Page 51 of Statistically Speaking
In this case, the wait is considerably shorter—a notification pings within a minute. Karim and I look at each other, eyes wide, and he gestures for me to check it.
I see that my friend request has been accepted and there is already a message. I read it out loud for him.
Gemma, how lovely to hear from you—and of course I remember you! I would love to catch up and hear how you are. I always expected great things from you. Would you mind doing it by email instead? I always find these messages a bit fiddly! Hope to hear from you soon, Geoff.
“Wow,” says Karim, grinning. “He doesn’t actually call himself Geoff with a G?”
“I don’t suppose he needs to when it’s in writing, does he, because you can actually see there’s a G. Only when he’s talking.”
“Fair point, Lieutenant Logic—so, will you email him?”
I nod and reply, “I will. I want to, for all the reasons some hot PE teacher guy gave me. But not now—now, we probably need to go back over the road and deal with a bunch of hungry and hormonal teenagers.”
He glances out of the window and pulls a face. I guess some of the hungry and hormonal teenagers are lurking outside.
“You’re not wrong,” he says.
Chapter 21
Twenty-One Days of Silence and 500 Meters of Swimming
Erin and Margie are in the smaller pool, leaning together against one of the edges, arms draped along the side. I have just finished twenty lengths in the bigger pool and feel exhausted, in a good way.
I pull myself up the steps and join them.
“I thought you were supposed to be exercising?” I say, raising an eyebrow.
“We are!” says Margie. “Look down below!”
I gaze lower and see that both of them are kicking their legs, slowly but consistently. There is no movement above, but sure enough, I have to concede that some form of exercise is indeed being taken.
This is an experiment we are trying, at Karim’s suggestion. He thought it might help Margie, with both pain relief and flexibility, and as soon as he mentioned it her face lit up in excitement. In fact, it seems remiss that we hadn’t thought of it before, but I suppose we were too busy drinking and doing jigsaws most of the time.
I join them, leaning against the wall, lazily scooping my legs around in the water. I have already done my proper exercise for the day and will allow myself to slack.
“How is it?” I ask Margie. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, love, it’s marvelous—I can’t remember the last time I felt weightless like this, you know? I’d forgotten how much of a joy it is to just float around! I feel like a mermaid!”
It is good to see her so relaxed, and good to at least try to relax myself. I feel edgy these days, vaguely disturbed and in a constant state of flux. Like I’m a can of pop that keeps getting shaken into a fizz every time I come near to settling.
It is now twenty-one days since Katie, and she-who-cannot-be-named-because-I-don’t-know-her-name, turned eighteen. Twenty-one days of checking, of telling myself off for checking, of checking again. Also thrown into the mix at the moment is the almost-as-strange knowledge that, any day now, I might hear from Geoff, might find out more about my mum. Or I might not. It could go either way, and I am not sure which way I would prefer.
No, I think,I do want to hear—I do want to know, one way or another. I need to, even if I don’t exactly relish the prospect. It is, though, adding to the blend of anxiety and weirdly creeping fear that I am feeling.
Fearis a strange word to use, but I think it’s the right one. On the surface, I am the most settled I have ever been in my life. This is the longest period of time I have lived in one place and done one job as an adult. I have friends I am closer to than I have ever been. I have Karim, and the wonders of that particular relationship continue to surprise me. I almost have a dog. I have sneakily laid down the roots I never thought I would manage to lay down.
The thing about roots, though, is that you can get tangled up in them as well—and there is part of me, part that I know is rubbish and wrong and made entirely of badness, that worries about that. About entanglement. If you’re tangled up in roots, how can you make a run for it when the boogeyman comes chasing? You only need to watch any horror film ever to know that roots can be the difference between life and death when you’re running through the woods at night with a slasher in a mask on your heels.
I dip my head under the water, shake it about a bit, come back up and gasp in air. I need to stop thinking like this. Stop expecting the slasher in a mask to appear around every corner.
In my case, though, the slasher in the mask feels like he’s cleverly disguised himself as The Past. The Past is coming for me, and it is undermining The Present. The two could meet, quietly and calmly, and say hello to each other and arrange to go for coffee. Or they could spectacularly collide and blow me to pieces as collateral damage.Boom.
It is an uncomfortable way to feel, but no matter how hard I try to shake it off, it persists, like fine drizzle in your hair on a damp day. You barely notice it’s raining, but you get soaked through and chilled to the bone anyway.
“What’s Katie up to today?” I ask, changing the internal subject.
Erin’s face breaks out into a smile, and she replies, “She’s at a gaming workshop in town. Making little figures of trolls or whatever and painting them. She’s the only girl who goes, and I suspect she is the subject of a lot of crushes.”
