Page 28 of Sad Girl Hours
Nell has a physical, tangible condition. Someone examined her and made a note on a chart – no decent person would ever reject her for that, for something she can’t help.
I take a second and then put on that perfect smile, the one I practised in the mirror for weeks before uni started last year, and say, “Thanks! I appreciate that.”
Nell’s silent for a second before saying slowly, “You’re welcome. You know … if there ever is—”
“Ah,” I interrupt as we come to a stop in front of a wall of maize. “Dead end.”
We retrace our steps and I get my phone out to film a few bits, partly because I need to, and partly because I hope it distracts Nell. When I point it at her and say, “Say hi, Nell!” she responds with, “Hi, Nell,” and an awkward wave. She’s not the most natural person in front of the camera and, once again, I feel guilty that she’s doing all this for me.
Half an hour and many more dead ends later, it doesn’t feel like we’re getting any closer to the centre. It’s hard to tell, given that we can only see maize and the October sky looming far above us, but I’m sure we’ve not taken enough turns inwards to be anywhere near the middle.
“How much longer do you think it’ll take?” I ask.
Nell shrugs. “Who’s to say? Though it does seem like the maze world record may be slipping out of our grasp, worse luck.”
“If it’s too much longer, do you think we should—”
“NO.” Nell crosses her arms tightly across her chest. “No, I do not. We will not be opening the envelopes. Not for a long time, not ever.”
I smile, despite my legs beginning to ache from standing for quite so long. “OK. If you insist.”
“I do.”
Chapter Twelve
Saffron
Anotherhalf an hour later and I’m tempted to ask again, but I remember Nell’s resolute expression and daren’t broach the topic a second time. Instead, I get my phone out to film some more clips. “We are now entering our second hour in the maze.”
“If you don’t hear from us again, assume we’ve been eaten by the minotaur,” Nell adds off camera.
“I don’t think we’re going to be eaten by a mythical creature from an ancient Greek story—”
“You never know.”
“That is true, you don’t. Actually –” I slide the camera up between the rows of maize towards the slowly darkening sky – “speaking of what you don’t know, the ancient Greeks had some really interesting ideas about astronomy. They observed that there were two kinds of stars – fixed stars and wandering stars. What they called fixed stars are the stars that we can see in the sky today. What they called wandering stars – which were stars that moved around in the night sky, separate from the others that only moved together slowly round the earth – were what we now know are planets, each with their own orbit.
“They also believed that there were two layers in what they thought was the ‘sphere of the universe’. An inner terrestrial level that went up to the orbit of the moon and was full of things like air, water and fire, and an outer celestial one where all the stars were and that was full of ‘heaven’.”
“That’s so cool,” Nell says. “I’d quite like to reach the inner terrestrial level of this maze if at all possible.”
“We could always…”
“NO. Not yet,” she replies, while I laugh and explain the envelope debacle to the future audience. “Not until we see the minotaur.”
“I think we’ve been here before,” I say (just to Nell) fifteen minutes later as we walk round a circle cut out of the maize and have to come back the way we came. Again.
Nell sighs. “I think you’re correct. Right or left?”
“I think right. We went left last time.”
Somehow, though, we come to what looks like an identical circle in the maize.
“No…” Nell storms round it in disbelief. “HOW ARE WE BACK HERE AGAIN? We literally went in the opposite direction.” She comes over to me and twists her head round to look at my watch. “We’ve been in here for an hour and a half.”
“We have.”
“That’s as long as most movies. We could have watched and been delighted by almost the entirety of any of the excellent Paddington movies in the time it’s taken us to get approximately nowhere in this godforsaken maze.”
