Carry You

Jenny Martin What the hell is going on with you, Dozy-Doo?

Georgia Ling Lol! xx

Suzanne Allen Where are you now? What can you see?

Abby Marcus Pay no attention Suze, she’s on the sofa, watching Rotting Hell.

I don’t know why Abby’s put that. She likes Notting Hill as much as I do.

No she doesn’t. What am I thinking of? Of course she doesn’t. No one does. Richard Curtis doesn’t like Notting Hill as much as I do.

Anyway, I think I deserve this relaxing little interlude. It’s been a very strenuous few days since I marched rapidly away from Wheelbarrow Man on Tuesday and got myself instantly and completely lost. I’ve been out walking every day since then, and that was five days ago. I must have covered at least ten miles every day, which is fifty miles all together. Bloody hell, I could actually have walked to Bluewater shopping centre. Could have had a Subway of the Day. Tried on shoes. Bought tights.

Julia Roberts is arguing for the last brownie. I pause the film at this point because Abby has just come and sat down near my feet and is staring at me pointedly. She looks like she wants to have a serious talk with me about something. I wonder what on earth it could be. Any ideas anyone? Answers on a postcard …

‘Daze, we need to have a serious talk about your training plan.’

Ding ding ding – correct answer, you’re a winner!

I smile and nod. ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Do you? Because I’m still not convinced you’re completely aware of how much work there is left to do.’

She’s entirely wrong there. Why on earth else does she think I’ve been walking so much? I’ve been like a walking demon this week, out every day, marching down to the park, marching around the park, marching backwards and forwards across the park, marching around the park again, becoming so familiar with the park and all its entrances and exits and all the housing estates that border it that I’ll never ever get lost again. It’s quite surprising really that, in all that marching down to, and through, and round and round the park and its environs, I never bumped into that man again. Or actually, I suppose I could have seen him again, I really wouldn’t know. I can barely remember what he looked like, except that he was holding something, I think. What was that again? Some kind of statue, was it? Or a bicycle? I can’t remember, it’s all gone.

I’ve also never seen that woman with the ponytail again, the one who walked like her and moved like her and looked like her. It doesn’t matter. It’s not as if I was looking for her.

Anyway, the point is that I have done some pretty substantial walking this week, whatever Abs might think, and I’m proud of myself. I’d like to see her cover ten miles a day. On foot, obviously – she does far more than ten miles every day in her car of course. I know that for a fact. She gave me a lift into town once when my car was off the road, and the only problem was I had to sit in the back while she gave a lesson first. It was only an hour, and it probably would have taken me that long to get the bus anyway, so I went with it. I had never seen her with a client before, and I was really surprised at how flirty she was with him, a lad of about nineteen or twenty. There was a lot of, ‘Oh hi there, Justin, OK, first gear to pull away, you look good today, braking carefully towards the junction, don’t you smell nice, what is that, Calvin Klein? Red light, Justin, red light.’ I sat in the back and rolled my eyes, and they kept on rolling for the entire sixty minutes. I felt a bit sick by the end of it.

‘What the hell was all that about?’ I asked her, once Justin had parallel parked (badly) to gushing praise from Abs (‘Oh well done, Justin, I’ve never seen such a beginner do it as well as that, you’re a natural’ – forget the fact he needed to get the bus to the kerb) and got out.

‘All what?’ she said easily, flipping down the sun visor and checking her appearance in the little mirror. She didn’t do anything to her face, like touch up her lipgloss or rub away mascara smudges like the rest of us have to, she just looked, scrutinised, turned slightly left, slightly right, once more in the centre, and was satisfied.

‘Yeah, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You know exactly what I’m talking about.’ I affected a high breathy voice. ‘“Ooh, Justin, look at your bulging muscles; ooh, Justin, you smell so delicious I could just eat you all up.” You were blatantly flirting with him, Abs! It’s outrageous! He must be all of eighteen!’

‘He’s twenty, Daze – in a couple of months – and stop looking so scandalised. This is me you’re talking to. I know you’re not that innocent, remember?’

She was right about that. Before I moved back in with Mum and Graham three years ago, I used to work in an office, processing food orders for restaurants and cafés. I gave that job up in the end, when being a carer became full time. But I used to be a real flirt-hound, when I had nothing less trivial on my mind. It was something of a hobby for Abby and me. We used to compare notes and swap tips over a glass of wine in the evenings. That is until Tom hove alongside and Abby was forced to give it up. It was like a habit she was trying to quit after that, with the occasional cute nineteen-year-old relapses. But she was with me when I flirted my way into Jamie Powell’s Spider-Man boxer shorts four years earlier. Oh calm down, he was twenty-one, it was all above board. He just had a bit of an obsession with superheroes, it turned out. Well, no, not superheroes. I would have liked that. He could have rescued me from things. Burning buildings, spiders, that kind of affair. What Jamie loved was comics. And action figures. Wanted to peer at me using Superman’s x-ray eyes, which basically consisted of a tiny red dot of light travelling up and down across every inch of my body. It took nearly forty minutes. That one was over before it started.

‘Oh yes, bring that up again. You haven’t mentioned it for at least two weeks, so we were well overdue. But the point is that this lad is your client, which makes it slightly different from me getting it on with the photocopier repair man, I think you’ll agree.’

She inhaled deeply, and sighed. ‘All right, yes, fine, I was flirting with him. So what? I flirt with all of them. It makes them feel strong and confident, so they’re more relaxed about driving. It’s perfect sense.’

I stared at her. She stared back. I raised my eyebrows. She raised hers. I folded my arms. She folded hers. Then unfolded them. Then fiddled with the bottom of her jumper. ‘Plus I get lots more business,’ she said quietly. ‘Word gets around.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I continued to stare at her.

She ran her hands lightly around the steering wheel, and focused intently on the cube of air that was sitting on the bonnet. ‘And he was really fit.’

‘There we go.’

‘Oh so what, Daze? It’s harmless, it doesn’t mean anything, does it? And Tom doesn’t know, and wouldn’t care even if he did ever find out, which he won’t, will he?’

I pressed my lips together and shook my head. Of course I wasn’t going to tell him. My loyalty was, and is, to Abby. Not the Monosyllabic Monolith she lives with. And anyway, she was absolutely right, there was nothing wrong with a bit of harmless flirting. It was harmless.

‘Training plan, Daze,’ Abs says now on the sofa, slapping my shin. I think she meant to pat it affectionately, but my leg muscles are feeling rather tender at the moment, so an ant crawling across my skin feels like someone dropping a chimney on me.

‘Owwww! Be careful, Abs. It all hurts, remember?’

‘Oh, yeah, sorry.’ She removes her hand as if my leg is a sleeping lion. ‘I’m so pleased with what you’ve done this week, you know,’ she goes on, although the tone of her voice suggests that she’s got more to say on the subject.

‘Thanks.’

She nods slowly, staring at the hairs on my knees. It makes me wish I’d shaved them today. They really do need to be shaved at least twice a week, and the last time I did it was November.

‘But I think you need to increase your distance now,’ Abs is saying, still nodding slowly at my knees. She looks up at me and smiles. Ah. It was a joke.

‘Yeah. Ha!’ I grin back at her. Like ten miles a day isn’t enough at this stage!

A small frown appears between her immaculately groomed eyebrows. ‘What’s funny?’

‘You are. Telling me I need to increase my distance.’

The frown deepens. ‘I’m serious, Daze. Three or four miles a day is good, great actually, to go from nothing to that, but you have got to do more. Longer. Maybe spend next week doing seven or eight miles every day – something like that?’

I stare at her. My mouth falls open a little. My eyes widen and start to dry out. I am forced to blink. My head jerks once to the left. ‘Nuh …’ I say, to convey my disbelief at her massive confusion and misunderstanding while explaining to her exactly where she’s mistaken.

She smiles at the same time as continuing to frown. ‘Daze, it’s not that bad, honestly. Seven or eight miles should only take you about two and a half or three hours. Less as you get fitter and faster. And until you get a job of some description, you’ve got all day anyway, haven’t you? We are going to be walking twenty-six miles in five weeks, remember?’

‘Nuh-uh.’

‘You’re being silly …’

‘No, Abs. I’m not. You’ve got it wrong. I’m totally on top of this already. I’ve been doing about ten miles every day this week.’

Her frown disappears at this point and her face takes on the expression of a mum looking at a four-year-old’s appalling attempt at a self-portrait. ‘Ah Daze. No you haven’t. Nothing like it.’

‘Yes I have. I haven’t just been going to the park and back, you know. I’ve been walking round it a couple of times and round all the estates near it, which must have been at least another two or three miles. So when you add that to the going all the way down there and back, which must be at least four miles each way …’

‘Mile and a half.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a mile and a half down to the park. And a mile and a half back. That’s three miles.’

I blink again. It’s because of all the incredulous staring at Abby I’m doing. This is utter nonsense. I look back at her and shake my head. ‘I don’t believe it. You’re just trying to get me to do more by telling me I’ve done less.’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m not. I’m serious. I mean, come on, Daze, Tom works in sports equipment, for Nike’s sake. He owns a pedometer.’