The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(106)

‘You look a bit peaky.’ Flo rummages in her cardigan pocket and pulls out a tube of mints. ‘Bit of sugar, that’s what you need.’

I shake my head. ‘Thanks, Flo. I’m all right, just tired.’

Jonah flew back to LA on Saturday. He called round on the way to the airport and left me with a kiss on the forehead, a hug that has to last until I see him again, and a copy of his manuscript.

Be brutal, he said. I trust your judgement more than anyone else’s.

I spent yesterday reading it, and all of last night rereading it, and it’s in my desk drawer right now. I keep going back through it, trying to read the empty spaces in between. It’s such a tender story, teenage angst at its poignant best and at its raging, hormonal worst, the horror and heartbreak of losing your best friend, the confusion and heartache of silently loving his girl. It’s all there, the story of us: Jonah’s vulnerable teen heart, Freddie’s bravado, and me, the thread that pulls the two of them together and apart. As is often the case in real life, no one wins in the end. The characters grow up and drift apart because seeing each other hurts too much. It’s raw and melancholy beautiful, but it’s not the kind of ending this story deserves.

‘Are you sure we can’t go back to the bonkers, Lydia?’ Flo grumbles. ‘I can’t make head nor tail of this computer.’

I look up from sorting a pile of recently returned books. ‘Bonkers?’

‘You know,’ Flo says, miming the old library date-stamp action. ‘The bonkers.’

‘You’re bonkers.’ I find a smile because Flo deserves it. ‘You and Mary, you’re both bonkers.’

‘Best way if you ask me,’ she says. ‘Makes life more interesting, anyway.’

I look at Flo. ‘Is Flo short for Florence?’

‘Florence Gardenia,’ she says, then laughs. ‘Bit of a mouthful. I used to tell Norm I only married him because his name was Smith.’

I don’t know a great deal about Flo’s past. She mentions Norm, her GI husband, every now and then, and I know they celebrated their golden wedding just before he passed away. She has sons, but I get the impression she doesn’t see as much of her family as she’d like to.

‘Where did you meet him?’

Her face softens. ‘He turned up one Sunday evening at the dance hall, all swagger in his fancy uniform. Gave me his cigarettes, I gave him my heart.’

‘Easy as that,’ I say.

‘Not always.’ She rests her face on her hands, thinking. ‘He was away too much in the early years.’ She pauses. ‘Wrote me some saucy letters, mind, I still have them in a shoebox in my wardrobe. I might have to burn them before I die to stop the boys from reading them.’

That’s one of the things I appreciate most about being around Flo; she always looks for the laugh.

‘Did you send him any back?’

She raises her eyebrows. ‘Do I look like a girl who’d write mucky letters, Lydia?’

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ I say, and she just laughs and taps the side of her nose.

We look up as the doors open and a class from the local primary troop in, filling the library with noise and wet wellingtons.

Turpin covered himself in glory just now when I emptied the contents of my old school bag out on to the rug. I’ve been up to the loft and I’m pretty sure what I’m searching for is in here somewhere. A dried-up Lypsyl, a magazine with a band on the front I can’t remember the name of, a pre-smartphone envelope of photos. I delved deeper to lift out the stuff at the bottom and one of those things happened to be a spider the size of Jupiter. Already jittery from venturing into the loft, I let out a scream as I shook it off my arm, alerting the cat, who shot off Freddie’s chair and landed on it with terrifying precision. I can’t say for sure if he squashed or ate it, but I don’t think it’s going to be troubling me any time soon.

I take a few deep breaths now and sit down on the rug, my teen life spread around me. Exercise books covered in doodles and graffiti; I flick through them, nostalgic for easier days. My careful handwriting, bubble dots above the i’s, red ruler lines, teacher’s marks in green. For a girl who didn’t like chemistry, I scored pretty well in the homework I copied off Jonah Jones. I set the books aside and pick up the thing I went to the loft in search of: a small wooden music box decorated with colourful painted birds.

It’s been years since Jonah gave me this for my birthday. At the time he told me he saw it in a charity shop window and thought I might like it because of the birds and all; nonchalant, no big deal. I accepted it in the spirit it was given and used it to stash the bracelet Freddie gave me that same morning. It isn’t in there any more, lost somewhere along the passage of years. I pause to smile when I find the yellow plastic flower ring Freddie gave me, and a couple of knotted necklaces and a pair of earrings I think might have been Elle’s rather than mine. Nothing else of worth or note except, underneath them all, a small, smooth pebble. I take it out and lay it in the palm of my hand. It’s pale grey and marbled with white, no bigger than a Brazil nut. It’s nothing special to look at, but as I close my hand around it I remember the day Jonah slipped it into my palm as we filed into the school hall for our first exam. For luck, he whispered, folding it into my shaking fingers.

I glance at my mobile on the coffee table. I haven’t heard from Jonah since he flew out on Saturday. I don’t think I will. He left me with his manuscript, the trace of his kiss on my forehead and the ball in my court. I think back to my earlier conversation with Flo, to those letters she still has in a shoebox in her wardrobe.