Page 61 of Dear Daisy

Alex smiled. His face crinkled along those sun lines and made his smile look even wider. He was attractive, he was cute and gentlemanly and understanding, but Daniel was stuck in my heart like a fish bone in my throat.

‘Lucy s-said, oh, y-yeah, Lucy and I, we’re g-etting back t-ogether . . . she said th-at’s why my s-tammer is getting b-better. Because I’ve l-ost the “survivor g-uilt” I had when Ellen d-ied.’ He took a swig of the coffee. ‘Nearly l-osing Scarl m-ade me realise, s-ometimes shit h-appens.’ Another swig. ‘S-orry, Scarl.’

‘You shouldn’t swear. It sets a bad example,’ Scarlet said, solemnly.

He nodded agreement over his mug. ‘You d-on’t mind?’ he asked, quietly. ‘A-bout me and L-ucy?’

I eyeballed him, then Scarlet, and jerked my head toward the kitchen area. He took the hint and followed me. ‘Seriously, I’m really pleased that you and Lucy are together again,’ I said, at a hopefully Scarlet-avoiding volume. ‘She’s really mad about you and she cares about Scarlet, I mean, she’s been fixing Light Bulb all this time . . .’

Alex looked over at the drunken, irresponsible expression sewn onto the corduroy face. ‘Oh. I th-ought that was y-ou and Mum.’

‘Seriously? You think I sew? For the record, Alex, I don’t iron or cook either. Lucy will be good for you and Scarlet.’ Memory threw up that image of him naked, all muscle and tan lines. ‘Have you worked off your frustration yet? I’m so, so sorry about that night, I wouldn’t have gone that far if I hadn’t thought you were right but it wasn’t you, it was me, being stupid.’

A really broad grin now. ‘We . . . err, we g-et by,’ he said and winked.

‘They send me to Grandma’s.’ Scarlet chimed in, concentrating on arranging the ponies by size on the cover. ‘They think I don’t know, but they’re,’ she lowered her voice, ‘making babies.’

‘She’s eight!’ mouthed Alex, with extreme emphasis and an astonished expression.

‘Work cut out there.’ I smirked back over the rim of my coffee mug.

‘You l-ook better.’ He tipped his head on one side and stone dust fell out of his hair. ‘Somehow.’

I made a face. ‘Thank you for not minding.’ I kept the volume low, although it hardly seemed necessary when Scarlet had such acute hearing. ‘That I lied about Daisy.’ I dropped my gaze so I was staring at the blackness of the coffee in my mug, where bubbles rose and fell and swirled.

‘Dan d-idn’t tell, if y-ou were w-ondering. Not until the h-ospital. He j-ust said y-ou had p-problems, d-epression. He k-ept your s-ecret.’ A smile. ‘Even f-rom me and he kn-ew I was in-terested in you. He c-ould have really sc-rewed that up b-ut I think he w-anted you to t-ell me y-ourself.’

‘I should have. I just can’t . . . couldn’t. If I tell people, then she’s really gone, you know?’

Alex looked sadly over at Scarlet, who’d now brought Light Bulb into the game and was forcing him to take part in the competition taking place on the cover. It was like bringing a T. Rex to a dog show. ‘Yes,’ he said, softly. ‘I kn-ow.’

* * *

Back at the House of Tiny, I sat on the bed. Well, part of me did, the other buttock had to wobble unsupported in the air, but I realised I’d got used to it. In fact there was something comforting in the confinement of the place — not just the house but the town, caught in its basin under the hills. London was great for invisibility. I could meet new people all the time, people who didn’t know about Daisy, whereas here I suspected that it was only a matter of time before the gossip-grapevine meant that my entire life history was spread among the community, but there was a comfort in that.

I’d seen from Alex’s experience how a small town enfolded itself around you. He could have moved away, gone anywhere, but he’d have had to explain every time, about the accident, Ellen’s death, the cause of his stammer. Whereas here, all right, everyone knew your family back ten generations and remembered when your great-great grandfather had nothing but a pig and two bits of sheet metal, but everyone just shrugged and got on with it.

Living in a place like this means never having to say you’re sorry. Whereas the anonymity of the big city means never having to say anything at all.

‘Winter?’

‘I can’t do this any more, Daze. I know it’s not you. I know it’s just me, trying to put words in your mouth, remembering, not wanting to let you go.’

‘Well, of course. But you’ve always known that, haven’t you? It’s not, like, a new realisation, is it?’

‘No. But it’s wrong. I need to . . . I need to stop. I need to face things. I need to stop imagining you as you would be now, with a great fashion job and a fabulous flat, all cutting-edge and stylish. I have to remember you as you were before . . . before you . . .’

‘Say it, Winter. Say it.’

‘Before you died.’ There were no tears, not now. I’d cried them all out over Scarlet’s pony-patterned duvet. ‘When we were twenty-four and living at home. You were still making your own clothes out of boot sale leftovers and I was writing press releases for people who made plastic widgets, and I just wanted you to have the future you never had, Australia and famous people and a brilliant job in design!’

‘You don’t know what I would have done with my life. Maybe I’d have got pregnant by the boy down the road who smelled of cucumbers. Maybe I would have turned to drugs and vanished into a series of squats and unsuitable friends . . . you don’t know. Stop trying to live a life for me and start living a life for yourself. Remember me as I was, okay, maybe I wasn’t exactly living the high life, but I was happy. We were both happy. Remember me as happy, Winter. That’s all.’

I smiled. ‘Yes. I can do that.’

‘And there’s one more thing you have to do. You know what it is, don’t you?’

I shrank inside myself with a feeling almost like nausea. ‘I can’t. Truly, I can’t.’

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