Page 64 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

Do I want to imagine Dee buying strawberry condoms? Not really. ‘Nice of her,’ I say.

‘Yeah,’ he says.

‘I like her a lot,’ I say, wondering if I should try to shoe-horn in the fact that Dee wants to marry him.

‘She’s easy to like,’ he says.

‘Easy to love?’ I say, keeping my tone light.

He makes a sound in his throat, a mix of frustration and exasperation. ‘I don’t think I even know what love is, Lydia,’ he says. ‘It’s easy for you, you and Fred have been together for ever. You’ve grown up together, you know? You have that short-hand. But what if you don’t have that history, if you don’t have all of those layers of life together to make up a strong foundation?’

It’s a lot more of an answer than I expected from him, so much so that I don’t have a ready reply.

‘Me and Dee, we don’t have any of that,’ he says. ‘I didn’t hold her hair back the first time she got drunk and threw up, and I didn’t carry her stupidly heavy rucksack back from school for her. I didn’t push her first car home for her when she beached it in a snowdrift and I didn’t let her copy my chemistry homework every Monday morning before class.’

He runs out of steam and I’ve no clue what to say because he’s just listed all the things that have made up our friendship over the years. He held my hair back in this very pub when we were seventeen years old, and he pushed my car in the snow when I called him in a blind panic.

‘You don’t need all those things to love someone, Jonah,’ I say in the end, not sure what he means. ‘What happened yesterday, or last week, or ten years ago … those things aren’t important. What really matters is now, here, today, tomorrow, next year. Some people fall in love at first sight and stay together for ever, other people marry their childhood sweetheart and end up in the divorce courts. You can’t predict life, Jonah, you can only try to make the best of whatever it throws at you.’

I don’t know where all that came from, and I don’t strictly believe my own lecture. In my waking life, precious yesterdays are all I have left of Freddie.

Jonah looks at the floor and then back up at me, his dark eyes unreadable. ‘What if someone falls in love with their friend?’

I think of Freddie. ‘Then they’re lucky,’ I say.

Jonah nods, bleak. ‘I guess so. As long as their friend loves them back.’

I open my mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out because I’m suddenly afraid where this conversation is heading, afraid of the charge in the air between us.

‘Being Freddie Hunter’s wingman has been the story of my life,’ he says, and something inside me twists because, a universe away, he said those exact same words at Freddie’s funeral. Back there he said it had been his honour and his privilege; I don’t think he’s about to say that here.

On cue, Freddie barrels through the door from the pub, all smiles at the sight of us.

‘Hey, my two favourite people in one place.’

‘Hey, you,’ I say, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. I realize I’m shaking.

‘Shall we go for curry?’ he says, leaning against the wall next to Jonah. I’m reminded of them standing exactly like that at school, backs against the wall, waiting for me at the end of the day. ‘I’m starving.’

‘You’re always starving,’ Jonah says, shaking himself down, shucking our too-close-to-the-knuckle conversation off his skin. ‘Your night, your choice, pal.’

‘Lyds?’ Freddie turns to me. ‘Coming?’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t think it’s good form for the bride to come on the stag night. I’ll go and find Dee and Elle.’

‘Last spotted ordering tequila shots,’ Freddie grins. ‘It’s gonna get messy out there.’

He disappears into the gents humming something loosely similar to the song coming from the bar, and Jonah and I look at each other, alone in the corridor again.

‘Forget I said anything, I’m talking shite.’ He swallows hard and rubs his hand over the back of his neck. ‘Too much beer.’

I nod, grateful for the lie.

‘I better get back out there,’ I say.

He nods, forcing out a laugh as he pushes himself away from the wall. ‘Tequila and all that.’

A couple of girls I vaguely recognize from our schooldays push the door open and I take it as my cue to leave. I make my way through the busy pub looking for Elle, still troubled even as I try to shove my encounter with Jonah to the back of my mind. I can’t easily spot my sister or Dee, so I give up and sit down on an empty stool, my head against the side of the fruit machine. Everything feels a few degrees off tonight: Dee is too frothy, Elle too pissed, Jonah too serious, Freddie too laddish. And then there’s me at the centre of it all in my Conservative-candidate black dress and festooned veil. I close my eyes, tired and ready to call it a night. I don’t want tequila, or Dee, or Elle, even. Tonight has felt much like trying to walk a tightrope. In fact, that’s a good analogy for how life is for me at the moment – I’m constantly standing on an invisible wire between two worlds and hoping like hell that I don’t plummet to my death. For a girl with bad balance, it’s hard work.

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