The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(19)

‘You couldn’t have got it more right,’ I say, reaching out across the table for his hand. ‘Don’t tell me any more. Let me daydream a while.’

He rubs his thumb over my knuckles. ‘You’re going to love it, Lyds.’

I have no doubt whatsoever. I feel like I’m about to cry, so I change the subject.

‘So what shall we do this afternoon?’

‘You mean it wasn’t girl code for sex?’ He looks hangdog, and then laughs. ‘We’re going to the movies, remember?’ he says, reminding me of a plan I’ve no knowledge of. ‘I’m going to snog your face off on the back row.’

‘Snog?’ I laugh. ‘No one says that any more.’

He reaches across the table and stabs my egg yolk. ‘I do. Hurry up, film starts at half one.’

‘Movies it is then,’ I say. It’s Bank Holiday Monday, I’m with Freddie, and we’re fine. Better than fine: we’re how we used to be, him and me against the world. I’m not even mad with him for the egg yolk thing, even though he always does it just to get a rise out of me. We’re going to go to the movies and snog like schoolkids on the back row. We’re going to make hay while the sun shines.





Sunday 27 May


I’m sitting on the kitchen floor, my sweat-soaked back pressed against the cupboard, the bottle of pills clutched tight in my still-shaking hand. I accidentally sent them flying off the countertop a few minutes ago, and then scrambled around on the floor like an addict, grabbing for them before they slipped through the cracks. I got a painful splinter in my index finger for my trouble, but all that mattered in those panicky seconds was ensuring that every last one of the remaining tablets went safely back where they should be.

I’ve visited Freddie for the last six days in a row, and I’m utterly exhausted, as if I’ve been running marathons in my sleep. I dully acknowledge that this cannot go on. It’s not just the physical toll; there is a steep mental price to pay too. My waking hours have become my waiting hours, filled with impatience and anticipation, edged with sickly fear that it may not happen next time, that I might never again experience the rush. It’s impossible to explain how it feels to be there. There was a painting in the National Gallery when Elle and I visited a couple of years ago, an Australian landscape by an artist whose name I can’t quite bring to mind. It isn’t one of the most well-known pieces nor the most spectacular, but there was something about the clarity of colour and the intense quality of the light that held my attention more than any other. My sleeping world is there amongst the brush strokes and pigments of that painting; alive and bold and spellbinding. Addictive.

I hold my head in my hands, bereft because the incident with the pills just now has forced me to acknowledge the truth that’s been lurking just beneath the surface for the last couple of days: I’m putting myself in real danger here.

Every day since Freddie died has been a fresh mountain to climb, and even though I’ve never been a sporty kind of girl, I’ve somehow found the strength to put on my walking boots each morning and begin that lonely climb again. For the last few days I haven’t bothered to lace up my boots, because it hasn’t seemed to matter so much if I cut the soles of my feet to ribbons. I haven’t watched my step or thought beyond the next bend in the track, because all roads lead to the safety of Freddie waiting at the crest for me.

But like all things, there is an inevitable trade-off. A bargain must be struck and the realization that the price might be my sanity is seeping into my bones like cold bath water.

I’m starting to resent being awake, and to resent everyone in my waking life too. I snapped Mum’s head off on the phone a couple of days ago and Elle said I looked like crap when she called around yesterday morning. I bailed on going to Mum’s for breakfast with her; I was borderline rude because all I could think about was the pink pill waiting for me on the kitchen worktop. She left after a few awkward minutes, her shoulders slumped and deflated, and I watched her go, feeling like a cow but unwilling to call her back because the siren call of the pill was too loud, too persuasive to ignore. And that’s the real problem: I see the road ahead and it’s littered with their trampled feelings as I turn more and more away from them in favour of the other place, in favour of Freddie.

I set the bottle of pills down on the kitchen floor beside me, and after staring at it for a few jagged, indecisive seconds I stretch out and move it beyond an arm’s length away.

Can I bear to take one every other day? Every three days, maybe? Once a week? I frown, remembering that I took two on Saturday, bingeing on Freddie like a greedy child. And that’s what worries me most. That I won’t have the strength to resist falling so deeply into my other life that I become more there than here, too immersed to make my way safely home again.





Tuesday 29 May


‘I’m thinking of going back to work soon.’

My mother tries unsuccessfully to mask her surprise. We’re in her small and immaculate lounge, barefoot as always in deference to the cream carpet; it’s not just in the hall, she loves a bargain and had it laid throughout the ground floor. Considering this is the lounge, there are quite stringent rules around the kind of lounging that is permitted. Red wine is a complete no-no, as is any kind of non-white food. So white wine is allowed, and mash or rice pudding. I’m not even kidding. Elle and I put away tins of the stuff throughout our teenage years, and despite the fact that the carpet is at least fifteen years old, it looks almost as good as new. The sofa covers the only stain that will never come out: a teenage Elle came home off her face on gin and blackcurrant one Christmas morning after visiting her then boyfriend down the road for less than an hour. Impressive really, until she threw up on Mum’s carpet and passed out cold in her Christmas dinner.