Page 63 of Dear Daisy

An inclination of the head and a half-smile. A hand came out of his pocket and touched my sleeve, curved over my arm until his fingers pressed against the flesh of my wrist. ‘I handled it all wrong, Win. My fault, couldn’t see the wood for the fire, should have hung around and tried to make it better but all I could see . . . all I could see was you in that circle of hell that you’d built for yourself. I wanted to get in there with you, help you to tear it down but you thought you were happy in there, y’know?’

The fog was thickening now, isolating us in a sea of white. ‘I thought I could keep her,’ I said, quietly, and the mist damped my words still further, so it sounded as though I was talking into a vacuum.

‘I know.’ His hand retracted and lost itself somewhere back in a pocket.

Silence came down with the extra mist until the air looked like a pint of milk in water and sounded dead. ‘And you know I’m staying in Great Leys? There’s nothing back here for me, Dan.’

A nod. ‘And you and Alex are . . .’

A snort that I couldn’t help. ‘No, Alex and Lucy are an item. Such an item, in fact, that Scarlet keeps telling everyone they’re getting married, but I think that’s a way off yet. No. He’s my friend, Dan, that’s all.’

‘Ah. Okay. Yeah, got it.’ Some more silent staring at boots.

‘Scarlet’s had her first riding lesson, I’ve given a talk at the school and I’m opening the Great Leys Christmas Fayre next week. With a “y”, Margaret was most insistent about that, something to do with standards, I think.’

‘Uh huh.’ A long fingered hand flicked beads of moisture off the coat. ‘And you’re . . . uh . . . I mean . . . I’m guessing you’re done with the writing about dead people now, yeah? Worked it out of your system, and all.’

I’d never seen Dan so uncomfortable before. His body language gave nothing away, because Dan was always as edgy as a cat introduced to a puppy, but his refusal to meet my eye told me that he didn’t want me to see how he was feeling. I didn’t need to look in his face to know that he was working on taking the rejection as stoically as he could.

‘Well, I’m not going back into writing press releases, I know that much.’

He glanced quickly at me, out of the corner of his eye. Jerked his head and water flicked onto the shoulders of his coat like diamond dandruff. ‘Glad you’re getting sorted then. No, really, I mean it. Glad you . . .’ His voice tailed off into gruffness; he cleared his throat but didn’t carry on talking, just shuffled his feet and hunched his shoulders up until it looked as though his coat was trying to swallow him. His elbows jutted, his hands were evidently digging so deep into the pockets that his fingers must have been gripping at his thighs.

I expected him to stand up then. To shrug, say goodbye and walk off like a shadow through the fog. But he didn’t.

‘You don’t have to stay, Dan.’ My voice sounded small.

Now he looked at me properly. Eyes like a night sky, carrying the weight of a universe of longing, met mine. ‘Yeah, I do. You sent me that email. You asked me to come here today. And whatever you are to me, whatever I was to you, you shouldn’t be here alone.’

Despite the location, despite the occasion, I felt something inside me pull open. As though the sun came through the fog and showed the possibility of summer, a crack in the relentless unhappiness that I’d felt for the last five years began to widen. He came back for me. I blew him out on the bridge, and he came back, I rejected him in the hospital, and here he is again. Daniel. Knowing what happened, knowing why I did it, and yet still here. Maybe it’s time to choose again, Winter.

I looked away through the mist. ‘You made me choose, Dan,’ I said, quietly. ‘You should never have made me choose.’

His look was deep now, intense, as though he was trying to read behind my words. ‘I know. I was wrong. But you were going to tear yourself apart, and I couldn’t stand by and watch that happen.’ He stood up suddenly. ‘I thought it would be me, y’see.’ And now he turned, sweeping a great circle, hunching himself against the weather. ‘I thought you would choose me.’ His voice was so quiet now that the words were part of the mist.

It was time to decide again, and now I knew the right decision to make. ‘I love you, Dan.’ I spoke to his back. To the stiff-collared greatcoat of flecked black and grey wool, to the fall of his hair over the neckline, to the muddied heels of his boots. ‘I wanted to tell you that night on the bridge. I wanted to say I love you, I wanted to say help me, but I couldn’t, you made me choose and then you were gone.’

He moved slowly, turning to face me. He extended one arm and the wrist fell bare, his chaos tattoo dark against that pale skin, a complicated fractal of a mark that summed Daniel up in a series of lines and discs. ‘And is it me now?’ His hand touched my cheek and he bent so that the uncertainty in his words hung in the condensation that his breath left on my hair.

I looked into his solemn face, those big dark eyes temporarily without their mischief and steadily gazing into mine. ‘Yes, Dan. It’s you.’

And now he drew me up, through the frosted air, until our lips touched. This kiss wiped out the memory of the last kiss, the one I had thought was goodbye. In fact, it didn’t just wipe it out, it tore it up and burned it then stamped on the ashes. He tasted of caramel and vanilla and the hands that held me were so much warmer than the day that it felt as though he’d stepped straight through from hell — but an interesting hell that was more pandemonium than any satanic realm. He blew out a sigh. ‘Finally. Finally I can stop feeling like a steaming great pile of shit.’ Black eyes flicked to my face and then away again, like nervous ravens. ‘Because it’s you, Win, like I said in the hospital. It’s you, it’s always been you since that day in the pub when you came flying in like some kind of possessed creature, all hair and legs and mad energy, and I looked up from my pint and it was kinda, “oh, there you are, love of my life, I’ve been waiting forever for you to turn up”.’

‘Overdramatic, even for you, Mr Bekener.’

A wicked smile that pulled the corners of his lips up and widened his eyes. He looked like an embodiment of the weather, ethereal, never still . . . but not cold. No. Not now. There was a heat in his grin that made my fingers tingle. ‘True though, love. You and me, can it be you and me again? Can we do it?’

Now it was my turn to pull him in close. To let him see the new mischief that I could feel spark in my eyes. ‘Oh, I should think so,’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind moving to Great Leys and living next door to Margaret and the ocular funfair that is her wardrobe.’

‘Already put the feelers out for work up that way.’ Dan gave a small smile. ‘And Daisy?’ He ran a finger over my mouth, almost wonderingly.

‘Wanted me to be happy, Dan. That’s all.’ And I raised myself up and kissed him this time.

When our mouths finally parted, he rested his forearms on my shoulders, linked his hands behind my head and winked. ‘Okay!’ Then he spun so that we were facing the same way through the thickening air and he had one arm wrapped around me. ‘Ready?’

‘I think so.’

And together we crossed the grass to the lone marker. It wore its fringe of grass lightly, almost stylishly, compared to the stones around it and its gold lettering, undimmed by five years of exposure to weathering, shone like a beacon.

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