LITMIR.BIZ

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       Five Years Earlier

      “You should have seen him!” Daisy gets up from her chair and mimes running alongside a car, her coat caught in a closed door. “His stubby little legs pounding the pavement, his fat face bright red, and Emma hanging out of the window screaming, ‘Stop the car! Stop!’”

      She finishes her story with a flourish and there’s a beat – a split-second pause as Al and Leanne glance over at me – and then the silence is destroyed by an explosion of laughter.

      Daisy continues to scream “Stop, stop!” at the top of her voice while she jumps up and down, her wedge sandals thumping the patio, a near-empty bottle of red wine in one hand, a full glass slopping around in the other.

      I take a sip of my own wine and stare into the firepit as it pops and crackles, watching sparks leap into the air. It’s our second night in Pokhara, and we’re sitting on the patio in our swimsuits. Damp towels lie at our feet like sleeping dogs, the sky is a black blanket speckled with holes, and the night is alive with the sound of motorbikes, car horns and cicadas. This was supposed to be a treat – a couple of nights’ luxury in a hilltop Pokhara hotel – before we hike up the Annapurna range to Ekanta Yatra tomorrow. I don’t know if it’s the humidity, the really shitty email Geoff sent me the day before the holiday, questioning my ability to do my job, or the fact that Daisy’s spent three days getting laughs at my expense, but I’m finding it hard to join in with the frivolity. Back home, I could retreat to my flat in North London when things got a bit overwhelming, but the four of us haven’t spent a second apart since we got here.

      “Oh, come on, Emma!” Daisy shouts. “Cheer up!”

      “I’m not miserable.”

      “Have you told your face that?”

      She laughs and glances at Al as if to say, “Right?” but Al doesn’t respond. If anything, her smile slips, just the tiniest bit. This is the drunkest any of us have seen Daisy in a while.

      “I’m fine, Daisy,” I say. “I’ve just heard that story before, that’s all.”

      “Ooh.” She raises her eyebrows and widens her eyes. “Sorry if I’m boring you, Miss Emma Woolfe. Are my storytelling skills lacking? I do apologise.”

      “Well, I think you’re funny,” Leanne says. She’s sitting cross-legged on her chair, her bony knees poking over the arms, a thin grey cardigan wrapped around her shoulders.

      “Thank you, darling.” Daisy takes a little bow then totters over to me. “What’s up with you, misery guts?”

      “Nothing. Forget it.” I reach for my wine glass and stand up. “I’m going for a walk round the grounds. I’ll see you guys in a bit.”

      I slip away quickly, Daisy’s mocking voice following me out into the darkness of the garden. She’s doing her “northern voice”, a cross between Yorkshire and Geordie. I’m not even a northerner – I’m from Leicester – but “everyone who lives north of Watford is a northerner”, according to Daisy. Daisy and Al both claim to be from London, but Al’s actually from East Croydon, while Daisy’s from Elmbridge in Surrey – “the Beverley Hills of Britain”, apparently, not that Daisy spends much time there. She went straight from Cheltenham Ladies College to university in Newcastle. Apparently, she was being groomed to go to Oxford or Cambridge, but she was more interested in shagging boys in the grounds after dark than studying for her A-levels, and only scraped three Cs. And then after uni we all moved to London.

      “Daisy, you’re hilarious!” Leanne laughs at Daisy’s impression of me like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. It’s been seven years since she first did it at uni, and apparently the joke still hasn’t worn thin.

      I make my way slowly around the swimming pool, checking the wet tiles for snakes, lizards and frogs, then follow the winding steps down into the gardens. It’s darker here, away from the glare of the hotel lights and the glow of the fire, but the moon is full and bright and I head for the crest of the hill and perch on the edge of a wooden bench there. We’ve only been in Nepal for a couple of days and I still feel as though I’ve been transported onto another planet. Forty-eight hours ago, we were in Kathmandu, with its roaring, beeping, haphazard traffic, men on bicycles piled up with treacherous, wobbling loads and monkeys jumping from building to building, their young clinging to their chests. Now, in Pokhara, the Annapurna range looms like a dark dragon in the distance, while the lake below, black against the glittering lights of the city, glistens in the moonlight. London couldn’t feel further away than it does right now.

      I take a sip of wine then place the glass on the ground. It wobbles precariously but doesn’t tip over. I’m drunker than I thought. The sound of someone shouting along to Madonna’s “Holiday” drifts across the night air towards me. There’s a pause, a loud splash from the swimming pool, and then the singing continues. It’s Al. The laughter is all part of the act that she’s okay, just like the ceremonial burning of Simone’s photo in the firepit earlier and the solemn promise to “never, ever, get involved with a baby dyke again”. Two thousand miles away and a bottle of red wine in her hand, and she’s over the love of her life. If only it were that easy.

      Leanne joins in the singing, her thin reedy tones picking out the words “holiday” and “celebrate” then falling silent for the rest of the song because she doesn’t know the words. Al laughs and Leanne laughs, Al dances and Leanne dances, Al sings and Leanne sings. Leanne does exactly the same with Daisy – it’s her M.O. She reminds me of one of those birds who jump from one rhino’s back to another, hitching a ride, pecking for food and enjoying the protection of the bigger animal.

      Movement from the bushes to my right makes me glance round. The leaves at the base rustle ever so slightly as a gecko creeps out. Its padded fingers grip the ground and its bulbous eyes swivel from side to side. I stare at it, transfixed. I’ve only ever seen a gecko in the zoo before. It’s strangely beautiful and almost other-worldly with its black, unblinking eyes.

      “Here you are!” Daisy comes crashing down the steps towards me, a fresh bottle of wine in one hand, a glass in the other, a blanket thrown over her arm.

      “Don’t hate me, Ems!” She throws herself onto the bench beside me and wraps her right arm around my neck, pulling me into her. Red wine sloshes out of the bottle and drips down the front of my swimsuit. “I was only having a laugh.”

      “I know.” I peel the bottle from her fingers and place it on the floor then untangle myself from her arm, but she continues to push the blanket into my face in a clumsy attempt to mop up the wine. “But I wish you’d stop doing it at my expense.”

      “Stop being so sensitive. It’s just a bit of fun.”

      “Yeah, because I loved being the punchline of my family’s jokes as a kid.” I can hear the whiny, self-pitying tone in my voice but I can’t stop myself. Daisy’s an aggressive drunk; I’m a maudlin one.

      “Oh, for God’s sake.” She lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Sometimes I think Leanne’s right.”

      “What about?”

      “You.”

      I inch away from her. “Go on.”

      “No.” She peers at me. She took her contacts out earlier because they were gritty at the end of the day, and she’s too vain to wear glasses. “You’ll get pissed off.”

      “Tell me.”

      “No.” A smile plays on her lips as she shakes her head. She’s so drunk this conversation has become a game. She knows it’s dangerous but she can’t stop herself from playing it.

      “Just tell me, Daisy.”

      “Okay, okay. Fine. She thinks you can be a bit of a misery guts, sometimes. You say stuff that lowers the mood. Your parents are doctors, they’re still together, your brothers and sister are successful and you’ve got a job that pays okay even if your boss is an arsehole.

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