Five days, p.1
Five Days, page 1
FIVE DAYS
ZOË FOLBIGG
For my sister Clare, the most brilliant woman I know
‘Play is the work of childhood.’
JEAN PIAGET
CONTENTS
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
II. Two Months Later
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
More from Zoë Folbigg
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Zoë Folbigg
Love Notes
About Boldwood Books
PART I
1
DAY ZERO
Now
Time and space can be wonderous and magical: children become friends in a boisterous and busy playground; people fall in love at first sight across a crowded room; Olympic gold gymnasts can do a double-double dismount on a beam only 10 cm wide. But these simple forces all boil down to physics and chemistry: stars align, worlds collide, engines fail.
Minnie Byrne was getting her head around the fact that all the miraculous things she believed in could be put down to science, as she sat in a wing-backed window chair, A Brief History of Time on her lap, drinking iced coffee in a cafe-slash-book-slash-record shop she was trying to take ownership of. Minnie would not let a bad memory of a bad thing that happened there tarnish this coffee shop for her. It was a space she loved in a happier time, and it would be that way again.
Minnie’s therapist had recommended she try new things: read books she would never usually dream of picking up (even if she was reading them in old haunts). Be more playful. Widen her friendship group. Learn a new skill. All baby steps she could take to ‘get outside of herself’ and bring back the carefree joy she’d felt as a child – Minnie was one of the lucky ones who’d had a happy childhood – and her therapist said it could help her heal as an adult.
She leaned back into the chair, her lungs and brain expanding with each deep, calm breath, each line absorbed. She was doing a good job of getting out of herself by reading all about black holes, white dwarves, time warps and the Big Bang. Despite her current lacklustre energy levels, due to her own personal quantum mechanics, Minnie was a gung-ho and positive person who liked a challenge. Growing up in a large family with five children, she had always done what her parents asked, however dull or however daunting the task seemed, because Minnie was a doer. A people pleaser. A glass half full. Minnie had liked to colour coordinate her parents’ books before social media was even a thing on which to show off rainbow shelves. She liked to stack the dishwasher in what she felt was perfect formation (a challenge her father set her, so he didn’t have to). She could recite the first line of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the correct order (a challenge she had set herself). At school, Minnie had relished homework and presented it as competently and as beautifully as she could, mainly because she wanted the teachers to like her. She wanted her therapist to like her too, which she knew was ridiculous.
Still, Minnie had picked up Stephen Hawking in the book section of Bondiga’s Books & Records, not paid for it (another reason she loved this place; if she was careful with a book she could read it and put it back), and gone to find a seat in the window of the cafe area for some peace and contemplation.
She had just come to the remarkable realisation that there was a scientific explanation for everything, when a yellow object shot across the room in her peripheral vision. As Minnie gazed at the missile on its trajectory, she realised that her epiphany was about to collide with catastrophe for someone else. She almost laughed and put her hand to her mouth as the ball struck a man, right on top of his head, and bounced on his mass of golden brown sticky-up hair. Space. And time.
It was a jolly looking ball. Small, yellow, bouncy. Even from Minnie’s chair on the other side of the cafe, she could see that the ball had two black oval eyes and a curve of a smile, reminiscent of the acid house smiley face of the nineties. This ball had been manufactured to bring joy.
‘Do you fucking mind?’ said the man who had been struck, as he turned, exasperated, halfway through picking up his coffee. The ball bounced once on the table, almost in slow motion, with enough kinetic lift to land in the coffee he had just picked up. It sent a scalding splash of syrupy brown liquid all over his grey cotton shirt and lap.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ the man lambasted, as he jumped up, placing the cup back onto its saucer on the table. Jesse was having a bad day. He was having a bad day before the ball struck his head and landed in his drink, and now he felt such searing anger, his hands were trembling. He was lucky not to spill any more. ‘Do you fucking mind?’ he repeated, louder this time, as he turned to the perpetrator, a little boy, frozen in the middle of the coffee shop.
The chatter in the room fizzled out as customers turned to look at the man and the boy. Only the distant sound of Leonard Cohen continued from the record shop in the adjacent room: Minnie’s favourite coffee shop, book shop and record store were all owned by Alistair Bondiga and had been in his family for three generations, enjoying the gravitational pull of North London’s book/record/coffee loving community since 1963. The book department of Bondiga’s was always quiet and contemplative, but now the cafe was awkwardly silent too.
The little boy, whose eyes were both solemn and mischievous, looked back at the angry man, too scared to reply. The boy’s mother, who had been lost in her own Instagram universe, looked up from scrolling on her phone, brought back into the room by the rudeness of the man and the commotion.
‘Excuse me?’ she said, her finger paused over a post she was deciding whether to deign with a like. ‘What did you just say?’ The woman stood and approached the man with the slow and predatory steps of a big cat, putting her paw protectively over the boy’s chest as she pressed her legs into his back.
Kip, a man with green hair and an eighties shirt, who ran the coffee shop, came around from the counter with some paper towels and a cloth and wiped the table and Jesse’s belongings down while Jesse felt the heat of his coffee, which he’d asked to be extra hot – Jesse always asked for his brew to be extra hot – hit his stomach and thighs.
‘Do you need a hand?’ Kip’s colleague Steph asked, as she came from out the back with a sack of coffee beans. Kip shook his head and offered Jesse a paper towel for his shirt but Jesse was looking squarely at the mother.
‘I said watch it!’ he replied. ‘Your kid has been throwing that thing all around the place – knocking into people – and now I’m burnt and covered in coffee. My notebook is wet. And I’ve got a really fucking important meeting and… thank you…’ He trailed off sarcastically, as he put his palms in the air.
The woman looked aghast.
‘Did you tell my son to fuck off?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes you did.’
‘No I didn’t. I said, “Do you fucking mind?”’
The woman was gobsmacked, and briefly looked to the other customers for support, to see if she was imagining the man and his rudeness. Most of them were keenly listening, but trying not to show it. Kip finished wiping down the table and pushed his little round glasses up his nose.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are, swearing in front of my son?’ The woman jabbed her finger into the space between them.
If Jesse weren’t so stressed, he would have raised an eyebrow. Instead he looked at Kip briefly and took the paper towel with a small nod.
The little boy’s bottom lip trembled. His wide eyes were like saucers. Minnie, watching from her chair, carefully put one flap of the book’s cover into the page she was reading and placed it down. The boy had been annoying.
The relentless thud of the bouncy ball on the wooden floor had been making it even harder for her to focus on eleven-dimensional supergravity, and at one point she had had to reprimand him for almost going in her handbag to retrieve a wayward blueberry. His mother hadn’t noticed, but Minnie’s piercing green eyes had made the boy rethink.
‘You need to go,’ the mother, who had a grey bob and wore designer Converse, said as she looked Jesse up and down, her eyes landing on the portfolio propped up against the chair next to him. ‘Jesse Lightning. You need to go. This is not a safe space for my son… You obviousl
That was the thing that stung Jesse more than the coffee. He was not a bad man.
‘What?’ Jesse scowled, still trying to pad his shirt down without making the stain worse. Kip handed him another paper towel and put some napkins on the table.
The boy’s mother turned to Kip. ‘You need to throw this man out and make sure he never comes back. Jesse Lightning. Make a note of his name and bar him—’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Jesse exhaled at the ceiling.
Kip looked a bit helpless.
‘You’re abusing my son!’
Minnie jumped up out of her chair by the window.
‘Whoah! Hey, this is all getting a bit heavy.’
Jesse looked at Minnie, slightly shocked by her interjection and her face.
‘How about cutting a little slack, on both sides, huh?’ Minnie suggested. ‘Fair dos – this gentleman was just minding his own business and now has coffee all over him; your boy… who I’m sure is delightful, didn’t mean to cause any… but, you know, this guy didn’t mean any harm either. I’m sure he’s not the Child Catcher…’ Minnie stopped wittering under the woman’s withering glare.
The woman looked at Minnie territorially while she decided what to do, whether to escalate her complaint to management. ‘Come on Orson, we’re leaving,’ she huffed finally.
‘What about my ball?’
Orson looked at Minnie with a princely hauteur, as if she were his servant and he expected her to retrieve it for him before he would leave.
Minnie contemplated the man with the coffee stain on his shirt and wondered why he was still looking at her, perplexed, in the middle of his meltdown. For a brief, thrilling, microsecond, Minnie wondered if he might recognise her, before shaking her head.
That ship has sailed.
Jesse Lightning was in a slight trance, as if he were resisting the pull of a vortex he didn’t have the energy to spiral into.
‘Well?’ Minnie asked. ‘Are you going to let him have his ball back?’
Jesse stepped back to indicate ‘Go ahead’ and the boy put his grubby hand in Jesse’s now-tepid coffee and fumbled for his ball, wiping it on his trousers.
‘Fair dos,’ Minnie said to herself.
The woman grabbed her bag, phone and son and left, turning and pointing to Kip and Steph as she stopped in the doorway.
‘You’ll be lucky if I ever come back!’
Minnie widened her eyes in a sarcastic wow expression, watched the mother and Orson leave, and then had another idea, as she turned back to Jesse.
‘I have wipes!’ she said helpfully, as she dashed to her bag in the window seat. ‘Here, try these.’
Jesse was frazzled. Why was all this happening? Now? His face was hot. His shirt was stained. His crotch was wet. And he had a meeting with Maddie Feynman of the Fox & Feynman Literary Agency two streets north of this cafe of all places. He did not want more drama.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the wipes. He shook his head and mumbled, ‘Little fucker,’ under his breath.
‘You can’t say that,’ Minnie gasped.
‘I can.’ He rubbed at the coffee, but it only seemed to widen and worsen the patch. ‘But I shouldn’t, I suppose,’ he conceded.
‘Here, let me get you another…’
Jesse looked at Minnie, puzzled. Why was this woman being nice to him when he’d just shouted at a kid?
‘Nah I’m good thanks—’
Minnie didn’t give him a chance.
‘Kip, another…?’ Minnie turned to Jesse as if demanding to know his order.
‘A… a black Americano please,’ Jesse said, unsure of himself, as Minnie went to the counter. ‘Extra hot,’ he mumbled, sheepishly, not sure this was a good idea. He’d already been scalded once.
Jesse sat back down and used the woman’s wipes to clean his crotch under the table.
‘And another Bondiga’s blended iced coffee for me please, Kip.’ Minnie waved her bank card.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Kip said with a smile that was halfway between pity and awe. He did recognise her. Kip’s working days were always better when Minnie dropped in. ‘It’s on the house.’
‘Oh, thanks!’ Minnie smiled, pleased. Simple things, she remembered. Take the joy and the wins in the simple things. Free drinks. Free time. Space.
Minnie placed the coffee carefully in front of Jesse and sat down at his table without asking if it was OK. He glanced up as he finished with the wipe.
‘Thanks, but you really didn’t need to.’
‘Oh I didn’t pay for it.’ She waved a hand. ‘But, you know, “you’re welcome”.’ Her laugh was slightly demonic.
Jesse studied the woman, getting a proper look this time. Her face was alarmingly beautiful. She had a short black bob with a cropped blunt fringe framing green eyes – a colour he couldn’t put his finger on, it was so unique – and high cheekbones on pale, almost translucent skin. She looked like her face was her currency to getting her own way, although Jesse knew that wasn’t true. No one always got what they wanted.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Looks like you already have.’ He shrugged. ‘I mean, sure… erm, it’s just…’ He looked at his watch.
Minnie carried on. ‘My therapist recommended I meet new people. Go back to basics, be friendly, take leaps of faith. Just talk.’
Oh fucking hell. Jesse mentally rearranged his features, so he didn’t look hostile. Too unapproachable. But he really didn’t want to be anyone’s therapy project and he really needed his meeting with Maddie Feynman to go well.
‘Of course,’ he said neutrally, gesturing to the chair the woman was already comfortably sitting on.
‘I’m not crazy or anything,’ she said, with a sparkle in her eye.
‘Of course,’ Jesse repeated flatly.
‘Bad break-up. I’m seeing a counsellor who just suggested I meet new people. And, well, you’re a new person!’ Minnie said cheerily.
‘Look, I’m…’
‘Oh I’m not trying to hit on you by the way.’
‘I wouldn’t be interested if you were.’
They looked at each other in stony silence for a second.
‘Charmed.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just…’
‘You’re having a bad day.’
‘I’m having a bad day.’
They said it at the same time and paused for a beat until Minnie broke the silence.
‘Well, I’ve been having a run of forty-seven bad days and this week my therapist suggested I take action to end that run.’
Jesse liked the woman’s exactitude, but didn’t speak. He let her talk. He had a feeling she talked a lot.
‘Get in touch with my inner child.’
Oh God. Jesse winced internally, trying to keep his face light. Minnie continued, in a low male voice that Jesse assumed was an impersonation of her therapist, except she made him sound like a geezer.
‘“Ride a Chopper”, “go runnin’ in a field”, “read a book you’d never pick up”, “get out there and talk to people”, “get off social media”, “stop comparing”, “stop adulting and go back to basics”…’
Jesse made a face as if to say that adulting did suck.
Minnie went back to her own, cheery voice.
‘Just… talk and play, with the innocence and the joy that we had when we played as kids. No agenda, no beef.’
‘Your therapist talks a lot for a therapist.’
