I kind of want to say something about it to Tom – the whole nasty-taste-in-your-mouth-about-lying-to-nice-people thing. But… I’m not sure what to say. Because, while for two people who’ve only known each other for eight days we’ve got to know each other quite well, we alsohaveonly known each other for eight days.
Also, right now, I have a big immediate problem, which is going to start to cause me serious short-term problems as soon as we get off this lawn: I havereallybad blisters from the tennis shoes.
We get to the edge of the lawn and I stop.
Tom carries on walking for a few paces and then turns round.
He looks at where I’m holding my sandals dangling from my left hand and after a moment asks, ‘Should you put your shoes on?’
‘I should have mentioned it before we left, sorry.’ The thing is, I didn’t want to take Tom away from the others for a private conversation, and I also didn’t want to upset his mother by saying in front of her that she’s basically maimed me for the rest of the day. ‘I can’t wear them. I got blisters from the tennis shoes and the front straps of my sandals cut exactly across them and when I tried to put them on before, it was searing agony. And that is not an exaggeration.’
‘Plasters?’
‘Searing agonywithplasters.’
‘Erm.’ He stares at me. ‘It’s a long way to walk in searing agony. And it’s also a long way to walk barefoot.’
I nod.
‘Piggyback,’ Tom declares a second later.
I shake my head. ‘That is not practical.’
‘I’ve given piggybacks to large men over extended distances. I can definitely carry you to the station.’
‘Okay, I can see that you might be able to. But it’s too undignified.’
‘What is both practicalanddignified, though?’
‘Not sure. I feel like theremustbe options. Like borrowing a pair of flip-flops. But I didn’t want to mention it in front of your mum because I didn’t want to make her feel bad about the blisters.’
‘Flip-flops are a brilliant idea. Back in a minute.’ Tom’s already striding back along the side of the house.
I sit down on the grass to wait. It’s quite nice being here by myself actually, a nice rest from the weirdness of all the pretending.
‘No flip-flops, would you believe it,’ Tom says quite a few minutes later, his deep voice coming round the corner before he does. ‘So we have two options. I know which one I think’s better.’
‘What are the options? Oh!’ I see that he’s pulling a mid-sized child’s fairly ancient scooter, clearly from the early days of ubiquitous scootering, because it has quite a strange shape and three wheels, but is far taller than you would expect a three-wheeled toddler-style scooter to be. ‘Yep, that could maybe work.’ No, it bloody could not actually. ‘But my other foot would still be bare and on the pavement.’
‘Both feet on the scooter and I pull you. And then a piggyback up and down steps.’
‘Really?’ No. ‘What’s the other option?’
‘Libby and her husband Marc are actually driving to Marc’s parents’ house in Surrey this evening, and they’re happy to go through London and drop us on the way.’
I think about that one for a second. That’s a really long time with Tom’s sister, and she seemed quite keen to question me during the barbecue. Plus, we’ve done a lot of tacit lying already to a lot of people that Tom’s close to and I know how I feel about that: not good.
‘What do you think about that?’ I ask.
‘Probably wouldn’tchooseto do it if we had other options. What about an Uber?’
I shake my head. ‘That would costsomuch. I mean you could practically pay someone to create an AI fake girlfriend for you for that kind of money.’
‘Scooter then?’
‘Surelythere’s a better solution.’ I’m not three years old. I can’t be pulled around on a scooter. We could bump into my neighbours at the end of the journey; far too embarrassing. I wrack my brain, before suddenly shouting, ‘Wellies!’ I can’t believe I didn’t think of them before. ‘Maybe a size too big padded out with tissues.’
‘Ofcourse.’ Tom looks pretty relieved; his face has broken into a wide smile. ‘What size?’
