Page 51 of Dear Daisy

‘I blame children’s television,’ Margaret said. ‘When Alex and Ellen were young it was all Blue Peter and Doctor Who, now it’s drugs and evil monsters and whatnot. She’s eight, she shouldn’t know about evil ghosts!’

Scarlet and I shared a suppressed grin of complicity. When Daisy and I had been eight we’d been given an Oxford Book of Ghost Stories and had happily scared one another stupid for the next eighteen months with tales based around those we read. ‘I don’t know. They’re good preparation for when life really does get scary,’ I said without thinking.

Margaret sniffed and, on her bosom, a flock of flamingos took off. ‘Let’s get you home, Scarlet,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Alex will be wondering where we’ve got to.’

I waved them goodbye, Scarlet now looking a lot more cheerful than she had when they’d arrived.

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Winter Gregory Author Page

Well, finally the new book is nearly finished. Here’s a couple of pictures of some of the gravestones that are going to be featuring this time round — some fascinating stories have come out of being this far north.

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Comments:

Cerys Grey: LOVE those pictures! Spooky

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J D Roxburgh: When’s the book out?

Winter Gregory Author: June, hopefully.

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I saw his reflection in the glass before I saw him. A dark head, broken and distorted by the patterned glass in the door, seeming to be staring down at the ground. He hadn’t knocked, but I opened the door anyway.

‘Hello, Dan.’

‘Hey.’

He looked a little bit better today, and I didn’t know whether that made me glad or not. ‘Saw your Facebook message and I reckoned the coast was probably clear for me to drop by.’ A pause and then he looked up. ‘You’re done, then?’

‘Yep.’ Even I could hear the pride in my voice. ‘It’s going to need a bit of tidying up, obviously, but . . . yes, I think it’s pretty good.’

He stayed where he was, making no attempt to come inside. ‘Okay.’ Then, words coming out with a bit more of the ‘Dan-style’ about them, ‘Look, I’m sorry. About everything. I never meant it to go this way, I never meant you to . . . I never meant to hurt you, Winter.’ Now he looked up and met my eye. ‘Seriously. You are . . . you were something special to me, and now the book is done and it’s finally all over and everything . . .’ He tailed off and his gaze slid back down to the step at his booted feet. ‘I just wanted it said. No unfinished business, you know?’

My body felt curiously heavy. As though the finality of his words had a weight that they’d laid on me, as though this ending was a thing of gravity that could be passed from one person to another. ‘Do you want to come in?’ was all I could think of to say.

‘Probably not a good idea. I mean, I should . . .’ This hesitancy wasn’t like Dan either. It was almost as if another man stood in front of me, one who looked like Daniel, who spoke with his voice but whose thoughts didn’t run like mercury through a head filled with impossible ideas but rather moved more at human speed. ‘This is it, Winter. Email me the manuscript, I’ll work on it back in London and get the edits to you, you never need to see me again. We’re done.’

There was a dryness in my mouth and a fizzing sort of grey inside my head, almost as though I’d had a shock. Dan’s going. But Dan was always going to go. You’ve done what you said you’d do, the book is finished and now so are you and Dan as any kind of entity. Connection broken. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?

‘Can I ask a favour? Before you go.’ Before it’s really all over. My fingers were tight on the door handle, sweating around the brass knob so that it slid like soap under my palm.

A faint smile from him now. A lightening of that terrible darkness that had drawn his brows down over his eyes and made his mouth look as though he’d recently eaten something mouldy. ‘Anything I can do, Win, you know me, always ready to help . . .’ He tailed off as though he thought his words might be misinterpreted and cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, I mean, if I can.’

‘Come with me tomorrow to Scarlet’s school. I’m giving my Authorly Talk to the kids there, and I’m not really sure that I’m enough to hold their attention. If you come and talk about books and what an editor does and everything, together we might raise Scarlet’s stock enough to make sure that she never gets bullied again.’ The words came in an unconsidered rush, almost bypassing my brain on their way to my mouth.

He put an arm up against the brickwork of the house, leaned against it. All the lines of his body relaxed and the smile on his face became softer. ‘Wow. You want me there? Or did they ask you to bring me?’

It’s an idea I’ve only just had, I didn’t say. ‘I just thought . . . Scarlet likes you, she’d love you to be there too, and I’m not a hundred per cent sure that I’ve got enough material to talk to kids for an hour, I’m more used to speaking to adults and everything. I’m sure the school will let you in, they’re all geared up for having one person, so I’m sure they could stretch to both of us on the premises, and you could maybe give them a bit of an idea of what an editor does, in case any of them are ever misguided enough to want to go into writing as a career.’ Inside my head I tried to unpack what I’d said. Had I over-justified? Or had I made a reasonable case for it being a good idea to have my editor there as backup for my talk?

‘Has she shown you the baby guinea pigs yet?’

As though he hadn’t declined my previous invitation to come inside and had instead been waiting for some magic word, Dan stepped past me and down into the living room, where he slouched down onto one of the chair-shaped items of furniture. ‘Oh, yes.’ Feet kicked up onto the mantelpiece. ‘Seen them, named them, we’ve even brushed them, even though I’ve told her that Bobsina will take care of all their personal hygiene needs.’ A flash of animation. ‘Maybe Alex should have got her something a bit more robust for a pet. Alsatian, Shetland pony, elk, something that way.’

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