“But, Diana, I’m ready. This is vintage,” I said, standing in front of her, allowing her to take in the full outfit.
A change of clothes later, Diana and I were on the high street, me in the changing room of a charity shop. Not the one that our grandmother works in; we’re not allowed to go in there. She says it’s mixing business with pleasure.
I was struggling into an orange and turquoise Paul Smith shirt. Being out of the house for this long was taking its toll on my anxiety levels. When I did finally get it on, having had to negotiate the fabric over my sweating arms and back, it would pop open at the bust every time I took a deep breath. Diana opened the changing room curtain and looked at me.
“No.” She closed it again. “Do you wanna go to Morley’s? I want four wings and chips,” her voice asked from the other side of the curtain.
“No.”
“I should have known you’re too stuck-up for that. Let’s get a milkshake, then,” Diana said, grabbing me by the elbow as I emerged and steering me toward one of those weird urban-designed modern ice cream parlors.
We sat opposite one another in a booth in the corner by the bathrooms and peeled the sticky menus apart. “What do you want?” Diana said from behind the menu. “I know what I’m getting. Oreo waffle, I always get it.” Diana held up her phone and scanned the room with it. “Hold on, just snapchatting our settings! I’ve captioned it ‘Cuz is 26,’?” she said, showing me a picture of myself looking at the menu, bewildered by the choice.
Twenty-six, and this is my life, I thought, looking around at the teenagers leaning on tackily decorated walls, all staring at their phones. Three years from now and I was meant to have been getting married. I was meant to be stable, and loved, and . . . I looked back down, and the words on the page started to blur. I looked over at the loo door. If I ran in there and had a panic attack, I could at least not let Diana see me fall apart again. I was meant to be getting better, and if she saw me having a panic attack she’d tell my grandmother, and then there’d be a whole thing about me going to therapy and it not working so bringing shame on the family for no reason.
“You all right?” Diana asked, locking her phone and putting it on the table. I must have looked really bad if she was stepping away from her phone.
Set an example, I thought, breathing in slowly and counting to three, hoping that my nostrils weren’t flaring too obviously.
“All fine, just looking for a waiter,” I said.
“You’ve got to go up and order, obviously,” Diana said, looking at me suspiciously, and slipped out of the booth. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Sorry. I’m fine!” I said, my heart rate slowing. “Just get me the same thing as you.” I handed her the twenty-pound note from our grandmother and watched her walk to the counter. When she was there, I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. Just breathe, Queenie. Breathe, imagine you’re, what is it Janet said, why can’t you remember? That’s it, the safe space, find your safe space. Where is it? That’s it, it’s the attic room in Grandma and Granddad’s first house. The room that they said was haunted, but you didn’t mind, you used to love the creak of the floorboards, and the way that the temperature of the air dropped when you stepped into the ro—
“Are you sure you’re okay? We can go back if you’re feeling weird?” Diana threw herself back into the booth.
“No, I’m fine,” I said, surprising myself by meaning it. “It’s all good. So, what’s this Oreo waffle, then? How exactly does it work?”
* * *
We walked back to the house, the sugar from our treat coursing through my veins like a shot of adrenaline. Diana was telling me, and the street, exactly how annoying it was to have a mum as religious as Maggie. “She makes me pray before every meal, Queenie,” she moaned. “Even snacks! Have you ever had a packet of crisps smacked out of your hand because you didn’t thank Jesus for them first?”
That topic lasted all the way back to my grandparents’. We walked through the door, and I saw three extra sets of shoes in the hallway. I could hear voices coming from the front-front room. I stepped out of my sneakers.
“Hello!” Darcy said, walking out of the room, holding a bright pink helium balloon with BIRTHDAY WISHES emblazoned on both sides in blue bubble writing.
“Happy birthday, Queenie!” Maggie jumped out after Darcy, holding a small gift bag. I looked for the owner of the third pair of shoes and saw my mum trail out nervously, trembling arms holding a birthday cake studded with candles, only half of them lit. My stomach tightened, and I had to force myself to get back into my grandparents’ old attic, my safe place. What I actually wanted was to climb into my grandparents’ current attic to escape all of this attention.
Maggie handed the bag to me and swept me up in a hug. “Maggie!” I protested, easing away from her. “Hi, Mum,” I said quietly to my mother, still standing behind her sister, the weight of the cake testing her strength.
“Oh, come on, birthday girl! Cheer up!” Maggie said, rolling her eyes. “Diana, was she this miserable when you were out?”
“Mum you know she doesn’t like hugs. It’s all right not to want people to touch you, you know.” Diana walked over to Darcy. “You must be Darcy, yeah? I’m Diana, Queenie’s cousin. Nice to meet you properly.”
My grandmother stepped out of the front-front room. “Can we all go inside one room and stop congesting the hallway, please?” she barked, herding everyone except for Darcy in. She looked at me knowingly. “You have some time to say hello to your fren,” she said, walking into the room and closing the door behind her.
“What happened to the candles, Mum?” I heard Diana moan. “I tried to plan all of this properly.”
Darcy and I stood for a moment in the hallway, looking at each other. She’d put on weight, and her blue eyes stood out against her unusually tanned skin. “Been on holiday?” I asked, suddenly unreasonably very awkward about standing with her when I was such a shit version of the me I used to be.
“Yeah, Simon and I went to France a couple of weeks ago. It was a nightmare. He didn’t want to leave the villa. Said that we needed to spend the whole holiday working on ‘us.’?” She stepped toward me and handed the balloon over. “Happy birthday, friend.”
I put Maggie’s mysterious gift bag down, took the balloon, and patted her on the shoulder.
“Thank you. This is nice. Why are you here? How did you know the address?”
“Your cousin is very wily. . . .” Darcy smiled. “We’ve been in contact for a while now. She tweeted me a few weeks ago. We’ve been ‘DM-ing.’?” Darcy raised her eyebrows, smug about using lingo she wasn’t used to. “And I was going to invite Kyazike but thought that might be too much for you right now.”
“Yeah, you might be right,” I said, realizing how much I really, really missed Kyazike. “I’ll be back to my usual text self soon, sorry for being so rubbish.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Darcy said softly. “I guessed you needed to switch off from it all. I feel like a bad friend, though. I should have handled it properly, helped you more.”
“You didn’t need to handle anything!” I protested, horrified that she thought she had any responsibility where my mental health was concerned. “It wasn’t for you to sort. I put a lot on you. Wasn’t fair of me. I’m sorry,” I said. I was getting good at this apologizing business. “I bet you get more work done without me, though.”
“So much more, you wouldn’t believe it. But it’s not as fun,” Darcy pointed out.
“I wasn’t much fun those last few months. It must have been like watching someone on self-destruct.” I laughed awkwardly. But felt less awkward.
“I’m not your friend because you entertain me,” Darcy said.