Daisy didn’t like the sound of those words… when the time is right… for what? If he was about to announce he was married to another woman, there probably wasn’t a great time for that. Or if he was questioning his sexuality, she thought, that was probably best kept a secret at this point. There was a time and place for honesty, and when you were six feet under, it probably wasn’t it.
She slid her finger under the sealed flap and ripped it open. There was a letter to her and a formal letter from a place called the Live Well Clinic. She had no idea what it was and decided it was best to read his letter first. Since spending years nursing Hugh, she now found anything that could remind her of the trauma too much to bear. She knew that with illness came watching the person you love diminish before your eyes: their corporeality and spirituality evaporating. And, for the moment, she preferred to avoid any reminders of that time.
She started to read, her eyes unable to compute what was in front of her. She could hear Hugh’s voice, louder and clearer than ever before since his death.
My dearest Daisy, I have a confession…
The word confession set alarm bells ringing and she almost didn’t want to read on but, short of burning the letter, she knew she would read on and find out the truth.
Years ago, when you started talking about wanting children, I knew I didn’t but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.
She gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth.
I had a vasectomy. I am so sorry, Daisy, please understand that I thought children would ruin us, would ruin the routine we had together. However, as you will see from the certificate with this letter, I did freeze my sperm. You know what I’m like, I’m never without a plan.
Daisy could hear her own heart thumping in her head. He had lied to her for all these years? She had thought she was unable to have children; she had done what every woman did and absorbed the guilt when it turned out, she might well be able to have children. Only now it was too late, or it was becoming too late. She was a biological time bomb.
Anyway, when I found out I had cancer; it was as if life slowed down to make me appreciate everything more. I never took you for granted but the way you looked after me until I came here, to the hospice, was amazing. Thank you for letting me die with dignity. It was then I realised I was leaving you behind in the house and because of my selfish act, and particularly never having told you, you wouldn’t have children to look after you.
I confided in James many months ago and we spoke. I told him I knew that he was in love with you. He didn’t seem surprised I knew. I asked him to look out for you because I am pretty sure you feel the same about him.
Daisy grabbed a tissue from the leather holder on Hugh’s desk and dabbed at her eyes and nose, almost pointlessly as the tears continued to stream.
We agreed he would look out for you and during this first couple of years I wanted you to know how much I need you to find happiness. I have been selfish once before, and I now, from the bottom of my heart, want you to find happiness. Seeing as I’m a boring old fart, I hope you’ll be happier. If you do love James, love him, and let him love you. Have children, Daisy, if it’s not too late, because you would make the most wonderful mother. Maybe that was why I was so selfish. Maybe you looked after me so well in our married life, I didn’t want to share that with children. But now, I can see how truly selfish that attitude is. I don’t know if you will use the sperm or not, and if you do I hope they take after you. But I will be looking down at you from the stars above, tell them to look out for me. If you don’t use the sperm, that’s fine too. I just thought it only right I share my unspeakable lie with you. Love you always, Hugh.
She slammed the letter and the card down angrily. The certificate sat on her lap, searing her thighs. Her eyes swam as she read legal signatures, her name, Hugh’s name. This was possibly her ticket to having children should she choose. Only, it felt like she would be creating a little person without love, without Hugh’s parental input and there was something quite strange about that. Then the fact that James knew all this: did he really love her? Or was he purely an extension of Hugh’s betrayal?
She stood, grabbed everything she had found and strode meaningfully towards the door.
Alistair stood on the other side, his face sweaty and ashen. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Daisy, but I think I made a huge mistake…’
She would have laughed if it hadn’t been for the tide of anger swelling up inside her.
‘You want to break it off?’ She patted his arm. ‘That’s fine.’
Relief passed across his features, and the colour rushed back to his cheeks.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I have to go to London.’ Daisy walked down the stairs and grabbed her coat and keys off the side.
By the light of the hall, Alistair was now able to see her tear-stained face properly. ‘God, are you OK?’
She looked down at the papers in her hand. ‘Yes… no. I don’t know.’ She drew a deep breath and tried to calm her jangled nerves. ‘I need to speak to James. I need answers.’
Alistair smiled. ‘Ah, James.’ He chuckled. ‘Yeah, he spoke to me before he left.’
‘Really?’ Daisy was surprised. ‘Only he didn’t seem to like you much. No offense.’
‘Exactly,’ Alistair agreed. ‘He told me that if I do anything to hurt you, he would find me and break me.’ He paused, deadpan. ‘So he seems like a nice chap.’
The car keys slipped from her hand to the floor as she laughed. ‘I think it’s called being protective.’
‘Something like that.’ Alistair bent down and handed her keys back to her. ‘Go and find him. He loves you.’
Daisy nodded. ‘You go and find Clare, she loves you too.’
They held each other’s gaze in a companionable silence before Daisy turned on her heels and headed out to the car. She tried ringing James as he hadn’t responded to any of her messages and when it went to voicemail, she put the key in the ignition and started up. If he was going to ignore her, she had no choice but to go looking for him without any prior warning.
Chapter 17
As she drove away from the peace of the Gloucestershire countryside, down the M4 to London, she found herself getting increasingly aggravated. She had no idea how people lived like this day in, day out: the constant noise, traffic and sheer numbers of people. Maybe it had been growing up on a farm but she was a country girl through and through. Hugh had worked in London and had often complained of the commute back home, but she insisted she would have been so unhappy living in the city. He bought a flat in Docklands and she had only ever been to it once after the theatre. In fact, she had been to James’s apartment in Marylebone more times, purely because she found that part of London enjoyable and the living space was light and airy. She didn’t feel trapped like she had in Hugh’s sixteenth-floor flat where the view was of other high-rise buildings.
In Marylebone, James had a small courtyard garden and the front of the house looked out over the main high street, the baker being directly opposite. So when she had come to London and because, quite often, James had been invited to join them by Hugh, she made all sorts of excuses to stay at James’s. Hugh would always begrudgingly leave her there, stating he wanted to be able to get into work early the next day and as his flat was only a stone’s throw away from the office, he would have to leave her. When she thought about it now, why had Hugh been so accepting of the time she spent with James? It was as if the last few hours had lifted the curtains on the fog of her marriage. Maybe it hadn’t been as harmonious as she had thought; maybe Hugh had already given into her love for James, and his for her. There were so many questions circling her mind she didn’t know where to begin unravelling the truth and her past.
She drove the route to James’s house as if she had only been there yesterday. In actual fact, Hugh had been so ill in his last months they wouldn’t have been able to make it to London. She parked up on a road a couple of minutes from his apartment that she knew require
d no permits and at this time on a Saturday was a free for all.
She pulled her coat tight around her and walked the two-minute journey to the familiar steps of his apartment building. She saw the glow of a lamp and her heart lifted. She thought of the way James had kissed her only this morning, the way, she realised now, she had fought the urge to kiss him back. She wanted him to hold her, tell her everything was going to be OK, that they were meant to be.
She tried the buzzer again and when no one came to the door, she retrieved the key James had given her to his apartment. It felt a bit wrong to be letting herself in after what had happened that morning and the atmosphere between them after the kiss, but she decided he could have been in the shower, and not have heard the door. She slipped the key into the lock and pushed the heavy front door open. The Victorian entrance hall table was filled with post for the three apartments. She picked up James’s couple of letters and turned to his front door. Using the other key, she jiggled it in the lock and pushed it open. Wary she didn’t want to scare him, she called out, ‘James, it’s me… Daisy. Are you in? Sorry, I hope you don’t mind me letting myself in. I need to talk to you urgently about something.’
She turned to close the door and as she looked back around, she screamed in shock. There in front of her was a woman, but not any old woman: Annabelle. Annabelle was wearing only a towel and her face was flushed.
‘Annabelle!’ Daisy squealed, anger, frustration and hurt building fast inside her. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ She knew it was a silly question: what she was doing in James’s apartment, flushed and almost naked didn’t really need explaining.
She could tell Annabelle had – not surprisingly – had a few drinks. She was slurring her words, and her towel kept slipping downwards forcing Daisy to look the other way.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said, lurching herself at Daisy. ‘How good to see you.’
‘I should be going, sorry, I shouldn’t have let myself in,’ Daisy blundered, making a fast get away. Realising she was still carrying James’s post, she turned back to find Annabelle now completely starkers, giggling like a schoolgirl.
‘Gosh, I’m so sorry, Daisy, flashing my bits at you… I can’t seem to keep my towel in place. The naughty thing wants to run away.’ She leant up against the hall wall, and then slid inelegantly down it until she was sat on the floor. ‘What brings you to this part of the world? I thought you hated London, that’s what James said anyway.’
‘Oh, he did, did he?’ Daisy smarted. ‘Anything else you two have discussed?’
‘Well, he never stops talking about you which is annoying.’ She pulled a face, hiccupping at the same time. ‘But I told him you need to lose a few pounds and lighten up.’
‘And he said?’ Daisy snapped, wondering why the hell she had come this far to be told by a drunken Chihuahua that she needed to lose weight and lighten up. She was pretty sure she was getting a sense of déjà vu. If she wasn’t mistaken, Annabelle had delivered a few home truths after the dog comment debacle too.
‘Not much actually,’ she admitted.
When Daisy realised she was getting no further, she made a move to go. ‘Well, I think there’s no love lost here, Annabelle. So I’ll leave you and James to…’ She gestured towards the bedroom, wondering how long he was going to hide in there for. ‘To do whatever it is you do.’
‘James has gone.’ Annabelle smiled crookedly, her eyes glistening. ‘But I’m sure he’ll be back soon.’
Daisy imagined him nipping out for a post-sex takeaway. That was what she imagined happened when you had hungry sex. Well, the clue was in the title… you got hungry. She had never had it so she wouldn’t know. Sex with Hugh had been such a rigid, formal affair that quite often she thought that in the time it took him to fold up his trousers and align his shoes, she could have whipped together a risotto and an Eton Mess. Once, she remembered, she had actually brought a can of Mr Whippy to bed along with strawberries dipped in chocolate. Her thought process had been that if the excitement wasn’t already there, bring the excitement to the situation. Only it backfired.
Hugh firstly told her off because they would get cream and chocolate on the bed sheets and once he had got over that (she reminded him that she did the laundry), he then sat upright in bed, pillow in his back reading the Financial Times and chowing down on her erotic cream and fruit. Not quite the sexy evening in she had intended.
Realising she had become entirely absorbed in her daydream and was in rapid danger of James walking back in with a Chinese, she opened the door and turned to Annabelle. ‘Drink some water, or have a coffee.’
Annabelle started to cry much to Daisy’s horror. She couldn’t bear drunken tears. Never had been able to tolerate it. Even when she was alone, she just ended up in a slanging match with herself in the mirror as if she was, in fact, two people.
‘Daisy, get a grip!’ she would shout and then the real her would cry pitifully into her sleeve, the smell of cheap student vodka emanating from her pores.
‘Why are you crying, Annabelle?’ She almost felt sorry for her and it took every ounce of willpower to not pull the towel back around her. Even though, truth be told, she was incredibly jealous of her petite frame and slim figure.
‘Because everyone leaves me.’ Annabelle hung her head, large tears dropping into her lap. ‘Well, I mean obviously I left him…’
‘You left who?’
Annabelle looked at her as though she had just crawled out from under a rock. ‘My husband, who do you think?’
Daisy didn’t want to say that she had no idea how they had remained together even this long but she imagined the way Annabelle had conducted herself at the guesthouse had been enough for him to snap.
‘So you left him?’
‘Yes, I left him because the man doesn’t even know what a downward dog is and if I have to tell him, one more bloody time, that I like Tattinger, not Bolly, I will literally tear my eyes out.’
Daisy smiled falsely at Annabelle’s first world problems. Next she wouldn’t be able to understand why her husband bought non-organic guacamole.
‘And,’ as if reading her mind, ‘if he buys another tub of sodding non-organic salsa, I won’t know what to do with myself.’ She frowned. ‘I mean who eats food that’s not organic. Well, I mean, I know the poor do but anyone else?’
‘I think you’ll find that most people do, Annabelle.’ She couldn’t believe she was even having this conversation with her. ‘I mean, I do.’
‘Do you think that’s why you might be carrying a few extra pounds?’
‘No,’ Daisy replied stiffly, ‘that’s because I like food.’
‘Oh.’ Annabelle was clearly trying to get her head around this concept. ‘I don’t.’
‘Well, that must be fun.’ Daisy rolled her eyes. ‘So you’ve left your husband and he’s currently looking after the children…’
‘No, silly.’ Annabelle now attempted to stand. ‘The nannies are looking after the children. You don’t think I’d let him loose to run the house, that would be like leaving my children with a complete stranger.’
Daisy went to say something but bit her tongue. ‘Quite right.’
‘Anyway, so I left him and James said I could come here.’
‘I bet he did.’ Daisy gave her a hard stare. ‘Men, they’re all the same.’
‘Oh no, James is not like any other man I’ve met. He is genuine and kind-hearted. He listens to me talk about all sorts of things. Like we had a great conversation about St Tropez only yesterday and do you know, James too, loves those olives in that salty stuff, and not oil.’
‘Brine?’
‘No, it’s like salty water.’
‘Yes,’ Daisy nodded. ‘Brine.’
‘Are you OK?’ Annabelle peered at her. ‘Are you sneezing?’
‘Never mind.’ Daisy turned once again to the door, keen to get out of the way before a flushed James pranced through the door with sushi rolls for one. Or olives. In brine. For two. ‘
Listen, I’m so glad you two have all this stuff in common.’ When she thought about it they perhaps did know one or two things more about each other than she and Alistair had, but that point aside, either James had reached new levels of shallowness or she didn’t know him either. She didn’t know Alistair. Fact. She thought she had known everything about Hugh. Wrong. She wanted to believe she knew James. Maybe she was completely out of touch with reality. She didn’t have a problem with conversations about St Tropez (Daisy thought that was in France, but she wasn’t sure) or olives in brine for that matter, but she and Jams had talked about love in the past, had talked about what life was all about, about the universe. But maybe he was happier when talking about antipasti and the rich living it up in France.
‘Well, listen, Annabelle, sorry to hear it’s not all going that well for you but maybe you should head home to your husband if you’re that distressed.’
Annabelle laughed raucously. ‘Yeah, so he can bring home yet another secretary he’s hired “to show her the ropes”?’ Daisy watched Annabelle’s face crumple with pain and her heart softened towards her.
‘Oh.’
Annabelle’s mobile bleeped on the side and Daisy passed it to her but not before she noticed it was a text from James. Her heart sank.
‘Here.’ She passed Annabelle the phone.
Annabelle opened up the message and grinned. ‘Oh, he’s on his way.’
Daisy knew she had to leave and quickly. ‘OK, well, I’m off.’
‘So are you going on another date with that Scotsman?’ Annabelle rose now and wrapped the towel around herself, fluffing her hair in the hall mirror. She pinched her cheeks and licked her finger in a bid to remove the mascara that had run down her face. Annoyingly, she looked transformed again. When she was inebriated and had been crying for England, there was no way of getting away from the fact she looked like an intoxicated panda.
‘Yes, I’m dating Alistair,’ she lied; she was getting as good as Ali.
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