Daisy's Secret (8 page)

All further searches for their missing hostess were postponed as the three gleefully watched the shopkeeper fill a brown paper bag with these goodies and gathering up their prize, scampered back to the kitchen. Afterwards, stomachs stuffed with food, they lay down on their beds and fell into a sweet, dreamless sleep.

As she drove back to the farm, Laura railed over why she’d never thought to ask questions when Daisy was alive, or paid more attention to what little her grandmother had told her. Why had she allowed herself to remain happily ignorant of the facts until now, when suddenly it seemed vitally important that she discover them. Laura no more believed that Daisy had cheated on her husband than she herself would cheat on Felix, despite being given plenty of provocation. Daisy simply wasn’t the type.

And why should she give up her quest to find about more about her?

Laura found herself drawn like a magnet to Daisy’s bureau but the little desk produced nothing more exciting than a drawer stuffed with bills, most of them fortunately paid, as well as old accounts from when the farm was fully functional during the war. She was bitterly disappointed. She’d been banking on some sort of diary, however small, to reveal more about the woman who had occupied this house before her.

Even so, she spent the next two days going through it with meticulous care, obstinately refusing to give up. There were several smaller drawers tucked beneath the roll top, and a number of pigeon holes, all filled with a detritus of paperwork: auction details, programmes for the County Show, orders for hen pellets. Laura felt a burst of excitement as her hands closed over a bundle of letters. Tucked right at the back they were tied up neatly with pink string, the kind farmers call binder twine. She smiled at this practical touch, so typical of Daisy but which also seemed to indicate that the letters had been read recently, since such material surely hadn’t been available during the war. Perhaps Gran had put her affairs into some sort of order before her death.

Laura pulled out the first one. It was short, but clearly a love letter, and was addressed to a mother and baby home. It was the one from Percy and had clearly been read many times for it was coming apart at the folds and the paper had gone brown with age. Laura slipped it carefully back inside its envelope.

Tucked behind, interleaved between this envelope and the next were two or three sheets of blue lined paper pinned together at one corner with a rusty pin, each filled with closely written handwriting which Laura recognised as Daisy’s own.

The first was headed with the somewhat outmoded phrase - To whom it may concern - The way things were!!! Laura was enchanted, particularly by the exclamation marks but, as her eyes swiftly scanned the contents, saw that it was not the diary she’d hoped for, more a chronology of events with short explanations and comments of their effect: the date the first bomb was dropped in Manchester; of folk watching dog fights in the skies during the days of Blitzkrieg; the collapse of France.
 

The list went on to include details such as when rationing had been introduced, together with a droll comment that she’d like to see the government survive on such a meagre meat ration. There were instructions on how to turn a pair of flannel trousers into hot water bottle covers and some fairly pithy remarks outlining her despair over how they would manage to get any eggs at all, now the hens could only be given household scraps. ‘What scraps!’ she had written, and Laura could almost sense her indignation. More pragmatically, it was followed by a recipe for using dried eggs.
 

Laura smiled to herself and put the pages to one side with the rest of the letters, to read more fully later.

She glanced quickly through a book which listed purchases and sales of livestock, no doubt in order to keep a record of their movement and progress. The latest recorded date appeared to be 1958. Were records no longer needed by then? Or was that when it ceased to be a farm and the land was then let off? If the latter, what had occurred to cause this change?

There was also a visitor’s book from when the house had operated as a guest house, starting with the first lodgers during the war and the later pages going on well into the fifties and sixties. Laura sat on the floor to glance through it, her back propped comfortably against the bureau.

‘Miss Geraldine Copthorne,’ Laura read out loud. ‘I wonder who she was? Sounds rather grand. And what was her reason for being here during the war?’ She’d written a few lines by her name in a carefully curving script. “Home from Home. I shall never forget you Dear Daisy and how you made me part of your family.”

Laura read some of the others: Ned Pickles - “Not much cop in the Home Guard, untidy guest, but a lifelong friend for you Daisy.” Tommy Fawcett - “Best day of my life when I landed up here. Shall never hear Lady Be Good without thinking of you all.” There were any number of others. So many names. Pages and pages of them: couples, families, maiden ladies with their companions, lone walkers coming to explore the mountains, all saying what a wonderful time they’d had, how they’d loved the Lakes, the walks, the view of Helvellyn, Daisy’s cooking. Would it be possible to trace any of them, after all this time? Probably not.
 

Laura smiled to think she might have acquired her own culinary skills from her grandmother. Most of all she felt a fresh kindling of excitement. Perhaps that’s why Daisy had left her the house, so that she could carry on where she had left off. The rooms were still here, after all. Intriguingly, inside the front cover of the book was a short dedication written by Daisy herself:

To Florrie, who allowed me to take over her kitchen and carry out my crazy ideas, often against her better judgement. To Clem, for being the father I’d always wanted, counsellor and best friend. And most of all to my dear husband, for always letting me have my own way, even when it would have been wiser not to.

‘I should think he had no option,’ Laura said out loud, chuckling softly. ‘You were ever one with a mind of your own, grandmother dear.’

‘I’d say that was a true assessment of Daisy’s character, bless her heart.’

So startled was she by the interruption, Laura dropped the book with a clatter. She’d thought herself quite alone in the house, as well as in the void of empty countryside around, and it came as a huge shock to look up into a grinning face, one eyebrow raised in quizzical amusement as a perfect stranger picked up the book and handed it back to her. She felt thoroughly unnerved by the encounter, and quite unprepared to be challenged by an unknown male in what was now her own home, let alone one so flagrantly pleased with himself.

‘I didn’t hear the front door bell?’

He threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘I announced myself with a shout from the back door. That’s the usual method here in the country. You must have been too absorbed to hear me.’

For several long moments each considered the other. He with curiosity, she with open animosity. Laura recognised at once that the man was exceptionally good looking, which rather seemed to undermine her confidence all the more and she found herself rubbing her dusty hands over her jeans, now rather grubby themselves after days of scrabbling about in attics and old cupboards. She even found herself tidying away a few straying wisps of hair.
 

He was about her own age, in his mid-thirties, and with an unruly thatch of black curls that flopped over a wide brow. Beneath this were winged eyebrows that were still quirking most irritatingly upwards as if amused by some private joke, and long curling lashes over wickedly teasing, light blue eyes. The whole set in a face that bore the kind of chiselled features usually seen on male models, if sufficiently weather-beaten to indicate a life spent largely outdoors that in no way detracted from his charms.

Laura felt herself becoming slightly flustered by the impact of this blue eyed scrutiny and levered herself quickly to her feet, setting the visitor’s book carefully among the bundle of letters on the bureau as she did so.

‘Interesting is it, reading other people’s love letters?’ Before she had gathered her thoughts sufficiently to answer that one, he went on: ‘Perhaps you like your own way too, to be prying so swiftly into her affairs. You won’t find any hidden share certificates or premium bonds, I’m afraid. I don’t think Daisy believed in saving for a rainy day. Always claimed she’d had plenty of practise dealing with those in the past. I think she gave away more money than she ever spent on herself.’ When still she didn’t reply, he frowned and asked more politely, ‘I take it you are the granddaughter?’

Laura stared blankly at the hand thrust out before her, making no move to take it as she struggled to damp down the hot curl of anger spiralling up inside her. Eventually he slid it back into his pocket with a shrug. He was wearing jeans and a blue checked cotton shirt open at the neck over a white T-shirt, despite the cold wind that had sprung up outside and was now blasting its way through every crack and cranny. It crossed her mind, inconsequentially, that if the house didn’t have some sort of heating system, it would cost a fortune to put in. But was that a good enough reason to return to the home fires of Cheadle Hulme?

‘Hello? Anyone at home?’ He interrupted her thoughts with a quizzical smile. ‘Would you like me to go out and come in again? I seem to have lost your undivided attention.’

‘I don’t think you ever had it. Who the hell are you, anyway?’ Laura switched into attack because she knew, instinctively, that her cheeks had gone quite pink, though really she’d no reason to be embarrassed. And she certainly had every right to be going through Daisy’s papers. ‘I’m trying to deal with my grandmother’s affairs. But I still haven’t caught your name, which is…?’ Asked in her frostiest tones.

‘Sorry. Remiss of me.’ Again he thrust out the hand. ‘David Hornsby, your nearest neighbour, and lessee of the land.’ The smile might have been considered encouraging, or simply vague, for his gaze had moved back to the bundle of letters which Laura had left propped on the drop down lid of the bureau. ‘Never seems quite right to me, to pry into a person’s life just because they are dead.’

Laura took a moment before answering, quietly drawing in a calming breath. ‘My grandmother was 79, old enough to have decided long ago which material she wished to keep and which should be consigned to the fire. I feel safe in assuming that any letters or papers she has left, she is quite happy for me to read.’

‘OK, good point. Hadn’t thought of it that way.’ A slight pause and then he added. ‘Anything interesting?’

It was on the tip of her tongue to say she wouldn’t tell him if there were when he picked up the guest book she’d just been reading and flipped it open. ‘Ah yes, I remember her showing me this once, telling me about some of these people.’

‘She talked to you about them?’ Despite her initial antipathy to the guy, Laura couldn’t disguise her surprise. She was instantly intrigued, wanting to know more.
 

He glanced up, recognising the interest in her voice. ‘Sure, why not? We were near neighbours for almost ten years, and she was on her own, so enjoyed a bit of a gossip. I was very fond of Daisy.’

‘I didn’t see you at her funeral.’

He gave a sad little chuckle. ‘She gave me firm instructions not to come. Said she hated the things, had been to more in her life time than anyone ever should and too many folk either wept and mourned with little sincerity, or started sharing out the household silver before the incumbent was reclining in her grave.’

They both laughed and Laura admitted there was some truth in the comment.

‘Genuine grief, Daisy said, should be carried out in private, and I was to drink a toast to her instead, and get on with my life. Her philosophy was to live for today, and let tomorrow take care of itself.’

‘There are some who might consider that to be a dangerous policy.’

‘Not Daisy.’

‘I wish I’d known her better,’ Laura burst out, suddenly envious of this man’s inside knowledge of her grandmother.

‘If you want to hear more, I’d be happy to tell you. Why don’t you come for supper tonight and I’ll tell you everything I know, as much as I can remember anyway.’

Despite her curiosity, Laura instinctively backed off from the speculative light she recognised in his eyes. She really didn’t need any further complications in her life right now. Not until she’d finally made up her mind what to do about Felix. She shook her head. ‘Thanks, another time maybe.’

He looked disappointed. ‘Oh, I thought you were genuinely interested in Daisy, and not just in whatever it is she left you.’

Again Laura’s cheeks started to burn, and the tone of her reply was stringent. ‘I am.’

‘Well then, come to supper. You have to eat after all, and it is a Friday, which is as good a reason as any.’ He glanced at the book and stabbed a blunt tipped finger on a name. ‘I could tell you how she met Harry Driscoll for instance, the love of her life.’

‘Harry? But that wasn’t my grandfather’s name. At least - I don’t think it was.’

‘Was it, or wasn’t it?’

For the life of her, she couldn’t remember. Had she ever been told his Christian name, or simply not paid attention? He’d died before she was even born. She knew a great deal about her maternal grandparents, who were sweet and supportive and had recently retired to Torquay. But of her father’s family she knew less than nothing, which wasn’t at all surprising. What she did know was that her father’s surname, her own maiden name, wasn’t Driscoll. ‘Where did she meet this Harry Driscoll, and if he was the love of her life, why didn’t she marry him? Was he killed in the war?’