“Fuck off,” she says from inside the cubicle.
I return to our table.
“You okay?” Cam asks. When I nod, she eyes me and says, “Bit quick for these to work.”
“Maybe it hits different on newbies,” Jo says.
“Aw, have we corrupted a purist?” Cariad asks. “Virgin, too?”
I gasp. “Your mouth,” I tell her, “needs soap.” I then laugh hysterically and they all laugh with me.
This is the mood now, to sit and smoke and drink and talk until we see the sun. We share secrets. I tell them about Ben and that sex is painful. “Maybe he’s shit and you’re not wet,” Cariad says and I can’t quite grasp what she means.
I don’t know what happens to time, but the pulses of energy leak out of me, leaving me loose and serene. I’m happy to just sit here amongst distorted conversation and colorful, perfumed fog. When it’s not my turn to speak, I think of old memories, things I haven’t thought about in years. Like when I first came on my period and Mum was in Ghana so she had to send someone I didn’t know very well to help me. Or sneaking into James’s room when he called to say he was staying over at a friend’s house, and staring out of his bedroom window. Dad nodding to teachers at parents’ evenings in a crowd filled with mothers. Watching Serena Williams play Wimbledon, Dad looking up from his newspaper and asking, “Do you like tennis, Maddie?” I think of the lemon cake Nia made me for my fifteenth birthday; it’d looked like she’d dropped it but it tasted incredible.
Then there’s blurred lights and the cool touch of glass on my forehead. We’re in a cab, just Jo, Cam, and me, driving out of Trafalgar Square. The world is slow tonight but shimmers brightly.
“I get what everyone’s talking about now,” I say quietly. “Move out, Maddie. Live a little, Maddie. I never wanted to admit it, but I’m so glad to be out of the house and living my life. I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person. I almost can’t blame James for abandoning me, because there’s just so much out there, you know? I have a boyfriend, a better job, and I’m going on holiday with new friends. I don’t cry at night anymore.” I hold my arms out. “I’m free.”
“It’s a good life,” Jo slurs. Cam snores from the other side of the cab.
I close my eyes and hum a song I’ve just made up.
Chapter Eighteen
I can’t lift my head the following morning.
My phone buzzes and my temples pulse. My mouth is too dry to open. I reach for my phone and realize my eyes are still closed. The daylight is blinding and I curse the sun.
It’s just hit noon and I should be at home for Dad’s birthday right now.
I sit up with an unintelligible groan and think I might be sick. I stumble across my room in last night’s dress to take two paracetamol tablets dry and then gag. My throat hurts and my stomach burns. I’d google “hangover symptoms” because I feel like I only have five minutes left to live, but I can’t see straight—my head is so heavy.
I’m not that late, and Dad’s not going anywhere.
I won’t even tempt myself by getting back into bed completely. No, I’ll just rest my head on my pillow … only for a minute … ten minutes maybe.
Half an hour at the most.
* * *
I wake up to a persistent buzzing.
My phone is ringing. “Mum LONDON” and, underneath, the time: 14:47.
Fuck. I jump out of bed and answer the phone. It’s fine; I’ll just take the cake home and decorate it there.
“Hi, Mum. Sorry I’m later than I said I was going to be. I’m leaving the flat in ten minutes.” I sniff my armpits. “Twenty minutes.” I grab a towel and reach for my shower cap. “I went to bed late,” I explain when Mum doesn’t say anything back. “So that’s why I’m—”
“Maddie?”
I stop because Mum’s voice is thick and heavy and she’s crying enough to force two more syllables into my name.
“Mum, what’s wrong?”
“Maddie, your father, he … he is dead. He’s dead.”
I freeze on the spot, half out of last night’s dress.
What did she say?
“Your father’s dead,” she repeats, then begins to choke and cry.
I frown because I can clearly picture my dad sitting in front of the TV, smiling. I shake my head. “But it’s his birthday,” I tell her.
“I know!” she says. “Oh, God. Oh, God. To take him on his birthday. And just now too, not thirty minutes long. I’ve been trying to call you. But he is dead. Maddie, he is dead.”
My body finally hears her and it happens all at once, the punching of my heart, the loosening of my stomach, the burning in my chest. My belly heaves in and out.
“Maddie, your father is—”
“Stop saying that!” I snap. “I heard you the first time.” I pull my phone away and stare at the red end call button.
“I’m sorry, Maddie.” She continues to cry down the line.
I want to tell her not to be so dramatic. It’s not what it seems. It can’t be today that he’s died. No one dies on their birthday. My dad is not dead. There’s been some mistake.
“You need to check again,” I tell her.
“The paramedics have announced it, Maddie,” she says. “I am so sorry.”
I hang up the phone and hold it to my chest. The only thing I can think about is Mum saying he died thirty minutes before, meaning I’d have been there if I’d woken up when I was meant to. I would have seen him one last time, said happy birthday, and kissed his forehead.
I stand, gently swaying on the spot until I trust my hands to pull my dress back on. I’m on autopilot when I walk out of my room and down the stairs.
I can hear suitcase wheels and pockets of conversation. They’re talking about Florence. Missing the last step, I trip and end up on the floor on my hands and knees. They both rush in and Jo laughs. “Still hungover, huh?”
I get up slowly.
“It was a bad idea to go out last night,” Cam says. “We need to leave in fifteen minutes. You’re so lucky you don’t have to catch this flight with—Maddie?”
“My dad’s just died.”
For a few seconds, no one says anything.
“Shit,” Jo breathes.
Cam gently takes my arm and walks me into the kitchen. She sits me at the table. My eyes are blurry, but I hear the kettle being switched on. She makes me a cup of tea.
“Fuck, Maddie,” Jo says, shaking her head. “What happened?”
When I repeat some of my mother’s words, they stand above me and they are sorry and coo until Jo says, “Shit, I can’t believe we have to leave soon.”
“We can’t go now.”
“What?” Jo turns to Cam so fast her hair whips across her face. “Tickets are nonrefundable,” she whispers.
I look at Jo, who is rearranging the features of her face until she’s unrecognizable, and my chest fills with air. I’m trying to expel it as quickly as possible because it’s not that she’s callous and it’s not that I’d rather they stay, it’s— I stand up. “You asked me … you made me stay out.”