Always and Forever (46 page)

The others raised their now nearly empty glasses of juice.

‘To being ready,’ Mel said.

Leah was out in the garden, sitting on the smal curved wooden seat just under the window. When the big windows were flung back, and the only outside noise was the droning of insects in the evening sun, you could hear a lot of what went on inside. She had come out to col ect flowers earlier, and when she’d heard the women talking, she’d decided to stay outside and forgo her evening hot tub. They were doing pretty wel without her.

”You are strong, confident, beautiful, wise … You’re talking to the mirror, you big idiot. And look at that pimple.’ Daisy sighed. This idea of making positive affirmations to yourself in the mirror every morning sounded great in theory. In practice, it made Daisy feel a bit ridiculous and gave her the perfect opportunity to study her make-upless self close up. How had she never noticed her pores before? They were huge. Crater-like. Giving up wine and drinking lots of water had not had the desired effect on her skin. Her kidneys and liver were undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief that Daisy’s bottle opener was retired, but her bladder was in shock at the floods of water passing through and al the impurities were making a break for it through the skin on her forehead. She’d just battled off three huge pimples there, with a lesser outbreak on her chin, and now another giant one was shining through just in the middle of her forehead. This clean living was making her look terrible, she thought. And she was stil overweight. She’d swapped a bottle of wine a night for a box of chocolates. It was a week after she’d returned home to Carrickwel after her visit to Cloud’s Hil , and, despite the pimples and the increased chocolate intake, Daisy was feeling better. She’d bought some new clothes to go with her new figure and she’d been checking out apartments and houses for sale around Carrickwel , because she was determined to move out of the home she’d shared with Alex.

There were a couple of lovely apartments in the centre of Carrickwel that sounded perfect, but even though Daisy had told the estate agent she wasn’t real y interested in houses, she’d found her mind kept returning to the For Sale sign she’d seen on a cottage on her way back from Cloud’s Hil .

Leah rang almost every morning before Daisy went to work.

‘I’m stil sad,’ she told Leah on the phone. ‘But I can cope with it. I know I can do it, and the pain isn’t going to go away, but I have faith in myself. Does that sound stupid?’

she asked anxiously.

‘Not at al . You’re doing wonderful y, Daisy. You’re facing up to al the awful parts of your life, and that’s empowering.

Before, you tried to blot out what you felt; now you’re like a boxer, saying, “Hit me with what you’ve got!”’

‘It’s hitting me,’ Daisy said wryly. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of adverts on the tel y last night for nappies.

Gurgling babies everywhere. It’d break your heart. Then, there was a film on about a mother whose daughter was kidnapped, and I cried non-stop for the first half an hour because I felt like my baby had been taken away too.’

‘I understand,’ Leah said gently. ‘When Jesse died, I got the feeling that the population of twenty-three-year-old men in California had quadrupled. They were everywhere: pumping my gas, giving me change at the store, walking along the sidewalk looking happy, healthy and alive. It was like they were reminding me of what I’d lost. And I thought: why didn’t one of them die and not my son?’

‘Leah,’ said Daisy. ‘I shouldn’t whine to you. You’ve gone through far too much to have to listen to me moaning. I’m sorry.’

‘When you confide in me about how you feel, you’re helping me,’ Leah said simply. ‘I can’t talk to most people about what

it was like when Jesse died. But when you talk to me about Alex and the sadness you feel about having your baby dream snatched away, I know I can talk back to you. We help each other.’

‘I’m not going to wal ow any more,’ Daisy promised. ‘When I couldn’t cope with that film last night, I switched over to the news and they had a report about children in Africa orphaned by HIV/AIDS. That’s a wake-up cal . I’m sobbing into my chocolate box and there are these beautiful kids with the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen who’ve got nobody left to love them and who’ve had to watch their mums and dads die. I thought I might get involved in charity work to raise funds for those kids,’ she added. ‘It seems selfish to moan about yourself al the time, doesn’t it?’

In her office at Cloud’s Hil , Leah smiled. ‘I admire you so much, Daisy,’ she said.

‘Admire me?’ squeaked Daisy, thril ed.

‘You’ve such a kind, tender heart. You wil be a wonderful mum one day, you know that. Even if your child isn’t biological y yours, you’l stil be its mum.’

Daisy was too choked to reply for a moment. ‘I hope so, Leah,’ she said final y.

Now that she was feeling better, Daisy was back at work.

The summer sale was winding down in Georgia’s Tiara and there was a lot of sorting-out of clothes every day and marking things down. It was hard work keeping track of it al , as wel as getting the latest autumn/winter stock out on the rails. Clothes, shoes and accessories that Daisy had bought in February were arriving al the time and had to be unpacked, accounted for and priced. They were working on a shipment of beautiful French knits when Daisy idly mentioned to Mary that she’d decided to move house.

‘Why?’ demanded Mary, astonished. ‘You’ve got a beautiful apartment; you’d want to be mad to get rid of it!’ ‘It reminds me al the time of Alex,’ Daisy explained. She went on calmly opening the wrappers on the knits, lots of subtle coloured cardigans and camisoles with velvet trims. Daisy had adored them when she’d first set eyes on them in Paris in January, and she was delighted to see that they stil appealed to her. It was so easy to buy stacks of something that looked wonderful when you first saw it, and then hate when it actual y arrived in the shop. ‘Bul shit,’ said Mary succinctly. ‘My house reminds me of Bart and I’m not getting rid of it.’

‘That’s different,’ Daisy laughed. Mary could always make her see the funny side of things. ‘You’ve got the kids. Alex and I don’t have anything to bind us together; we haven’t even talked about the flat.’

‘I hope you’re going to come to some fabulous financial agreement with the help of a complete shark of a lawyer,’

Mary interrupted. ‘I’l give you the name of my guy - he’s bril iant. Stil owes me a ride in that Porsche I paid for,’ she added. ‘I don’t want a shark,’ Daisy said. ‘I want to let go and move on.’ Since she’d left Cloud’s Hil , she’d thought of nothing else. She’d spent too long locked in the past, grateful to Alex for rescuing her.

‘Letting go and moving on does not mean turning into a complete idiot who throws away a valuable asset,’ Mary pointed out. ‘You are sitting on a piece of real estate that’s worth a lot of money and you want to have something after fourteen years . With Alex.’

‘Oh, you can’t say he left me nothing,’ Daisy deadpanned. ‘I have got a massive inferiority complex, after al .’ Mary grinned. ‘I don’t think that the courts would consider that an asset.’

!$ ‘Besides, I suppose I had that long before I met Alex,’

Daisy Wed honestly. ‘I want my half of the money for the apart-it, that’s al , Mary. No more.’

‘Where would you move? Not out of Carrickwel ?’ said Mary alarm.

‘There’s a cottage for sale near Leah’s. And my mum’s,’

Daisy! added. ‘I’ve driven past it a few times and I’ve decided to see it on Saturday afternoon. I’ve never thought of a cottage before, but that was because Alex was an apartment person. I thought I was too, but I’m not, actual y.

Funny, I’ve lived in apartments al my grown-up life and now I think that I prefer houses.’ Carla, who’d taken over from Paula in the shop, stuck her head in the stockroom. ‘Just sold tons off the sale rail,’ she said delightedly. She held up a pair of denims with embroidered hems. ‘But nobody’s gone near these for days. Should we drop the price?’

‘I suppose so. I’l fix the labels,’ sighed Daisy, taking the I denims so Carla could go back to the shop floor. ‘I hate the sale. It’s constant recrimination for al the articles I bought that were wrong. I thought people would want cute jeans like these.’ ‘They did,’ Mary pointed out, ‘they just didn’t want that pair, size ten.’

‘I fitted into a size ten once,’ Daisy began.

‘Oh, don’t start,’ warned Mary.

‘No, I won’t,’ said Daisy. ‘I’m going to go and lose the weight.’ ‘Why?’ asked Mary. ‘So you can be thin once again and Alex wil come back to you?’

‘No,’ said Daisy, ‘so I can be thin and beautiful, and when I go off to the shows next month I can find a fabulous new man to romance.’

‘If that’s what you’re doing, I want to come with you!’ said Mary, pleased to see her friend getting some of her sparkle back. They both knew that Daisy was joking, because she was a long way from wanting romance, but laughing about it was a step in the right direction.

Daisy smiled. ‘No way, Mary, you’re not coming. I travel alone. Cleo tel s me that mysterious men are far more likely to chat women up when they’re travel ing alone. She says she sees it in hotels al the time. Groups of women are threatening, but single women aren’t. Although, you have to watch out for strange men, obviously. She laboured that point, actual y. Do I look like the sort of woman who’d attract strange men?’ ‘I’m saying nothing,’ remarked Mary. ‘Don’t forget to buy some clothes when you’re off eyebal ing mysterious men, wil you? We have a shop to run.’

The cottage was a mile away from Cloud’s Hil , on a winding part of the road, and had a long stone wal topped by a hedge facing the road. Daisy wasn’t sure what to expect because she knew that estate agent-speak translated reality by way of wildly optimistic descriptions.

‘An opportunity to purchase a unique old cottage with unusual features,’ could easily mean she was going to view a house that was hideously ugly with rising damp, a heating system straight out of Dickens and a close-up view of a pylon. She drove in the tiny gate of The Anchor - the name would have to go for a start; there was no sea for miles -

and sighed with pleasure.

The Anchor looked idyl ical y cottagey on the outside with a sloping roof, a sea-blue door and a tumble of wild flowers in the garden. Unless the name was a hint that there were plumbing issues, it was so far, so good. It had diamond-paned windows like her mother’s house, and looked as if it had been designed by the same hand. The estate agent was waiting with the key. Inside, the nautical reference became apparent as the owner was clearly ship mad.

There were ships in bottles, out of bottles, and maritime bits and bobs hanging from every inch of the low ceiling.

The wal s were in need of decoration and the carpet in the hal , living room and tiny dining room could probably qualify for antique status, but the house had enormous character.

‘The kitchen’s not that big,’ the estate agent said cheerily, flattening himself against the wal so they’d both fit into it,

‘but you could extend. And look at the view.’

The back of the house looked out over the val ey with Carrickwel visible in the distance, and the swathe of the mountains surrounding it.

Daisy imagined adding on a sun room and sitting out there, gazing down at the town the way she had from the safety of Leah’s hot tub room.

She felt comfortable here, at home, safe.

Paula’s baby’s christening was the fol owing Sunday.

Despite feeling that she’d made so much progress in the past couple of weeks, in her heart, Daisy wasn’t looking forward to it. Little Emma was thriving and her besotted mother wanted everyone and their granny to come to the party in her home afterwards. Daisy was terrified of descending into black gloom again at the sight of the baby.

Gurgling infants in nappy adverts were one thing: a real, live baby would be something else. ‘You’ve got to come,’ Paula insisted on the phone to Daisy. ‘I know it’s been so hard since you split up with Alex, but please, Daisy, it would be terrible if you didn’t come.’ Daisy was very glad that Paula had no idea about the fertility treatment she’d hoped to have. Paula wouldn’t have pushed her to come to the christening if she had known.

‘That’s why I tried to keep it quiet,’ Daisy told Mary the next day in work, ‘because I didn’t want people pitying us because we didn’t have children. Sorry,’ she corrected herself, ‘I didn’t want people pitying me. Obviously Alex didn’t give a damn either way.’

‘Fertility treatment is a big deal for men,’ Mary said thoughtful y. ‘It scares them.’

‘Are you on his side now?’ demanded Daisy.

‘No,’ Mary said, ‘I’m not. But therapy does teach you how to look at both sides of the story.’

‘Mary, I preferred you when you were being an evil bitch and you were threatening to make a wax dummy of Alex, stick pins in it and put a hex on him!’

Mary did her best to look serene. ‘I have moved on to a better place,’ she intoned grandly, ‘and being negative is so ageing. I was reading an article in Vogue the other day and they were saying that negativity drags your face down and gives you more lines. I would have stopped being a bitch years ago if I had known that.’ It was Daisy’s turn to laugh. ‘I think we both need a session in Leah’s hot tub -

that wil soothe away al the lines and it might work on my pimple outbreak.’

‘Oh, yes,’ moaned Mary. ‘Maybe we can get a couple of treatments before the christening. I could do with a bit of work. One of those hot stone massages.’

‘A detoxifying facial -‘ decided Daisy - ‘that would be perfect. It would help me to face al Paula’s lovely relatives, who’l keep commiserating with me for not being with Alex any more and patting me every time we pass baby Emma and saying things like, “Don’t worry, it wil be you soon”. I don’t know if I can cope with that!’

‘They won’t,’ Mary insisted. ‘Now they’l just think you’re a sad and twisted single woman who hates men and they’l leave you alone. Simple.’

‘That sounds so much better,’ Daisy agreed.

‘Did you go to view the cottage yesterday afternoon?’

Daisy nodded, her face animated. ‘It’s beautiful. I’m going to put an offer in but I need to talk to Alex about putting the flat on the market. I hate contacting him, though.’ ‘You’l need a lawyer to sel the apartment, so get one and ask him or her to send Alex a letter saying you want to sel as quickly as possible. That way, you don’t have to talk to him ever again.’