Page 26 of Dear Daisy

Thank God for the knock at the door. Otherwise I might have talked myself into messaging him, although I had no idea what I could possibly say. And besides, after all you went through, it would be disloyal to Daisy to have any contact with him again. She suffered too, the splashback of vitriol from his accusations and dislike; for all she told you to reach some closure, she wasn’t intending you to have that kind of contact, was she?

At the door stood Margaret, again, and Scarlet. Light Bulb was nowhere in evidence and Margaret looked a bit tense. ‘I’m sorry, Winter, but Scarlet wanted to say hello.’ She sighed an exaggerated sigh. ‘There, Scarlet, I told you Miss Gregory would be busy, she’s a writer and it’s not something you can just pick up and put down like a casserole you know. Now, just say hello and we’ll go back and you can have those fish fingers until Alex gets that wall up.’

Scarlet looked smaller than usual, somehow. She was wearing her school uniform dress, red checks like a blood-drawn chessboard, with a red sweatshirt over the top, heavily embellished with the school name and a logo that looked as though a graphic designer had gone a bit trigger-happy on a tree. Her grandmother was holding her hand as if it were sticky.

‘Why don’t I walk Scarlet home?’ I suggested, and watched her brighten. ‘And then you can get back to . . .’ I groped for inspiration, which Margaret’s knitted outfit wasn’t providing, unless she was off to trawl for cod.

Margaret’s face relaxed. She feels restricted by duty too, I noted. Trying to do the right thing, the required thing, having a life thrust upon her that she could never have imagined. ‘Well, I was going to drop in on Mr Park’s mother, who’s got a problem with legs, not her own legs, of course, these are china.’ Margaret was practically smiling now. ‘And I know Scarlet would love it.’

‘I would, I would! Please take me home, Winter, and then you can talk to Alex some more about building and cooking and things.’

So she was listening to us talking before she burst in. Good job you hadn’t got round to propositioning him then, but to hear her recap does make you sound like the world’s most boring conversationalist. Building and cooking, good grief, is that who you are now?

‘Come on then.’ I reached behind me into the room, which practically put my hand in the oven, grabbed my anorak and pulled it on. Margaret released her granddaughter into my care by passing her hand over, as though she was marrying us. I’d been right, it was sticky. ‘We’ll go straight over there and I’ll wait with you until Alex has finished whatever he’s doing.’

‘Alex made me leave Light Bulb at home today,’ Scarlet said, bobbing along beside me like an excited cork. ‘It’s only ’cos I hit Angel Williams, but Angel Williams hit me first, so it’s not fair that I had to not have Light Bulb when she never even had to not have pudding, is it?’

‘Well, it does sound a bit harsh.’ I pulled the door closed behind us. ‘But I suppose it rather depends on the pudding in question.’

‘Alex had to go into school this morning when he took me in, to talk about it,’ she said, confidentially. ‘Mr Moore let him sit in his office. I bet he didn’t give him a Polo, Mr Moore only gives Polos to people he likes.’

I zipped up my anorak. There were school mothers dotted randomly down the High Street, I wondered if they were a crack Fashion Squad waiting to put a hit on me. ‘Why doesn’t Mr Moore like Alex?’ I asked, trying not to squint evilly at School Mother Number One, a tight-jeaned WAGalike gazing in the window of the jewellers as we passed.

‘Mr Moore is Miss Charlton’s dad, and Miss Charlton used to go out with Alex but Alex went off her, and then Miss Charlton married a man who used to hit her so she came home and Mr Moore thinks that Alex thinks he’s too good for her,’ she said, with a vast amount of satisfaction.

Hm, Alex, are you playing us off against each other perhaps? ‘How do you know all that? Scarlet, do you listen at doors or something?’

A moment’s consideration, then she cast her eyes down and her warm hand clenched in mine. ‘A bit. Sometimes. But people will whisper and roll their eyes about and sigh and everything, as though I couldn’t possibly understand. They forget, I am eight.’

Maybe Alex and I were better off sticking to discussing cookery and buildings. This child knew far too much to be good for her.

Walking along with Scarlet, but without Light Bulb, felt strange. She kept hold of my hand, although she’d tug and leap about at the end of my arm like a small dog scenting strangers, and she kept up a running commentary about people, things, cars, the shops we were walking past. The constant chatter reminded me of Daisy when we’d been about ten or eleven and she was nervous about our impending move to the senior school. I’d looked forward to it, she’d dreaded it.

‘Is everything all right at school?’ I felt compelled to ask Scarlet.

Her little hand went limp against my fingers. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, but her tone was dull. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Her other hand flew up to her face and her thumb found her mouth, but she kept her eyes on the pavement in front of us.

‘You just reminded me of my sister then, when she was a bit worried about school,’ I said, trying to talk myself out of the hole I’d dug. ‘She was small for her age and she had a bit of a hard time.’ Maybe, if she’s being bullied, hearing that she’s not the only one will help her to open up.

‘Oh.’ She removed the thumb and looked up at me. Are you really suitable to be the person she talks to about this? Surely it would be better to be Alex or her teacher or almost anyone else, really. ‘But if you’re identical twins, why weren’t you both small?’ Oh all right then. We’ll drop that line of enquiry for now.

‘We were. But I was a bit more down to earth than Daisy. She used to burst into tears very easily.’

‘Oh.’ Another moment’s thumb-based thought, then, ‘Only babies cry.’

Oh, Scarlet, no. Grown women cry too. So hard that sometimes they feel as though it isn’t tears, it’s blood.

We got to the end of Stepford Street. I imagined the head of each School Mother turning on an immobile neck like something out of a horror film as we passed, but I refused to give them the satisfaction of taking any notice, and was very smugly glad to walk through the archway to the Old Mill as though I owned the place.

There was a whole gang of blokes taking down some scaffolding, a cement mixer rumbled in the middle of the yard and there was no sign of Alex. ‘Will you make me fish fingers?’ Scarlet led the way into the glass-fronted hall. ‘I’m quite hungry.’

I followed her up the stairs to the flat with a sense of dislocation. I’d come here to write my book, not act as a surrogate mother, but there was a lot about Scarlet that called out to me. Her bravery, even if she didn’t know that’s what it was, in the face of loss. Her hanging on to the memory of her mother through the medium of a cloth-headed horse, giving him life through sheer will and imagination, as though the power of her belief could somehow keep that connection to her parent alive. Poor little girl. Poor, lonely, emotionally-neglected little girl.

Once inside the flat Scarlet bounced to the freezer and produced a pack of fish fingers, then placed them expectantly beside the cooker, cocking her head to look at me, as though she was an exceptionally able dog. ‘I’m not allowed to turn on the oven, otherwise I’d cook them myself. I can cook already.’ And then bravado waning into realism, ‘Well, I can do cornflake cakes and toast. If Alex is there.’

‘Good for you.’ I read the instructions on the packet. Fish fingers weren’t really in my repertoire. ‘Okay, they’re in. Twenty minutes at 180 and brown. Should suit you down to the ground.’

Scarlet gave me a grin that told me she’d heard that bit of my conversation with Alex as well. ‘I have to go and change now. I’m not allowed to wear my uniform out of school, in case I tear anything.’

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