Page 44 of Dear Daisy

Subject: Barn dance

I’d love to make the barn dance. Not sure about Winter though. It’s a bit complicated.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Barn dance

Okay. Well, if you need to talk about things, you know where I am! Winter is lovely, Scarlet never stops talking about her and it’s obvious she cares a lot for both of you but . . . sorry. Not going to say any more. She’s lovely and it’s a shame she can’t make the barn dance. See you there.

Lu x

Chapter Eighteen

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Book of the Dead 2

Thanks for mailing Winter, mate. I don’t want to scare her, but hopefully it’ll shake her up a bit and she’ll realise that she has to knuckle down, might make her a bit more responsive when I see her tomorrow. At least, I’m hoping to, there’s every possibility that she’ll have skipped out on all of us, so I’m pinning my hopes on her staying to help out a little girl with bullying issues. Reckon if it wasn’t for that, she’d have run a while back . . .

Anyhoo. Yeah, to update you. I’m doing okay. Yeah, yeah, you’re concerned, very touching mate, very Brideshead Revisited, but I’ll be fine. I mean, the whole deal with Beth getting hurt . . . but she’s doing okay too, so don’t need to worry about me. It’s Winter we need to worry about. Not just as an author, if you see what I mean. We both know that there’s plenty more where she came from, after Book of the Dead everyone is having a crack at writing Genealogy Fiction, we can fill that June slot a hundred times over if we want, although, Jeez, don’t you ever dare tell her that, she’s fragile enough already. No, she’s going non-functional on me.

I’ve got my . . . well, not spies, but people who are watching out. And she’s not eating, not leaving the house except when she has to, and the awful, evil fucking thing is that I think I know what’s going on in her head. Win and I we were a tight team back in the day . . . what am I saying, it’s only been six months, feels like a lifetime. Hey, we were good. And I know how she thinks, how she works. She’s pinning this all onto me, won’t leave the house because of me, etc etc, you know how it goes. And, yeah, I could go. Take away that excuse. But then I think without me to drive her on, even if it’s pure hate that’s keeping her running, without that . . .

Shit, mate, I dunno. I’ll just do what I can, I guess.

Dan

I thought I was ready for Daniel. I was wearing my most combative jeans and a jumper that effectively hid most of my upper body; I looked as though Margaret had taught me everything she knew about fashion. I’d opened multiple files on the laptop, sorted the books so that disparate pages pointed to the fact that I was researching carving styles, and removed the latest half-dozen cups of cold coffee from around the room.

I actually started reading one of the books while I waited. I’d forgotten, yes, almost forgotten that I enjoyed this sort of thing, and I had sunk myself so deeply into the pages that the knock at the door made me jump.

‘Dan?’

‘Yeah, well, Richard Armitage was busy.’ He stayed on the step this time, making no attempt to come inside. ‘You look like shit.’

‘You don’t look so great yourself.’ It was true. He looked . . . well, ‘bleak’ was the only word which sprang to mind. His normal restlessness seemed stilled as though life had tied weights to his limbs and his stubble had crept away from his chin and was now climbing up both cheeks like a cheap disguise. ‘It’s not your sister, is it? She . . .’

A smile that only engaged his mouth. ‘No. Beth’s cool.’ And then the quiet again, so alien to Dan, who usually came on like someone had wrapped a stream of consciousness in a greatcoat and turned it loose.

‘So,’ I said, awkwardly. ‘You want to talk about the book?’

‘What, in comparison to standing on this doorstep with Swedish-export winds whistling into every orifice? Yeah, settle for that one.’ He hunched his shoulders.

I stepped back to let him in. ‘I’m getting stuff done.’ I waved a hand at the open books.

‘Really?’ He was looking at the shelf above the fire, but I’d moved Daisy’s picture upstairs to beside my bed to stop him using it as a conversational opener. His dark eyes raked around the room. ‘Jeez. If you’d said you wanted to write in these conditions we’d have rented you a lock up in Camden. Do these windows actually, y’know, work? Or are they just stuck onto the brickwork for show?’

‘It’s cosy.’ Why was I defending a room where I regularly sustained impressive bruises just trying to tune the radio? ‘Snug.’

‘Even Bobso’s got better accommodation. At least he can turn round without having to go outside.’ Dan whipped around and his coat swept a handful of biros onto the floor. ‘Okay. So what have we got?’ Now he perched on a corner of the table, one booted foot up on the seat of a chair. ‘’Cos that deadline . . .’ Arms flung into the air as though to avoid an oncoming train. ‘I can see every hair on its chin.’

I indicated the books lying beside him on the table. ‘Research. And I’m fifty thousand words in, so . . .’

‘Coffee.’

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