Page 19 of Dear Daisy

I’ve been on the move a lot lately. Getting some fresh ideas, fresh perspectives. After The Book was such an unexpected hit (none of us saw that coming; it was destined to be niche at best . . .) there’s been an influx of manuscripts on similar subjects, a lot of people trying to cash in. Some good, some bad. But I needed to get away for a while, from the office, from London. From the questions, everyone chasing the follow-up, chasing me, chasing her.

My personal life took a fall. Amazing woman, terrific writer, it’s like she sees the gaps in a story, she’s fascinated not just with people but with what makes them who they are and I reckon that’s why the book was such a success. She gets into those nooks and crannies of personality and jemmies them open so that anyone could see what makes people tick. Now she’s on with another and I should be involved. But I ruined it.

Should have handled it differently. Should have been . . . what, more sensitive? If I were any more sensitive I’d be talking to the other bloody side, and sometimes, you know, sensitivity isn’t enough. Sometimes there has to come a bottom line. I gave her mine. And she stood there on that bridge that night, all brown eyes burning through me and hair in the wind like Medusa and her crazy snakes and she blew me out. Just ended everything I thought we were working towards.

I offered to help her, offered everything I had to make it better but, in the end, she chose the life she’d already made. A narrow, broken path that’s never going to get anywhere, just going to pull her deeper and deeper into something dark.

I wish it hadn’t gone that way.

‘Win?’

‘Hey, Daze. You just read Dan’s blog?’

‘You were right.’ Daisy sounded upset. ‘He’s completely rewritten his version of history, hasn’t he? Bastard.’

My sister rarely got upset, at least, not like this. She was, for all her artistic temperament and flair and really weird clothes, much more equable than me. If anything was going to get thrown during an argument, it was always me doing the hurling and her ducking.

‘He’s putting it all down to me. I notice there’s no mention made of the ultimatum. He’s making it sound as though I’m something to be pitied, and for what? Not ending up with him?’ I was finding the anger useful, it pushed all the other feelings away.

‘We’ve got each other though, Win. He tried, but he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t keep us apart, so we won in the end.’ Daisy was calmer now. ‘We just have to remember that.’

‘And forget about him? You agree with me now, that I keep as far away from Dan Bekener as I can? I’m relieved about that, I thought you were going to nag me to ring him or something.’ The unknotting of my muscles told me how relieved I really was. There had been that tiny hint of dissention between my sister and I lately, whenever we’d spoken there’d been that little breath of blame in everything she’d said. As if my talking to Dan would have resolved something. ‘Daze, he wanted you out of my life! No amount of talking was going to change that, you know what he’s like.’

‘Single-minded. Determined.’

‘Yes.’

‘Sexy as all get out?’ She sounded as though she was smiling now.

‘There was that too, of course.’ I smiled back. ‘But being more attractive than a softly-melting bar of Galaxy on a no-carbs day doesn’t mean he’s not as mad as a badger, does it?’

Now she laughed. ‘Why are you always so totes logical?’

‘Because I’m the oldest, and don’t you forget it.’

That’s better. When Daisy had gone, I could properly appreciate the lifting of my spirits, the extra bit of brightness in the day. You can’t fall out with Daisy, not over this. We need each other, that’s what Dan doesn’t get. He thought it would be a simple thing — you never speak to your sister again and that would be it. Boom. Plain sailing. But he never got the ‘twin’ thing, the fact that we spent nine months together, jostling for space in the womb, two people who came from one conception, one act, how could we ever be separate? Even when she’s far away and you’re here, we’re still feeling one another in some stupid, semi-mystical way, and that, Mr Bekener, is forever. When you and your fancy drainpipe jeans and your hard-man boots and your chaos-symbol tattoo have vanished into nothingness, we will still be together, Daisy and me.

So shove that up your red-pen comments and your track changes.

* * *

On Monday I found myself struggling to write, with one eye on the clock. I could feel the ideas, almost taste them; they were there, hanging in the air in front of me. But whenever I tried to pull them into existence with my keyboard they seemed to vanish, puffing into the air as though they’d always been ghosts. As though I was trying to make the unreal real and just couldn’t do it, just couldn’t do justice to the beauty and the shape of them, like trying to nail clouds onto paper using only the power of the apostrophe.

Eventually, at three, I packed up. I could no longer ignore the itchy feeling telling me that I’d only got another thirty minutes, even though the distance between the churchyard, where I was working, and the school could have been covered in infinitely less time, by someone with only half the number of limbs I possessed. Is this how Alex feels all the time? Is this what it’s like to be a parent, this constant rule of the clock?

I wandered up to the school alongside a drift of mothers, some pushing buggies, some walking in little knots and clusters. Almost every single one looked me over and dismissed me, which gave me a momentary desire to snarl, until I realised that I was wearing jogging bottoms with my recently-purchased anorak over the top, and looked less like a massively successful author than the kind of unfortunate who shouts at cars. Maybe you should have got dressed properly? These other women all have full make-up on, fading summer tans and designer flip-flops, you look as though you just got off The Jeremy Kyle Show.

I hung back to let the School Gate Massive have the space they clearly wanted. Lurked around in the newsagents for a while, bought a packet of little toffee chews for Scarlet and read Your Dog magazine until I heard the raised voices from the direction of the school, and then wandered down.

This time Scarlet was standing inside the building with a man. He had ‘Head Teacher’ written all over him, from the thinning hair to the ever-so-slightly askew tie. They were waiting for the playground to clear, and as soon as the final drifts of children had been swept up by parents, or run off together towards the park, he approached the doors. But before he had a chance to usher Scarlet out, Lucy Charlton appeared in her floppy smock and I could see their lips moving behind the glass as they launched into a conversation. They had the unnaturally cheery expressions that told me they were talking about Scarlet without wanting her to know. She was gripping Light Bulb by his stick so hard that his floppy corduroy ears were almost rigid, whilst in her other hand a vivid green nylon book-bag trailed to the floor, and she was scuffing her toes along the corridor lino in a ‘bored and wanting to go home’ way.

The Head eventually made the sort of face that goes along with the words ‘if you must’ and surrendered Scarlet, shuffling off into some inner reach of offices, and Lucy opened the door to launch Scarlet out into the world, floppy-headed hobby horse first.

‘Winter!’ Scarlet was clearly relieved to see me. There was a red streak across her face, cheekbone to cheekbone and one grubby sock was flapping as though the elastic had given up the ghost. ‘Can we get an ice cream again?’ She seemed cheerful enough, if a little less keen to gallop off down the road than usual.

‘Miss Gregory?’ Lucy hooked a couple of strands of her blondish hair behind an ear. ‘Could I have a quick word, please?’

I looked from her to Scarlet. ‘But I’m not . . . I mean, I’m only picking her up as a favour.’

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