the woman I spoke to.’
Dil y was looking at the screen. Her friend Zena had posted a series of pictures of her trip to Paris. They were so boring that Dil y couldn’t think why she’d bothered.
‘Why’re you going then?’
‘Because I
Dil y gave a little shiver. It was frightening when Chrissie talked like this, and she’d talked like this a lot recently. Dil y didn’t want to be unsympathetic, but she couldn’t see what was so very different about the way they’d lived since Richie died, apart from his glaring absence.
Chrissie wore the same clothes; the fridge was ful of the same food; they al took showers and baths and spent hours on the computer and switched the lights and the television on, just as they always had. Tamsin had made a bit of a speech about economy the other day, but then she swished off to work in a pair of shoes Dil y swore she’d never seen before, and for shoes Dil y had a memory like a card index. It wasn’t so much that Dil y was afraid of economizing, afraid of making changes, but more that she was made fearful by the uncertainty, by these vague and awful threats of an impending doom, which was never quite specified and whose arrival, though certain, was vague as to timing.
‘Mum,’ Dil y said, turning away from yet another of Zena’s art shots of the Eiffel Tower, ‘Mum, we’l al get on our bikes when you tel us what’s happening and how we can help.’
Chrissie picked up her handbag and blew Dil y a kiss.
‘I’l tel you that, poppet, as soon as I even begin to know myself.’
When she had gone, Dil y was very miserable. Even the thought of texting Craig, of seeing Craig on Friday, didn’t have its usual diverting capacity. She logged off Facebook with an effort of wil and glanced at her manual. The next section was on sugaring and threading. Threading was real y difficult. The Asian girls on Dil y’s course said that in their community the threading technique was passed down from mother to daughter, so they’d known how to do it since they were tiny, a sort of beauty routine cat’s cradle. Dil y looked up, tapping a pencil against her teeth. Anxiety was an almost perpetual waking state now, and it made her fidgety and unhappy, unable to distract herself as she usual y could with a phone cal or a coffee or a bit of eBay browsing. She would have liked to cry. Crying had always been Dil y’s first resort when confronted by the smal est hiccup in life, but one of the many miseries of the present time was that she couldn’t seem to cry with any ease at al over little things. Crying seemed to have taken itself into another league altogether, and involved huge, wrenching sobbing sessions when she suddenly, al over again, had to confront the fact that Richie was no longer there.
Her phone, lying on the table beyond her laptop, began to ring. She picked it up and looked at the screen. It was bound to be Craig. It was, instead, a number she didn’t recognize. She put the phone to her ear.
‘Hel o?’ she said cautiously.
‘Dil y?’ Sue said.
‘Oh. Sue—’
‘Got a minute?’
‘Wel , I—’
‘Home alone, are you? I need to see you for a moment.’
‘Me?’
‘Dil y,’ Sue said, ‘I’m ringing you, aren’t I?’
‘I’m – I’m working—’
‘No, you’re not,’ Sue said. ‘You’re doing your nails and comparing boyfriends on Facebook. I’m coming round.’
‘Mum isn’t here—’
‘Exactly. I’m coming round to see you.’
Dil y said warily, ‘Are you going to tick me off?’
‘Why would I?’
‘You just sounded a bit – forceful—’
‘Not forceful,’ Sue said, ‘decided. That’s why I’m coming round. I’ve decided something and I want your help.’
Dil y said, ‘Why don’t you ask Tamsin whatever it is?’
‘Too bossy.’
‘Amy — ’
‘Too young.’
‘OK,’ Dil y said doubtful y.
‘Don’t move. I’l be ten minutes. Put the kettle on.’
Dil y roused herself. She said abruptly, ‘What’s it about?’
‘Tel you when I get there.’
‘No,’ Dil y said, ‘
‘No.’
‘Then I won’t open the door to you.’
