Page 21 of Dear Daisy

‘No, but I had detention every playtime for half a term. There’s nothing you can do, Win. I know you like her and you’re drooling after him, but—’

‘Hey, who’s drooling? No drooling. Absolutely none. He’s a bit tasty, that’s all. And he’s invited me to dinner tonight.’

A pause. ‘Are you taking your toothbrush?’

I stopped to consider. Did I want to sleep with Alex? That well-muscled body promised a good time but . . . but what? He’s sexy, he’s tactile, more importantly he’s available, and we all know how rare nice, straight, good-looking men are once you’re over the age of twenty-five, so why is there any hint of a but? ‘It’s a bit soon. We’ve not known each other that long yet.’

Daisy snorted. ‘Remember, when you were nineteen, that bloke on the train? And Johan, on the Uni exchange programme, didn’t you sleep with him within about ten minutes of meeting him?’

‘Well, yes, but . . .’

‘You’re still comparing every man to Dan, aren’t you?’

‘Daisy, you need to stop bringing Dan into every conversation that we have. I am so over him, if I was any more over him I’d be in orbit, all right? Please, can we stop mentioning him, or even thinking about him, yes?’

Daisy made a rude noise, and was gone. I went back to trying to put into words the sudden, and rather ignominious, end of a chap buried in one of the churchyards up on the moors who’d been killed by a herd of sheep. Despite his family’s clearly not having much money, he had a dramatic stone, so italicised and decorated that the details were hard to read, and topped, rather thoughtlessly I thought, by a ram’s head.

Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB

@WinterGAuthor Please just let me know that you’re okay.

WinterGregory @WinterGAuthor

@EditorDanB I’m working.

Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB

@WinterGAuthor That’s fine. It’s good, I’m glad.

I waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. All right, so maybe he was just checking on his investment, I’d had quite an advance for this book and a deadline of Christmas, any failure to hit it was going to make Dan look daft in front of the entire publishing community. Particularly when he’d taken such a huge gamble on me when I’d submitted Book of the Dead, which I knew was fun and different and everything but I’d never foreseen it being a huge hit. I’d written it when I’d come into some money, Mum and Dad’s split and divorce and subsequent relocation to different continents having released some family cash and I’d got sick of my research job. The idea for Book of the Dead had come to me when I’d been standing in a graveyard, wondering about some of the people buried there and . . . well, that was pretty much it.

And Dan had seen it too. Cajoled and persuaded the publishing company he worked for to make an offer and the rest was publishing history. And now we both had the pressure on us, follow that up with something equally spectacular or go down as the one hit wonder a lot of the critics supposed me to be, and the unpredictable, unconventional risk taker everyone said Dan was. But it hadn’t mattered when we were together. We’d just giggled at the thought of being a flash in the pan. Book of the Dead had made money for me, for the company, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to write another one. But Dan came from a family where no one ever stopped. His father had dropped dead at his printing works, his mother still worked with special needs children, all his siblings had stepped into employment straight from school or university and none of them had ever, as far as I could tell, even taken a day off hungover in their lives. The government could have used them on posters. So, he’d talked me into writing another book, then another, and we’d keep going until . . .

Until I couldn’t do it any more. Shit.

I changed out of my writing clothes and into a respectable blue shift dress and heels. It felt strange not having trousers on. The sturdy breeze which swept down from the moors and scoured through the little town curled around my bare ankles like the ghosts of a thousand affectionate cats. I’d pinned my hair up, but London hairdos were not equal to Yorkshire wind and by the time I got to the Old Mill I had the feeling that I looked a bit pre-rumpled. Not that I was expecting Alex to rumple me, but I did look as though I might have had a tuppenny tumble in the bus shelter on my way over, which wasn’t quite the sophisticated look I was going for.

‘Hello, W-Winter.’ Alex met me at the door. The lights inside were turned down so that the whole building seemed to glow softly, the seasoned timber almost shone. ‘You l-look l-lovely.’

‘Well, since all the local females seem to wear designer stuff just to get their kids from school, I thought I’d better make an effort. Besides, turning up in an anorak and jeans would have been ungrateful.’ I slipped out of my London coat, beautifully shaped and fitted but with only two front buttons, which had let the wind in and flapped like a turbine all the way here.

‘They’re all v-very nice w-women really,’ he said, turning to lead the way through to the stairs up to the flat.

Yeah, if you’re a sexy single bloke with a come-to-bed physique and eyes like snowclouds. ‘Was Scarlet all right when she got home?’

Alex laid a finger to his lips and inclined his head, indicating, I thought, that Scarlet was probably sitting in her bedroom listening for any mention of her name. ‘I’ve m-made risotto,’ he said. ‘Or m-more precisely, the s-supermarket m-made it and I heated it u-up.’

‘Ah. Thought you said you could cook?’

Another one of his blinding smiles. ‘I was wr-wrong. Turns out it’s h-harder than it l-looks.’

‘What the hell do you and Scarlet eat, then?’ I handed my coat to Alex, who draped it carefully over the back of a chair. A proper, upholstered chair; the desire to ruin the spines of the nation was clearly his mother’s and didn’t run in the family. ‘Cereal and buns?’

‘Eight-y-year-old girls l-like b-breadcrumbs, b-batter and b-brown, anything else is d-disgusting, apparently. If it isn’t ed-edible as a result of twenty m-minutes at 180, then f-forget it.’

There was gentle overhead lighting in here too. The plain wooden flooring reflected the overhead bulbs but everything was dimmed and subtle — he probably wanted to disguise the dust and the sheer number of pony books. Up at the kitchen end of the room I could see a table, laid for two, thankfully no candles though. I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for that yet.

Alex peered, rather unnervingly, in through the oven door. ‘P-probably done, come and sit down.’

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