The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(61)

‘I love it,’ I say at the end.

He nods. ‘It’s one of my favourites too.’

I reach for my notepad and write ‘And I Love Her’ down at the top of the list.





Thursday 20 June


‘It’s nice to see you again.’ Dee stands up and brushes a kiss against my cheek. ‘Thanks for coming, I wasn’t sure if you’d think it was a bit weird.’

She smiles, wary, and shoots me a self-conscious look from beneath her lashes. We’re in a cafe not far from my work. I was caught off-guard by Dee’s email this morning asking if we could meet for coffee; I’ve seen her out and about on several occasions with Jonah but we haven’t exactly built up a close, meet-for-a-natter sort of friendship yet. Here we are, none the less. I raise my hand in greeting when I spot her at a table in the corner and order a coffee. She stands and kisses my cheek quickly before I slide into the chair opposite hers.

‘How’ve you been?’ I ask.

‘Okay.’ She fiddles with the handle of her cup. ‘Busy at work.’

I smile as the guy from behind the counter places my coffee down, casting around in my head for something to say. I don’t find Dee all that easy to chat to without Jonah as a causeway.

‘I guess you’re wondering why I suggested this?’ she says.

I appreciate her directness. ‘A little bit,’ I concede, but I can’t stop myself from politely adding, ‘although it’s nice to catch up, of course.’ How very British of me; I just about manage to stop myself from remarking on the glorious weather.

Dee’s wearing a canary-yellow vest top and black leggings, her dark hair scraped severely back into a high ponytail. She has the look of someone perpetually on their way to the gym; she’d definitely be Sporty at a Spice Girls fancy-dress bash.

‘I need to ask you for some advice. Well, some help really …’ she falters. ‘With Jonah.’

Fear kicks in. ‘Is he okay?’

She nods, and then shrugs, anxious. ‘Yes and no. I’m really worried about him, Lydia. He won’t talk to me about the accident – he clams up every time I even mention Freddie’s name.’

I look at her across the table, at the way she’s twisting the plastic hairband around her wrist and biting the corner of her lip. It probably took a fair amount of courage for her to ask me here today.

‘I never met Freddie,’ she says. ‘I mean, I know they were best friends, obviously, and I know some of what happened, but beyond that I’m in the dark. I haven’t even seen a photo of him. Can you believe that?’

It’s news to me that Jonah is so closed off about things with Dee. He’s always been a talker, much more so than Freddie ever was, but now I think about it, he and I don’t talk much about the accident itself. I don’t especially want to go over it again, so I haven’t noticed his reticence. I sat through his painful account of events at the inquest and then he didn’t mention it again until the unpalatable truth tumbled out of him at the grief session. We talk about Freddie often, but the accident itself? Not so much.

I rummage in my bag for my phone and flick through until I find a photo of Freddie and Jonah together. It doesn’t take long, I have loads. Dee studies my phone screen when I hand it to her.

‘Wow,’ she says after a while. ‘That isn’t how I imagined Freddie at all.’

‘No?’ I’m not sure what she means.

‘I expected them to look like brothers, I guess,’ she says, and then she smiles and hands my phone back. ‘He was very handsome,’ she says. ‘You must miss him terribly.’

What do I say to that? ‘It’s been fifteen months since he died and, yes, I miss him every day’? Or ‘Of course I miss him, but I secretly see him in a parallel universe sometimes which eases the pain considerably’? ‘Yes, but I’m trying to get on with my day-to-day life, in fact I have a date planned soon with a guy I met at silent speed dating’? All of the above are true, but I don’t think Dee really came here to talk about me, so I just nod and shoot her a tiny, tight smile.

‘They might not look like brothers, but they were as good as,’ I say. ‘Jonah spent most of his teenage years in and out of Freddie’s house.’

I don’t add that Jonah’s home life was less than ideal; she probably already knows about his past, but if she doesn’t, it’s not my place to fill her in. Maggie, Freddie’s mum, once told me she gave Jonah an old BMX from their shed for his fourteenth birthday; it was his only gift. She realized he couldn’t ride a bike when his foolhardy teenage pride saw him swing his leg over the crossbar and attempt to pedal away. She fished him out of the gutter, bathed his bleeding shoulder and then spent the next week holding on to the saddle while he got the hang of riding it in the privacy of her back garden. It probably isn’t a story Jonah likes to think back on, and I don’t expect he’d appreciate me sharing it with Dee.

‘I think a change of scene might be what he needs,’ Dee says. She’s chewing her lip again, nervous.

‘A holiday?’ I suggest. ‘Well, if you’re going to surprise him, don’t go for somewhere too hot because he’s not much of a sun-lounger kind of guy. Italy, maybe? Somewhere historic, he’d like that.’