk every day. I swear when the magic trainers come out of the cupboard, they spring into life and start quivering with excitement.

  Today I’m here for a good, solid, conscience-free reason. Abby has asked me to wait here to meet her friend Joanna who is to be my brand new walking companion. Turns out the whole walking companion issue wasn’t unresolved at all, which I discovered as soon as Abby and Tom got back from their meal last night.

  ‘Walking companion,’ she said, taking off her coat. ‘Let’s do this.’ She plopped herself down on the sofa next to me, leaped back up again immediately, moved the toast plate I’d left there, then sat back down again with a muted sigh. ‘My friend Joanna has said she’s happy to walk with you, starting tomorrow. She’s absolutely lovely, I’ve known her for years, I’m sure you’ll get on really well. What do you think?’

  She’d unfolded a sheet of paper at that moment and for a second I thought I was going to see Joanna’s CV, and what she thought she could bring to the role.

  ‘I don’t know her, do I, so how can I think anything?’

  ‘Well, you know she’s a friend of mine, which is surely a good recommendation?’

  I’d shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And she’s run marathons and stuff, so she’s definitely fit.’

  Oh God. She sounded awful. ‘I bet she’s vegetarian, isn’t she?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I knew it. She’s not going to try and get me to run, is she?’

  ‘No no, definitely not. I’ve explained this is for the MoonWalk, no running allowed. She’s fine with it.’ She handed me the paper. ‘Joanna’s mobile number and home address.’ I glanced at it, noticing as I did that there were another couple of names underneath Joanna’s.

  ‘Wh—?’

  ‘If Joanna can’t make it any time, you ring the next person on the list. They’re in order of desirability, so you work your way down until you get someone. OK?’

  All hope left me then. Even if – God willing – something ghastly happened to Joanna to prevent her getting to me, like a broken toe or tonsillitis, I still had other options open to me before I could return to the desired state of solitude.

  So here I am, and here, I believe, comes the amazing Joanna. She’s in hot pink leggings and a microscopic crop top which reveals a row of abs like quorn sausages. Her hair is up in a very long swingy ponytail and she’s jogging energetically towards me, a giant grin plastered across her face. As she gets nearer I notice that her face, chest and arms are all shiny with sweat already, and she’s slightly out of breath. Something tells me she may have started without me.

  ‘Hiya! Are you Daisy? Yeah, you must be, it’s so funny seeing you sitting there, it’s exactly, exactly what Abby said you’d be like, sitting on the bench, closed eyes, sleepy expression, so funny. I’m Joanna, by the way, ha ha, you probably worked that out already, or you’re wondering what the hell some random stranger is doing introducing themselves to you for no apparent reason!’

  I’m exhausted already. The entire time she’s speaking, she’s jogging on the spot and the enormous ponytail is swinging jauntily backwards and forwards behind her. It’s like a little pet that’s desperate to see what’s going on.

  I stand up and hold out my hand. ‘Hi, Joanna. Yes, I’m Daisy. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you too, Daisy. Sorry to hear about your mum and everything, Abby told me all about it, it’s so horrible. Shall we go then?’

  She turns back round to face the way she’s just come and looks at me pointedly. Still jogging.

  ‘Um, Joanna, did Abby tell you I’m training for a walk, not a run? Running’s strictly not allowed on the walk, actually, so I won’t be …’

  ‘Oh, no, no, that’s fine, yes, she did say, don’t worry, it’s not a problem.’ She shakes her head, then nods, then shakes again, and the whole time the ponytail is peeping in and out of view. ‘If you don’t mind, I’m going to jog anyway, but I’ll stay with you the whole time, I’ll just jog really slowly, if that’s OK with you?’

  ‘Oh, right, OK then.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  We set off and Joanna immediately sprints to the edge of the park, goes through the gap in the hedge and disappears from view. I walk on as usual for two and a half hours without seeing her again.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Abby explodes later on when I tell her what happened. ‘She’s fucking awful, that girl.’

  ‘You said she was lovely …’

  ‘Did I? Well she fucking isn’t. Never mind.’ She glances around the room briefly and, after failing to spot a pen, she deftly scores through Joanna’s name on the sheet with a fingernail. ‘Forget her, useless cow. Let’s move on. Malcolm.’

  Malcolm is a fellow driving instructor of hers, so I’m reserving my excitement. Driving instructors as a race are generally quite nerdy and they all labour under the misapprehension that the Highway Code is good fodder for comedy. They drive Nissan Micras and Honda Accords for God’s sake! Abby told me once that they’re such dullards that they all use complete words and correct punctuation in their texts. Full stops, commas, even semi-colons on occasion. I mean, who does that? And why? Texting is like the fast-food of communication. It’s not a beautifully crafted pièce de résistance, it’s not always exactly as it should be, but it does the job it’s meant to do, and it does it quickly. Why would you spend valuable seconds of your life saying ‘Oh my God, that’s a bit strange, isn’t it?’ when you could say ‘WTF?!’

  We’re meeting in the town, n
ear the bank. Abby has done the arranging for me by text. No doubt Malcolm’s reply went something like this:

  Dear Abby, Thank you for your message. Please would you ask your friend Daisy to meet me outside the bank at ten o’clock tomorrow morning? Many thanks. Kind regards, Malcolm.

  In fact ‘OK, tmrw 10, o/side bank’ would have done just as well. Actually ‘tmrw o/s bank 10.30’ would have been preferable as he keeps me waiting for almost half an hour. Which leaves me loitering here by the cashpoint for thirty minutes, trying not to look like I’m memorising people’s PIN numbers. What a waste of my time – I could’ve been half-way round the canal path by now. I’d be annoyed if I was waiting here for half an hour to meet Hugh Grant, let alone some tedious stranger who probably looks like Mr Bean. Actually no I wouldn’t. I’d wait weeks for Hugh.

  ‘Oh, hello there,’ a voice booms behind me suddenly and I spin to see a shortish man in his forties in a navy blue velour leisure suit and loafers. I blink, hard, but he’s still there. ‘You must be Daisy. I’m Malcolm Rivers. Nice to meet you.’ He holds out a hand so I take it and instantly regret it, as his fingers are covered with little hard lumps of dead skin. It reminds me of the hull of a boat below the waterline.

  ‘Shall we go, then?’ he says, and turns to face down the sloping precinct, towards the centre of town. ‘Straight ahead here, Daisy, down towards Waterstones, watching closely for pedestrians.’ In silence we walk briskly for about two minutes as we head down the slope. OK, this is acceptable, as long as there are no interruptions or attempts at conversation. ‘Just pausing here a moment,’ he says suddenly, looking behind him quickly before stepping over to the side of the path. ‘Hope you don’t mind, just need to pop in for a sec. Won’t be long.’

  Eight minutes later, he emerges, blinking in the sunlight, carrying a huge Waterstones bag with what looks like The Book of the Dead or something in it. It’s enormous.

  ‘OK, are you ready? Then off we go.’ He glances up the precinct behind us quickly, then steps out and down the slope. ‘Child on a bike there, Daisy, just so you’re aware.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I saw him. Um, Malcolm?’ I begin, but he puts up a hand.

  ‘Just slowing down a little here, Daisy, OK? Watching the lady with the pram, she might just stop suddenly.’

  ‘Yes, but even if she does, it doesn’t … Look, Malcolm, I don’t need …’

  ‘Hope you don’t mind if we make another stop here, Daisy? Just got a couple of errands to run while we’re in town.’

  The next stop is Boots, for razor blades. Then the library – taking back some CDs which apparently he had concealed somewhere about his person. I’m stunned when he produces them – that leisure suit is pretty unforgiving. Finally we arrive at a white building on the corner of a residential road, just outside the town centre.

  ‘Lovely. Right, just a little break here, if that’s OK. Doctor’s appointment.’ And infuriatingly he marches into the building and closes the door behind him. We’ve walked about five hundred metres through the precinct, and have taken over an hour to do it. It reminds me of a very bad blind date I went on when I was about seventeen. I stood in Gamestation for forty-five minutes while he played on the Xbox. Then he bought himself a burger and made me hold his rucksack while he ate it.

  When Malcolm comes out of the doctor’s surgery some considerable time later, he finds me long gone.

  ‘The doctor?’ Abby erupts later that evening. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Sadly not. Actually, I was glad to get rid of him. God knows how long it would have taken us to cover any meaningful distance.’

  I catch Abs glancing at me sideways and smiling to herself. ‘What?’ I demand.

  ‘What, what?’

  ‘What’s with that secret little smile? I know you, Abby Marcus. You’ve got something planned, haven’t you?’

  She frowns fleetingly, then shakes her head. ‘No, no, I haven’t. I was just thinking about you getting impatient that you couldn’t cover any meaningful distance.’ She smiles warmly at me now. ‘I’m just pleased to see how motivated you are now. Bit different from when you started, isn’t it?’

  I think back to only a matter of weeks ago, when I went to quite extreme lengths to hide my absence of training from Abs: tramping around in the garden in my trainers to get them dirty, then disguising the footprints in the mud by raking it all back afterwards. A little heat comes into my face, but thankfully Abs doesn’t notice.

  ‘Right,’ she says, spreading out the well-creased list of names again, ‘who’s next? Aha. Marianne.’

  ‘Look, Abs, is this really necessary? I mean, we’ve tried the top two on your list and they’ve been disastrous. Joanna was almost entirely absent, and Malcolm actually slowed me down. You said day before yesterday they’re in order of desirability, so the next few are likely to be even worse.’ I point at the next names on the list. ‘Marianne is probably going to turn up pissed or something …’

  ‘She wouldn’t!’

  ‘… and then Felix after her will be scoffing a Big Mac and fries while I carry his rucksack.’

  ‘What …?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. The point is that there will be something that caused you to rank him and Marianne lower than jogging Joanna and Leisure-Suit Malcolm. Can’t we just forget about the others and get back to letting me go on my own?’

  She’s already nodding before I’ve got to the end. ‘You’re absolutely right, Daze. Those first two were appalling. I’m pretty pissed off with them, to be honest, although of course I can’t say that to them because they were doing me a favour to begin with.’

  ‘So let’s not risk it with Marianne, and let me get back to going on my own.’

  She considers it. She actually does. I can see the thought process on her face: will Daisy keep it up? Yes, probably. Will she speed up? Hmm, maybe. Will she totter off the path and get eaten by a wolf dressed as an old woman? Definitely.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ I cut in, as she opens her mouth to speak. ‘I’m not a child.’

  ‘I know, Daze, but you can be forgiven for not being one hundred percent focused at the moment. That’s why I want someone with you.’

  ‘Then let me find someone myself. No more Marianne. Lose jogging Joanna. Ditch Malcolm X.’

  She narrows her eyes and peers at me, clearly thinking: if I agree to this, Daisy will never, ever be able to find a walking partner herself. She has no friends except me and Tom. It will not happen. And when she fails, she will have to accept my choice of partner anyway, and she will be more amenable because I agreed.

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘But the walk is getting nearer. You’ll need to find someone quickly so that you can really start stretching yourself.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Good. You’ve got a week.’

  ‘OK.’ I’ve also got a plan.

  Well, it’s more of an idea, really. I’m three drawing boards away from an actual plan.

  Daisy Mack

  Something needs to be done. So I’m doing something.

  Abby Marcus Brilliant Daze. Keep it up.

  Nat ‘Wiggy’ Nicholson Girl Powerrrrr!

  Abby Marcus You do mean walking, don’t you?

  Daisy Mack Course I do Abs. Now let me get on with it.

  Georgia Ling Good 4 u babes x

  So the following morning I’m up early and marching up the canal bank at a rate of knots. I’m determined to show Abs that I don’t need a walking partner at all, but if that part of my non-plan fails, I’m going to find someone myself. Yes, I know, as plans go, it’s Wile E Coyote balancing a boulder on a strategic see-saw in the faint hope that Road Runner comes past. But it’s the best I can do so I’m sticking with it.

  My speedy progress alongside the canal this morning has two main aims: 1) get to the bridge at a certain specific time – I glance at my watch: I’ve got just over ten minutes; and 2) get my speed up myself and get round the circuit in record time all on my own. Of course there’s also the side issue
of 3) training for the MoonWalk; but my first two reasons are much more pressing at the moment.

  Almost before I realise it, I’m back at the bridge. I check my watch and am stunned to find that it’s four minutes past ten. By total coincidence (and military precision timing) I have arrived here at exactly the same time as Abs and I did on Sunday. I pause and rummage in my back-pack for a moment but completely fail to find either a professional make-up artist or a sexy black evening dress. It’s ridiculous, I don’t know why I’m even bothering, I look an absolute wreck all the time at the moment. But it’s an excuse to stop for a minute or two and glance up and down the path. I won’t stop for longer than two minutes though. Five at most. I’m determined to get my lap time down, and by a significant amount, so that Abby realises I’m not as lame as she seems to think I am.

  Twenty minutes later, my patience pays off and I spot someone in the distance jogging towards me. He’s a bit far away to see properly so I jut my head forward to bring my eyes two inches nearer. It works, and I can now make out that, sure enough, it’s the same runner from Sunday and last week. He obviously spots me too as he approaches and waves, so I wave back. We then have to endure fifteen seconds of awkwardness – waiting for me, jogging for him. Do we look at each other as he approaches? Do we wave again? At what point do we smile? I resort to rummaging in my bag until he’s almost here, then look up and we smile together.

  ‘Hello again,’ he says, and stops, although he continues jogging on the spot.

  ‘Hi. We must stop meeting like this.’

  He frowns fleetingly. ‘I don’t see why. Do you always pause here?’

  I nod. ‘Yeah, I have to. Steeling myself to get over the bridge.’

  He glances across the bridge, then looks back at me. ‘Steeling yourself? Why?’