Giant Days Read online

  But there was an overwhelming amount of it for being a student.

  “Susan. Help me. I’m DYING.” Esther staggered in through the door and collapsed face-first on the bed.

  “You should see a doctor about that. A qualified one.” Susan’s voice had the distinct air of someone who hadn’t bothered to look up.

  “That’s exactly what’s killing me.” Turning her head to one side, Esther smiled at Daisy, who was sitting on the floor, back resting against the bed.

  “This is a very confusing conversation, Es. Is there any chance you could dial down the dramatics and actually make sense?” Susan remained intent on her laptop. From the look of it, she was browsing poisons on Wikipedia.

  “The admin!” Esther rolled onto her back, specifically so she could fling an arm across her forehead and stare miserably at the ceiling. “There’s so much of it.”

  “Ah.” For the first time, she had Susan’s attention. “I’m guessing someone has failed to register for a doctor and needs”—Susan turned from the laptop, eyes narrowed in calculation—“something that isn’t life threatening enough to qualify as a medical emergency but is sufficiently urgent that you need the matter resolved sooner rather than later.”

  A pause followed, long enough for Daisy and Esther to hold their breath in anticipation.

  “Someone forgot to renew her prescription for the pill,” Susan pronounced.

  Esther shot up in surprise. “Am I really that predictable?”

  “Well, Susan’s very perceptive . . .” Daisy began.

  “Yes. You absolutely are.” Susan said.

  “Right. Well, have you got any I can borrow?”

  Susan shook her head and tapped her arm. “Implant. Even though I like to think my womb naturally provides a toxic environment so that anything resembling sperm would shrivel and die on entry.”

  Esther leaned over the edge of the bed hopefully. “Daisy?”

  “Providing a hostile environment for sperm hasn’t been much of a priority for me.” She blushed. “Sorry.”

  A moment later, Susan had the web page for the university health service up on her laptop, open to the registration form. “Here.”

  Esther pecked with distaste at the graying keys. “It says it’ll take two days. That’s forty-eight hours I don’t have.”

  “I’d never have taken you for someone who took being prepared so seriously.” Respect battled doubt in Daisy’s voice.

  “My moods are finely adapted to the hormone levels in my body. Do you want to mess with those? DO YOU, DAISY?”

  Daisy shuffled so that she was pressed against Susan’s shins. Her voice trembled a little as she said, “No?”

  “Yet for all your fine-tuning, you’ve only just noticed that you’ve run out of contraception,” Susan said levelly.

  “WHY IS THE UNIVERSE CONSPIRING TO MAKE MY LIFE SO DIFFICULT?”

  “You say ‘the universe,’ but I think we can all agree this is mostly down to you. And it’s definitely not down to me or Daisy.” Susan patted Daisy’s shoulder much the way she might a nervous dog. “Personal responsibility.”

  “Is a ruse invented by those seeking to argue their way out of the problem of evil in the face of an omnipotent, omniscient, benign god.” After filling out her home address, Esther looked up to see her friends staring in shock. “What? So I retained some information from one of the seminars I went to last week.”

  “Did you attend it because it was about the problem of evil?” Daisy asked.

  Esther’s gaze darkened gleefully. “They say problem, I say solution.”

  “But not to the problem of managing your hormones through birth control.” Susan’s tone was scathing, but the look she gave Esther was one of grudging capitulation. “I don’t think the world needs to see how far your mood can swing without the restraining influence of added estrogen. Tell me what brand you need, and come meet me after lectures tomorrow. Daisy, you want in?”

  Daisy worried her lip a moment. “When Granny warned me about drug deals, I don’t think this was what she meant.”

  “Not unless she’s Catholic,” Esther reasoned.

  “She isn’t.”

  Esther studied the calendar on her phone, trying to work out what—if any—lectures she had on. “I’ve a lecture that finishes at eleven.”

  Susan glanced at Daisy. “Twelve noon up at the hospital? We can all go for lunch in the medical school canteen afterward. They do excellent potato wedges.”

  A large amount of Esther’s time in her Prose lecture was spent on planning her exit. Not in the way Daisy might mentally prepare for a fire drill, or the way Susan fantasized about biting someone’s arm with a blood capsule in her mouth to see what 250 medical students would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Esther’s plans had a very specific aim: to orchestrate leaving the lecture theater at the same time as Vectra and to sustain some kind of conversation.

  After the disastrous Creative Writing seminar, Esther knew she had to make this one count. Rather than blunder in and get it all wrong, she was adopting the Susan Ptolemy approved method of observing her target. The list in her notebook was coming along nicely.

  Don’t sit too close

  No compliments

  Don’t rush out

  Don’t stay too long

  Stay away from any lecture talk

  No eye contact

  Ed Gemmell reached across and scribbled in the margin of her notebook: No bright light, no water, don’t feed after midnight???

  After reading it through twice, Esther was still none the wiser and gave Ed a helpless shrug.

  “You’ve never seen Gremlins?” he whispered. “It’s a classic . . . in a so bad, it’s good kind of way. There’s these, er, gremlins . . .” His eyebrows knitted together, and he trailed off with a sigh. “Never mind.”

  “No! I love how you have faith that one day I’ll understand one of your nerdy references.” The lecturer was wrapping up. “Keep trying. One day we’ll find some common ground other than Endings, Closure, and Narrative Ambiguity in the 1920s.”

  While Ed Gemmell packed away his things and hurried down to the front of the lecture hall to talk to the professor who’d given the lecture, Esther waved hello to Noor as she passed by, then twanged the elastic band around her notebook and buried her plans in the bottom of her bag. If there was one thing she could do now to ensure Vectra never spoke to her again, it would be to expose just how hard she was trying to impress her.

  There was a message on her phone from Daisy saying she was waiting down in reception, and Esther smiled at the picture she’d sent with it: a hand reaching for one of the little wooden models of faculty buildings on display with the caption Giant Daisy!

  “All right?” A husky rustle of syllables, like bats emerging from a catacomb.

  Startled, Esther did her best to arrange her face into something suitably cool and distant as she looked up to where Vectra had fallen into step next to her and nodded, biting back her inclination to ask where Vectra’s boots came from or what online tutorial she’d used to get that perfect ripple effect going on her eyeshadow.

  Six steps of silence, and it was Vectra who broke it.

  “So. Your friend. Glasses too small, hair too big, tries too hard.”

  “Ed Gemmell?”

  “Yeah. He’s doing Introduction to Cinema, right?“

  “I—er—maybe.” With a guilty flush, Esther realized she had no idea which optional modules Ed Gemmell took—she only knew they weren’t the same as hers.

  “Yeah. So. Could you ask him for his notes from the last couple of seminars? I’m still trying to catch up after my throat infection, and that one’s always scribbling away.”

  “He’s just back there.” Esther paused on the stairs and raised a hesitant thumb back toward the lecture theater. “You could ask him yourself.”

  “I’m asking you to ask him.” For a second it looked as if she might have been smiling. “Because I think he’ll say yes to you.”
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br />   Bewildered, flattered, and a little uncomfortable, Esther carried on down the stairs, trying to decode the subtext of their interaction.

  At the bottom of the steps, Vectra turned and arched her eyebrows at Esther.

  “Let me know about the notes, yeah?”

  “Yes, umm . . .” Esther did a quick sweep of the foyer, relieved when she saw that Daisy was preoccupied with reading the Postcard Poems display. “How? E-mail? Phone?”

  “Or you could just bring them to the next Creative Writing seminar.”

  Of course. Esther was still getting used to her new schedule—and the fact that she was supposed to be sticking to it. Vectra gave Esther’s outfit an impenetrable head-to-toe assessment.

  “Nice belt.”

  And then she was out the door, turning her collar up against the wind and pulling her headphones on.

  “Esther?” Daisy stood at Esther’s shoulder, following her gaze to Vectra, who glanced back with another enigmatic half smile before disappearing.

  “Vectra Featherstone liked my belt.”

  “That’s good . . . well done for having a nice belt.” She petted Esther much as she would Baby Gordon. “Shall we go and see Susan now?”

  There was a gentle touch at her elbow, and Esther felt herself steered gently outdoors, someone zipping up her top and pulling her devil-horn hat down over her ears. (Daisy, presumably.)

  “Do you know what a compliment like that means in the universal language of the outcast?” Esther turned, wide-eyed with conviction. “It means we’re friends.”

  The walk from the English building to the hospital wasn’t so long—not compared to how long it took to walk all the way up the hill to Catterick Hall—but the conversation made it feel an awful lot longer to Daisy. Although it was less of a conversation and more like listening to a monologue on Vectra Featherstone and all the ways in which she was some kind of super race of human brought forth into the world under a moonless night, anointed with sacrificial blood and destined for darkness.

  When Esther liked something, she really went all in, something that Daisy admired. It took conviction and confidence in one’s own judgment to make such strong proclamations about something—or someone—about which she knew so little. Daisy always felt that knowing what she liked took time, a seed planted and tended and watered, nourished under many suns, watched and cherished until it blossomed into something true and beautiful or withered away to create more fertile soil for something else. One of the many reasons she’d found her Social Period so stressful was because she’d planted too many seeds for her to keep track of.

  With only Zoise to think about, her passions had taken on a certain clarity, her energies focused in a single direction.

  “So, are you going to ask her for a coffee after tomorrow’s seminar?” Daisy interjected as Esther drew breath.

  From the reaction, Daisy might as well have suggested Esther locate Vectra’s room, try on all her clothes, and sit at the end of her bed, braiding loose hairs plucked from Vectra’s brush while watching her sleep. Once Esther had recovered from all the theatrical gasping, she replied, “I don’t want to look too keen.”

  “But if someone wants to be your friend, then . . . keen is? Not good?” Did Daisy have this all wrong? Was that not how to be friends?

  Esther soothed her, standing on tiptoe so she could pat the top of Daisy’s head, hand bouncing on her curls. Pat, pat, pat. Usually Daisy liked being fussed at by Esther. It made her feel safe and loved. Today, though, she felt patronized.

  “You innocent little homeschooled flower. The path to true friendship is fraught with tests. Herculean tasks of logic overcoming emotion, a chessboard of moves to baffle your opponent.”

  Which bore no resemblance to how Daisy and Susan and Esther had come to be friends. Emerging from the depths came the thought that maybe this had all been too easy: One did not make friends for life by accident of university accommodation allocation.

  Daisy was just a temporary associate, not a friend to whom Esther had to prove herself.

  At least Daisy could be consoled that if the worst happened and Esther moved on, she had somewhere else to go. She knew exactly where she stood with the Brethren of Zoise. Or rather, where she sat, or lay, which was how everyone spent most of the time in the basement.

  There was, however, the small issue of the Ceremony of Sharing. Unlike everyone else, Daisy didn’t have an inexhaustible supply of worldly possessions. Daisy had never found her life with Granny tarnished by a lack of wealth, but the two of them had always been frugal. It had required some adapting for Daisy to take Esther’s extravagant spending habits in her stride, but looking around, Daisy saw that university life was rife with fiscal exuberance.

  There was always the option of introducing someone else to the joys of Zoise yoga, but who? Susan’s skepticism was insurmountable, and Esther was even less likely to give yoga a go now that she had Vectra to obsess over.

  Daisy needed to come up with some ideas of what to share, or she wouldn’t belong with the Brethren, either.

  As Esther and Daisy passed the reception area for the hospital and made for the doors marked MEDICAL SCHOOL, Esther’s phone blooped in her pocket.

  Over the road.

  Esther looked up, and another message came in.

  Around the corner from the cash machine.

  The two of them followed the directions and the thin trail of smoke that wafted past the queue at the cash machine to find Susan slouched against a wall, cigarette between her fingers, leg crooked so one foot rested flat on the bricks. Her head was tipped back, smoke leaking from her lips, eyes closed in bliss.

  Esther cast a revolted look at the enormous trash container right next to where Susan was standing and wondered whether students had to pass some kind of basic hygiene test before they made the Hippocratic oath. On current evidence, Susan would fail. “So, is this where he’s meeting us?” she asked.

  “Him who?” Susan pushed her way off the wall and stubbed out her cigarette.

  “The man,” Esther whispered, but her friends looked nonplussed. “You know. The one we’re seeing about a dog?”

  “I wish we were seeing a man about a dog,” Daisy said wistfully. “Do you think there’s a black market for students who just want to pet a puppy for an hour?”

  “Definitely.” Susan nodded.

  “It’s a euphemism.” Esther tried again.

  “No, I think Daisy really does want to pet puppies . . .”

  “I do.”

  “I MEAN THAT WE’RE HERE TO SCORE SOME DRUGS.”

  There followed the sort of silence that only occurs when lots of people have heard something they shouldn’t, and Esther became acutely aware that the line of people waiting for the cash machine was peering at her from around the corner.

  One of them, a middle-aged lady with a crutch in one hand and a cash card in the other said, “Aren’t we all, pet? Aren’t we all . . .”

  The man in front of her nodded. “Came in here for some antibiotics, and now I’m waiting for a bloody X-ray.” Others in the queue murmured in sympathy. “I told them, it’s just a gammy foot. Google it, mate. All I need is a bit of penicillin.”

  Next to her, Esther felt Susan tense, but with everyone distracted by comparing and contrasting Google diagnoses with the treatment they were waiting for, it was the perfect time for them to edge deeper into the shadows. As they did, an indistinct form emerged from behind one of the bins.

  “Ptolemy,” the figure said.

  “Walters.”

  Their dealer was female, medium height, wearing office-style civilian clothing rather than the scrubs Esther had been expecting. Maybe thirty? As far as Esther was concerned, there were only five ages of human: child, her age, thirty, parent age, ghost.

  “You got the goods?” Walters asked, and from the capacious pocket of her cable-knit cardigan, Susan produced a handful of small syringes still in their sealed bags.

  Esther’s eyes widened in horror as S
usan exchanged syringes for a single slim foil pack of pills. Before she had a chance to protest, to fling herself between the two and prevent Susan from enabling this poor woman’s addiction, the deal was done, and Walters was gone.

  “Here you go.” Susan pressed a blister pack into Esther’s palm. Had it really been worth Susan jeopardizing her degree for this? Worth another woman’s good health?

  “Susan,” Esther croaked. “Did you just aid and abet Walters’s next heroin session?”

  Daisy gasped in alarm. “Susan!”

  “What are you going on about?”

  “The syringes . . .” Esther mimed rolling her sleeve up and injecting something, eyes rolling back for effect.

  Her charade was met with a burst of laughter. “Penny Walters? A junkie? She volunteers at a hedgehog rescue center. They use syringes for feeding the babies.”

  “But the pills . . .”

  Susan clamped a hand on each of her friends’ shoulders, steering them toward the entrance to the medical school.

  “I put a call out on the phase 1 group chat asking if anyone else used Microgynon 30 and if I could have a pack. It’s not been filched from Family Planning or anything.”

  “Do you have any more of those syringes?” Daisy asked. “They might be handy for Baby Gordon.”

  The medical school canteen had the same whiff of industrialized catering about it as the dining hall in Catterick Hall, but Susan assured them the food was better—she was positively evangelical about the potato wedges.

  “So . . . better than halls, then?” Esther teased.

  “Believe me, there’s no way I’d be able to eat that crap for three meals a day. I’d make a sandwich or something.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Esther said with complete conviction. “You’d find some unsuspecting sap and steal their lunch instead.”