Page 84 of Sad Girl Hours
“No. Well, sometimes. But no, I’ve made sure to have some in my bag any time I go out with you ever since the day in the maze when you asked me for a giant pretzel. Giant pretzels tend to go mouldy with prolonged tote-bag exposure, but these are fine.”
The blinking’s back. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Um. No?”
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done. You know that, right?”
A smile tugs up my face. “You arranged a full bucket list of activities to try to make me love autumn and winter because you knew they made me sad. I think that beats a bag of pretzels.”
“Technically, I didn’t know that you had seasonal affective disorder at the time. I just thought you didn’t particularly enjoy those seasons. I wasn’t knowingly trying to make you romanticise your way out of a legit mental illness with hot chocolate and scavenger hunts.”
I let out a laugh. “Yeah, when you put it like that. See, I knew it wasn’t going to work and, like,cure me, or whatever. But I still wanted to do it because I wanted you to have an excuse to do the things you like.”
“You’re so annoying. You agreed to let mehelp you–” she puts the words in quotation marks – “only as a way to help me. Have you ever done anything for yourself, like, ever?”
I stop and think about it. “I came home with you?”
Nell grins. “True. And definitely a good start. But I think you should keep doing it. At least one thing a day that you do just for yourself.”
“Another scheme, Nell. Really?” I joke, and am rewarded with her laugh. “But maybe that’s not a bad plan. If I agree, will you shut up and eat some pretzels?” I add, noticing her closing her eyes, swaying forward like she’s still dizzy.
“I will eat some pretzels because the salt will make me feel less dizzy. Butyoushould agree because it’s something good to try foryou, not because it will get me to eat them.”
Ah.“I’m not very good at this, am I?” I concede.
“No. You’re not.”
Chapter Forty-one
Saffron
A couple of minutes of crunching later and Nell’s feeling well enough to keep going. We carry on walking until we come to a kissing gate at the edge of a field. Nell pushes it open and then holds it for me, neither of us commenting on the significance of what we’ve just passed through.
“All right,” Nell says as we walk up a sharp incline to the very top of the hill, on which two crumbling stone walls are sitting. “Don’t say I never take you anywhere exciting – welcome to our village castle.”
I look around a little. “Where?”
“Here,” Nell says. “This is it.”
“These … walls?”
“Listen, I didn’t say it was a good castle. Just that, purportedly, this was once a castle. In medieval times. Now, I will admit, it’s just a couple of stone walls that are rapidly losing their ‘wall’ status and rapidly gaining their ‘pile of rocks’ one.”
“You can really feel the history,” I say. “I’m getting such a good sense of what life must have been like back then.”
“Very funny.” Her eyes dance as she turns round. “Luckilythisis the main event really. Not our embarrassing attempt at not being invaded.”
“What?” I ask but, as I turn round, I realise.
Far beneath us lies the village, tucked between expanses of green fields and snow-capped hills. The sky above is blotted withpink over all the gold, the sun teasing the horizon of hills as it slowly nears.
It’s beautiful.
I turn to say this to Nell but she’s already watching me with an expression that tells me my thoughts are perfectly clear to her.
“Worth the hike?”
“Definitely,” I say. “Thank you for bringing me up here.”
