Page 5 of Dear Daisy

‘Daze?’

‘You should be asleep. What time is it over there? Three? Four?’

‘Half three. I can’t sleep.’

‘What’s up? I told you, you shouldn’t read those books before you go to bed, all those ghoulish goings-on in graveyards . . . wow, that is a really good sentence, you can have that one.’

I rolled over in the bed. In keeping with all the other furnishings in the cottage, it was about three-quarter size. I was beginning to feel like Alice blundering about among all these tiny things. ‘I was talking to a little girl today about when we had Jack, the pony? Just remembering what fun it all was; how long the summers seemed to go on for. Oh, and you falling off that time you tried jumping without stirrups and crying all the rest of the day.’

‘Winnie, I’d broken my wrist. It’s no wonder I cried all day.’ Daisy sighed. ‘And, yes, looking back is all very well but you mustn’t dwell.’

‘Am I dwelling? I don’t think I am.’ I drew the covers up around my shoulders. September was getting well dug-in and this far north the frosts came early.

Another sigh. ‘You are, of course you are.’ My sister’s voice became faint for a moment, then strengthened. ‘And it’s only because the writing isn’t going well, and you know what you need to do about that. You need to talk to Dan.’

‘I can’t not talk to him, he’s my editor.’ But my hands were sweaty at the thought, and the hair at the base of my neck prickled. ‘But I don’t have to see him again. Do I, Daze?’

She ‘humphed’. I could picture her right now, sitting in her second-floor apartment which was strewn with fabric swatches, the Australian spring sun putting her in a warm spotlight of colour and texture. Her long legs, with those bony knees that caused both of us many hours of anguish as we tried to find tights that wouldn’t make us look as though we were built of hinges, would be drawn up and she’d be fiddling with her toes. ‘Don’t expect me to tell you what you should do, Win, you already know. Now, I have to work and you need to sleep, go away.’

Now it was my turn to ‘humph’. ‘Charming.’

But she’d already gone, and she was right. The pressure was on to come up with another winner, the follow-up to last year’s Book of the Dead, a book I’d come up with on the spur of the moment, pitched and been commissioned to write all within a matter of weeks, because Dan . . . I tossed my head on the pillow but the image remained . . . because Dan had had faith.

Dan. In his perpetual long black coat and motorcycle boots, hair that stuck up from his head like a dark aura. The hands of an artist, the soul of a poet and the business sense of a well-tuned laser; lover of indie rock music, snowstorms and sunset colours. The man who had taken my hand and told me I could be something.

The man who had made me choose . . .

Chapter Four

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Just to say thanks

Hello

Thanks so much for looking after Scarlet yesterday, and it was very kind of you to let her help you do your photos. You mustn’t let her be a nuisance — although, having written that, I’m damned if I know how you prevent an eight-year-old from being a nuisance sometimes, it’s kind of inbuilt, isn’t it, like the whole ‘pink’ thing and a love of One Direction? She’s adorable in a kind of ‘force of nature’ way, not loving Scarl would be like not acknowledging gravity, but then, I’m her uncle so I would say that! Anyway. Upshot and point of this whole mail was just to say ‘thank you’ for keeping her company — she’d hate me for saying this but she can be a bit lonely sometimes. Life in a small town like Great Leys can be hard enough, when everybody remembers your family back three generations and every single transgression any one of them ever made, it’s even worse when there’s some kind of tragedy in the background for them to carefully ‘not mention’ in every conversation! So, any time you feel like dropping by the Old Mill for a slow chat please do.

Thanks again

Alex

I re-read the email. Was it just me reading between carefully typed lines, or was Alex hinting that it wasn’t only Scarlet who was lonely in the small town? Or was he nicely shacked up with the local beauty, bringing up his niece as his own amid a brood of Greek godlings and mini goddesses? He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d trawl through incomers for a potential hit-and-run affair though, he’d seemed normal. Right up at the good-looking end of the spectrum, obviously, but still, normal.

Which was a nice change, really.

And, as though the word ‘normal’ had ricocheted through the aether and set off some kind of chain reaction, my in-box pinged again.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Hey . . .

Seriously though. I mean, seriously. Progress check would be nice, you’re on a deadline, y’know.

D

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