Always and Forever (37 page)

Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, KC sat at her kitchen table watching the news channel and smoking. In the morning light of curtains not pul ed the night before, he looked older and certainly less sexy. But not as bad as she did. He was drinking what looked suspiciously like a Bloody Mary, although Daisy couldn’t imagine how any person could face alcohol after the amount they’d consumed the night before.

‘Hey, Daisy.’

The two-word greeting made it worse.

Daisy cringed at the crude morning-after conversation. At least he knew her name. Surely that counted for something? ‘Hey yourself,’ she said, attempting to be blase. ‘How are you feeling this morning?’ She’d never done this before, so she wasn’t sure of the protocol.

‘Rough. This helps.’ He gestured to his glass before finishing the drink. ‘Want one?’

‘Tomato juice?’

One eyebrow raised infinitesimal y. ‘What do you think?’ ‘I’d be sick if I had a Bloody Mary,’ Daisy said. ‘It wil help.’ That was as close to being intimate as this conversation was going to be.

‘No, real y.’ She made herself a cup of coffee, added lots of sugar, and drank it slowly. Her hands were shaking, she realised. Hangover hel .

‘Sorry we didn’t get to … y’know … last night,’ KC said. ‘I’m not in a rush anywhere now.’ He stubbed out a cigarette in his makeshift ashtray - one of Daisy’s antique market finds, a pretty bowl in blue and white mosaic - and lit another. The smel made her feel sick.

‘Gotta go …’ and she ran to the loo, making it just in time.

She retched until her stomach hurt and only then was she able to stop. Crouched on the floor by the toilet bowl, nauseated in every way possible, Daisy’s red-rimmed eyes stared around. Two months ago, she and Alex had shared this bathroom, talking as they flossed their teeth, side-stepping to get to the mirrored cabinet over the sink. Alex’s great trick was smacking her cheekily on the bottom as she climbed into the shower, saying, ‘Hurry up, sexy. I need you.’ And she’d laugh back at him. ‘Is that a promise or an idle threat?’ she’d say. From her current vantage point, she could see how her housekeeping had become nonexistent since Alex had left. There were dust bunnies clustered behind the sink pedestal, while the white wicker bin was jammed ful and she hadn’t had the energy to empty it. That would never have happened before. Daisy couldn’t sit down at night until she’d cleaned up after dinner and every surface was shining. This mess wasn’t her. But what was her? She just didn’t know. It was as if Alex had taken her identity with him when he’d left, she realised. Daisy was desperately trying to find herself but there was nothing to find. Without Alex, she was nothing.

‘You al right?’ roared a voice.

A nothing with a strange man in her apartment after a drunken night. A nothing who was a slut into the bargain wel , she could have been a slut but clearly had been too drunk. Although KC was offering to make al that up to her.

The nausea carne back at that thought, and she had to hang over the toilet bowl again. Her life was over, she thought in despair as she retched again. Nobody else cared, so why should she?

It took ten minutes for her to summon up the courage to tel KC he ought to leave, and another two hours to feel reason able enough to leave the apartment for work. Daisy decided to walk, thinking the air might help her feel better.

On the way, she stopped off in the newsagent’s and bought cigarettes, although she didn’t smoke, a big bar of chocolate, and a bottle of water.

‘Hi,’ she said cheerily to the girl behind the counter in Georgia’s Tiara when she rol ed in at the horrendously late hour of half-eleven.

Paula’s replacement, Carla, was very young, very fashionista and very shocked. Daisy hadn’t bothered with much in the way of make-up and her face was a funny grey colour. Worse, she was wearing the weirdest combination of clothes: a vintage looking silk skirt in plummy colours, black tights, a man’s big grey sweater and what looked like suede slippers.

‘Er, Mary … ?’ cal ed Carla nervously.

Mary’s blonde head peeked out from behind the office door. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ she said at the sight of Daisy.

‘What happened?’

‘Wish I knew.’ Daisy stil looked drunk. Now she plonked herself down on the edge of the window beside a mannequin dressed in a chic urban summer suit. ‘It’s over, Alex is total y finished with me. Finished, over, al gone!’

Mary grabbed a handful of notes from the til and thrust them at Carla. ‘Two coffees from Mo’s and a muffin. Lattes with extra shots of espresso.’

Carla fled. Daisy didn’t appear to notice.

‘What I don’t understand, Mary, is how I didn’t know.’

‘Compartmentalising, my dear,’ announced Mary. She flipped the shop sign to closed and sat down beside her friend. Then can put their lives in lots of little boxes, while they can’t put their socks in the correct drawer. While we, who know which drawer to put al the laundry in, are incapable of keeping our lives separate. If we love someone, we love them and everyone knows.’

‘I didn’t think it was love with Louise, you see,’ said Daisy. ‘I sort of hoped it was a fling and he’d come back to me.’

Mary shot her a glance fil ed with sympathy. ‘You shouldn’t get your hopes up,’ she said gently.

Daisy took a deep breath and confessed everything: about!

letting Alex have sex with her and then the awful incident with KC. ‘Oh, Daisy, that’s not the way to get over a man, pet,’ said Mary, when Daisy had finished, trying to put an arm round her.

Daisy pushed it away. ‘You can say that again,’ she said tearful y. ‘It’s awful, bloody awful. I’ve never done anything like that in my life and now, one day after I know it’s total y over, I’ve brought a strange man home and I don’t remember any of it. I’m a mess.’

‘You’re not,’ Mary said, trying to comfort her. ‘You’re a good friend, a talented person, look at al you’ve got. A financial friend, a talented person, look at al you’ve got. A financial interest in the shop! That has nothing to do with Alex. You earned it because you’re clever and talented.’

‘None of this matters,’ Daisy said suddenly. ‘What’s the point? What’s the point of al this,’ she gestured around the shop at the racks of clothes, ‘this rubbish?’

‘It’s not rubbish,’ Mary said patiently. ‘It’s clothes, it’s work.’

‘It wasn’t work for me. I thought it al meant something and if I wore the right things, then I’d fit into the world but I was wrong. Clothes mean nothing. Words mean nothing. I have nothing.’ Her eyes stared up at Mary beseechingly.

‘You do,’ Mary said, wishing she could say the right thing.

But what was the right thing exactly?

‘I don’t.’ Daisy plucked at the packet of cigarettes with nervous fingers. She wanted to smoke them al , then drink so much her head spun, and eat her way through a fridge ful of cake and biscuits and cream. ‘I’ve spent my grown-up life with a man who no longer loves me or wants to be with me. I thought I was fine because he was with me, and without him I don’t think I’m anyone. I’m empty - nothing -

empty. The first thing I do when he dumps me is screw my life up.’ She looked down

at the skirt she was wearing, the pretty plum silk with its appliqued flowers, and began to rip it systematical y. ‘See, it’s like everything in the world: just rubbish, easily frayed rubbish.’ Daisy tore and ripped so al she could hear was the sound of ripping fabric.

Mary did nothing. If it made Daisy happy to tear a perfectly good skirt apart, then she might as wel do it. Mary had her own version of ripping clothes. When she and Bart had first separated, she’d got his col ection of motorbike magazines and torn them to shreds. Every single one. She’d had to take a trip to the tip with bags ful of shredded paper because the neighbours would know she’d lost her marbles if she left them outside the house for the binmen. Mary might have been on her own but she wasn’t going to be pitied by the neighbours. Poor Daisy was way beyond that point. She didn’t care who pitied her. That was what was frightening. Because in al the years Mary had known Daisy, she’d always cared too much about what other people thought. Not caring was a sign that she was in deep distress.

‘You should take time off,’ Mary said careful y. ‘If you want, that is. You might want to work like a mad woman, and if that’s the case, go for it, we’re behind you. But time off could help.’

Daisy raised bloodshot eyes to her friend. ‘I’m going home,’ she said.

‘That’s good,’ said Mary with relief. ‘I’l drop you back.’ ‘Not the apartment. To my old home, to my mother’s. I don’t want to sit in the apartment on my own. I don’t want to go back there at al ,’ Daisy said. ‘There’s nothing there I want.’ She grabbed her handbag from behind the counter and left the shop, the overhanging bel twinkling sweetly as the door slammed.

Mary rushed out after her to see Daisy climbing clumsily into a cab. ‘Blast!’ yel ed Mary as the cab whizzed off. It took ages to order a cab in Carrickwel and when you didn’t want

to see one, they appeared and whisked upset people off into the ether.

Mary ran back inside and picked up the phone. She had enough experience of dealing with men to know that Alex Kenny would not take a phone cal at the office from his ex-girlfriend’s boss, particularly a boss he’d never got on with.

So she’d pretend to be his mother.

Unless Mrs Kenny had changed radical y in the time since Mary had seen her, she stil adored Daisy and was unlikely to have instantly welcomed Louise into the bosom of the Kenny family. Which meant that Louise was not likely to chat and realise it wasn’t Mrs Kenny. Lying real y was access al areas. The faltering, sweet voice of ‘Mrs Kenny’

having an emergency got her through to Alex’s direct line in thirty seconds flat. ‘Mum …’ said Alex, sounding as if he’d run to pick up the phone.

‘It’s Mary Dil on and don’t hang up. There’s a problem.’

‘With Daisy?’

‘No, with Julia Roberts and the Dalai Lama. Of course with Daisy,’ snarled Mary. ‘I know you’ve a wandering dick but I didn’t think your brain was wandering too.’ She cracked on before he could respond. ‘Daisy is having some sort of breakdown and I’m worried about her. She just left here and she says she’s going to stay with her mother, which, as even you know, is unusual. They never talk, so why would she go and visit her? And she wouldn’t go back to the apartment to pick up any clothes. You have to talk to her, you have to do something.’ Silence.

Then, ‘What can I do?’

‘Fol ow her, talk to her. Do something!’ Mary was furious with him.

Her mother’s car was sitting on the gravel drive outside the cottage, but there was no answer to the door when Daisy rang the bel . Her mother surely couldn’t stil be away, Daisy thought blindly. And then she thought of the phone messages on her machine - unanswered, natural y. One had been the usual breezy missive from her mother about a trip abroad, ‘to help Imogen recover from the operation’.

What operation? Daisy wasn’t sure, and she cared less.

Her mother ran to take care of her own siblings, and left her daughter on her own.

The taxi driver was looking at his watch. ‘I’ve another job, love,’ he roared out of the car window. ‘An airport run. I can’t miss it. Are you staying or coming back into town with me or not?’

Daisy was about to say that she didn’t know when a head popped over the hedge.

It was Brendan, her mother’s elderly neighbour, the man who had the keys when Nan Farrel was away. Daisy smiled tiredly at him. ‘Brendan,’ she said, finding the name in the recesses of her brain. ‘Forgot my keys,’ she said, knowing it would al be al right now.

When Brendan had been persuaded to go - he’d seemed very anxious at Daisy turning up unannounced, and kept saying that her mother had never mentioned it to him -

Daisy shut the white painted door and leaned against it with relief. Peace and quiet, at last.

Unlike Daisy’s first home, the terraced house in Carrickwel , the cottage had always been a quiet place to live. The centre of Carrickwel had buzzed, as had the smal cul de sac Nan and Daisy had lived on. But the cottage was one of a line of six detached dwel ings, farm cottages from another era, and they were more or less in the middle of a field in the countryside. Apart from the one at the end, which had been bought by a young couple, the residents of the other five were al past fifty, and the lane was quiet.

The cottage was smal but postcard perfect, with a tiny drawing room complete with wal s the same colour blue as the morning room in the mansion Nan had grown up in, and some

of the silver from the mansion in the walnut cabinet.

Watercolours painted by her mother hung on the wal s. The kitchen, the room most used, was the cosiest and boasted a huge stove - sadly, not an Aga, Nan always said - and a yel ow cushioned window seat where Daisy used to read when it was too cold to sit in her bedroom.

She went up the winding stairs to her bedroom, although it wasn’t real y hers any more. The coverlet she’d made with her sewing machine when she was sixteen was gone, as were al the things she’d left at home when she’d moved out. Her mother wasn’t one for sentimental hoarding.

But the bed was the same. The bed she dreamed of a future on.

Daisy lay down on it, slipped off the slippers she’d worn into work, and fel into a dreamless sleep.

When she woke up, she made herself some tea and switched on her phone. There were several messages, most from Mary, who sounded increasingly worried but trying to hide it, and one from Alex.

‘Mary rang me. She’s worried about you. Says you’ve gone to see your mother … I am sorry, Daisy.’ There was a pause, as if Alex knew he’d said the wrong thing. ‘Just phone me and tel me you’re OK.’

Reassure you that I’m al right so you can go to sleep with Louise in peace and lie up against her bel y and feel your baby kick, Daisy thought bitterly. The bitterness was the most awful bit. It choked her, rising up in her stomach and flooding into every part of her so that she couldn’t so much as look up at the sun without feeling rage and bitterness against it for looking so golden when her world was so bleak.

She searched for something to drink, although she knew she was wasting her time. Her mother might have the odd bottle of sherry around for guests, but that would be it.