She was naked. Every bit of her on show, stripped down, displayed for all the world to see.
Annie sat on her sofa, a cup of tea cooling in front of her. Her nude drawing was propped up on the chair, brown paper wrapping hanging about it like the folds of a dressing gown. It had been waiting for her when she came home.
For a long time, she just stared at it. It was her, unmistakably her—the scar on her stomach, the mole on her shoulder—but at the same time it wasn’t. Somehow, the curves and folds of her body, which caused her such angry tears when she looked in the mirror, had been transformed into something different.
This was her, Annie Hebden, ex-wife of Mike, ex-friend of Jane, mother of Jacob. She could never stop being that. Daughter of Maureen—something else she would always be, no matter how far into the darkness her mother disappeared. There was no one like her on the whole of the planet, no one who had ever lived or ever would. There was not a single other person with her fingerprints, with her memories, with the blood beating in her veins. She was herself, and she was alive right now, despite everything. This picture proved it.
Annie got to her feet, restless. What could she do? She’d let her friends drift away, turned down offers from colleagues, stopped going out, and gardening, and making her home nice, and even washing her hair. She stayed in every night with TV and sugar for company. It was time to stop. In fact, it was time to start.
In a burst of activity, she tore the ratty blanket from the sofa, exposing the ripped pleather underneath. A shower of pistachio shells clattered out. Bloody Costas. Next the sofa covers, then the shabby rug on the floor. All of them dusted in crumbs, splashed in ketchup and tea. She bundled them into the washing machine and set it going. It occurred to her this was a small, happy thing—the sound of clothes spinning, getting clean. It reminded her of Mondays after school, when she’d come home to find the machine whirring and her mother watching Countdown with a cup of tea and packet of orange Club bars. And they’d sit together, working out answers on the back of the Radio Times. Her mother, who loved word puzzles, had always beaten her hands down, calling up words from the depths of her memory. Adamant. Vivacious. These days, she often couldn’t remember her own name.
Trying to stay one step ahead of grief, Annie flung open her fridge and larder, blitzing the out-of-date food, the peppers with mold sprouting on them like hipster beards, the ready meals that were iced into the freezer, the packets of pasta and rice spilling all over the shelves. Soon she’d filled a huge bin bag. She started making a list. Wash windows. Re-cover sofa. She took all the cups out of the cupboards and scoured the insides clean. Polly was right: her taste in crockery was truly abysmal. She filled another bin bag for the charity shop, putting everything in except her mum’s nice china. She added to the list: Buy new spoons. Get a spiralizer. Ask landlord to have walls painted in color that doesn’t look like dog poop.
Next, the bathroom. She looked with distaste at the old moldy shower curtain. She’d buy a new one, in cheery colors, that didn’t wrap around your legs like a slimy alien ghost. She’d get a new bath mat and some nice towels. She threw out dried-up lipsticks, flaky mascara, bottles of shower gel with only an inch of scum in the bottom. God, it was moldy. How had she let things get this bad?
By the time Costas came back off his late shift, he could barely open the door because of the pile of bin bags blocking it. He looked around, confused, and cocked his head at Annie singing along to Magic FM as she scrubbed the hob. “Annie! Is this because I leave cheese on the dish? Because I promise, I wash! I wash them good! Do not kick me out, please?”
Annie burst out laughing. “Oh, bless you, no, I’m not throwing you out. I’m throwing myself out. Or at least, some of the mankier bits of me.”
Costas looked puzzled.
“I’m sorry it hasn’t been nicer for you here,” she said. “I promise, from now on, I’ll make this a better place for both of us to live. I mean, we could both do that. Keep it a bit tidier? What do you say? Not so many pistachio shells in the sofa? Grease the dishes before you bake cheese in them?”
He knit his brows, frowning. “Annie? You are feeling okay?”
She considered it. She hadn’t cried in the shower for almost two weeks. Her flat was cleaner than it had been when she moved in. Her mum was getting better. And she had actual social events, with actual people, in her diary. “Actually, Costas, you know what? I’m not too bad. Not too bad at all.”
DAY 13
Take a higher view
“He’s delicious,” Polly said, peering at Costas’s bum as he read the display on the wall. “Tastier than a whole box of baklava.”
“He’s twenty-two,” Annie whispered reprovingly. She wished Polly would lower her voice. “Also, pretty sure he’s gay.” He’d never actually told her this, but the fact he went all-night clubbing in Vauxhall three nights a week was a fairly strong indicator.
Polly sighed. “I should have known. Nobody straight has eyebrows that neat. Ah, well. Maybe George and he will hit it off.”
Annie doubted it—George hadn’t addressed a word to him since he mentioned what he did for a living. She’d seen him wrinkle his nose as Costas enthused about all the different drinks he could make. “Latte, skinny latte, flat white, not-flat white...”
“How long is this going to take?” George complained now. “We’ve been waiting for, like, an hour already.”
“We’ve been waiting for ten minutes,” Polly scolded. “And it’ll be worth it.”
“I can’t believe you’re making me a do a tacky tourist thing. What next, Madame Tussaud’s? The zoo?”
“The zoo is a great idea! Let’s do that next week. I could even adopt an animal, name it after me. Something to live on when I’m gone. Unless it’s a mayfly, I guess.”
Costas was staring around him, rapt. “In Greece we have nothing this big. We lost all our money instead and set fire to our capital.” He said it cheerily.
“That’s the spirit, Costas,” Polly said, rubbing his shoulder. Annie tensed. She really had no sense of personal space. “It’s a modern marvel. You can see all the way to Kent on a good day.”
“The question of why we’d want to see Kent remains unanswered,” George muttered. The bruise on his eye was still livid, but he’d shaken off Annie’s attempts to ask about it.
They were now in the lift, alongside a tubby family in tracksuits, who all gawped at Polly’s choice of ensemble—a red ruffled skirt showing her long frail legs, a pink sparkly cowboy hat, such as might be worn by drunken hen-do attendees, and a jacket made of purple sharkskin. Annie would have looked like a clown in it, but Polly was drawing admiring stares along with the puzzled ones. “Isn’t she that one off that telly thing?” Annie heard one of the Tracksuit Family hiss.