by Jill Mansell
Daisy abruptly broke off, sensing movement at the periphery of her vision. Someone in a bright red jacket was standing by the lychgate, over to her left. Realizing that she’d been spotted, but keen nevertheless not to be thought of as a complete nutcase, Daisy stayed where she was and kept quiet.
The raised metal rim round the base of the bucket was starting to dig into her bottom. She resisted the urge to wriggle in case she toppled off it.
Finally, because the person beside the lychgate wasn’t moving, Daisy turned her head and gazed directly at them. When she realized who it was, she nearly toppled off her bucket anyway.
Then again, it was the anniversary of Steven’s death. Maybe she shouldn’t be that surprised.
Recovering rapidly, Daisy called out, ‘It’s OK, you can come over.’
Puffa jacket—only this time she wasn’t wearing a Puffa—hesitated, then began to thread her way between the gravestones. The frosted grass crunched beneath her flat leather boots. She wore a scarlet fleece, white jeans, a bright green woolly scarf, and blue knitted gloves. In her arms she carried a small cellophane-wrapped bunch of white roses.
Warily approaching Daisy, she said, ‘Look, sorry about this. I could go away and come back later, when—’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve pretty much finished here anyway. You can have my seat if you like.’ Easing her bottom off the bucket—ouch—Daisy stood up and gestured for the girl to take her place. Deeply curious, she smiled briefly and said, ‘I recognize you from the hospital. I’m Daisy.’
‘I know.’ The girl’s nose and cheeks were pink with cold, and she was looking uncomfortable. Ha, thought Daisy, wait until you try sitting on that bucket.
‘My name’s Mel,’ she said at last.
Daisy wondered whether they should be shaking hands, but hers were warming up nicely inside her coat pockets. Besides, the girl didn’t look as if she much wanted to.
‘OK, look, I suppose this could count as one of those tricky social situations, but it really doesn’t have to be.’ Now that the girl was here, Daisy was curious to know more about her. ‘I’m sure Steven told you our marriage was pretty much on the rocks. Well, pretty much doesn’t come into it, to be honest. Absolutely on the rocks, more like.’ She was doing her best to be friendly, but it didn’t seem to be having much effect.
‘I know that.’ Mel began unwrapping the stiff, crackling cellophane from the bunch of roses. ‘He wanted a divorce and you refused.’
Confused, Daisy stared at the girl’s bent head.
‘What?’
‘He wanted to leave you,’ Mel repeated. ‘But you wouldn’t let him go.’
‘Oh no, I’m sorry, but that is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.’ Abruptly, Daisy discovered that Steven still possessed the ability to astound her. ‘I was desperate for a divorce! I told him it was all over between us the week before Christmas. That was when he told me he had cancer.’
‘Cancer?’ It was Mel’s turn to look stunned. ‘Oh God, I didn’t know he had cancer!’
‘Yes, well. He didn’t. He was lying. It was his way of blackmailing me into staying with him.’ Daisy forced herself to stay calm. ‘And do you know what? I fell for it. I thought I couldn’t abandon him to cope with something like that on his own.’ She paused, remembering the moment in the bad news office. ‘Except it wasn’t even true.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Mel was winter-white, her hands trembling. ‘He wouldn’t do that. You’re making it up.’
‘Trust me. If I was going to make up a story like that, I’d have come up with something more original,’ Daisy shot back. ‘It’s such a cliché! Remember EastEnders, Angie doing it to Dirty Den? You see, that was the thing about Steven. He was a con artist. He told me that his only chance of recovery was some new form of treatment in America. He said it cost twenty thousand pounds and asked me to lend him the money—which, basically, meant give him the money, because Steven didn’t have any left of his own. Who knows what he planned to do with it,’ Daisy concluded with a shrug. ‘Run off to America with you, probably. And come back six months later, miraculously cured.’
Was she being cruel, telling Mel this? More to the point, did Mel believe her now?
The creamy-white roses lay across the grave, unwrapped and untouched.
Mel said slowly, ‘I don’t know what to think anymore.’ There were tears in her grey eyes.
‘Oh please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Daisy blurted out. ‘But you have to know what Steven was really like. I hadn’t any idea he was having an affair, but our marriage was over anyway.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ Mel said slowly, ‘is why he would lie to me. We loved each other. We wanted to be together more than anything. If you were happy to get a divorce, why would he want to stay with you?’
Daisy, who had long ago figured this one out, simply gestured over the churchyard wall. In the valley, with the river snaking around the perimeter of the landscaped gardens, the hotel nestled seductively, bathed in winter sunlight, and looking as if it had been liberally dusted with castor sugar. The twenty-foot high Norwegian spruce by the entrance was garlanded with silver lights. The Manor House itself, parts of which dated back to the fifteenth century, was like something out of a Ralph Lauren ad. The other week a reviewer in one of the Sunday papers had hailed it as one of the most glorious hotels in Britain. He’d also mentioned that it was owned by one of the most flamboyant characters in the business and had gone on to describe Hector as Basil Fawlty with attitude, which would probably put off zillions of potential clients, but you couldn’t win them all.
‘Look at it,’ Daisy said simply. ‘This is why Steven wanted to stay with me. He enjoyed the lifestyle too much.’ She didn’t add that Steven had never been much of a one for slumming it. Or for working his fingers to the bone.
‘The trouble is,’ Mel frowned, ‘you can say anything you like about him now and he can’t answer back.’
‘Oh, come on, think it through! If Steven had really wanted to leave me, why didn’t he?’ Impatiently, Daisy swept back her long dark hair. ‘I couldn’t stop him, could I? He was an adult. It wasn’t as if I could tie him up and shove him in the cellar!’
Unexpectedly, Mel said, ‘Would you have given him the twenty thousand pounds?’
Daisy shrugged. ‘I suppose so. He was still my husband. I could hardly say, gosh, cancer, how horrid, but I’m sorry I can’t actually spare the cash right now, I’d really set my heart on a new car.’
Mel, her gaze unwavering, said, ‘Did you love him?’
Considering they were virtual strangers, thought Daisy, they were having an astonishingly frank conversation.
She shook her head. ‘Not at the end, no.’
‘So why are you here, visiting his grave?’ Mel’s tone was faintly challenging. ‘I saw you talking to him just now.’
Daisy’s fingers brushed against the letter in her pocket. But first she had a few more questions of her own.
‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Did you love Steven?’
Mel shot her a pitying look. ‘Of course I did. Otherwise why would I be here now? And I brought him some flowers.’ Her grey eyes glittered as she added pointedly, ‘Which is more than you’ve ever done.’
‘Ever done? So you’ve been here before?’ It was on the tip of Daisy’s tongue to say ‘Do you come here often?’
‘I visit every week. It’s allowed,’ Mel retorted with a flash of defiance. ‘You can’t stop me.’
‘I didn’t say I was going to stop you.’ Heavens, she was touchy! ‘In a weird way, it’s nice to know he has a visitor. How old are you?’ Swiftly, Daisy changed the subject. See? I can ask personal questions too.
‘Twenty-six,’ Mel said stiffly.
Hmm, older than she looked then. With that schoolgirl fringe and neat little mouth, Daisy had guessed twenty-one or -two.
‘So you were twenty-five when you got involved with somebody else’s husband. No qualms about that?’
Mel’s hands were as red as her nose as she clumsily began to arrange the roses in the stone vase. The frost from the grass was melting into the knees of her white jeans.
‘I felt sorry for him. He said he was trapped in a loveless marriage—which was true—and that you were, well…’
‘Let me guess. The bitch from hell?’ That figured, thought Daisy. She could picture it clearly in her mind, nobody could lie or charm their way through life more convincingly than Steven. ‘Actually, I’m not. I’m really nice. Not that I’d expect you to believe that, but I am.’
Mel looked up. ‘You did do one nice thing. Telling the nurse at the hospital to let me into the intensive care unit. That meant so much to me. I couldn’t believe you’d done that.’
Daisy smiled briefly. ‘Ah well, there you go. Like I said, I’m actually a fantastically lovely person.’
Mel, too tense to smile back, said, ‘That was something else Steven told me, that you were full of yourself. Hardly the shrinking violet type, he said.’
‘Shrinking violets can’t run hotels. Speaking of which, I should be getting back.’ Checking her watch, and at the same time noticing Mel check it out—yes, it was a Cartier and no, it wasn’t a fake—Daisy said, ‘Before I go, there’s something you might like to see.’
Mel took the envelope and shook out the two sheets of paper. Her fingers clearly numb with cold, she unfolded them and began to read, first the explanatory letter from the coordinator, then the one from Barney.
She only read the first few lines of the second letter. Not bothering to carry on to the end, she stuffed them back into the envelope and thrust the whole lot into Daisy’s hand.
‘Doesn’t it help?’ Daisy frowned, taken aback. This wasn’t the reaction she’d been expecting.
‘Why would it?’
‘But I think it’s brilliant! That’s why I had to come and tell Steven. He did a good thing. Thanks to him, this boy’s got his life back.’
‘But he’s a complete stranger.’ As she spoke, angry tears sprang into Mel’s eyes. ‘I don’t care about him. I’d rather Steven was still alive. I want him to have his life back, not some boy I don’t even know.’
Chapter 4
Tara, nudging the door open with her bottom and backing into Room 12 with her arms full of fresh towels, nearly jumped out of her skin when she realized she wasn’t alone. The current occupiers having just taken off in their helicopter, she had, naturally enough, expected the room to be empty.
‘Oh, it’s you! Good grief, what are you doing?’ Dumping the towels onto the four-poster, Tara veered across to the windows where Daisy, kneeling up on the window seat, was peering through a pair of binoculars. ‘Not bird watching!’ Tara let out a wail of dismay. ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve taken up bird watching, that is such a nerdy thing to do. You’ll have to go around in one of those hideous green parka-y things and start wearing a woolly bobble hat and I’m telling you now, you’ll never get a boyfriend—’
‘I’m not bird watching, I’m spying on someone,’ Daisy interrupted her diatribe.
‘Oh well, that’s all right then, that’s an excellent hobby.’ Tara nodded in approval. ‘Who is it?’
‘Ooh, nobody special. Just the girl who was having an affair with Steven before he died.’
‘What?’
‘Ouch.’ Daisy yelped as the strap of the binoculars abruptly tightened round her neck. Sensing that strangulation could seriously damage her health, she disentangled herself and passed them over to Tara. ‘Over there in the churchyard. Red jacket, dark hair.’
‘Got her.’ Tara pressed the binoculars against the glass, gazing avidly at the girl who was kneeling next to Steven’s grave. ‘But how do you know for sure she’s the girlfriend?’
‘I’ve just been over there, talking to her. We got a few things sorted out.’ Daisy heaved a sigh. ‘Steven told her almost as many lies as he told me.’
Blimey. ‘Lying never works. You always end up getting caught out,’ Tara said sadly. ‘Like I was telling your dad earlier, that’s just how me and Dominic broke up.’
Her mind evidently elsewhere, Daisy said, ‘Dominic? Dominic who?’
‘Dominic Cross-Calvert, you twit.’
Daisy looked astonished. ‘Cross-Calvert? But that’s the name of the chap who’s getting married here in two weeks’ time. Are you telling me you used to go out with him?’
Tara tut-tutted and tilted her head sympathetically to one side. ‘Honestly, I worry about you sometimes. I told you that this morning.’
‘Did you? Oh well, never mind. If it’s going to be awkward, we’ll just re-jig your shifts. You don’t have to see him.’ As she said it, Daisy was watching Mel leave Steven’s grave and make her way slowly out of the tree-lined churchyard.
‘Don’t be daft.’ Tara was indignant. ‘It was no big thing. I’m fine about Dominic.’
‘So you promise you won’t be doing anything embarrassing, like leaping up in the middle of the ceremony and yelling, “Yes, yes, I know a reason why he can’t get married!” Because if you did do that,’ Daisy shook her head in sorrowful fashion, ‘I’m afraid I’d have to sack you, then chop you up into little pieces and feed you to Bert Connelly’s dogs.’
Yuk. Bert Connelly, one of the hotel’s handymen, kept a small pack of snarling, ravenous pit bulls.
‘I’m not going to do anything,’ Tara protested. ‘Just say hi, that’s all. Crikey, I haven’t even thought about Dominic for months. He was never that important. Life goes on. If he’s getting married, I’m happy for him. And I promise not to do anything embarrassing.’
Daisy nodded, relieved. She could see that Tara was telling the truth.
‘Actually, they’re coming down this afternoon. Maybe you could hang around after your shift and say hello, get it out of the way before the wedding.’
‘I thought of that, and I’d have loved to,’ Tara said honestly, ‘but I’ve got a hair appointment at four, and it’s my last chance before Zoe goes off on maternity leave.’ This was also true. Zoe, the only hairdresser in the world she trusted with her hair, had thoughtlessly gone and got herself knocked up. This afternoon she had to cut and highlight Tara’s spiky blonde hair thoroughly enough to see her through the next four months, while she herself selfishly gave birth and lazed around at home looking after a small baby. Honestly, hairdressers could be so inconsiderate. Didn’t they realize the psychological harm they were inflicting on their loyal clients? Couldn’t they just remember to take their Pills?
‘I can’t miss my appointment,’ said Tara, feeling like a heroin addict being asked to give up her next fix.
‘Don’t panic. I just thought it might be easier to see him this afternoon. I don’t want you getting upset on the day of the wedding.’
‘Honestly, you’ve got this so out of proportion,’ Tara complained. ‘I’m not the tiniest bit in love with Dominic Cross-Calvert. He means nothing to me.’
‘OK, OK.’ Realizing she’d overdone it, Daisy waved her arms in surrender. ‘So long as you’re sure.’
***
On the morning of the wedding, it rained. Not just normal rain either. It was bucketing down.
When the bride-to-be arrived with her mother and sister at ten thirty, Daisy greeted them in reception and led them upstairs to their suite.
‘I know we’re early,’ gushed Annabel, who was plump, blonde, and china-doll pretty, ‘but we wanted to allow plenty of time to get down here, and I’ve been up since five o’clock anyway, all of a flutter. Dominic thinks I’m mad, he says I’m a hopeless case, but how can I not be excited?’ Panting slightly as she followed Daisy up the staircase, she declared with pride, ‘It’s the morning of my wedding, the most important day of my life!’
The suite’s s
itting room had been specially prepared for them with welcoming bowls of flowers and champagne on ice. A fire was crackling away in the grate.
‘Of course it’s important,’ said Daisy. ‘And I bet you any money he’s as excited as you are. Men just like to pretend they aren’t, it’s one of those blokey things they do. What time’s he going to be arriving?’
The wedding ceremony itself was due to take place at three o’clock. Annabel had plenty of time in which to titivate and get herself ready.
‘Oh, two-ish. His best man’s driving him down here. But Dominic mustn’t see me, don’t forget—it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding! Still, I expect they’ll stay downstairs in the bar. Another of those good old male traditions.’ Annabel rolled her eyes in good-natured resignation, then broke into an uncontrollable grin. ‘I still can’t believe this is actually happening to me, I think I must be the luckiest girl in the world. How about you, are you married?’
‘Me? Nooo.’ Brightly, Daisy shook her head. This was one of those questions she preferred to veer away from.
‘What? How can you never have been married?’ Annabel looked shocked. ‘You’re so beautiful you could have any man you want!’
Oh dear, nothing worse than shattering a girl’s illusions hours before her nuptials. No blushing bride-to-be wants to be reminded that some men might trick you into thinking they’re the answer to a single girl’s prayers but that deep down they’re all cheating lying warthogs.
‘Well, I tried it once,’ Daisy said super-casually, ‘but it didn’t work out. Oh wow, that is fabulous.’ Diverting attention from her own unfortunate brush with matrimony, she exclaimed over the wedding gown Annabel’s mother was lovingly unzipping from its case. ‘What a dress… look at that beading.’
‘Every single bead sewn on by hand,’ Annabel twinkled as her mother blushed with pride. ‘Mummy made the dress for me. Isn’t it just fantastic? She’s been working on it for months.’
‘Gorgeous,’ Daisy agreed, though quite so much beading and intricate white-on-white embroidery wasn’t really her thing. ‘Well, I’d better leave you to settle in. I’ll have a pot of coffee sent up, and you can just buzz down to reception if there’s anything else you need.’