I wake up and make it as far as the shower, but I quickly realise I’m not well. There’s a shiver inside my bones, and muscles I didn’t know I had ache. I wonder if I’ve caught whatever virus it is Mum has. Even Margot notices. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks as I sit at the breakfast table. Mum isn’t up again.
‘I feel pretty gross.’
Margot frowns and holds the back of her hand to my forehead. With a ‘hmm’, she dashes upstairs, to return a moment later with a thermometer. ‘Here, pop this under your tongue.’ I do as I’m told and a minute later she whips it out of my mouth without warning. ‘Goodness. No, you’re not well. Back to bed with you, young lady.’
I don’t even have the strength to argue. I practically have to drag my hollow limbs up the stairs back to my room.
I toss and turn, one minute burning up and fighting off sheet tentacles, freezing cold and rattling the next. Crazy fever dreams about Margot and Andrew and Rick and Dewi and Bronwyn and Thom filter in and out of my head. I keep waking up in a panic, thinking I have to be somewhere.
In the worst, Mum has been rushed to hospital while I’m lying here. ‘Mum!’ I yell out at one point.
‘What?’ She pokes her head around the door.
‘Mum?’
‘I’m here.’ She sits at the foot of the bed. ‘Are you feeling any better?’
I don’t. It feels like there’s broken glass in my throat. ‘I had a dream about you. Are you real?’
A gentle smile. She looks very beautiful, like a painting from the Louvre or something. The sun hits her pale face and it’s way Renaissance. I can never pronounce Renaissance. ‘Yes, I’m real. You poor thing. Let me get you some paracetamol.’
I grab for her arm. ‘No, don’t go.’
She sits back down. ‘It’s all right, Fliss. I’m here.’
I scoot over and she lies down next to me. I hold her close and drift off into a shallow sleep.
The rest of Thursday is a write-off and, let’s face it, if you’ve had Thursday off you’re hardly going to go back to school on Friday. The teachers barely bother to hide their hangovers on a Friday. Lots of ‘Quiet Reading Time’.
I do feel a bit better though. The burning throat and shivers seem to have morphed into a stinking cold, which I can deal with, even if I do look like a gooey plague victim. Mum and Margot let me sleep until about nine thirty and then I feel well enough to head downstairs. I want out of the bed. it’s sweaty and smells like ill person.
I have some toast before sinking into a hot bath. Well, if you’re gonna be ill, do it right, I think. I daren’t read the diary in the bath in case I drop it, so I take a Nancy Drew Case Files paperback I already read a few years back and soak until the water goes tepid and Nancy figures out who’s leaving the sorority spooky messages.
Because I’m off school, I tie my hair into a messy bun and put my dressing gown on. Mum has changed my bedding while I was in the bath and, truth be told, I’m probably well enough to have gone to school.
Ah, well. As it is, it’s another day with Margot’s diary. I get under the covers (the farm is only getting more Baltic as we head into autumn) and turn to the next entry.