Last night being a case in point. I dreamed about a near relative’s debit card being cloned, his bank account emptied. I’ve got a few months, but what to do? Tell him to pay cash only until June, beef up his Internet security? I deliberated all morning, eventually opted to send him an e-mail. Fabricated something about a friend being hot on this stuff. What he does with it, I guess, is up to him.
When I next looked up it was nearly midday. I could barely remember Callie leaving my flat to go to work. I never took the time to kiss her as she woke, make her a coffee, ask if she fancied doing something this weekend. Tiny chances to connect, fluttering from my fingers.
“It’s a shame,” Callie says now.
I clear my throat. “You don’t miss what you never had. And friendships aren’t too easy to invest in when you have to keep to yourself all the stuff that defines you.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to define you.”
But it does, I think.I don’t have a choice about that.
We walk on, past wrought-iron railings laced with frills of winter jasmine.
“Well, my friends love you,” Callie says. “I couldn’t keep up with my messages the day after Esther’s party.”
I smile. “That’s good.” Because if you can’t be normal, then pulling off a decent impression of it is the next best thing, I guess.
“You know, what you think of yourself isn’t always how other people see you.”
I taste the sweetness of her words, compress her hand with the crease of my elbow. “Speaking of which... have you always thought of yourself as a secretMastermindcontender?”
She laughs. “What?”
“How does one person amass so much general knowledge? You knoweverything.” (We played a trivia game after dinner. And to cut a long story short, Callie wiped the floor with all of us.)
Unsurprisingly, she’s pure modesty. “As if. I was only good on science and nature.”
“And geography. I mean, where did you pick up so many random facts about Peru? And I don’t know anyone else who could name the capital of Tanzania off the top of their head.”
Callie sinks her chin into her scarf. “Ha. Piers used to hate that about me.”
“Hate what?” It’s hard to imagine Callie with any loathsome qualities at all.
“That I knew lots of random facts. He thought I was trying to show him up.”
“Like a kid,” I suggest, not particularly inclined to go all out and batter him. The guy messed up his chance with the best girl in the world. He’s already a hundred?nil down.
“Let’s just say, if he’d lost like you did tonight, he’d have sulked for a week.”
I feign indignation with my eyebrows. “Hold on—likeIdid? I wasn’t as bad as Zoë. She didn’t even know who invented the telephone.”
Callie starts laughing. Grips my arm a little harder. “Don’t you just know she was dying to sayMr. Telephone?”
“Yep, and she only reined it in because Kieran kept kicking her.”
Fizzing with mirth, our eyes meet. We start contorting with laughter. A solitary late-night dog walker gives us a wide berth, glancing over his shoulder as he strides away up the otherwise silent street.
•••
I don’t tell Callie about Kieran cornering me in the kitchen earlier, while I was helping to clear plates. (I learned years ago from Tamsin that when you’ve got kids, it’s the little things you appreciate.)
“Where did you find this girl?”
His question was rhetorical. Callie had already told them the story over parsnip soup, one hand gripping mine, the sole of her foot in the crook of my ankle. So I just smiled.
“I’m happy for you, mate.”
“Thanks.”
