I wake up before dawn. There are a blissful few seconds before my brain kicks into gear and the memories of last night hit. Unable to bear the assorted scenes flashing through my brain, I force myself out of bed and pull my tracksuit bottoms and hoodie on over my pyjamas.
I creep downstairs, stopping in the kitchen to collect a bucket, a bottle of washing-up liquid and a sponge, before heading out into the dark morning.
I spend the next few hours scrubbing at the doors and walls and windows and paths until I’m satisfied the main traces of the evening’s events have been removed. It’s cold and miserable work and by the time I’m finished my hands are red and numb. But at least I don’t have an audience – my only witnesses, the postman and a couple of people out walking their dogs.
I crawl back into bed shortly after 8 a.m. and, for the first time ever, call in sick.
‘God, you sound awful, Ro,’ Eric says on the phone. ‘You take care of yourself and we’ll hopefully see you next week, yeah?’
His kindness only makes me feel worse, silent tears rolling down my cheeks as I hang up.
My phone is full of notifications from Tanvi – text messages and missed calls and voicemails – all of them begging me to get in contact and let her know I’m ‘OK’. My stomach churns as I imagine Sienna and co returning to the party and gleefully describing the evening’s events in all its gory detail. All my careful hard work, all those years of keeping myself to myself, and for what?
Absolutely nothing.
In the cold light of day, the anger I felt last night has been replaced with something far, far worse. At least anger has a purpose, some fire behind it. Right now, all I feel is numb. Like all I want to do is fall asleep and never wake up. Am I in shock? I don’t know.
Amongst the dozens of messages from Tanvi, there’s a single photo message from Dad – him, Melanie and Izzy grinning in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The caption reads: Lots of love from the happiest place on Earth! Dad, Mel & Izz xxx
I stare at it for ages, their happy faces blurring behind a film of tears before I delete it.
I delete all of Tanvi’s messages too, then turn off my phone, shove it in the top drawer of my bedside chest and pull the duvet over my head.
When I next wake up, it’s midday. Still groggy, I roll my aching body out of bed. I’m due at Noah’s in an hour’s time. A big part of me wants to cancel, but I’m worried if I do, it might be Christmas before I see him again.
On autopilot, I shower and dress and venture downstairs, my heart clenching as I pause outside the slightly ajar living-room door. I peer through the gap.
No Bonnie.
My shoulders slump in relief.
I have zero interest in seeing her today.
Or tomorrow for that matter.
In fact, the way I’m feeling right now, I’m pretty certain I don’t want to see Bonnie ever again.
At 1 p.m., I knock on Noah’s door.
No answer.
I knock again.
Nothing.
I look through the living-room window. No signs of life.
I ring his number. It goes straight through to the answerphone.
I’m halfway through leaving a garbled message when I remember the figure at the window last night. Because it appeared at the master bedroom window, I’d assumed it was Mr Hornby, but what if it wasn’t?
Dread creeps up my arms and legs and back as it dawns on me.
It wasn’t Mr Hornby that saw me – it was Noah. And now he wants nothing more to do with me.
I realize I’ve stopped talking. I stab at the ‘end call’ button and shove it in my back pocket.
My eyes fill with tears. I blink them away.
I head back to the house.
Maybe I’m being silly. Maybe he’s just gone out. Maybe he forgot we had plans.
I look frantically around the kitchen. I need a distraction – something, anything to keep my thoughts from consuming me. My eyes fall on the dirty dishes in the sink. I insert the plug and turn on the tap. As the sink fills up with steaming bubbles, I turn on the radio, blasting the volume up to maximum. It makes my brain ache but I don’t care.
I’m almost finished when I look up and see a pink woolly hat with a huge pompom on the top passing under the window.
Tanvi.
First comes the disappointment – it’s not Noah.
Followed by panic – Tanvi is here, at my back door.
My actual back door.
Shaking, I wipe my damp hands on my jogging bottoms and turn off the radio just in time for Tanvi to rap neatly on the glass. I duck down, my back pressed up against the cupboard under the sink, and remain as still as I can. My hands smell of dirty dishwater.
‘Ro!’ Tanvi calls in a croaky version of her usual singsong voice. ‘It’s me, Tanvi.’
I can make out her diminutive form, blurry through the frosted glass panel. My heart in my mouth, I begin to crawl towards the hallway. The lino is tacky, my palms sticking to the bubbled plastic.
Tanvi knocks again, more insistently this time. ‘I know you’re in there, Ro. I saw you washing up just now.’
I stop crawling.
‘I’m going to keep knocking until you open up,’ Tanvi adds.
I believe her too. After all, this is Tanvi Shah we’re talking about. Persistence is her middle name.
Her fingers appear through the letter box, propping it open. ‘Please open up, Ro,’ she says. ‘I’m worried about you.’
But I don’t want Tanvi’s worry or pity or sympathy. I want her to go away.
I leave the dirty dishes bobbing in the lukewarm water and keep crawling, not stopping until I’m at the foot of the stairs and firmly out of sight. Upstairs, I take out my maths homework and wait for Tanvi to give up and leave.
After about twenty minutes, curiosity gets the better of me and I peek through the gap in the curtains. For a second I think she’s gone but then I spot her in the garden below, perched on the edge of Bonnie’s rusty sunlounger, her arms clasped around her knees. Dressed in her electric blue duffel coat with its fat red toggles, she’s the brightest thing in sight.
It’s cold out, windy and damp, the sky grey, the air soupy. The back garden offers a little shelter but not much.
I dismiss the pinprick of guilt before it has the chance to burrow itself any deeper. I’m not forcing Tanvi to wait out there. And I’m certainly not going to invite her in.
If I wait long enough, she’ll get bored. Or too cold. Or she’ll be summoned home by her parents. Tanvi Shah may be determined, but I’m confident this is just a waiting game – one that I’m going to win.
Ten minutes later, I hear the sound of something being thrown repeatedly against the wall. I return to the window. Tanvi has found an old tennis ball and is chucking it against the wall, letting it bounce on the patio each time.
Thwack, bounce, thwack, bounce.
I’m reaching for my headphones when I hear muffled voices outside, propelling me back to the window.
I press my face against the glass. In the garden below, Tanvi is talking to Bonnie.
No, no, no.
I dive off the bed and down the stairs, reaching the back door just as Bonnie is opening it. I squeeze through the gap, refusing to look at either of them, shame and fury battling for supremacy.
I need to get out of here. Now.
My arms folded across my chest, I stride down the path. My heart drops as Tanvi says a hurried ‘goodbye’ to Bonnie and scurries after me.
I hesitate on the pavement outside the house, my brain whirring as I try to come up with a plan.
‘Where are you going?’ Tanvi asks, reaching my side.
‘None of your business,’ I mutter, crossing the road.
‘You’re not wearing a coat,’ she points out, scampering to keep up with my long strides.
‘So?’ I say.
‘It’s freezing.’ As if on cue, she sneezes.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, trying to ignore the cold penetrating my baggy denim shirt.
‘Look, can we talk?’ she asks. ‘I need to know you’re OK.’
‘I’m OK,’ I snap.
‘Don’t believe you,’ she hits back, not missing a beat.
I stop walking and let out a growl of impatience.
‘Please, Ro,’ Tanvi says, planting herself in front of me. ‘Just hear me out. And after that, I promise I’ll go away if you want me to.’
I look her in the eyes for the first time since she turned up. They’re puffy and swollen, the whites rippled with blood.
‘Go on then,’ I say.
Tanvi hesitates. ‘What, here? Don’t you want to go back to yours, or to a café or something?’
What I want is for this to be over with. I look both ways down the street, my eyes resting on the unoccupied bus shelter about ten doors down.
‘If you’ve got something to say, you can say it here,’ I say, heading towards it.
She follows me, sitting down on the narrow metal bench, leaving a clear space so I can sit next to her. I ignore it and remain standing up, leaning against the side of the shelter.
She sneezes three times in quick succession. Her sneezes are high-pitched and delicate, like the sort you’d expect from an animated woodland animal.
‘Gosh, excuse me,’ she says.
I glance over at her as she digs into her pocket for a tissue. She really does look awful, her nose and upper lip area red raw.
A twinge of sympathy in my side.
I block it out.
If Tanvi felt that awful, she would be tucked up in bed right now, not here, sticking her nose in where it isn’t wanted.
‘So, what was it you wanted to say?’ I ask as Tanvi stuffs her used tissue up her sleeve.
‘Hang on a second,’ she says, reaching into her backpack and pulling out a bulging plastic folder.
‘What’s that?’ I ask, frowning. ‘Coursework?’
‘Uh-uh. I’ve been reading up,’ she replies. ‘On hoarding, I mean.’
I flinch at the word. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Well, that’s what your mum does, isn’t it? Hoards stuff?’
There’s no point in denying it – Tanvi was literally just outside my back door – but I don’t want to confirm it either.
‘It’s actually really common,’ Tanvi says when I don’t respond. ‘Did you know that? Like, did you have any idea that in Australia over one third of all house fires are down to hoarding! And they reckon the only continent on earth where there’s no hoarding at all is Antarctica and that’s only because no one lives there apart from a few scientists and a whole lot of penguins.’
I stare at her. Does she honestly think I don’t know this stuff already? That I’ve never thought to Google it?
‘What I’m trying to say,’ she continues, ‘is that you’re not alone. In fact, statistically speaking, there are probably other hoarders in Ostborough.’
She actually seems excited about this. What is she thinking? That we put out an advert? Form a support group? Because if she knew anything about what it’s actually like to live with a hoarder, she’d know that people like Bonnie would never attend a support group in a zillion years.
‘So other people hoard stuff?’ I say. ‘So what? That doesn’t help me, Tanvi. It doesn’t change anything.’
‘I’m getting to that,’ she says. ‘And the thing is, there is help out there. For you and your mum. Here, I printed off this list. One second.’ She opens the folder and pulls out a sheaf of papers, sifting through them until she finds the one she’s looking for.
She hands it to me. It’s a list of helplines she’s printed from a website called ‘Help for Hoarders UK’. It’s the same list I’ve presented to Bonnie more times than I can count: the same list she’s happily ignored for years now.
‘What’s the rest of that stuff?’ I ask, pointing at the other papers.
Tanvi hands the lot over. I flick through it. There are pages and pages of information and case studies and advice. She must have been up at the crack of dawn to read this.
Then my eyes fall to the date and time stamp at the bottom of the page. Friday 25 October. Over a week ago.
I can feel my temperature rising.
‘I’ve spoken to my auntie Rina too,’ Tanvi continues, oblivious to my discovery. ‘Did I mention she’s a psychologist? Anyway, she’s going to have a chat with her colleagues and see if any of them have some suggestions.’
‘You knew,’ I say, cutting off the end of her sentence.
She blinks. ‘Knew what?’
I point to the bottom of the page.
Tanvi leans in, her cheeks reddening as she realizes her slip-up.
‘How long?’ I demand.
She bites her lower lip. ‘Since Diwali.’
‘Diwali?’
‘Remember you left your phone in the bedroom?’
I nod.
‘Well, when I found it, I thought you might need it so we drove back and I knocked on your door, or at least what I thought was your door, and an old man answered.’
I tip my head backwards and focus on the bus shelter’s translucent roof. It’s covered with bird poo and head flies.
‘He had no idea who I was talking about at first,’ Tanvi continues. ‘I thought I was going crazy! Then I described you and he told me I was in the wrong place; that I needed to try number 48. So I did.’
‘You’ve known for a week and you didn’t say anything?’ I ask.
‘I wanted to, I really did. But I didn’t know how to bring it up without making you feel uncomfortable. I nearly did a few times, but it never felt quite right.’
‘You let me lie to your face,’ I say.
‘I didn’t want to embarrass you.’
‘So you felt sorry for me?’ I snap. ‘Is that it?’
‘No!’ she cries. ‘I just wanted you to talk to me about it when you were ready. That’s why I did all this research, so that when you were up for it, I’d understand and be able to help.’
She’s still not getting it.
‘But it’s not your problem to fix, Tanvi,’ I say.
Her forehead crinkles in confusion. ‘Of course it is,’ she says, reaching for my hand. ‘You’re my best friend and you need me. We need each other.’
I think back to last night, when Tanvi was cocooned in her own little world with Emerson. She certainly didn’t need me then.
‘Could have fooled me,’ I say, shaking her off.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You literally begged me to go to the party with you and the second we got there, you abandoned me.’
Tanvi’s eyes widen. ‘Wait – I abandoned you? You’re the one who full-on disappeared and didn’t tell me where you were going. You were gone for hours!’
‘The only reason I disappeared was because you went off with Emerson!’
‘You disappeared before that too,’ Tanvi says. ‘When Marissa arrived. One minute you were right there and the next, you were gone.’
‘And you were so heartbroken you headed straight for the dance floor.’
Tanvi’s mouth opens then closes again. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I got carried away,’ she says. ‘But last night was a big deal for me.’
‘Well, I’m glad it all worked out for you.’
‘Please, don’t be like that, Ro. So, we both messed up a bit, there’s no point in falling out over it.’
I don’t say anything.
Tanvi responds by rifling through that stupid folder again. ‘There’s this one website that you should definitely look at because it’s especially for children of parents who hoard,’ she says. ‘I only had a quick look, but some of the information looked really helpful.’
‘Oh my God, can you just stop!’ I cry.
She looks up in surprise.
‘Has it not crossed your mind that I’ve tried all this stuff already?’ I ask.
‘I, I don’t know,’ she stammers. ‘Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you, I was just trying to understand.’
‘Well, you can’t, OK? You can read as much as you like but you’re never ever going to know what it’s like living with someone like my mum.’
‘So tell me,’ Tanvi says. ‘Make me understand.’
But I wouldn’t even know where to start. And even if I had the words, I don’t think I could say them out loud. It’s all too raw, too messy, too shameful.
‘I’m a good listener, I promise,’ she adds.
‘I’m sorry, Tanvi, but I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ she asks, her voice tinged with frustration. ‘We’re best friends, aren’t we?’
I wish she would stop calling us that. It was OK last week, before everything went wrong, but today it just feels suffocating, like I’m being forced into a hole I have no hope of ever fitting into.
‘Well, best friends tell each other stuff,’ Tanvi continues. ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t tell you.’
An image of the photo frame next to Tanvi’s bed leaps into my head just in time. ‘Yeah right,’ I say.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘The girl in the photos?’
‘Photos? What photos?’ Tanvi asks, blinking her big old bloodshot eyes.
She must think I’m a total idiot.
‘The photos all over your bedroom! Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, there’s one right next to your bed.’
Tanvi’s face falls. Caught red-handed.
‘Anna,’ she murmurs. ‘You’re talking about Anna.’
‘How am I supposed to know what her name is? You’ve never even bothered to mention her.’
‘If you wanted to know about her, Ro, then why didn’t you just ask?’
‘Because I’m not like you! I don’t go sticking my nose in people’s business all the time.’
Tanvi’s lip begins to tremble and for a few horrible seconds, I’m scared she might start crying. ‘Is that what you think?’ she asks. ‘That I’m just some kind of busybody?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ I rub my face. I just want this conversation to be over.
‘Well, come on, what is it?’
‘You’re just always there, Tanvi, you know?’ I say. ‘It’s like I can’t take a single breath without you popping up and offering me a plate of pancakes or something.’
‘I was trying to be nice,’ Tanvi rasps, her voice just about clinging on. ‘Because that’s how friendship works, Ro. You do nice things for each other; you make an effort. You’re there when the other person needs you!’
‘Well, I don’t need you, OK? I don’t need anyone. And if you’re that bothered about sharing, then go hang out with your buddy Anna instead! Go make her some pancakes.’
‘I can’t!’ Tanvi yells, the sudden fury on her face making her almost unrecognizable.
‘Well, why not?’ I yell back.
‘Because she’s dead!’
My mouth drops open.
What?
‘What?’ I whisper.
‘She died just before Christmas. From thyroid cancer.’
Oh God, oh God.
‘And the reason I don’t mention her is because I still find it really painful to talk about,’ Tanvi continues, spitting out her words, tears spilling down her cheeks. ‘Maybe I’ll be able to one day, but I’m not ready yet, and if you’d actually bothered to ask me about her instead of filling in the blanks for yourself, that’s what I would have told you.’
I swallow hard. It didn’t even cross my mind that Anna could be a friend Tanvi met in hospital. I feel so stupid.
‘But you didn’t ask, did you?’ Tanvi adds. ‘You made up your mind all by yourself.’
My entire body is quivering.
‘You’re not the only one who has a hard time, you kno w?’ Tanvi says. ‘You don’t have the monopoly on misery.’
‘I never said I did,’ I hit back weakly.
‘You didn’t have to!’ Tanvi snaps, her eyes on fire, her anger making her look like a stranger. ‘You spend so much time protecting yourself, it doesn’t even cross your mind that other people might be struggling too.’
My mouth hangs open uselessly. I have no idea what to say.
‘I can’t do this any more,’ Tanvi says, wiping away her tears with a mittened hand.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘This,’ she says, gesturing at me. ‘With you. I’m too tired.’
I open my mouth to say something but no words come out. Tanvi holds my gaze for a couple of seconds, then shakes her head, her eyes full of water and sadness. She puts the folder in her bag and walks away, the pompom on her hat wobbling with every step.
Go after her, a voice inside my head whispers as Tanvi’s form grows smaller and smaller.
Apologize.
Explain.
Fix this.
I don’t, though.
I just let her go.