Miranda had gotten home, eventually, and had brought Oscar with her.
This meant she was subjected to questioning from Julia.
“Where have you been all day, and who is this?”
“It’s a very long story. This is my uh… friend, Oscar. He walked me home but he’s not feeling very well, and it’s kind of late so I said he could stay.”
Julia clearly didn’t buy it.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Is he high?”
“No!”
“He looks high.”
“Julia, he’s not high! He’s just… been kind of weird since we met this girl… it’s a really long story. And I just want to go to bed, okay?”
“Okay. He has to sleep downstairs though.”
“No! Look, I’m trustworthy, Julia, we’re not going to get up to anything. You know me. I just don’t want to leave him alone.”
“Fine, I’ll let you off. But never do this again, okay? And answer your phone in future; I was worried about you!”
“Okay. Night now, you soppy git. You should get to bed too,” Miranda advised as she pulled Oscar out of the room and up to her own, where the den had yet to be dismantled, and slipped between the covers without bothering to get changed.
And then it was moving.
-
“Where the fuck am I?” Oscar groaned as he woke, disturbing Miranda who lay besides him in the mess of blankets and cushions.
“Don’t swear,” she replied groggily, “and don’t shout.”
“Who are you? And why am I here?”
“My name is Miranda, remember? And you’re in my house. I brought you here last night because you were too out of it to tell me where you lived, let alone get yourself there.”
“Oh… had I been drinking?”
Miranda sat up then, so she could stare down at Oscar.
“Are you honestly saying that you don’t remember anything that happened yesterday?”
Oscar was silent for a moment. “I remember a storm. And I burnt my tongue… maybe I overdid it with the rum?”
“The storm was on Friday. It’s Sunday now.”
“What! How? How could I just lose a whole day?”
“I don’t know, Oscar. Yesterday was… odd. I think it’s best if you just go home now.”
“But… no, that’s not fair. I need to know what happened yesterday. And I don’t even know where I am. You have to help me.”
Miranda sighed. “Fine. I’ll help you. But let me go back to sleep for an hour.”
-
While Miranda slept, Oscar looked through her things.
Despite all the mess, her room seemed pretty sparse. The only things that were there in any great multitudes were books. They filled the two bookshelves then spilled over: building up in piles on her floor; on her bedside table; her desk and even her bed.
Oscar didn’t understand how it was possible to have so many books. He himself probably had about ten books that he’d actually read and liked. This girl seemed to have a couple hundred.
He wandered downstairs, where another girl was sleeping of the sofa. She looked just like Miranda, but smaller.
The whole house, like Miranda’s room, was sparsely decorated. It was very cream, and there were things that stood out in each room- peacock feathers here, mirrors there, paintings and photographs- but they were few, and far between. It was entirely unlike the bright quirkiness of his own house.
Miranda wandered down after about forty minutes, and clicked on the kettle.
“Tea?” she asked, seeming irritated with the world.
“Yes, please,” Oscar replied, helping himself to a seat at the kitchen table.
Miranda made the tea- quite slowly- and invited him to drink it the living room.
“Julia!” she exclaimed, incensed, when they got in there.
The girl on the sofa awoke with a start and a guilty expression marched itself on her face.
“Oh! Morning sweety-” she began, but was cut off. Miranda was on the rampage.
“Did you sleep down here last night? Why? And you didn’t eat. I know you didn’t, because there are no dishes in the sink, and I know you wouldn’t have done them- Right, that’s it, I’m making breakfast and you have to eat it-” she bustled out, leaving her tea untouched on the coffee table.
“What’s bitten her?” Julia wondered to herself.
-
Miranda made a huge breakfast. Oscar stared at it in awe.
Julia groaned. “I’m not even hungry,” she grumbled as Miranda took a plate and began filling it with liberal amounts of everything.
“Too bad,” Miranda replied, grimly.
“Why did you make so much? There are only three of us,” Julia protested as Miranda put the now laden plate down in her front of her sister with a clunk.
“Eat it all,” she ordered. “Otherwise you’ll never get fat.”
Oscar could only stare on, bewildered.
Miranda served up a plate for him too, giving him more than she had her sister. Oscar wasn’t quite sure how that was even possible.
He started with what he knew, taking a forkful of scrambled eggs and inserting it into his mouth.
Only when the egg hit his tongue did he realise that he was ravenous.
After that, he polished off the contents of his plate indiscriminately
Julia watched, amazed. Miranda nodded in approval.
When he went in for seconds, he asked what was what.
The tiny fried fish were jacks, the balls of fried dough were bakes and floaters, the yellowy substance that resembled scrambled eggs in appearance only was ackee.
“Where did you learn to cook like this?” he asked, marvelling at how the crispy shell of the floaters gave way to the light, airy, almost melt-in-your-mouth insides.
Miranda shrugged. “My parents. Aunt’s and Uncles. Julia, you’re not eating. I will take that drink away from you!”
Julia huffed and shovelled some more food into her mouth before throwing a resentful look in Miranda’s direction.
“If mum and dad were here-” she begun, but Miranda interrupted, saying:
“They would say the exact same thing as I did, so get on with it!”
There was no more talk after that.
-
“She hates having to get up in the mornings,” Julia explained while Miranda was in the shower. “Although she’s not usually that bad. She’ll get over it though; I wouldn’t worry. So. What did you two get up to yesterday? Miri dragged you in, half unconscious and refused to tell me anything.”
“To be honest with you, I don’t remember anything about yesterday. I was hoping Miranda would tell me,” Oscar replied, shamefaced.
“I see,” Julia said, her words clipped. Her mood, which had been light and playful, became cold and suspicious in that instant. “Were you drinking?”
Oscar remembered having asked Miranda that very same question, and her reaction to it, and shook his head, no. “I don’t think so. But I don’t know. The last thing I remember was going to bed on Friday night. Nothing else.”
Julia narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you sure you’d not been drinking?”
“Nope. Well, I put a little rum on my tongue on Friday night for a burn, but not that much. I mean, I don’t even remember getting up yesterday.”
Julia continued to eye Oscar sceptically. “So how do you know Miri anyway? I’ve never heard her mention an Oscar.”
Here Oscar coloured quite spectacularly. “Urm, well…” he looked down, away, “I don’t, really. That is- I woke up this morning on her floor and she told me off for swearing and that’s the first time that I’d seen her-” he stopped, thought, amended- “Rather, that’s the first time I remember seeing her. I guess she must know me, though.”
Oscar did not dare to look up from the light stain on the carpet, but the frosty silence made I abundantly clear that Julia was displeased.
However, Miranda came in before Julia could say anything, luckily for Oscar- and it really was very lucky indeed, because Miranda usually never gets ready in under an hour.
Julia was surprised enough to completely forget her train of thought.
“Oh, you’re ready already- is that my skirt?”
Miranda looked down before shaking her head. “No, it’s mine. You stole it from me. Oscar, let’s go.”
Julia pursed her lips, but said no more.
-
It was another perfect, sparkling day.
The light bounced off the red brick and white sills of the houses, and the blue of the sky made such a perfect backdrop to the world surrounding them that it seemed almost unreal.
“So,” Oscar said when it became clear that Miranda wasn’t going to say anything. “Yesterday…”
Miranda huffed. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Oscar looked across at her cagey frown and tightly folded arms, and came to his own conclusion. “Did we… uh…”
“Did we what? Well, spit it out!” Miranda snapped, impatiently. She had slept badly and woken up with a splitting headache. All she wanted to do was sit on her sofa with a cup of iced tea and watch Dave.
She did not want to have to drag herself halfway across London, and she did not want to explain the events of yesterday because she barely understood them herself.
“Did we erm… do anything?” Oscar stuttered out, his words forcing Miranda to a standstill.
“No! Like that? No, no, no! Of course not! Thank heavens. Yesterday was weird, but not that weird,” she said, beginning to walk once again.
Oscar wondered if he should be a little offended by how relieved Miranda was that they didn’t ‘do anything’, but decided that under the circumstances, he’s probably be relieved to.
“So what did happen then?” he asked instead.
“I don’t think you’ll believe me,” she said, seeming nervous now. She was certain he wouldn’t believed her: he hadn’t even believed what was happening while they were living it.
Oscar watched her for a second as she worried her lip with her teeth.
“Tell me anyway? Just… start at the start, yeah?”
Miranda nodded, but she didn’t say anything for a long time.
“Miranda?” Oscar prompted gently.
“Yes, yes. Well. I don’t know about you but I’d just been having a pretty normal day. Watched Top Gear and then decided to go for a tan in the garden-”
Here, Oliver gave her The Look. People always gave her The Look when she talked about tanning. What The Look said was: “But you’re…”
“Black, I know. Doesn’t mean I can’t acquire a healthy glow. Anyway. As you saw, my garden is very deck-y and wood panelled. But when I got outside, I was in this glade type thing, and you were there beside me.” She sucked in a breath, and looked over at Oscar to see how he was faring.
Not very well.
She sighed. “It only gets worse from there.”
-
They were on a bus.
Oscar didn’t have anything on him, so Miranda had to fork out two twenty for him to get on. Now, he looked at her.
He had not really looked at her before. Rather, if he had, he had forgotten.
She had her eyes shut, and her head leant against the side of the bus, cushioned by masses of barely-tame hair. Even sitting across from her, he could see the thickness of her lashes as they rested against her cheeks. She was very thin, although it was not in the same worrying way that her sister had been thin.
The aspect of her he found himself most drawn to were her lips. They were very plump. The more Oscar stared at the, the stranger they seemed, until he begun entertaining the idea that they weren’t really her lips at all.
He noticed that she bit them a lot, her teeth picking at the dry skin and till it changed from a dusky-brownish red to a stark and unnaturally pale yellow. Over the course of their journey, her lips had given over being dry in favour of becoming very pink and sore looking.
She had allowed herself to be lulled to sleep by the warmth of the day and of the engine that thrummed behind her seat. Oscar was glad of this; he needed time to think over the matter.
His head was telling him that she was a con artist looking for an easy target, having drugged him and made up some madcap story about yesterday’s events. But then what was she getting out of it? He didn’t have any money, and when he’d borrowed her phone to call home that morning, his mum had scolded him for going out without taking his phone or leaving any sort of explanatory note. So she hadn’t stolen from him.
In fact, she was paying for him to get home. And she had cooked for him.
So that left the possibility that she was telling the truth.
Oscar sighed and, as was his wont, decided to worry about it later.
-
“Umm, thanks,” Oscar said once she got him into safe territory. “Let me take your number- so that I can pay you back.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine, it’s only five quid,” Miranda replied. She sounded tired.
“That’s a still a fair amount of money. And you’ve gone out of your way to help me. I’d feel awful if I couldn’t repay you.”
“Well, I don’t have any paper, and you don’t have your phone,” she pointed out, fairly.
“Then I’ll give you my number.”
Miranda made a fuss at this, but somehow Oscar extracted her phone from he and put his number into it. Then- just in case she was planning on never contacting him again, he sent himself a quick text from her phone.
“I texted myself, so that I could save yor number,” he explained as he handed the phone back. “I hope that was okay.”
“It’s fine,” Miranda replied, clearly a little irritated. She had indeed been planning on not giving Oscar her number.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like him, although she wasn’t very sure that she did (-she couldn’t stand people who go all googly-eyed over a pretty face, having neither been googly-eyed herself nor having ever had anyone go all googly-eyed over her.)
The main reason she hadn’t wanted to give her number to Oscar was because she was scared he’d ask her yet more difficult questions about the day before.
“Thanks again for all the help and things,” he said, when it became clear that Miranda would say no more.
“No problem. Anyway, I should probably go now, you know? Otherwise Julia will get worried again…”
Oscar nodded. “Yes, of course. Um, well… bye.”
Oscar watched as she said bye, and as she slipped into the small crowd of people waiting for the next bus.
Then he turned and begun the walk home, feeling almost disappointed.
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