Page 34 of Dear Daisy

My shoulders slumped and I realised how tense I’d been all the time we’d talked. The sheer familiarity of him and the way he was had somehow fooled me into forgetting so much that I’d managed to function almost normally while he’d been in front of me, but now I could feel the low, hot burn of the anger and pain deep in my stomach again. An emotion that had been put on hold while Dan was actually there, as though his presence had functioned as a kind of damper, but now my mind was free to fan those flames into life again.

‘Bastard.’ My hands scrabbled a sheet of paper from the pad, nails raking it to strips, then my fingers curled it into a ball so tight that the molecules squeaked. ‘Completely bloody stupid . . .’ And whether I spoke about him or me, I couldn’t have said.

Chapter Fifteen

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: How are you?

Hey, a first — I’m not going to apologise! Unless you feel that I took advantage somehow but . . . no, it felt as though you wanted me to kiss you as much as I did. Well, you didn’t slap me sideways, so I’m taking that as a positive thing, okay? But it’s all right, it was just a kiss, there’s no implicit commitment there, I’m not going to be making moves on you every time you step outside your door — suppose you’d figured that out, what with it being a couple of days since I’ve seen you. Anyway. No stalker behaviour, no throwing myself on your mercy, just saying that now I feel we’ve moved a step further on. And I wish, oh, how I wish this could be a conventional thing, that I could take you to the pictures, for a meal, we could walk in the countryside together, have a lovely, leisurely time of getting to know one another properly, but, you know, there’s Scarlet. And my life revolves, has to revolve around her, which means I’m pretty much only free during the day, and not even much then, what with having to get this building work finished before the bank makes that kind of ‘Ur-ur’ noise on my business loan.

So, what I’m trying to say is, let’s just see what happens, shall we?

Alex

I flipped the laptop shut and tried to ignore the chewing sensation in my abdomen, as though my stomach was working on a tricky toffee. Alex. Yes. Let’s see what happens, take it slowly, be friends. I could think the words, even try to believe them, but they felt hollow and plastic. The last person I’d dated had been Dan, and that had been completely traditional. Well, no, not completely, he’d been my editor after all, given to throwing sudden ideas in the air to see if I’d catch them, but walks in the sunshine, holding hands, films and meals and . . .

Stop it. I shook my head hard, trying to dislodge the image of Dan as my ‘lost love’. He wasn’t. Wasn’t my anything, just an opportunist and then a betrayer, that was all. So why do you keep thinking of him? You know now what he’s capable of, why do you keep coming back to thoughts of him ripping around London, nipping down side alleys like a grown-up Artful Dodger, all in black and as wild as the wind? You see? You even keep thinking of him in romantic terms — what the hell is this all about?

* * *

Schools nowadays weren’t like they had been when Daisy and I had been children. There were intercoms and secretaries to get past, and appointment books, and a Head who couldn’t see me because he was in a meeting but would bear my request in mind and I could telephone tomorrow to see what he said. It wasn’t a big, brick building either, like our school had been, this one was built of pale sandstone, a single-floored square surrounded by playground where there was space for benches and little raised vegetable beds, and beyond were fields of cows and horses. When we’d been young it had been tarmac and car parks and huge high gates of wire, full of people coming and going, parents in classrooms listening to readers and drinking coffee, hadn’t it? I was ushered from the building by a lady on her way to the photocopier (another thing I never thought of existing in schools), and we passed a classroom where I saw Scarlet sitting alone at a table, colouring as though her life depended on it, while everyone else clustered around the teacher, engaged in some energetic hands-up session.

My heart did that squeezing thing again and I must have hesitated because the lady showing me out gave me a stern look. ‘If you don’t have a CRB then we have to be careful about allowing you into school,’ she said. ‘The safety of the children must be paramount, of course.’

‘Well, of course,’ I muttered, wondering how deranged I looked that she’d seen fit to mention the Criminal Records Bureau check. I’d put my clean jeans on and tied my hair up and my sweatshirt, although a bit baggy, wasn’t really serial-killer special issue, was it? But, as I was hustled over the threshold, my mind held on to that image of the little girl alone while everyone else was busy as a group, and I wasn’t quite sure why.

‘Maybe she reminds you of you.’ Daisy gave her matter-of-fact opinion as soon as I told her about my feelings. ‘Don’t you always feel a bit like the odd one out?’

‘Maybe.’ I stirred soup while I was talking to her, to keep me busy, stop me from mentioning that Daniel had turned up. This conversation was about Scarlet, there was no need to upset my sister by mentioning his name. ‘She looked so sort of lonely, as though she was concentrating on her crayons to keep from crying.’

‘Hmmm.’ A pointed kind of noise, as though something should be self-evident. It wasn’t, but I decided to ignore that. ‘So you suggested that you go in and talk to the class about writing? Must be nice to have a transferrable skill, I could never go in and talk about fashion to anyone at primary level. It would just have been a discussion about shoes or something, and don’t all children wear trainers? Godawful things.’

‘I don’t think Louboutin make children’s shoes, Daze. And yes, that’s what I’m suggesting; it might give Scarlet a bit of clout around the place if they know that she really does know a real-life author. And . . .’ I stopped. Stirred carefully, making sure with the tip of the wooden spoon that nothing was catching on the bottom of the pan. I will not mention Dan.

‘You’ve seen Dan.’

‘Yes.’ No point dissembling. No point saying ‘how do you know?’. Identical twins, identical minds . . . ‘But I think it’s okay. I really think I can work with him, just to get this book finished. It’s giving me hell, Daze, I’m stuck and I just can’t work out how to go forward with it and he . . .’ Stopped again.

‘Winter,’ and she sounded sad. Not, as I would have expected her to, deceived or upset, just gave my name a weight as though it carried unshed tears. ‘Remember. Just that. Remember what he did, how he was.’

The surface of the soup became agitated as the spoon swung back and forth in my eagerness to make her understand. ‘But that’s the point, Daze, I do remember! It’s fine, now I know what he’s like, underneath. I know he’s a bastard, that he wants to keep us apart, so he can never pull that stunt on me again. We can work together and get this book done and he won’t be able to draw me in like he did last time.’

‘Hmmm.’ And if the last ‘hmmm’ had been pointed, this one was positively serrated. Barbed, almost.

‘Please try to understand. He’s the one who knows what it’s going to take to get the book done to deadline, he’s got an interest in getting it finished — if I don’t hit deadline then he looks as stupid as I do. He’s the one who got the publishers to take me on even when they all thought Book of the Dead was a stupid idea. So he’ll be professional, he won’t want to risk me throwing it all away.’

‘Would you? Seriously, Win, would you give the book up if Dan made a pass at you again? Chuck it all in and go back to writing advertising copy rather than go to bed with him?’

Soup slopped and my teeth gritted. It sounded as though my answer mattered more than it should have done. ‘I don’t need this book. I’ll always have Book of the Dead to show I could do it, now I . . . Yes. Yes, I’d give this up rather than get back with Daniel Bekener again.’

There was a silence at the other end, as though my sister was processing this. Then, ‘I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good idea. He’s . . . he’s a sexy piece, Win, you know that. All that wild charm he throws around, all that “look how I manage chaos” thing, as though he’s got the secrets of the universe just revolving somewhere in his head. And the way he is, the way he can be so caring and gentle and then all hard like a great granite block . . .’

‘You remember, then.’ My voice sounded rough, as though the memories cut away at the edges of the words, chopping into the meaning. ‘Everything he did, and you still remember that about him.’

‘Hard to forget, you have to admit. And that body . . . well, he’s got it going on, our Daniel, hasn’t he, Winter? Hasn’t he?’

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