Page 11 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

I watch them for a few seconds as they strike out towards home, David’s arm around Elle’s shoulders. I hold silent the part of me that wants to call out for them to come back and instead I step inside and close my front door.

Saturday 12 May

‘Lydia?’

You know that kind of sleep you fall into after a bout of daytime drinking, the sleeping at the bottom of the sea kind? I’m fathoms below when I hear Freddie say my name, and it takes all of my concentration to push myself off the bottom, kicking furiously upwards to get to him before he goes away.

‘Jesus, Lyds, you were dead to the world.’ Freddie’s hand is on my shoulder, shaking me lightly. ‘Did you and Elle go shopping?’

I scrabble to sit up straight in the corner of the sofa, rubbing the crick in my neck where I’d slumped over. I can’t gauge what time it is, if I’ve been out for five minutes or five hours. My head is pounding, my heart too, at the sight of Freddie.

‘You’re looking at me weird.’

You would too if you were me, I think but don’t say as I clear my throat.

‘Would you grab me a glass of water?’ I croak.

He frowns and looks at me more closely, then laughs. ‘Have you two been on the wine already? Jeez, Lyds, that’s hardcore even for you.’

‘Here,’ he says, coming back through with a couple of pills as well as the water. ‘Take these.’

I accept them one by one, swallowing them down.

‘You look like an extra from Shaun of the Dead,’ he smiles, smoothing my hair behind my ear. ‘You haven’t been crying, have you?’

I focus on the clock. It’s just after two in the afternoon, I can’t have been asleep for long. I backtrack over the time since Elle and David deposited me on the doorstep; the failed attempt to sleep on the sofa even though my brain ached, the last resort of a pretty pink sleeping pill with alcohol still swilling around in my system.

And then this. I’m wide awake in my sleep again and Freddie is here, taking the piss out of me for drinking too much with Elle. There is very little point in telling him I was drinking with Jonah Jones too and we couldn’t find anything to say to each other, because he won’t believe a word, and why would he? I don’t actually know what I’ve been doing here in this world. Maybe I have been out for a breezy morning shopping and a couple of lunchtime glasses of wine with Elle.

‘Hate to tell you this, Lyds, but you might want to scrape the mascara off your cheeks. Jonah’s coming to watch the game with me in about –’ he breaks off to look at his watch – ‘ten minutes ago. Late as usual.’

‘Do something with me instead?’ I say. ‘Take me somewhere. Anywhere. Just you and me.’

‘You sound more like Ed Sheeran every day,’ he says as he pulls his phone from the back pocket of his jeans, no doubt to text Jonah. But then he shoves it away as we hear the sound of the back door opening.

‘Cutting it fine.’ Freddie grins as Jonah strolls into the living room with a box of Bud under his arm. ‘Tell me it was for a woman at least.’

Jonah glances at me and I’m convinced he’s going to say ‘Yes, I was with Lydia’.

‘Auditioning for The Living Dead, Lyds?’

I stare at him, trying to work out if he’s playing a part. If he is, I can’t imagine him saying anything much crueller. I mean, come on: The Living Dead?

‘Knobhead,’ I mutter, and he does a tiny double take.

‘Grumpy,’ he shoots back, then grins.

‘She’s just woken up,’ Freddie says, taking the beer. ‘She needs five minutes to become her usual sunshine self.’ He shoots me a wink, laughing as he heads to the kitchen.

Jonah drops down on the other end of my sofa, his arms flung wide across the back. He shouldn’t be here; this is my dream. I’m pretty sure that means I’m entitled to have Freddie all to myself. I experiment with the idea of being in charge and try to mentally eject Jonah from the living room, half expecting him to spring up and leave backwards as if someone pressed rewind on a DVD. He doesn’t though. He just lounges in that boneless way he has, perpetually somewhere on a beach with a beer in his hand and his toes in the sand.

‘What’s new with you then, Lyds?’

Right, so we’re doing this. Surely it would be okay for him to break character now Freddie is out of the room?

‘You know,’ I whisper, leaning in, testing him. ‘In the pub, earlier? Wine and gin and vodka and brandy?’

He stares at me, nonplussed. ‘This morning? Bloody hell, Lyds, that’s going some.’

---