Page 12 of Dear Daisy

ElliottTravels @Tripsky02

@EditorDanB How’re you doing? Thought you were coming over all white picket fence on us?

Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB

@Tripsky02 Things went bizarre, mate.

Sam Turner @ComfortZone6

@EditorDanB @Tripsky02 Off anywhere nice?

Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB

@ComfortZone6 Just getting things sorted in my head. Finding things out, you know?

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Heading out for a bit

Sorry, Bethie, but I’ve got to take off for a while. I’ll be down to see you in a few weeks, so keep up the exercises like they told you, but I have to go north. Winter is . . . she’s on a deadline and she’s gone quiet on us.

I don’t like it. So I’m going to check it out, make sure she’s coming in on time with this book. Yeah, I want this one out, on the shelves but . . . I need to see her. Think you’re the only one who gets it, Bethie. Sounds stupid when I run it through my head, she hates me, wants me nowhere near her, so why the hell do I feel like this?

I do know. Course I do. You nailed it in your last email (although there were some cracking good voice-recog cock-ups, ‘that time wee ran around the garden?’ Cried laughing at that one). Last time I saw Winter, I walked away.

It hurt. Hurt so much. It was her choice to make, but maybe I could have handled it another way, been more understanding. Helped her see that what she has with Daisy is unhealthy, keeping people at arm’s length while she tells all her secrets to her sister when she could have . . . should have been telling them to me. But making her choose — yeah. Not my finest moment, but I couldn’t take being second best, not after the way we’d been together. Winter made me feel something, made me feel like I fitted in somewhere. You know our family, everyone all niched up, the accountant, the paramedic, the scientist — only you and me breaking the mould, and now—

So, what could I do? She wouldn’t let me save her, so I had to save myself. But I don’t feel saved, Bethie. If I were safe, it wouldn’t hurt like this.

Take care of yourself, kiddo. Promise I’ll come and see you soon.

Danny Boy

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Winter Gregory Author Page

This is a picture of the little church I was in yesterday. Stones carved in Primitive and some very interesting stories to go with them!

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Comments:

Briar Jenkins: Beautiful pic! Can’t wait for the book!

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I spent the rest of the week driving around on the moors. Mists would come down overnight and then burn away by lunchtime, so I managed to get some atmospheric pictures of headstones rearing their way up through the fog and then sit in warm sunshine to type and do the background research. Some of the little churches had records going back to the mid-1500s when parish registers first had to be kept, and I found one particularly isolated chapel which had had a vociferously anti-everything vicar in 1623, who had written snarky little notes all over his registers, which kept me happily busy for ages. I didn’t see Alex, Scarlet or Margaret at all that week. I wondered if Alex was regretting his drunken heart-opening email and staying away from embarrassment, or whether, and more likely, he was just busy.

A little of the pain had slipped away now. Dan had gone dark on Twitter and it was easier to pretend he didn’t exist when his name didn’t pop up in my feed every time I checked. Alex tweeted every now and then, but mostly about craft supplies or building work and he clearly checked my Facebook page because he religiously ‘liked’ every update I put. The distance was giving me perspective, and I was realising how right Daisy had been about Alex. He may be gorgeous and kind, he might have the disposition of a saint, but his first responsibility would always be to Scarlet. Did I want that? She was lovely and everything, but she was eight, and lonely, and if she attached herself to me then how would it work if Alex and I broke up?

So I threw myself into work partly, I had to admit, to keep myself out of the town and away from Scarlet or Alex.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

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