“Sorry about George. He’s gunning for an Oscar in the role of Most Bitchy Brother, I think.”
“That’s okay.” Annie was still trying to take in the garden. She could have fitted her entire flat into it twice over. It meandered down the hill, full of green nooks and wrought iron furniture, fruit trees and little statues. “Did you grow up here, then?”
Polly looked around, disinterested. “Yeah. Didn’t expect to find myself back living here at thirty-five, though. I guess you grew up not far away?”
Only two miles or so. But worlds apart. “Is that the Shard?” She could see the wedge-shaped skyscraper soaring through the gap in the trees, across the wide gray ribbon of the Thames. Annie had a sudden stab of jealousy again. Imagine if she’d grown up here, with this garden, with the shops and cafés of Greenwich just around the corner, instead of on her Lewisham council estate, doing her best not to get pregnant before she left school.
“We should go up it,” Polly said, taking a running jump and leaping onto an old wooden swing that was tied to the branch of the apple tree. It looked like a photo shoot, her carefully chosen outfit, the disheveled garden behind and the view of the city across the river. Something Instagram-worthy, a picture of a perfect life.
“What, the Shard?”
“I have some tickets I bought a while back for me and George and his boyfriend and...anyway, he split up with his boyfriend, thank God, because Caleb’s awful, so we never used them. Fancy it? Another happy thing? Bring your flatmate, too.”
“Costas?” She got enough of him singing Mariah Carey in the bathroom and melting cheese all over everything. “I suppose I could see if he’s free.”
“George thinks it’s tacky.” She smiled. “Annoying my brother is another thing that makes me happy, I have to say. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Annie?”
“Not that I know of,” she said. She might have any number of half siblings, of course.
“Oh, right, you said your dad wasn’t about. Where is he?”
“I’ve no idea. As far as I know he buggered off when I was two days old. Couldn’t handle it, the whole family thing.” Leaving Maureen Clarke, twenty-four and broke, alone with a new baby in a drab council flat. Stunned, lonely, wondering what happened to her life. It was all so different from this family, with Polly’s successful father and stylish mother, her confident clever brother, this beautiful house, like a sagging-down wedding cake, the garden full of fruit trees.
“That’s rough.”
“Not really. You can’t miss what you never had, after all. I hardly think about him.”
Polly gave her another irritating inspirational look. “Life’s too short for regrets, Annie. Maybe you should try to find him?”
“I did the happy-days stuff,” Annie said, changing the subject firmly. “I wrote down some things, anyway.” Swimming, walking, visiting her mum—it didn’t seem a lot. “How’s yours going?”
Polly didn’t answer, and Annie saw she’d stopped swinging, her face pale. “Are you okay?”
“It’s just... Oh, crap. I shouldn’t have had that pudding.” And she lurched forward onto her knees and threw up on the grass with a retching sound.
Annie ran to her. “Polly! Are you all right?”
Polly sat up, shaky, wiping her mouth. “It’s just Bob. It happens all the time. Sorry you had to see.”
Annie helped her up, feeling how hard Polly was trembling. “Why don’t you go and lie down? I’ll see myself off.” It was easy to forget how ill Polly was, but underneath all this cheer there was no escaping the fact that the tumor was gnawing away at her, a little bit every day.
DAY 8
Walk to work No. No, please. He can’t be. He can’t be— Annie sat up in bed, panting, her body clammy with cold sweat. It was the dream again. That morning, back in the old house. The slice of sunlight across the floor. The brief second of happiness before it all shattered, Mike’s footsteps in the hallway, and then his terrified voice shouting for her. Annie! Annie, call an ambulance!
But it was just a dream. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t now. She got her breathing under control, slowly bringing herself back to the world. Monday morning. She was sorely tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but she dragged herself up, listening carefully at the door to make sure Costas was out. It was irrational, but bumping into him in her pajamas could make her want to explode with rage. She’d once had her own lovely home with its spare room and window seat and garden full of flowers, and now here she was flat-sharing again. She washed in the moldy shower, brushed her teeth in front of the toothpaste-stained mirror and got dressed in her usual black attire. The dream still clung to her like cobwebs, an under note of panic in her breathing that she knew made no sense. It was years ago. It was far, far too late for panic.
Since she was up early, Annie set out to walk to work. At the last moment, feeling how cold it was when she opened the front door, she almost balked. But she thought of the packed bus, and remembered that she’d have to have something to write down in her notebook. So she went. One foot in front of the other, walking away the past, step by step, until her breath came quicker because of the exercise rather than the dream, and her head had cleared. The walk was perhaps not the most beautiful in the world, but the morning sun was pink on the concrete, and when she arrived at the office she was slightly puffed and glowing. She was even early, since she hadn’t been stuck in traffic on the bus. Sharon helpfully commented that her face looked “all red and sweaty,” but Annie barely even cared.
DAY 9
Write down your thoughts Annie sucked the end of her pen as she regarded the blank page of her notebook. On the other side of her bedroom wall, she could hear Costas talking on the phone in loud Greek. Another person who could just ring their mother up for a chat whenever they felt like it, without worrying whether said mother would know who they were or not. She tried to block out the noise.
So far, in just over a week, she’d made a new friend—or a new whatever Polly was. She’d got naked in front of people for the first time in two years. She’d exercised. She’d taken a lunch break. It wasn’t much in the scheme of things—no dancing in the rain or trekking the Inca Trail—but it was more than she’d done in a long, long time. But what could she put for today, and tomorrow, and the next day? Hearing a loud clattering noise from the kitchen, she opened her bedroom door to find Costas washing up, clanking and splashing.
“Annie, hello, I do the washing like you ask.”
“Great. Thanks. Um...” She could have asked him not to spill water everywhere, but instead she said, “Listen, do you want to come up the Shard with me?”
“The big building?”
“Yeah. My friend has some tickets. There’s a nice view or something.”