Giant Days Read online

  “SHOPPING TRIP!”

  There was a missed call from Esther on Daisy’s phone. At the time it came in, she’d been sprinting as fast as she could through the Botanical Gardens, away from a shattered pane of the Glass Pavilion, and answering her phone hadn’t been a priority.

  Anarchic Croquet was a much more extreme sport than she’d been expecting.

  Regrouping at the rendezvous point, shoulders bristling with an assortment of “mallets” (baseball bats, hammers, a golfing umbrella, and a plastic flamingo), Daisy wondered about asking what would happen if they’d been caught on security camera, but someone bellowed out “Nachoooos!” and the group moved off toward a nearby pub.

  Daisy dithered. She did that a lot these days—not that the word days really meant anything to her. Every waking hour—and some of the ones she usually reserved for sleeping—was taken up attending all the clubs and socs and groups she’d joined. What had started as a manageable trickle had turned into a deluge of commitments, her phone screen flashing like a social stock exchange.

  She could be halfway through a conversation with someone over a cup of tea and her phone would beep to inform her that she should be on the other side of the city attending drinks with the Circus Soc, or that she was supposed to be drawing up a petition for the Campaign in the Arse Association. There were times when such commitments overlapped, and Daisy found herself walking one way, then doubling back, over and over, caught in a frenzy of indecision and obligation, until her phone beeped again with a message asking where she was.

  In what could have been three days or thirty, it felt as if she’d gone from being entirely anonymous to almost universally recognized. The Halloween party had been but the tip of an iceberg large enough to sink the Titanic. People kept giving her those little chin-nods of acknowledgment as she passed them on the street, and her phone was crammed with messages from unknown numbers as part of the various group chats she’d been assimilated into.

  This was the university dream, wasn’t it? Drinks every night and a friend in every corridor.

  Only that wasn’t quite how it felt. Like Jonathan Tremain, Daisy spent most of her time calling people by the wrong name. And shouldn’t she know more about all these new friends than the fact that Adaptation was so-and-so’s favorite Nicolas Cage film or that girl had singed her eyebrows after trying to juggle with fire? She’d had the same conversation about the best cartoon theme tunes so many times that her nightmares were haunted by out-of-tune renditions of the theme song for DuckTales. Daisy felt overloaded with so much inconsequential information that at times she struggled to remember anything significant about herself.

  She was floating in a sea of newfound friends, untethered from anything or anyone of significance.

  Daisy looked down at the phone in her hand. Something about a missed call . . .

  But then two overdue reminders blooped up in quick succession.

  Assassins Association said the first—there was a time and a place listed with it.

  The second simply said: shopping.

  As she stared at the word, she felt a dim pang of longing for a half-remembered life, and faces of people she actually wanted to see swam before her eyes . . . but then her phone buzzed with a message on yet another of her groups, reminding her there was somewhere else she needed to be. Esther’s missed call and the reminder Daisy had set for their shopping trip was swallowed up by the behemoth of obligations eating Daisy Wooton alive.

  The card issued by the National Union of Students promised a world of discounts, from 10 percent on clothes purchased at Forever 21 to 25 percent off cinema tickets and probably some other things in which Esther had no interest. She was crooning over hers, stroking the passport-booth photo of her own face.

  “You have a problem,” Susan said, giving her a disgusted look and edging a little farther away from where Esther was sitting on the lip of the water feature outside Sheffield town hall.

  “Says the woman incapable of quitting smoking.”

  “Don’t go there unless you want me to go home and order myself a coat online without your input.”

  “No!” Esther flung herself across Susan’s lap as if she really had been about to leave. “I bow down to your superior willpower. All hail Susan, queen of iron.”

  “Off!” Susan waved her away and checked the time on her phone. “I don’t think Daisy’s coming.”

  Not that Susan blamed her. If she’d had even a shred of confidence in Esther’s judgment, she’d have handed over her measurements and tasked Esther to buy her a coat while she applied her 10 percent student discount to something more enjoyable. Like bulk buying a load of tampons.

  “But I put a Post-it Note on her door . . .”

  “. . . and did you try sending one via pigeon post? Baby Gordon’s a bit young for that.” But Esther had that slightly wounded air about her, to which Susan was gradually growing sensitive. She laid a hand on Esther’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Come on, let’s go get me a parka so I can pretend I’m proper Northern while you spam Daisy’s messages with pictures of all the ridiculous outfits you can’t afford to buy.”

  The Assassins Association wasn’t for her, Daisy decided as she slithered through a cubicle window and swung onto the drainpipe next to it. She was a lover, not a fighter. A healer, not a hit man. When they’d put a hood over her head and asked her to swear fealty to the Mercenary Code, she’d pretended to be desperate for the toilet, and now here she was, shimmying down three stories’ worth of drainpipe, unable to check any of the messages she could feel buzzing through to her phone.

  If she hadn’t been so averse to killing people, Daisy suspected she might have made a very resourceful assassin.

  They’d found an Army Surplus store. Even the fact that it didn’t offer a student discount hadn’t deterred Esther from purchasing half the stock. Struggling back to their hall, she was weighed down with bags stuffed with a rifleman’s jacket, desert boots, and weird strapping and belts and holsters with which she’d said she would modify some of the more tired items in her substantial wardrobe.

  Susan was wearing a grotty arctic jacket and carrying a single expensively branded bag containing towels so luxuriously thick that they could have doubled as a mattress.

  “Can’t you at least give me a hand?” Esther said, dropping her bags for a moment and staring at her bloodless fingers while they waited for the traffic light to change.

  “No. I said I wouldn’t help you back in the shop, and I am a woman of my word—”

  But Susan’s sanctimonious sentence was cut short when Esther body-slammed her into a bush. As Susan fell awkwardly, protecting her towels while spitting and cursing, Esther peered out between autumn-sparse fronds at something up ahead.

  “There she is . . .”

  “Who?” Susan hated whoever she was without even having set eyes on her.

  “The Goth Girl,” Esther breathed, her whole face as reverent as if she’d seen a dark angel. “Look at her.”

  “Thought I already was.” Susan shot a wry look in Esther’s direction before following her gaze.

  She knew who Esther meant the second she saw her. Shorter even than Susan but delicate, like a twiggy little doll. The enormous headphones that rested around her neck looked especially out of proportion on someone that petite. She was walking with a group of smiling girls, all of whom chattered brightly while Goth Girl’s face remained impassive, a marble statue amid a flock of starlings. She had a permafrost expression and a pinched, pretty little mouth pursed in a perfect purple cupid’s bow.

  “Why are we hiding from someone you want to be friends with?” Susan asked, starting to stand up. “We could just go and talk to her.”

  “One does not simply approach a dark goddess!” Esther hissed, yanking Susan back into the bush. “Not looking like this.”

  Susan cast a critical eye over Esther in an attempt to see what was wrong, but she looked as effortlessly chic as Susan did disheveled. It was like seeing a single b
eautiful bloom shying away from the sunlight.

  “You look perfectly glorious. As always.”

  “To you . . .” Esther said dismissively.

  Smothering a twinge of hurt, Susan waited until Esther’s quarry was farther away before emerging from the foliage. Not bothering to say anything, she trudged toward Catterick Hall, regretting she’d ever mentioned that she needed a coat.

  Daisy’s door was open when they got back to their corridor, but she wasn’t there. Half an hour after Esther had forced her purchases into spaces they were not designed to occupy, she checked Daisy’s room again. Gently swirling golden light from a glitter lamp bathed the room in honey, the radio, turned low, played soothing world music, but there was still no sign of Daisy.

  Esther took one look at the scene and went to find Susan.

  “I’m worried about Daisy.”

  “When are you not?” Susan was lying on her bed beating her laptop at chess and didn’t bother looking up.

  “I’m serious. She doesn’t have any lectures this late, and her door’s been open since we got back.”

  Susan shoved her laptop aside and sat up in alarm, slapping an overly dramatic hand to her face. “Oh, my gosh! Do you think she’s been abducted by aliens?”

  But Esther wasn’t playing. “I think we should check the showers in case she’s fainted and cracked her skull open.”

  “A vivid and disturbing image.” Susan dropped the act and stood up. “One that I now can’t get out of my head.”

  Although there were showers on their floor, one had a broken shower head, another’s thermostat couldn’t be coaxed above room temperature, and Daisy swore that the third was haunted, so it was to the floor below that Esther and Susan hurried, their pace getting quicker with every step, so that they were sprinting by the time the door was in sight.

  Steam rose from behind the first shower curtain.

  “Daisy! Is that you?” Esther prodded at the curtain.

  “Do you mind?” A girl’s head emerged from behind the curtain, shortly followed by a boy’s. “Some of us are trying to get clean here.”

  “You say that . . .” Esther hurried past before nudging Susan and whispering, “Looked more like they were getting dirty to me.”

  There was no one in the second shower, but the curtain was drawn across the third—although there was no sign that the shower was on.

  “At least there’s no blood,” Esther murmured, glancing at Susan before she raised her voice. “Daisy? Are you in there?”

  A groaning kind of sigh sounded from behind the curtain, and the girls looked at each other in horror.

  “Pleasedon’tbenakedpleasedon’tbenaked . . .” Susan yanked the curtain aside.

  There, still in her bathrobe, slumped against the wall, her forehead resting on the taps, was Daisy. And she was sound asleep.

  Once Daisy was showered and dried and clothed in the outfit she’d laid on her bed before she’d gone down for a shower, she accepted a mug of cocoa from Susan and sat at the kitchen table.

  “It’s six o’clock on a Tuesday, Daisy,” Esther said. “You really should not be this tired.”

  “Unless you’re an insomniac.” Susan pointed both thumbs at herself, then gave Daisy a doubtful look. “Which you’re not—are you?”

  “I don’t think so.” Daisy blew across the top of her drink, watching the ripples. “I’ve just been a bit busy.”

  “Doing what? Digging trenches and carbon-dating human remains?” Susan asked.

  “Ooh, or you’ve uncovered some kind of cursed medallion that possesses you during the night, so that you wake more exhausted than when you went to bed, dirt under your fingernails and a taste for blood . . .” Esther stopped talking when she realized how the other two were looking at her. “What? Like you weren’t thinking that, too.”

  “I definitely wasn’t,” Susan said.

  “Nor me.” Daisy studied her fingernails. “Although it’s good to know what signs I should watch out for. No, I’m actually a bit behind on my course.”

  “What?” Susan was aghast. “I mean, I expect this from Esther—”

  “Hey!”

  “—but you? Daisy Wooton, I would never have you down as a slacker.”

  “I’m not usually.” Tracing the pattern on the side of her mug, she reluctantly met Susan’s eyes. “It’s just, you know, you said I should try out some of those societies I signed up for at the fair?”

  “I did . . .” Susan was wary.

  “I might have signed up for a few too many.”

  “A few, like, how many? Five? Ten?”

  Daisy replied, but it was too quiet for either of the others to hear.

  “Sorry, what?” They both leaned in.

  “A few like . . . thirty-two?”

  It was remarkable how quickly one could stage an intervention—especially when you had exactly the right outfit for the occasion. Esther marched back and forth in front of the enormous whiteboard in the kitchen in her new rifleman’s jacket, feeling incredibly important and trying not to get distracted by the tiny little jizzing penis in the bottom corner of the whiteboard that a long-ago J-block occupant had drawn in permanent marker. Drawing a grid with long, swooping lines so that everything was on a slight slant, Esther mapped out a week planner, while Susan and Daisy sat at the table, Daisy’s laptop open and her out-of-control inbox on the screen.

  “Daisy, please write in your course commitments.” Esther held out a red pen imperiously, and Daisy jumped up to write in five lectures, one seminar, and a lab session before returning to her seat.

  “And you actually go to all these . . . ?” Esther asked doubtfully.

  Daisy nodded in earnest, and Susan smirked. “Good to see that the de Groots are getting value out of those tuition fees . . .”

  Ignoring that dig, Esther switched to a green pen and stepped up to Monday.

  “Club me up.”

  Daisy ran a search for the date, and four separate e-mails showed up.

  10:00 A.M. Comic Club

  12:00 P.M. Ladies Who Brunch

  3:00 P.M. Paper Clip Fanciers

  6:00 P.M. Snap Soc

  As Susan read out each entry, Esther added them to the board. Moving on to Tuesday, she wrote in five more meetings, two of which clashed.

  “Seriously, Daisy, how, exactly, did you plan to attend two different clubs at opposite ends of the city scheduled for exactly the same time?” Susan asked. “Were you planning on splitting yourself in two like a sociable amoeba?”

  A faint whimper emerged as Daisy shrugged. “I thought maybe I could FaceTime the Debating Society while doing origami.”

  “If there’s anyone in this world capable of delivering a speech in favor of”—Susan leaned across to check the e-mail—“compulsory pasteurization of Continental cheeses while folding a paper strawberry, it’s you.”

  “Actually, I was only going to listen. Apparently my debating style is too feisty for those thin-skinned public-school boys.”

  Susan cast Daisy an affectionate look. “That’s my girl.”

  Three meetings scheduled for Wednesday. Six on Thursday . . . three, four, and seven on Sunday.

  “Written out like this, it does look like quite a lot,” Daisy admitted.

  “You think? I’m exhausted just reading it.” Susan took the pen from Esther and stepped forward. She crossed out anything that interfered with Daisy’s course, which eliminated Comic Club and Marble Enthusiasts. “Now for anything that clashes. Go with your gut. Debating or Origami?”

  “Origami,” Daisy said without hesitation, and Susan put a line through debating.

  “Esther, unsubscribe Daisy from the list.”

  “On it.” Esther hammered out a polite request to be excused from further meetings and clicked the unsubscribe button, looking over Daisy’s shoulder as she removed herself from the group chat.

  “Tiddlywinks or Beekeeping?”

  “Ooh . . . that’s a hard one . . .” Daisy pondered for a few secon
ds. “I mean . . . I like bees, but am I ever going to own a hive . . .”

  Esther started playing the Countdown theme on her phone, and Daisy grew increasingly flustered before exclaiming, “BEES! I CHOOSE BEES.”

  They eliminated two more clubs this way, but that still left Daisy with an impossible twenty-six memberships. After an hour discussing the merits of each, all three of them had lost the will to live, and an alarm sounded on Daisy’s phone.

  “I’ve got to go!” She started gathering her things and pointed at the 9:00 P.M. meeting scheduled for Tuesday. “I’ve got a Nicolas Cage Club meeting to attend . . .”

  “No, Daisy!” Esther leaped in front of her to bar her exit. “You’ve got to break the cycle. You don’t even know who Nicolas Cage is.”

  “Yes, I do! He’s the man who wrote The Notebook.”

  “No, you’re muddling him up with the Nicholas Sparks Club. That’s not till Friday.”

  “BUT I NEED TO GET TO MY MEETING!”

  No sooner had she sounded the battle cry than Susan had launched herself across the room to wrap herself around Daisy’s knees while Esther remained resolute in barring the doorway. The struggle was intense but brief. Daisy was no match for Susan’s tenacity or Esther’s strength. Defeated, Daisy sank back down on her stool.

  They needed a distraction, and the only one Susan could think of was to put the kettle on. Daisy asked for a fruit tea.

  “I really appreciate what you’re doing,” she said, giving Susan a wan smile when she took the tea.

  “It’s for your own good,” Susan said, feeling like a horrible Victorian patriarch, not helped by the fact that Esther was still stalking around in her ridiculous military regalia.

  “It’s a bit hot to drink just yet.” Daisy set her mug down. “Can I just nip to the loo while it’s cooling?”

  Stopping her from going to the toilet seemed a step too far, but when Daisy had been gone for five minutes, Susan exchanged a worried glance with Esther. As one, the two sprang up, hurrying down the corridor to Daisy’s room. The window was open, and the leather coat that had been on her bed was gone.