Page 50 of Dear Daisy

You’re hot. You are a totally lovely woman, and I think hormones just got the better of both of us for a while, didn’t they? And, yes, I totally get why you pulled back on me. I should never have even got that far and feel like a complete bastard for letting things get out of hand the way they did, especially if it compromises anything. What we’ve already got is enough, honestly; your friendship is worth so much to me and to Scarl, so if I’ve done anything to jeopardise that then I might as well gnaw off my own balls right now. It wasn’t right, I knew it before I started, know you don’t feel ‘that way’ as the problem pages coyly have it, about me. I can see it in your eyes and, hey, don’t worry about it, not a big deal, like I said, friendship is more valuable than any amount of meaningless banging when you’ve got a small child in the mix.

Ultimately. Point of all this rambling. You did the right thing. I was a mindless, cock-driven bastard last night, and I am so glad, in this cold light of day, that you stopped me. I like to think I behaved with dignity and grace under pressure, but you know, if you never want anything to do with me again, I’ll do my best to come to terms with it, but please, please, Winter, don’t.

Alex

I got up late from a night of bad dreams. Dreams in which I’d been in bed with Alex but turned over to find he’d morphed into one of the faceless, nameless men that I’d slept with until I’d met Dan. And then he’d become Dan, teasing smile, dark eyes and open arms and the metal bedstead had clanged like a bell with all the sighing and turning over I’d done, but I fell into proper, dreamless sleep around dawn.

The laptop was still on. I crouched in front of it wrapped in the duvet from the bed and checked. Yep, all the work from yesterday was still there. And still good. I raised my eyebrows at it and tried not to notice the slight slick of stubble burn that adorned my chin from last night. Alex might have thought he’d shaved but he had the ‘outdoors’ approach to being clean-shaven rather than ‘city man’, which was so smooth I always suspected they slept in a silk bag.

Yep. Words, lots of them. Tentatively I sat down and doubled the duvet around me while I typed a few more sentences, and the next thing I knew the light was vanishing from the window and there was someone knocking at the door.

‘Margaret, hello. Hi, Scarlet.’ Margaret’s frock du jour was a slightly startling bird-print but as I was wrapped in a duvet and still had bed hair, I really wasn’t one to start pointing fingers today.

‘Hello, Winter. Are you poorly?’ Margaret looked me up and down. I couldn’t return the favour without it looking as though her dress was taking flight, so I just smiled.

‘Working. Got a bit caught up.’

‘Bobso had babies,’ Scarlet said, sounding sulky. Her school uniform was creased and there was a small rip in the hem of her chequerboard dress. ‘But Granny says we have to give them away.’

‘Well,’ I said, gamely, ‘I’ll have one. And I bet you won’t have any trouble finding takers if you ask around at school. They’re so cute, just like miniature guinea pigs!’

‘They are miniature guinea pigs,’ Margaret said, stepping down into the living room and giving my biscuit-strewn workstation a sideways look. ‘If you think about it.’

‘I suppose they are. Would you like a biscuit, Scarlet?’

Scarlet accepted a HobNob, still slightly sulkily, and sat on a chair to eat it. ‘Alex showed you the babies,’ she said, her mouth looking as though only the biscuit was preventing it from pouting. ‘It’s not fair. I wanted to show you Bobso’s babies!’

Margaret did the ‘adult over the child’s head’ face. ‘I told him not to tell her, but Alex has this “honesty” thing. Very admirable, of course, but I dread to think what would have happened if his father and I had been honest with him at times,’ she said. ‘But it’s upset Scarlet dreadfully.’

Scarlet’s lip was wobbling now, despite the HobNob. ‘You’re my friend, Winter. It’s not fair Alex showing you Bobso and the babies — Bobso is mine too!’

Well, she did have a point. And Alex had sort of used Bobso as a lure to get me round there, so I was conceding that she was entitled to be a bit cross. Blimey, this was a tricky one. I gathered the duvet more closely around me. ‘I’m sorry, Scarlet. I should have let you show them to me, of course. But what about Daniel? Has he seen them yet?’

Scarlet brightened a little bit. ‘No! He was out yesterday so I didn’t get to tell him, and he didn’t come back to Granny’s last night.’

I felt a tiny flicker inside me. Where did you go, Dan? Back to London?

‘I told you, Scarlet, he went down to Lincoln, he’ll be back later tonight.’ Margaret looked relieved. ‘Maybe you could show him the babies then.’

‘Can I show them to you as well, Winter?’ Scarlet finished the biscuit and the prospect of having someone new to appreciate Bobso’s offspring had clearly cheered her up.

I don’t think being in the same place as Dan and Alex is a great idea at the moment. There may be some kind of critical mass achieved. ‘Maybe another day. It can’t be good for Bobso to have lots of people poking around with her when they’ve only just arrived,’ I said, thinking fast inside my duvet-sausage. ‘Show them to Dan and I’ll come and see them . . . how about Friday? After I’ve talked to you all about writing.’

Scarlet bounced. ‘Mr Moore said he was going to ask you to come on Friday. We had an assembly about it this morning and we’re to think of sensible questions to ask you!’

‘Just don’t ask Winter if she earns as much as J. K. Rowling,’ Margaret said, darkly. ‘Mr Park asked a visiting author that at one of the book club meetings, and there was “an incident”. Probably partly to blame for his wee problem, now I come to think of it.’

‘Where’s Light Bulb?’ It suddenly occurred to me why Scarlet looked a bit less occupied than usual. ‘Did you have to leave him at home again today?’

Margaret and Scarlet exchanged a look. Margaret’s expression was nine-tenths exasperation, while Scarlet cast her eyes down after a few moments’ contact with her grandmother. ‘Lucy is fixing him again,’ she said very quietly at last. ‘His head came loose.’

A sudden memory of Light Bulb’s increasingly-lopsided and psychotic grin. Lucy mends him, does she? I thought it was Alex trying out some amateur embroidery skills. Lucy must be fond of Scarlet then, which bodes well if they ever try a rapprochement.

‘Scarlet was using him as a weapon,’ Margaret semi-hissed at me. I had no idea why she bothered. Scarlet had no hearing problems that I knew about.

‘Maybe things will get a bit better when everyone at school knows that you really do know a writer,’ I suggested. ‘Then if anyone is horrible to you, you can tell them that I’ll make them a baddie in my next book.’

Scarlet’s incoming smile went a bit ragged. ‘But you write about dead people,’ she said. ‘Can you make dead people into baddies? Or . . . or . . .’ Sudden enthusiasm crashed in. ‘You could write about evil ghosts!’

---