“That’s for me,” Sophie said, wrapping her hands around the heat of the mug and shifting her attention to that rather than the sugar patterns.
This wasn’t like it had been with Morgan and Georgia, when she’d just sort of translated the things her mum had learned from reading articles on the internet.
This felt as if she were finally talking to Freya.
“So you hurt. Is that it?”
“Ryan!” Sophie felt the thump of Win kicking him under the table – enjoyed his startled wince.
“Ow! I meant is there more stuff? I was trying to be nice!”
“Or you could do a Google instead of making Sophie spell it all out?”
“Left my phone at home, didn’t I?”
Sophie smiled into her coffee at their bickering. She could give Ryan a list of symptoms so long he’d grow bored by the end – who wanted to hear about aches and pains and flares and rashes and mouth ulcers and fatigue and brain fog? But then … who wanted to live it?
“Is there anything you want to tell us?” Win said, a tenderness in her voice that Sophie had to pretend she couldn’t hear. “I mean, things we should know so we don’t do something insensitive?”
Sophie swallowed while she considered the question.
“Well. Try not to bump into me or grab me. It can hurt.”
Sunny edged further along the booth until she was squashed up against the window and Win rolled her eyes in a way that made Sophie smile.
“And I get fatigue.”
“You get tired?”
God. Sunny sounded so much like Freya at times. That so what tone permeating what was clearly intended as a sympathetic question.
“I get fatigue. Not the same.” Sophie had spent so long thinking about how she might explain this, never thinking that it would be to a bunch of strangers. “Tired is something you can get rid of, OK? You sleep, you regenerate, you feel awake. That’s not fatigue. It’s like your energy is being drained away before you even start using any. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t have any to begin with – it still keeps on at you.”
She could hear the fear in her voice. Felt it, because she was already paying for yesterday’s exertion. She’d woken into that wading feeling, everything taking that much more effort – thinking, moving, existing. It would have been better to stay home and do nothing than try for another day of activity, but she’d wanted something more. Now here she was, paying for it.
“So, what do you do, like? Just grin and bear it?” Ryan’s outrage almost sounded sympathetic.
Sophie shrugged. Winced, really. “Sometimes I have to stay home from school, bored out of my brain stressing out that I’ll have to re-sit my GCSEs.”
“But today you’re OK?” Lucas looked a little alarmed, and Sophie thought better of telling him that “OK” was a relative term. By his standards, she probably wasn’t.
“I need to go carefully. Last night…” Sophie closed her eyes a moment, remembering. “I went too hard. Stayed out too long, tried to do too much.”
There was so much more she could tell them, but this was all she had stamina for. Explaining herself was hard work.
“Can we change the subject?”
“Of course.” Win stretched across the table and cupped her hands gently around Sophie’s. She wore a stack of three green rings on her thumb. Sophie wanted to run her finger across them, feel the smooth green surface of each ring and the grooves between them, but then Sunny laid her hand over Win’s, then Lucas over Sunny’s.
Ryan gave the lot of them a repulsed curl of the lip.
“I’m sorry, are we the three fucking musketeers?”
A second later they all pulled back to make room for plates of battered fish and steaming chips and Sophie felt an urge to snatch Win’s hands back, to hold on to a comfort no one else had given her. As they ate, Sophie caught Win looking at her across the table, thoughts hidden behind an artfully blank expression that creased into a warm smile.
For all the things Freya had got wrong, Win Su was something she’d got very right.
RYAN
Going with them was supposed to be an easy getaway, not a guilt trip.
All those times Freya had grumbled about Sophie flaking out on her, how she never wanted to do anything fun any more…
Shit.
Ryan looked across the table. Sophie was a stone-cold bitch who liked him about as much as he liked her. Still. What she’d said about her illness sucked. Pain wasn’t something you could climb into a car and drive away from.
Not like Freya had done. She’d left everything behind her when she went – her problems and the people that went with them. She’d said she needed to get away from everyone. He guessed that included Sophie and him and Lucas and … Win? Didn’t seem likely, did it? That girl solved problems, not created them.
“Beach or amusements?” Lucas nudged him in the side. “You’re the deciding vote.”
Across from him Sunny very clearly mouthed “Amusements.”
“Amusements,” Ryan said. “See if I can double my money on the penny falls.”
SOPHIE
The amusement arcade was Too Much for someone who wanted to have a rest and not have to talk or think or be.
“You OK?” Win appeared in the periphery of Sophie’s vision. “You look…”
If she said tired, Sophie was going to thump her.
“…like you need to sit quietly for a bit?”
Words so familiar that Sophie wondered where she’d heard them before.
Win’s smile was as subtle as everything else about her. “That’s what you said, last night in the garden.”
There were so many ways for someone to listen, but Sophie liked Win’s way best. It wasn’t the prove-yourself variety like Morgan, who only showed she was listening if someone tested her, or Georgia, whose attention had to be caught and held cupped in your hands before it escaped.
And Freya… Well that was something Sophie was starting to think hadn’t worked in either direction. Sophie had only listened for the things she expected to hear and Freya for the things she could fix. She’d never had patience for Sophie’s rash issues, or how tired she felt. Never asked about the doctor’s appointments because she’d not listened when Sophie said she was going. Like every healthy person in the world, Freya had assumed treating an illness was enough to make it go away.
But Sophie shouldn’t have tested her, either. She’d been playing chicken with the truth against someone unaware of the game.
With Win though… Sophie had a feeling that if they’d been friends, Win would have asked.
The two of them sat squashed together on a seat for one of the driving games, legs over the side so they could watch the others. Ryan was at the penny falls, all the money he’d saved from lunch turned copper as he doggedly fed two-pence pieces into the machine, eyes on a five-pound note that quivered with promise at the furthest reaches of the fall.
“Do you think he’ll win?” Sophie asked.
“I’m not sure winning’s in Ryan’s nature,” Win replied, watching him with a quiet kind of interest that encouraged the same from Sophie.