“Uh...” Annie looked at the cake in her hand. Slightly squished. “Thank you?”
“That’s okay.” The woman licked some rogue frosting off her hand. “Ick, I hope I don’t get MRSA. Not that it would make much difference. I’m Polly, by the way. And you’re Annie.”
“Er. Yeah.”
“Have a good day, Annie Hebden. Or at least a slightly better one. Remember—if you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.” And she waved, and skipped—was it the first time anyone had ever skipped down the Corridor of Doom?—out of sight.
*
Annie waited for the bus in the rain, that gray soupy rain that Lewisham seemed to specialize in. She thought what a stupid thing it was the woman had said. Rain didn’t always lead to rainbows. Usually it just led to soaked socks and your hair in rattails. But at least she had somewhere to go. A homeless man sat beneath the bus shelter, water dripping off his head and forming a puddle around his dirty trousers. Annie felt wretched for him, but what could she do? She couldn’t help him. She couldn’t even help herself.
When the bus came it was rammed, and she stood squeezed up between a buggy and a mound of shopping bags, buffeted by every turn. An elderly lady got on, wobbling up the steps with her shopping trolley. As she shuffled down the bus, nobody looked up from their phones to offer her a seat. Annie finally snapped. What was wrong with people? Was there not a shred of decency left in this city? “For God’s sake!” she barked. “Could someone let this lady sit down, please?” A young man with huge headphones slouched out of his seat, embarrassed.
“No need to take the Lord’s name in vain,” said the old lady, tutting disapprovingly at Annie as she sat down.
Annie stared at her feet, which had left grimy marks on the wet floor of the bus, until she got to her stop.
How had her life come to this? she wondered. Losing it in public over a change of address? Weeping in front of strangers? Once it would have been her raising her eyebrows as someone else had a meltdown. Offering tissues, and a soothing pat on the arm. She didn’t understand what had happened to that person. The one she used to be.
Sometimes it felt to Annie like her life had changed in the blink of an eye. Eyes shut—she was back in the bedroom of her lovely house on that last sunny morning, and everything was good. She was filled with excitement, and hope, and slightly exhausted joy. Perfect. Eyes open—she was here, trudging back to her horrible flat, catching the bus in the rain, lying awake full of dread and misery. One blink, perfect. Two blinks, ruined. But no matter how many times she closed her eyes, it never went back to how it used to be.
DAY 2
Smile at strangers
The doorbell was ringing. Annie woke up with a jerk, her heart shock-started. What was it? The police again, the ambulance...but no, the worst had already happened. She sat up, registering that she’d fallen asleep on the sofa again, in the clothes she’d worn to the hospital. She couldn’t even remember what she’d been watching on TV. Tattoo Fixers, maybe? She liked that. It was always comforting to see there were people who’d made worse decisions than she had.
Riiiinnnngg. She moved aside the blanket Costas must have laid over her. As she stood up, crumbs and tissues and a remote control fell out of her clothes. It was as if she’d come home drunk, but drunk on misery, on grief, on anger.
Riiiiinnnnnng! “All right!” Jesus. What time was it, anyway? The TV clock read 9:23 a.m. She had to hurry or she’d miss visiting hours. Costas would have left ages ago to do the breakfast shift, in and out without her even seeing him. A feeling of shame rolled over her —the Annie of two years ago would never have slept in her clothes.
“Annie Hebden! Are you in there?”
Annie winced. Through the door chain she could see a blur of jewel green—it was the strange woman from the hospital. Polly something.
“Er, yes?”
“I’ve got your hospital letter.” A hand appeared in the gap, this time with silver nails, and waved an envelope under Annie’s nose. It had her name on it, but a different address. One in a nicer part of town. “You probably got mine,” said the woman cheerfully.
Annie looked at the pile of letters on the mat. Bills. A subscription to Gardening Monthly, which she really should have canceled by now. And a bright white envelope addressed to Polly Leonard. “How did that happen?”
“I guess Denise got mixed up when you changed the address. I called her to switch them around, no harm done.”
Was the hospital supposed to give out her address? “So you came all the way here, just to give me this?” It would have taken more than half an hour from Polly’s home in Greenwich to Annie’s in Lewisham, especially at rush hour.
“Sure. I’ve never been to this part of town before, so I thought why not?”
There were a million reasons why not. The area’s soaring crime rates. The monstrosity of its seventies shopping center. The fact they’d been digging up the heart of it for years now, creating a traffic-clogged hellhole full of thundering drills and melted tarmac.
“Well. Thanks for bringing it.” She stuck Polly’s letter out the gap. “Bye, then.”
Polly didn’t budge. “Are you going to the hospital today?”
Every instinct told Annie to lie, but for some reason she didn’t. “Oh, yeah. I will be, but—”
“Appointment?”
“Not exactly.” She didn’t feel up to explaining.
“I’m going in, too. I thought we could travel together.”
Annie had been known to stay in the office for an extra twenty minutes some days, just to be sure her colleagues were gone so she wouldn’t have to catch the bus with them. “I’m not dressed,” she said.
“That’s okay. I can wait.”
“But...but...” Annie’s stupid brain couldn’t think of a single reason not to let this annoying, overly colorful stranger into her home. “I guess...okay, then.”
*
“So this is your place.” Polly stood in Annie’s drab living room like a Christmas tree. Today, she wore what looked like an ankle-length cocktail dress in crème de menthe satin, and underneath it, biker boots. A fake fur jacket and a knitted hat completed the look. The hem of the dress was damp and dirty, as if she’d just walked through Lewisham in the rain. She looked like a model on an urban fashion shoot.