The Two Lives of Lydia Bird - Josie Silver Page 0,81

heard him properly laugh – it’s as if he catches himself and feels guilty.’

I only half hear what she’s saying because my brain is struggling to get past the idea of Jonah moving to Wales. This town might not mean much to Dee, but it’s Jonah’s home. He and Freddie forged their friendship on these streets, in these pubs. The DNA of their teenage years, of all of our lives, is here. I’m big enough and old enough to understand that things can’t stay the same for ever, but so much has changed already, and the selfish part of me wants what’s left to stay the same.

‘I don’t know, Dee. At least here he’s surrounded by familiar places and people. Maybe he needs that right now.’

‘Or maybe he’d find it easier to move on if he was somewhere else,’ she counters, and then shrugs. ‘I don’t know, I honestly don’t. I just know he’s miserable and doing nothing isn’t going to fix him.’

I drink a little coffee and mull over what she’s said. ‘You can’t fix grief, it takes as long as it takes,’ I say. ‘My doctor told me you have to pass through it sentiently in order to emerge the other side.’

We look at each other. ‘Well, that sounds like bollocks,’ she says, and we both laugh. It’s the first moment of real connection we’ve shared.

‘Will you talk to him?’ she asks, finally playing her hand. ‘About Wales?’

Any trace of humour leaves me. My gut reaction is no, I can’t possibly advise Jonah to move hundreds of miles away. I don’t see him all that often these days; he’s gone from being an almost permanent fixture on my sofa to a once-in-a-blue-moon run-in, but there’s a certain security to knowing he’s around if I really need him. The possibility he might disappear from my life altogether feels desperate, but what if Dee’s right? What if fresh Welsh air would blow those purple bruises away from beneath his eyes? What if the shadows here are just too long for him to ever see any light?

‘Let me think about it,’ I say. It’s the best I can offer.

Friday 28 June

On a regret scale of one to ten, I’m hovering between eight and eleven, and my nerves are making it hard to swallow my breakfast. I haven’t told anyone about my date with Kris today, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve picked my phone up to cancel. I’m trying to coach myself not to see it as a date; it can be anything I want it to be, so I’m framing it as meeting up with a friend for a casual drink after work. Even though Kris isn’t a friend as such, because I’ve only met him once for a couple of intense minutes. We’ve texted a few times over the last two weeks; he sent me an aerial photo of the coast from the roof of a building he’s designed, I sent him a shot of a dinner I’d burned when he asked if I liked to cook. It’s all been very light-hearted so far, which is the only reason I haven’t pressed ‘send’ on any of the cancellation messages I’ve written. Well, not the only reason. I guess I feel that if I can get one date – or one ‘meeting up with a friend for a casual drink’ – out of the way, then that’s another hurdle jumped. Or at least limped over with the skin taken off my shins. I’m trying not to overthink things, but I’m honest enough with myself to know I don’t want to spend the rest of my days looking at an empty armchair. I eye it now, the blue chair I barely sat on because it was well and truly Freddie’s. I very rarely sit on it now either; it just feels off, somehow. The cushions fit his bum, probably. Piers Morgan is on the TV now lambasting a bunch of vegetarians so I get up for the remote control to turn him off, and as I flick, a tacky advert flashes up for PodGods coffee. I catch my breath, then shake my head and huff, because it’s a sure fact Freddie would have made a slicker job of it. I click the TV off and stand in the middle of the room, then impulse makes me sit on Freddie’s chair to finish my toast. I perch. And I wiggle. I make myself sit there for a minute,