Page 15 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

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.

Okay, Sunday afternoon, we’re done here. My sister has gone home to her husband, and I have someone else to be with too.

Monday 21 May

It takes me a few seconds to recalibrate and realize we’re in Sheila’s, the tiny backstreet cafe around the corner from home, and the waitress has just placed two full English breakfasts down on the table even though it’s after twelve. It’s our usual order in here; Freddie likes it more than I do and always wolfs half of mine. I’m comforted by the familiarity of sliding back into our old routine.

‘Best thing about Bank Holiday.’ He forks a sausage from my plate to his. ‘Extra breakfast.’

It’s a plastic-chairs-and-chipped-Formica kind of cafe. Builder’s tea and instant coffee in mismatched mugs. The paint on the sign outside is faded and flaking, but for all its shortcomings the food is hearty and the welcome warm from Sheila, whose husband hand-painted the sign forty years ago. He died a couple of years back, dropped down while flipping bacon in the cafe kitchen; just as he’d have wanted, by all accounts. It was standing room only in church for his funeral. I remember being squished between Freddie and a neighbour from a few doors down who leaned heavily against me and sobbed that he’d never known anyone more talented with black pudding. I’m genuinely not making this up. I catch Sheila’s eye when she appears through the beaded curtain from the kitchen and she throws me a smile. Freddie is treated to a wink, and he sticks his thumb up in reply.

‘Better bacon than my mother,’ he grins, making her preen. ‘Don’t tell her I said so though.’

He has a way of doing that, of making people feel like his favourite. I’ve seen him do it countless times over the years, catch someone momentarily in his spotlight.

‘I’m just going to grab the ketchup,’ I say, compelled to speak to Sheila. I’m on my feet and at the counter in five steps, not long enough to formulate my thoughts into words.

‘Everything okay, love?’ she asks, glancing around me at my barely touched breakfast. Sheila is a woman who’s fiercely proud of her cooking, despite the unpretentious appearance of the cafe.

I nod, biting my lip.

‘More tea?’ she guesses, confused.

I shake my head, feeling stupid. ‘I just wanted some ketchup.’ I pause and then stumble on. ‘And to say how sorry I am about Stan.’

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