Page 30 of Dear Daisy

Nobody else seemed to notice. No one could feel that cooling of the air as though a savage and very local climate change was taking place, or smell that sulphurous burning that pricked my nostrils, which was probably just whatever fancy brand of cologne Dan had chosen to wear but smelled to me like something satanic. They all just kept chatting among themselves, for all the world as though I wasn’t slowly being dragged to hell.

Dan nodded. There was a tautness to him; I wondered if it had always been there. A wary set to his muscles, even in his face. His eyes seemed larger, as though he was shocked by something, his narrow face tired under the stubble. ‘I just wanted to . . .’ his voice lowered even further, syllables dropping under his mild Lincolnshire accent. He must have been suffering some kind of trauma because he usually covered those giveaway vowel sounds with an assumed London jauntiness, he hated people thinking he was from some rural backwater, even though he was. ‘I needed to see that you were all right.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ I answered, equally quietly. There were several directions this conversation could have gone in, and I didn’t want most of them to be overheard. My heart had steadied now that we were actually talking, although there was a stripe of sweat down my spine that told me I wasn’t nearly as calm as my autonomic nervous system would have me believe.

‘With what happened. The way we split, the way you were, I was worried. And you went off without telling anyone at Shy Owl where you were going.’ He raised a hand as though in an awkwardly unilateral shrug. ‘We’ve got money invested in you and the new book, so I needed to know that you were working.’

‘You didn’t have to come in person,’ I said around a smile. At least, my mouth was giving smiling its best shot. I had the feeling that my eyes were sucking any trace of humour from my expression.

‘You’ve changed your phone number. I tried emailing but you didn’t answer. You weren’t giving much away on Twitter or Facebook, so I rang your mum. She said you’d left France and gone to Yorkshire, I thought that was a bit of a desperate move, so I decided I ought to come up and make sure you . . .’ he tailed off. Margaret was standing poised by the urn with a slightly suspicious look on her face, watching us talking. ‘That’s my landlady. Does she have some kind of allergy?’

‘It’s her dress.’

‘Bizarre.’ Dan looked down at his feet. His boots were scuffed and muddied around the soles. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said, randomly.

His eyes looked almost bruised, their normal darkness shaded with insomnia as though he was wearing make-up and when he looked down like that I could see how hollow his cheeks were. I will not feel sorry for him. I know how he operates.

‘You look tired,’ and I was surprised, no, appalled, to hear how gentle my voice sounded. His eyes flicked up as though I’d scared him.

‘I should go.’

‘Yes.’

We both stood and looked at one another. ‘And the book is going well? I can tell them that much, that you’re on for the deadline?’

I averted my eyes. ‘It’s okay.’

His personality seemed to slip, as though the Dan I’d known before was under tight restraint, but still in there. ‘Come on, kiddo, it’s doing your head in, isn’t it?’

No! No, Winter, don’t you dare, don’t give him so much as a sniff of your insecurity. He’ll take it and use it to jemmy your life wide open again. ‘It’s got a bit . . . stuck.’ You idiot.

He took a cup of tea from the table. There were new rings on his fingers, a plain silver band replaced the Celtic knot I’d bought him and the thought that his life had changed, that things had happened, he’d bought things, without me knowing, made an accordion of my lungs.

‘We need that book, Winter,’ he said, his voice sliding underneath the warm-air rise of the conversations around us. ‘Yeah, you’re okay living on the back of Book of the Dead, but we’re not doing so well at the moment. And I need . . .’ another tiny shrug, ‘I need the work.’

Not the money. It wasn’t money that Dan prized, it was the feeling of being needed, of putting his head down and grafting to put a book together. ‘You could go freelance?’

Now those eyes were on me. In contrast to Alex’s calm grey eyes, Dan’s looked like the eyes of a mischievous child. He’d always had eyes that seemed to contain a gateway to another, far more chaotic, universe, as though a wild magic was barely kept in check within his body. ‘Yeah, well.’ That half-shrug again and a tilt of the head. ‘Maybe I’m losing the edge there.’ He sipped at the tea, but half-heartedly, and then put the cup down. Came in so close that I could smell a kind of frost-chill on him. ‘I want this work. This book.’

I shuffled a hurried step back. ‘Like I said, things are fine. Go back to London, Dan.’

On the far side of the room, Margaret, deep in conversation with the elderly couple, glanced over and frowned. I fixed a smile on my face and tried to look as though I was having a fun chat with a fan. ‘I just need to sort a few things out and it will all go smoothly from there.’

‘Yeah, right.’ To my surprise he took my cup and put it down next to his. ‘Let me help you.’

My adrenal glands nearly burned their way through my dress. ‘I don’t need your help.’

‘You said that before.’

‘And I meant it then too.’

‘But . . .’ Then he sighed and folded the coat around himself again. The stiff fabric made an aching sound. ‘I’m not just going away, you know that, don’t you? I can’t come all this way and then turn round, head back to London and say “oh yeah, she’s cool, not writing anything mind, but I’m sure it’ll come good in the end”. Not to a bunch of guys who are pretty much existing on the money from the last book and pennies they find in the street. They need assurances, we all need assurances, that you’re coming in on time with this one and that it’s going to be worth the time and effort, right?’

I bridled. ‘I know what I’m doing!’ It came out far louder than I’d intended, and there was a lull in the conversation as a roomful of faces turned our way and I had to do the ‘fun smile’ again for a few moments until they lost interest. ‘I said, I don’t need your help, Daniel.’

Spread hands, like surrender, but I knew him better than that. ‘Can’t stop me hanging around though, can you? Just keeping an eye, cracking the old whip.’

I pursed my lips at him and tried to think of something cutting to say. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to tell Daisy,’ I finally said and watched him freeze up, pulling his collar to his ears.

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