be a real flirt-hound, when I had nothing less trivial on my mind. It was something of a hobby for Abby and me. We used to compare notes and swap tips over a glass of wine in the evenings. That is until Tom hove alongside and Abby was forced to give it up. It was like a habit she was trying to quit after that, with the occasional cute nineteen-year-old relapses. But she was with me when I flirted my way into Jamie Powell’s Spider-Man boxer shorts four years earlier. Oh calm down, he was twenty-one, it was all above board. He just had a bit of an obsession with superheroes, it turned out. Well, no, not superheroes. I would have liked that. He could have rescued me from things. Burning buildings, spiders, that kind of affair. What Jamie loved was comics. And action figures. Wanted to peer at me using Superman’s x-ray eyes, which basically consisted of a tiny red dot of light travelling up and down across every inch of my body. It took nearly forty minutes. That one was over before it started.
‘Oh yes, bring that up again. You haven’t mentioned it for at least two weeks, so we were well overdue. But the point is that this lad is your client, which makes it slightly different from me getting it on with the photocopier repair man, I think you’ll agree.’
She inhaled deeply, and sighed. ‘All right, yes, fine, I was flirting with him. So what? I flirt with all of them. It makes them feel strong and confident, so they’re more relaxed about driving. It’s perfect sense.’
I stared at her. She stared back. I raised my eyebrows. She raised hers. I folded my arms. She folded hers. Then unfolded them. Then fiddled with the bottom of her jumper. ‘Plus I get lots more business,’ she said quietly. ‘Word gets around.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I continued to stare at her.
She ran her hands lightly around the steering wheel, and focused intently on the cube of air that was sitting on the bonnet. ‘And he was really fit.’
‘There we go.’
‘Oh so what, Daze? It’s harmless, it doesn’t mean anything, does it? And Tom doesn’t know, and wouldn’t care even if he did ever find out, which he won’t, will he?’
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. Of course I wasn’t going to tell him. My loyalty was, and is, to Abby. Not the Monosyllabic Monolith she lives with. And anyway, she was absolutely right, there was nothing wrong with a bit of harmless flirting. It was harmless.
‘Training plan, Daze,’ Abs says now on the sofa, slapping my shin. I think she meant to pat it affectionately, but my leg muscles are feeling rather tender at the moment, so an ant crawling across my skin feels like someone dropping a chimney on me.
‘Owwww! Be careful, Abs. It all hurts, remember?’
‘Oh, yeah, sorry.’ She removes her hand as if my leg is a sleeping lion. ‘I’m so pleased with what you’ve done this week, you know,’ she goes on, although the tone of her voice suggests that she’s got more to say on the subject.
‘Thanks.’
She nods slowly, staring at the hairs on my knees. It makes me wish I’d shaved them today. They really do need to be shaved at least twice a week, and the last time I did it was November.
‘But I think you need to increase your distance now,’ Abs is saying, still nodding slowly at my knees. She looks up at me and smiles. Ah. It was a joke.
‘Yeah. Ha!’ I grin back at her. Like ten miles a day isn’t enough at this stage!
A small frown appears between her immaculately groomed eyebrows. ‘What’s funny?’
‘You are. Telling me I need to increase my distance.’
The frown deepens. ‘I’m serious, Daze. Three or four miles a day is good, great actually, to go from nothing to that, but you have got to do more. Longer. Maybe spend next week doing seven or eight miles every day – something like that?’
I stare at her. My mouth falls open a little. My eyes widen and start to dry out. I am forced to blink. My head jerks once to the left. ‘Nuh …’ I say, to convey my disbelief at her massive confusion and misunderstanding while explaining to her exactly where she’s mistaken.
She smiles at the same time as continuing to frown. ‘Daze, it’s not that bad, honestly. Seven or eight miles should only take you about two and a half or three hours. Less as you get fitter and faster. And until you get a job of some description, you’ve got all day anyway, haven’t you? We are going to be walking twenty-six miles in five weeks, remember?’
‘Nuh-uh.’
‘You’re being silly …’
‘No, Abs. I’m not. You’ve got it wrong. I’m totally on top of this already. I’ve been doing about ten miles every day this week.’
Her frown disappears at this point and her face takes on the expression of a mum looking at a four-year-old’s appalling attempt at a self-portrait. ‘Ah Daze. No you haven’t. Nothing like it.’
‘Yes I have. I haven’t just been going to the park and back, you know. I’ve been walking round it a couple of times and round all the estates near it, which must have been at least another two or three miles. So when you add that to the going all the way down there and back, which must be at least four miles each way …’
‘Mile and a half.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a mile and a half down to the park. And a mile and a half back. That’s three miles.’
I blink again. It’s because of all the incredulous staring at Abby I’m doing. This is utter nonsense. I look back at her and shake my head. ‘I don’t believe it. You’re just trying to get me to do more by telling me I’ve done less.’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m not. I’m serious. I mean, come on, Daze, Tom works in sports equipment, for Nike’s sake. He owns a pedometer.’
An image pops into my head at this point of Tom’s placid, immobile face, with its closed-mouth half-smile and immaculate blond hair, wobbling backwards and forwards on top of one of those bikes with only one wheel you see clowns on. I start grinning, wondering if he rides round the warehouse on it to save time. I mean, it’s the ideal form of transport for that kind of thing. Both hands are free at all times for holding clipboards and ticking things off lists. Or is it just a hobby of his? Goes out on it at weekends? Maybe there’s a club or something where they can all meet up and wobble about together. Race each other. Oh no, wait. I don’t think that’s a pedometer, actually, is it? Isn’t it called a monobike or something. No. What is it? Unicycle. Yes. So what’s a pedometer then?
‘It measures the distance you’ve walked,’ Abby says at this point, surprising me not at all with her mind-reading capability. Yeah, I know, it is very impressive that she can actually read minds – or maybe just my mind – and leave exactly the right sized gap of silence for me to think about what she said before answering my unspoken question. But I have seen it before. She looks at me sometimes and somehow just knows what I’m thinking. Unless maybe I show every single thought and idea on my face, and she just reads that. It’s possible, I suppose. Then again, I don’t really see how she could pick up that I was wondering what a pedometer is just from, I don’t know, the way my eyebrows are, or what my mouth is doing.
‘DAISY!’
I jump in my seat with a little yelp. ‘Oh my God, Abby. What?’
‘Pay attention! Seriously, you’ve got to start focusing on what’s going on around you.’
‘I am.’
‘No you’re not. You’re on some kind of constant internal monologue, incessantly debating with yourself about stuff that’s trivial and unrelated to what is actually occurring.’ Her voice softens and she touches her hand to my arm. ‘God, I know you’ve been through a terrible time lately, Daze, and I know you’re drifting and finding it incredibly hard to focus on your life again and connect with the world around you. You’re like a … a delicate little blossom flower that’s dropped from