Brightwood

by Tania Unsworth

  “I found you,” Daisy said.

  A second later, she was fast asleep.

  DAY SEVEN

  THIRTY-­SIX

  The early morning light came through the window blinds in thin stripes. The strangeness of it woke Daisy up. Her mum’s hand lay unmoving on the blanket, just in front of her eyes. Daisy stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then she sat up.

  “Mum?”

  Her mother looked as if she were simply asleep. Daisy leaned forward and touched her face.

  “Mum?”

  Her mother’s skin was warm, but she didn’t move or open her eyes.

  “It’s me!” Daisy cried. “It’s Daisy!”

  She could hear a faint humming sound coming from all around. It was the noise of the hospital waking up. Panic seized her.

  “Mum!”

  She grabbed her mum’s hand and squeezed it hard. It was thinner than she remembered, the fingers delicate, with faint marks of paint still under the nails.

  “You have to wake up,” Daisy said. “You have to!”

  A man and a woman came into the room. They were wearing the same pale green overalls as the women the night before.

  “Who are you?” Daisy said, confused.

  “We’re nurses,” one of them said, giving her an odd look.

  “It’s time to go,” the other said. “You’ll be wanting some breakfast.”

  Daisy shook her head.

  “You can come back later,” the first nurse said. “You can’t stay here now. The doctor needs to make his rounds.”

  Daisy held on tight to her mother’s hand. “I can’t leave,” she said. “I have to wake up my mum.”

  The first nurse made a face, her mouth turned down. “I know you feel that way, honey, but . . . ”

  “We’re doing everything we can for her,” the other added.

  “You don’t understand,” Daisy said, her voice rising.

  The first nurse had her hand on Daisy’s shoulder and was steering her in the direction of the door.

  Daisy twisted away. “Let me go!”

  She scanned the room frantically, looking for her bag.

  Both nurses stepped towards her, their faces firm.

  “Come along now.”

  “You don’t want to make a fuss, do you?”

  Daisy spotted her bag lying on the floor by her mum’s bed and made a grab for it.

  “I brought her all the way from home,” she told the nurses, her fingers scrambling to open the buckle. “I have to give her to my mum. I have to.”

  She lifted Dolly Caroline out of the bag, smoothing her hair.

  “She saved her once before,” Daisy said. “I thought maybe . . . ” What had she thought exactly? Whatever it was, it suddenly seemed childish, too foolish to put into words.

  Both nurses were gazing at her sadly. “Oh, honey . . . ” the first one said.

  It had been pointless to bring the doll. She was just a thing, like a lampshade was, or a pencil, or an empty coat. But Daisy turned to the bed anyway and placed Dolly Caroline in the crook of her mum’s limp arm.

  “Look,” Daisy said, softly. “She’s still wearing her dress and her little shoes. She’s still perfect. Please look,” she begged. “I brought her for you, Mum.”

  Her mother didn’t move.

  Daisy covered her face and burst into tears.

  Behind her, one of the nurses gave a little gasp. “Did you see that?” he said.

  “What?”

  “The right hand. See?”

  It might have been the touch of Dolly Caroline’s silky hair or the sound of Daisy sobbing. Or perhaps it was both. Caroline Fitzjohn’s hand trembled and her breathing deepened. She opened her eyes.

  “Daisy?” she said in a faint, astonished voice.

  “Who’s the doctor on call?” the first nurse asked the other in a high, excited voice. “He needs to be paged at once!”

  Caroline shifted, struggling to raise her head. “There was an accident,” she murmured. “I remember . . . ”

  “Try not to talk, Mrs. Fitzjohn. The doctor is on his way.”

  Daisy was still crying, although it was different now. She had never understood how it was possible to cry from happiness. But it was exactly the same as crying from sadness, except you didn’t have to try to stop. You could go on crying for as long as you liked.

  “How long have I been here?” her mum asked.

  “A week,” Daisy told her. “And it wasn’t an accident. It was Gritting. He came to the house. He tried to hurt me too.”

  Her mum’s eyes widened. “I was so worried. He kept threatening me. He wouldn’t stop. I tried to ignore it for as long as I could. Then I knew I had to get help. I was on my way to the police. I was going to tell them about him and about you as well . . . I was going to tell them everything.”

  “Please don’t upset yourself,” the nurse urged. Caroline didn’t seem to hear. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh, Daisy,” she whispered. “I’ve been so wrong for such a long time.”

  Daisy thought of all the Day Boxes piling up day by day and year by year. Each filled with memories her mum couldn’t bear to lose. But some things were meant to be lost.

  Perhaps in the end, she thought with a flash of sadness, everything was.

  “I want things to be different,” Caroline said, her eyes still fixed on Daisy’s face.

  “You mustn’t talk,” Daisy told her. “You must rest.”

  The room was suddenly full of people. A man in a white coat hurried forward and felt her mum’s wrist. “Remarkable!” he said, staring at his watch. “Do you have pain anywhere, Mrs. Fitzjohn? How many fingers am I holding up? Can you tell me the name of the current prime minister?”

  A nurse drew Daisy aside.

  “You must let us do our job now,” she said. She led Daisy out of the room into the corridor. Then, much to Daisy’s surprise, she suddenly pulled her into a hug. There were tears in her eyes.

  “She will get better, won’t she?” Daisy asked.

  The nurse sniffed and wiped her nose. “It certainly looks like it.”

  She leaned forward to brush the hair out of Daisy’s eyes. “And you’ll be just fine as well. To think that nobody knew you were there all that time, alone in that big house!”

  Daisy looked at her anxiously. “My mum . . . she won’t get into trouble, will she?

  The nurse hesitated. “I don’t think ‘trouble’ is the right word,” she said. “But I’m not going to lie to you, Daisy. When she gets better, your mum is going to have to answer a lot of questions. People will want to make sure that you are going to be okay. Do you understand?”

  Daisy didn’t. She was already okay. But it seemed rude to point that out when the nurse was being so kind. So she nodded instead.

  “Now let’s go to the cafeteria and get some breakfast,” the nurse said, straightening up. “You look like you need it. After that, you might like to visit the children’s waiting area. There’s a lot of fun stuff there. Toys, books, video games. There might even be a couple of other kids to talk to.”

  Daisy gave her a worried look.

  “Trust me,” the nurse said, smiling. “I’ve got a feeling you’re going to really like the place.”

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  The riverboat was sturdy, built for use rather than beauty. Its hull sat low in the water, and its three snug decks had been weathered by tropical rain and sun until they were the same brown color as the great river itself. The upper deck was open to the sky. From here, it was possible to see in all directions: the vast, slow-­moving water ahead and behind, the jungle-­smothered banks on either side.

  Caroline Fitzjohn had set up her easel in one corner of the deck and was just adding the final touches to a painting of a flock of parrots exploding like fireworks out of the trees. She hesitated for a second, then signed the painting in the bottom right-­hand corner and stepped back, staring at it with her head tilted to one side.

  �
�You know, Daisy,” her mum said, “if I pluck up all my courage, perhaps I could persuade a gallery to show one or two of my pictures. Maybe one day even an exhibition . . . ”

  Daisy’s mum rubbed the nape of her neck where her hair tickled. It was growing back fast, already a good three inches below the brim of her broad hat.

  “Maybe I’m being too ambitious,” she added with a flash of doubt.

  “No, you’re not!” Daisy said. She was sitting cross-­legged on the deck with her binoculars around her neck and a notebook on her lap. She was wearing dark green trousers with a lot of pockets and loops, and there was a red bandana tied around her head. She had decided to keep her hair short. It felt light and good that way. “People are going to love your pictures,” she said.

  Her mum stared out across the water at the dark, endless jungle. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “Although there’s something about this place that makes me feel as if all sorts of things are possible.” She smiled at Daisy. “I have to admit, when you said you wanted to go to the Amazon, I was a little shocked. Of all the places in the world to go! But you were right. After everything that’s happened, it feels perfect.”

  Her mum paused. “Why did you want to come here?”

  “I’ve told you fifty times already,” Daisy said. “I made a kind of promise . . . ”

  “Yes, but a promise to whom?”

  “It’s hard to explain—” Daisy began, then broke off abruptly. She seized her binoculars and scanned a clump of trees on the right bank. “I thought so!” she cried, recognizing a dark, motionless shape hanging from a branch. “It’s a sloth! My first sloth! I can see its face!”

  She reached for her notebook. She was making a list of all the animals she had spotted. The list was already fairly long:

  pink river dolphin

  scarlet macaw (x6)

  tamarin monkey (x50?)

  piranha (!)

  Amazon river turtle

  unidentified beetle (large with horns)

  anaconda (although it might have been a twisty branch)

  tapir

  “And that’s just what I’ve seen today!” Daisy said, adding sloth to the list.

  “It’s nearly time for supper,” her mum said, turning back to her painting. “I should clear this up for the day.”

  Daisy kept her binoculars trained on the riverbank. She was hoping to catch sight of a jaguar, although she knew it was unlikely because jaguars were extremely rare. The jungle grew right to the edge of the water, so thick it looked impenetrable. But here and there, the roots of particularly large trees had forced small, mud-­filled clearings in the otherwise unbroken line of vegetation.

  The boat was drawing parallel to one such clearing now. It was just the sort of a place a jaguar might come down to the water to drink.

  There were shadows in the clearing, black and white against the deep green trees. Daisy squinted and adjusted the focus on her binoculars. The shadows separated into two figures.

  One was a man in a strange helmet with his trousers rolled up to his knees. He was paddling in the muddy water, carelessly, not looking where he put his feet. All of a sudden, he lost his balance. Daisy watched him teeter, arms flailing wildly, then land on his backside with a splash.

  The other figure was smaller. She stood high up on the bank, her hands on her hips, her body stiff with exasperation.

  Daisy knew exactly what she was saying.

  You have any idea how fast piranhas can strip a body to the bone?

  Daisy raised her arm to wave. But they were too far away and too busy arguing to see her. Another moment and they were gone, lost in the flow of the swiftly moving river.

  “What have you seen?” her mum called. “Another sloth?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “What, then?”

  Can I be perfectly honest? Daisy thought, smiling a little to herself. She shook her head.

  “Just imagining things,” she said, jumping up to help her mum with supper.

  Acknowledgments

  This book may very well have remained no more than a collection of false starts and muddled drafts without the almost magical guidance and advice of my agent, Rebecca Carter. It is hard to be both kind as well as right, but somehow she manages it. Thanks also to Krestyna Lypen at Algonquin, whose shrewd, tireless editing turned a manuscript into a book, and Anne Sibbald, for her wisdom and support.

  Last, but never, ever least, my love and thanks to David Thaler.

  D. E. THALER

  TANIA UNSWORTH spent her childhood in Cambridge, UK, before moving to America in her twenties. She currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and two sons. She has written one previous novel for young readers, The One Safe Place. Her website is taniaunsworth.com.

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  Published by

  Algonquin Young Readers

  an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-­2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2016 by Tania Unsworth.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  eISBN 978-1-61620-659-8