The Two Lives of Lydia Bird - Josie Silver Page 0,22

be doing something today?’ I ask, catching sight of Elle’s haul of bags in the hallway. I hope I haven’t made plans with her and then forgotten.

She looks at me oddly for a silent second then shakes her head. ‘I went into town before coming over here. Didn’t think you’d fancy it.’

‘Next time,’ I say lightly.

She smiles hesitantly, probably because – last weekend’s trip to The Prince aside – that’s the first time in weeks I’ve so much as hinted that I might like to do anything other than ghost around the house like Nicole Kidman in The Others.

‘Get anything nice?’ I ask. ‘Other than coffee and walnut cake?’ I pick it up and sniff it to show her how much I appreciate the thought.

‘Just some work stuff.’ She shrugs the question off, even though Mum tells me that she’s fizzing with excitement about her new job at the hotel.

‘Can I see?’

Honestly, the look she gives me makes me feel as if I am the most shit sister in the world. It’s hope coupled with distrust, wary kitten-like, as if I might change my mind and whip the saucer of milk away if she shows too much excitement. Ashamed, I make sounds of approval when she shows me the clothes she’s bought, and in truth I do feel a genuine pang of envy over her new shoes; not the shoes themselves, but what they represent. New shoes, new job, new start. I hope she doesn’t find a new best friend there too.

‘Are you nervous?’ I ask, watching her fold the tissue just-so over the shoes before she closes the lid. She’d definitely be Monica.

‘Massively,’ she says. ‘Worried I’ll be like the new kid at school that no one likes.’

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.