Carry You

‘OK.’

When Mum and Graham both got so ill at the same time, Naomi and I decided that I would move back in with them, to help care for them both. Of course it should be me; Naomi was living in domestic bliss with Russell, I was sharing a rented house with three other girls. It made sense. I packed my stuff up into boxes then and made myself at home in my mum’s spare room. It was only ever a temporary set-up, but it was horrific knowing it was only temporary. Knowing why it was only temporary.

Upstairs in my room I start pulling all my clothes out of the drawers and wardrobe, but most of them are on the floor so I just scoop them up and dump them on the bed. Then I stare at them. Then I sink down onto the edge of the bed. There isn’t much there, not really, not for three years of my life. Tee shirts, jeans, socks, pants. Swimming costume. Not that the length of time you live somewhere should have any bearing on how many clothes you have. But three years I’ve been here, and all I’m taking with me are a couple of boxes of clothes and some toiletries.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t like to take more. Right here on the dressing table is a gorgeous photo of the whole family – Mum and Graham and all of their combined children – on their wedding day. I’d love to take that with me, but I can’t. I’m not allowed. I pick it up and move it reverentially towards the pile of clothes on the bed, holding it as if it were a photo of Elvis reading The Times on the tube in 2001. Perhaps I could just squeeze it in, between my knickers? Who would ever know? But then the thought of my stepbrother Darren’s face in between my knickers makes my lip curl and I replace the picture on the dresser. It’s just not worth it.

A few minutes later Abs appears with a newly three-dimensional box in each hand and we spend the next hour or so filling them with my things and carrying them out to her car, then starting again. There are a few things downstairs too that are mine – laptop, some CDs, all my DVDs – and once they’re in, and the bathroom is cleared, we’re done.

‘That was quick,’ I say, as we stand together in the hallway. She squeezes my arm, and I look at her gratefully. Then I realise that she’s not squeezing my arm to say, ‘I know, this is really hard, but I’m here for you, my friend, and I will help you get through it.’ This particular arm-squeeze means

‘We’re not done yet, Daze.’

Turns out she thinks we need to clean the entire place, really thoroughly, before I quit it forever. She says it will put me in a good light. She says I owe it to my mum. She says I can’t ever let anyone find out what a complete and utter disgusting slob I’ve been for the past few months.

‘Oh my God, Daze, that girl is such a terrible slob,’ Naomi’s scandalised voice comes back to me, in a conversation we had about a girl called Heidi who flat-shared with her for a while a few years ago. ‘There’s always at least two pairs of shoes left in the hallway, letters on the bread bin, a knife in the washing-up bowl, and she never puts her jacket away in the cupboard. Always leaves it on the sofa!’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’ I was as appalled as her at these disgusting character flaws. ‘What does she expect to happen to it there? The cleaning fairy will put it away?’

‘Huh, yeah, no doubt. I’m not sure how much more I can stand. May have to burn it.’

‘Bring it on!’

Somewhere along the road, my exacting standards for cleanliness have taken a bit of a nosedive. ‘You’re not a disgusting slob,’ Abs says now, ‘but people will think you are when they see …’ she indicates the entire house with a wide sweep of her arm ‘… this.’

Twenty minutes later I know she’s right when I find what once was either a chocolate Hobnob or lasagne in a mottled beige arc by the dining room door. I glance over at Abs, currently positioned rump-end towards me as she scrubs at some other disgusting bit of filth on the carpet, and I feel glad that she can’t see the disgusting bit of filth over here. Because I’m definitely going to keep my dignity as long as she doesn’t see this particular stain. The fact that she’s already seen the mouldy coffee cups, the stale pizza crusts, the coffee spills and the unopened post will have no bearing on her opinion of me.

Actually, knowing Abs, it won’t.

I met Abby just over four years ago in a queue in Tesco. It’s an electrifying story. I only had a basketful of items, although I might have had one or two more than ten items in there. It’s a possibility; they were all small. They all fitted in the basket, so I definitely qualified to go down the basket queue. I was perfectly justified. Abs was behind me with a carton of orange juice and a bottle of tequila and some limes. Goodness knows what she was up to with that strange combination. Anyway, it was all going very well – the person in front of the person in front of me had paid and left; the person in front of me put his basket on the little shelf thing to unload it; and the rest of us all shuffled forward silently without making eye contact with anyone or actually looking at anything. Eventually the man in front of me took his dog biscuits and meal for one and left, and I moved forward and unloaded my basket onto the conveyor belt. Then suddenly, it all kicked off. Quick as a flash, the bespectacled boy behind the till anxiously eyed my line of shopping and didn’t start swiping it.

‘Um, sorry, I think you’ve got, um, got more than, er, ten, yeah, ten items there,’ he nervously stammered out.

I raised my eyebrows and he flinched. His name was Spencer, I remember that. I hadn’t had a good day so far – I’d had to take Mum to the hospital that morning for some reason, can’t remember what it was that day – and I think Spencer could tell in my eyebrows that things for him had suddenly taken a downward turn. ‘And?’ I said, not moving.

A smile appeared on his face the way you sometimes catch a fleeting flash of sun reflected on someone’s glasses across the street. Then it disappeared. ‘Well, um, this is the ten items queue …’

His voice tailed off as I started shaking my head. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said confidently. Actually I said it a lot more confidently than I really felt. I was fairly sure the sign said ‘Baskets Only’, but at this point I suddenly experienced a lurch of fear dropping in my belly. The queue behind me was starting to shift its weight from foot to foot and heft baskets of shopping around needlessly. I sensed that it wouldn’t be long before they were dropping their baguettes in favour of pitchforks and lanterns and driving me out of town. Mentally I picked up a cudgel, squared my shoulders and turned round slowly and threateningly to face the restless villagers. In actual fact I was hunching a bit while checking behind me nervously. ‘I think you’ll find,’ I cringed, ‘that this is the “Basket Only” queue.’

Spencer gave the fleeting glimpse of teeth again, only this time with less conviction. ‘Noooo …’ he started, but then there was a rustling sound and a low, menacing voice behind me said,

‘Some time today.’

The queue shuffled its feet in agreement and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My animal instincts were sensing approaching danger, and I felt trapped, like cornered prey. I glanced around me nervously, assessing my exit possibilities, but there wasn’t much choice. Walk slowly and with dignity, head high, towards the exit; or leg it? Oh but I really didn’t want to do that. Maybe I had another option. Maybe I could stand my ground, have the courage of my convictions, like Mum had always told me. ‘Have the courage of your convictions, Daisy Duck,’ she said. ‘Stand up for what you believe in, be strong, no matter what anyone else thinks.’ I know, it’s incredible isn’t it? Still calling me Daisy Duck well into my adulthood.

‘I will, Mum,’ I thought to myself fervently now, pressing my lips together. ‘I’ll do it for you.’

‘Pardon?’ said Spencer.

‘Huh? Oh, no, nothing. Um …’

I was stalling and he knew it. One of us was going to have to concede, and we were both starting to believe that it was going to be me.

‘You’ll have to … move your things,’ he said very quietly, avoiding eye contact at all costs. ‘You need to use the trolley tills.’

I lowered my head towards him. He visibly flinched. ‘Spencer,’ I said, using my mum’s voice that was in my head, ‘you don’t honestly think it’s going to take less time for me to pack all these things back into this basket, than it would for you to run them quickly through the till, do you?’

‘Um,’ Spencer began helplessly, doing 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.

THREE (#ulink_7aed2d85-1b01-5463-adb6-532719a7401b)

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????