Page 32 of Dear Daisy

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Life Up North

Hey, kiddo. How are you doing? Mum says you’ve made progress with the new chair and it’s not trying to kill you any more — can’t wait to see you whizzing around in it. Bet the dog is terrified! You’re like a high-tech version of that remote control car we used to chase Django round with, remember? No wonder he finally chewed it to bits . . .

I’ve seen Winter. And now I think . . . I think I can do this. I can just be her editor — it’s what she wants. The feelings aren’t dead, they haven’t gone away, but I can keep them down there. It hurts, but it doesn’t rip me up like it did do. She looks rough, looks like she’s come to a standstill with the book, so I’m going to stick around, make sure we get this thing done to deadline and then? I’m gone. I’m no kind of martyr, me . . .

Love ya

Danny Boy

Chapter Fourteen

‘Sometimes it’s not what’s written on the stone that’s interesting, sometimes the spaces that are left can tell us more about the person lying beneath, or, at least, they can hint heavily . . . One Alexander Wright (1748–1813) had his stone erected ‘by his loving and grieving wife, Mary’, who clearly expected to be buried with her husband, judging by the space left beneath his epitaph for her own. However, the space is still there and Mary lies elsewhere in the churchyard, having overcome her grief to the extent of marrying a Thomas Fenwick six months after the death of her previous husband. Thomas must have swept her off her feet in a significant fashion — there are local reports of his having hired a coach and four to drive them to their wedding. They lie together beneath a stone much more ornate than that of the briefly-lamented Alexander . . .’ — BOOK OF THE DEAD 2

* * *

It was a warm morning that smelled of the plums which seemed to hang on almost every tree in Great Leys, the air buzzed with wasps and a wind jangled the yellowing leaves. I squared my shoulders on the doorstep and went out, my notebook clutched to my chest and my pen rigid between my fingers as though I was off to attend some kind of inter-author jousting event. The road was busy, the pavements teemed with Stepford WAGS and children off to the school bus and there was no sign of Dan; my fingers loosed their grip on the biro a little and my shoulders relaxed a fraction. Of course there wasn’t. He hadn’t meant any of it — all that stuff about hanging around to get the book finished, he was just trying to freak me out, to rock the equilibrium of this little world I’d started to accrete around myself as though I was one of those naked creatures at the bottom of a pond, searching for things to barricade round me to keep me from harm.

In fact, knowing Dan and his dislike of wide-open spaces that didn’t have a DJ in front of them, he’d probably headed straight back to London. He looked tired. Stressed. Maybe he really was telling the truth about needing this book? I shook my head against the little voice in my head, aware that people were starting to look at me strangely, poised here on my doorstep staring out into the morning busyness with my writing gear held in front of me like a shield, and I slammed the door behind me in a meaningful way and stalked out across the pavement.

The churchyard was a little heap of quiet, like an island in a sea of noise. The sun slanted down through the shading trees, making little patches of light and shade on the grass through which the headstones reared up to point long fingers of shadow towards the town like worn auspices of mortality. Not quite sure what to do with myself, other than try to occupy my mind, I leaned against the familiarity of Beatrice, letting the warmth of her sun-heated limestone seep into my jangling nerves.

‘Hey.’ The voice came from a dark bulk under the branches of overhanging cedar and made me drop my notebook into the long grass.

‘Dan?’ I put the mass of Beatrice between me and the shape, uncurling itself from where it had, apparently, been sitting cross-legged on top of a tabular monument to the father of a large local family whose high point had been opening a bakery.

‘It’s a graveyard. Who’re you expecting?’ There was a soft sweeping sound as his coat flicked loose of the memorial and he stepped forward into the sunlight, boots jingling. ‘Mr “Massively Over-Compensating for Something”?’ He slapped at the stone as he moved past it. ‘Seriously, mate, that amount of curly writing? Never in a million years . . . Might just as well have had “I made a fortune but had a tiny knob” carved on your stone.’

I was aware that my fingers hurt as they tried to dig into the solid stone under my hands. The stone felt a little like my heart at the moment, harsh and rough with scuffed edges. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, you know.’ Dan’s coat swung and coiled around his body like a solid mist, the buckled fastenings giving it weight and the light sparking off the silver catches. He flipped the collar up and hunched his shoulders, standing in the patch of sunlight that lay between us as though he knew the impact his slender dark outline would make. ‘Like I said, just protecting my investment.’

Yeah, like I’m a ‘thing’. Something to be watched, not a person. Thing. Anger tried to swell my throat. ‘Everything is under control.’ I bent to pick up my notepad without taking my eyes off him which meant contorting my body, and I saw the way his eyes hovered along the lines of my buttocks and his lips formed a growl shape. ‘And anyway, I meant, here. How did . . .’ I stopped. I would not let him know how much his physical presence affected me. ‘What made you think I’d be here?’

‘Bloody hell, there are other places you could be?’

I felt my mouth betray me by trying to twitch into a smile and firmly stopped it. ‘I could have been in the coffee shop. Or the library. Or bed.’ The more I looked at him the easier it got, he wasn’t the bogeyman my mind had built him into — cruel and warped and evil. He was just Dan, just the guy I’d just . . . Dan. My editor, the man who wanted this book written almost more than I did, the person most likely to understand the problems I was having with it. Whatever else he was, underneath, I didn’t have to deal with right now. ‘Or halfway to the nearest place round here that sells actual things instead of scented candles and pumpkins, which, I have to tell you, is probably York and that’s a really long way away.’

A little of the darkness left his face, as though the mischief in his eyes had become the normal, ‘knock on doors and run’ kind rather than the ‘knife them in the dark singing nursery rhymes’ sort. ‘What can I say? Intuition.’ He gathered the coat around him, then hopped up to sit on another flat-topped tomb, biker boots up so that his knees were under his chin. He’d shaved since last night, I noticed, or at least hacked the stubble into reasonable order. ‘Besides, the local coffee shop is still shut, I checked the library, and I knew you weren’t in bed because I saw you.’ He coughed and looked down at his knees, pretending shame. ‘I’m staying with Mrs Hill up the street from you and from her guest bedroom you can see the curtains on your upstairs windows, so I knew you were up. Who’s Alex?’

I dropped my pen now. ‘Alex?’ Wow. He is quick. I’d forgotten that about Dan, that he could get squirrels to tell him where they’d buried their nuts, using only the power of his charisma and those wicked eyes.

‘Yeah. Mrs Hill mentioned that she thought you might be off to see Alex. I didn’t like to say “who” because, well, you know me, never admit to not knowing something when you can always pretend and find out later, so who is he? She? Anything to do with the book or . . . ?’ he tailed off and tilted his head to regard me at an angle that made him look like a curious funerary statue.

‘He’s Mrs Hill’s son. He and I . . .’ The memory of Alex’s warm kiss and hot body must have heated my eyes because Dan twisted his mouth and stood suddenly on top of the grave.

‘Okay. So. What’s the plan for today?’ He spread his arms wide and his coat flapped, he looked like a raven preparing for flight. ‘Research, writing, what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Something about the sheer energy of him made me feel as though he could somehow anchor me. ‘But it’s okay, I’ll think of something. I just need . . .’ I made a sort of shrugging motion with the notebook still clutched to me. ‘It’s fine.’

Dan stepped a slow ring, arms still held out. His sleeves fell back and the tattoo of a circle and eight points gleamed for a second in a stray beam of sunlight on his wrist. Chaos. What Dan was really all about, and what he brought to everything. ‘We can do this, kiddo. We can.’ He turned his face to the sun. ‘Yeah?’

‘Don’t, Dan.’

He finished his rotation and looked down. ‘Don’t?’

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