The Two Lives of Lydia Bird - Josie Silver Page 0,21
at being interrupted doing nothing. Yes, it’s turned midday and I’m still in my PJs, but hey, it’s Sunday. Plus, I have actually had a shower. Frankly, I’d like to lie here like a statue until the sofa digests me. That can actually happen, I’ve seen it on morning TV: the chemicals in your sofa eat you alive if you lie on it for long enough. I indulge in a not wholly unpleasant daydream where the sofa opens up like a big fabric Venus flytrap and swallows me whole, but I don’t have the luxury of letting it happen; Elle’s peering at me through the bay window and from the way she’s rummaging in her bag I can tell she’s looking for her keys to let herself in. I didn’t actually give my mother or Elle a key to my house. One of them must’ve appropriated the spare in the raw days following the accident, and evidently they’ve had copies cut so that any number of people can swan in and interrupt my wallowing whenever they feel the need.
I sit up and try to arrange my face into a less morose expression as Elle deposits her bags in the hall and calls out a hello.
‘In here,’ I say, forcing a brightness I don’t feel into my voice.
‘Didn’t you hear the door?’ Elle sticks her head round the doorframe as she takes off her boots. I don’t expect people to take their boots off when they come in, for the record. It’s just a habit that’s been drummed into us both by our mother, ever since she installed a cream carpet in our childhood home. ‘I rang twice.’
‘Dozing,’ I say, giving myself a little pull-it-together shake as I stand up. ‘You caught me.’
Elle’s face falls. ‘You didn’t sleep so well last night?’
‘On and off,’ I say. The truthful answer is barely. I don’t want to take the pills to help me sleep at night because visiting my other life when everyone there is sleeping feels like a waste. I did it the other night, and oh my word yes, it was all kinds of lovely to watch Freddie sleep, but on balance I crave his time and his words and his waking love. I’ve become a nocturnal animal, awake with Freddie when I should be asleep, trying to sleep when I should be awake. I don’t explain any of this to Elle though; if I tell her I’ve found a back door to a universe where Freddie isn’t dead, she’ll think that I’ve been on the Kool-Aid. Or the vodka. Again.
She follows me through to the kitchen, picking up a canvas shopping bag in the hallway. ‘Grabbed some bits and bobs you might fancy,’ she says, laying ready-made pancakes and fresh lemons on the table. Shrove Tuesday was always a big event when we were younger; she’s the chef of the family and always made a thing of how good she was at tossing pancakes like a pro. Mine usually ended up on the floor, whereas hers were perfect rounds served up with sugar and lemon.
‘Lemons for my gin?’
My lame attempt at a joke doesn’t hit the mark; she picks up the little net and places it pointedly on top of the pancakes. It’s not as if I’m a huge gin drinker, but she’s a worrier so I’m sure she must have awful images in her head of me drinking alone at the kitchen table in the middle of the night. Chicken breasts follow; two in the pack. I don’t ask her who the other one is supposed to be for. It’s not her fault the world caters to couples and I’m now Lydia-lonesome.
‘Cake,’ she says. ‘Coffee and walnut, your fave.’
It’s as if she thinks I’ll have forgotten. I look at its fancy wax-paper wrapping and nod obligingly. ‘It is.’
She pulls milk and juice from the bag, then bread and eggs and ham.
‘You don’t need to do this, you know,’ I say, opening the fridge door to stash the things away. The scant contents of my fridge call me out as a liar; most of the stuff in there has been bought by someone other than me. Soup in Mum’s Tupperware, grapes from my workmates, cheese and yogurt Elle herself put there earlier this week. The only thing I’ve supplied for myself is the wine and a tub of Philadelphia.
‘I know I don’t, but I like to,’ she says, handing me a block of butter. ‘Coffee?’