The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(17)

She follows me through to the kitchen, picking up a canvas shopping bag in the hallway. ‘Grabbed some bits and bobs you might fancy,’ she says, laying ready-made pancakes and fresh lemons on the table. Shrove Tuesday was always a big event when we were younger; she’s the chef of the family and always made a thing of how good she was at tossing pancakes like a pro. Mine usually ended up on the floor, whereas hers were perfect rounds served up with sugar and lemon.

‘Lemons for my gin?’

My lame attempt at a joke doesn’t hit the mark; she picks up the little net and places it pointedly on top of the pancakes. It’s not as if I’m a huge gin drinker, but she’s a worrier so I’m sure she must have awful images in her head of me drinking alone at the kitchen table in the middle of the night. Chicken breasts follow; two in the pack. I don’t ask her who the other one is supposed to be for. It’s not her fault the world caters to couples and I’m now Lydia-lonesome.

‘Cake,’ she says. ‘Coffee and walnut, your fave.’

It’s as if she thinks I’ll have forgotten. I look at its fancy wax-paper wrapping and nod obligingly. ‘It is.’

She pulls milk and juice from the bag, then bread and eggs and ham.

‘You don’t need to do this, you know,’ I say, opening the fridge door to stash the things away. The scant contents of my fridge call me out as a liar; most of the stuff in there has been bought by someone other than me. Soup in Mum’s Tupperware, grapes from my workmates, cheese and yogurt Elle herself put there earlier this week. The only thing I’ve supplied for myself is the wine and a tub of Philadelphia.

‘I know I don’t, but I like to,’ she says, handing me a block of butter. ‘Coffee?’

I nod, grateful.

‘Were we supposed to be doing something today?’ I ask, catching sight of Elle’s haul of bags in the hallway. I hope I haven’t made plans with her and then forgotten.

She looks at me oddly for a silent second then shakes her head. ‘I went into town before coming over here. Didn’t think you’d fancy it.’

‘Next time,’ I say lightly.

She smiles hesitantly, probably because – last weekend’s trip to The Prince aside – that’s the first time in weeks I’ve so much as hinted that I might like to do anything other than ghost around the house like Nicole Kidman in The Others.

‘Get anything nice?’ I ask. ‘Other than coffee and walnut cake?’ I pick it up and sniff it to show her how much I appreciate the thought.

‘Just some work stuff.’ She shrugs the question off, even though Mum tells me that she’s fizzing with excitement about her new job at the hotel.

‘Can I see?’

Honestly, the look she gives me makes me feel as if I am the most shit sister in the world. It’s hope coupled with distrust, wary kitten-like, as if I might change my mind and whip the saucer of milk away if she shows too much excitement. Ashamed, I make sounds of approval when she shows me the clothes she’s bought, and in truth I do feel a genuine pang of envy over her new shoes; not the shoes themselves, but what they represent. New shoes, new job, new start. I hope she doesn’t find a new best friend there too.

‘Are you nervous?’ I ask, watching her fold the tissue just-so over the shoes before she closes the lid. She’d definitely be Monica.

‘Massively,’ she says. ‘Worried I’ll be like the new kid at school that no one likes.’

I laugh softly. ‘I don’t think there’s a single person who knows you that doesn’t like you.’

She looks doubtful. ‘Am I bland?’

‘Not bland,’ I say. ‘Definitely not bland. Just kind and funny.’ I screw my nose up. ‘And a tiny bit bossy sometimes.’ I hold my thumb and index finger about an inch apart. ‘This much.’

She looks down her nose at me. ‘Only because you need someone to boss you around sometimes.’

‘I’m glad it’s you.’

‘It could be worse. It could be Mum,’ she points out, and we both nod because we know it’s true.

‘Will you have to boss people around at work?’

‘I’ll have about ten staff.’

‘Ah,’ I say sagely. ‘You won’t be the new kid then. You’ll be the new teacher. They’ll all be trying to impress you, bringing you apples and stuff.’

‘You reckon? I’ll bring them here and make you eat them if they do. You need the vitamins more than I do.’

‘You’re being bossy again.’

‘Practising for work.’

‘You’ve got it down.’

We sit for a second and drink our coffee.

‘Cake?’ I say.

‘I will if you will,’ she says, a line reminiscent of so many other days of our lives. Sledging down the hill behind the house on winter mornings when we were kids, our backsides on Mum’s tea trays: I will if you will. Getting our ears pierced at the dodgy salon in the precinct when we were teenagers: I will if you will. Another drink at last orders, even though we’ve both had enough: I will if you will. Keep breathing even though you’re heartsick: I will if you will.

I reach for the cake and unpick the pretty wrapper. ‘It’s a deal,’ I say.

Cake turns into an impromptu movie fest after Elle flicks the TV on and finds Dirty Dancing, and we pass a couple of hours watching an earnest-eyed Patrick Swayze gyrate his snake hips at Baby Houseman. I rack my brain to remember the last time I danced, but I can’t. It’s as if my life has been split in two, before the accident and after. Sometimes I struggle to bring the details of my old life into sharp relief and panic tightens my chest at the thought of forgetting us, of forgetting Freddie Hunter. I know I’ll always be able to recall the top notes – his face, our first kiss, his proposal – but it’s the other things: the late-night scent of his neck, the gritty determination in his eye when he rescued a tiny frog from the main road and pedalled all the way to the local park with it wrapped in his T-shirt, the way he could bend the little finger on his left hand back further than was normal. It’s those memories I’m scared of losing, the incidentals, the events that made us us. The last time we danced, for instance. And then it comes back to me, and the knot in my chest slowly unravels. I danced last on New Year’s Eve, both in The Prince and along the frost-lit streets on the way home, Freddie holding me up even though he was three sheets to the wind himself. I stumbled that same walk last week with Elle making sure I didn’t fall in the gutter.