All That She Can See(39)

Never feeling anything again. POP!

She wished it was as easy as bursting a bubble. It felt satisfying to see her thoughts disappear with a pop but they didn’t stay gone for long and grew back in her mind like weeds, their tendrils growing over all her happy thoughts until the happiness was near impossible to see.

‘I’ve got to take the job,’ Cherry said. It spurted out of her mouth like one of the bubbles, but it didn’t pop. Even when Chase said, ‘What?’ and stopped drying the forks in his tea-towel-wrapped hand. ‘That’s a joke, right?’

‘You heard that “Happy” woman. I can’t carry on here, can I? I’m finished in the bakery business.’

‘She said you could train! I know it seems unnecessary as you’re already damn good at what you do but the alternative is… barbaric! It’s just madness!’

‘Train? For what? To be turned down years down the line? Build up my hopes again only to have them dashed by some woman named after one of the seven dwarves? I’m not doing that. I’d rather —’

‘Give up?’

‘I know when I’m beaten!’ Cherry turned to him with such a spin that water came sailing out of the sink in a tidal wave and the plate she’d been holding slipped out of her sodden hand and crashed to the floor, shattering on impact. Neither of them flinched. Chase held Cherry’s sad stare while she held his determined one.

‘I’m not going to sit here and let you get your feelings sucked out of your brain. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d ever say, but there it is,’ Chase declared.

The ridiculousness of it all would have been funny to Cherry if the idea of having her mind messed with wasn’t so horribly real. ‘I won’t even know what I’m missing,’ she said, moving a piece of the broken plate around with her foot.

‘I’ll know. I’m not going to let you go through that… because of me.’

‘Stop that,’ Cherry chided gently. ‘It wasn’t all your fault, Chase. It takes two to tango.’

‘Yeah, well.’ He shrugged. ‘I asked you to dance.’

Cherry wanted so badly to wish she’d never met Chase but in truth, despite his dismal outlook on life, his tendency to overreact and his desperation to be the best at everything, meeting him had been a pivotal moment in her life and she was ultimately grateful for it. Living your whole life thinking you’ll never find someone who really understands you, that you’ll always be carrying the weight of a secret, living a double life, was what had kept Cherry’s Loneliness so strong, so healthy, so real. Since Cherry had met Chase, Loneliness hadn’t grown at all. It had been kept in its place because no matter what, despite those irrational, habitual feelings that often crept up on her, Cherry knew she wasn’t really alone, not any more. She reached into her cardigan pocket and pulled out the bottle of blue pills.

‘I’m going to whip up a batch of cakes as a parting gift for everyone in this town I’ve truly screwed over. Each containing a little bit of the Normality they deserve. That should do the trick. If they eat them, that is.’ She rattled the bottle. ‘I wouldn’t if I were them. I once ate a bad kebab from a fish and chip shop in Sheffield and I’ve not eaten a kebab since, let alone one from that place.’ She tried to laugh but it got strangled in her throat and died there so she turned back to popping her thoughts.

Silence reigned for the rest of the night until order had been restored to the bakery. As he was leaving, Chase didn’t know how to say goodbye. He was unsure now about whether their relationship had shifted, so he just nodded – but when he turned to the street where the light had now faded and the street lamps were lit, he realised that when Happy referred to an incident, she wasn’t just talking about Orla or what had happened inside the bakery.

‘Oh my God.’ Starting from the doorway of the shop, Chase took in the destruction that spread in several directions. Vomit, clothes, blood, cake boxes and half-eaten cookies were strewn as far as he could see. Some of the debris disappeared in the direction of the town centre, some led to the ferry that went to The Barbican and some of it was piled around sleeping bodies that lay in the middle of the street in various states of disarray. Cherry stood in the doorway, her fingers starting to tremble.

‘It’s all right, Cherry. We’ve been given a way to fix this. We can fix this. Cherry?’

Cherry’s ears were full of the noise of her rapidly beating heart and her blood rushing violently through her body. Chase’s voice was fading…

‘Cherry? CHERRY!’ Chase shouted as he caught her before she hit the floor.





I’ll take care of it. x



Cherry read the sticky note stuck to the wall opposite her bed with bleary, half-asleep eyes. She reached inside her cardigan pocket and as she expected, the bottle of blue pills was missing. She looked down at herself to see that she had been perfectly enveloped in bed. Chase had literally tucked her in, the sheets sitting neatly around her frame. He’d even placed a glass of water at her bedside, which she immediately downed in a few gulps. Gingerly, she clambered out from under the sheets, changed into some fresh, clean pyjamas and went downstairs to her dark and empty bakery. The mess from the night before had been cleaned off the streets and whether that had been Chase or a kind neighbour, Cherry was grateful either way. (Although she did spot one lone pair of pink frilly knickers stuck to the windowsill of the art gallery opposite.) With her outside slippers on her feet, Cherry ventured out to find Chase.