Page 102 of The Life Daisy Devlin Designed
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” Alma had whispered.
Daisy had given her a hug. “I’m the one who should be sorry.” She’d pulled back, feeling ashamed when she saw the astonished look on Alma’s face. “This is for you.” She’d handed her a soft package, wrapped in white paper.
Alma had opened it, pulling out a long, fine-knit cream scarf. “It’s beautiful.”
“I made it recently. I thought you’d like it.”
“Thank you,” Alma had said solemnly.
“Let us know how your mother is,” Daisy had urged. “And you’re always welcome back.”
Two hours later, Daisy stood in the same spot with James, before she left for work.
“It might be good to spend some time with Fiona and Daniel,” she said, wondering if she should pass on her best wishes to them. Although she didn’t actually know either of his siblings, and she’d no idea where she and James stood now.
He gave her a withering look. “I’m glad you think so.”
“So why are you going?” she challenged. “If it’s Matt, you’ve got the wrong idea.”
“Really? Tell me how, Daisy.”
“Nothing happened!” She glanced away. “Not what you think, anyway. We didn’t –”
“I don’t care anymore.” His voice was flat. “If you’d nothing to hide, you would have told me about Matt when you took that job. And, to be honest, I don’t know how much to believe.”
She met his eyes again, hoping to see a fragment of the person who’d always trusted her. But his expression had hardened. She forced herself not to stop.
“What about you and Alma? Do you even realise how close you two were? Admit it, since she came to live here, you’ve spent at least as much time with her as you have with me!”
James gave her a long look. “You’re right. At least she was easy to be around. We could just game together, and talk about normal stuff. There was zero pressure.” He shook his head. “You’ve got this sort of ... one-track mind, Daisy. Like, everything is so intense.”
So she’d been right, she thought miserably. James obviously hugely regretted that they’d ever moved in together. Or that they’d got together at all. That was why he’d been pulling away, not wanting to spend any time with her. With Alma, on theother hand, there had been no expectations, no pressure to move forward in a relationship he had no interest in.
“Yeah, well, sorry things have been so shitty.” Zero points for an articulate defence, she thought, miserably.
He gave her one last look. “I’ll be in touch.”
After he left, Daisy burst into tears. She’d lost him, just like she’d lost Matt five years ago. Only this time, it was her own fault. If she’d been truthful with James from the start, maybe they could have talked about it. Maybe she wouldn’t have been so tempted to let Matt overturn everything. But would it really have made that much of a difference? He’d still have spent all his time working – or gaming with Alma. Things hadn’t started to go wrong with James after Matt’s return: they’d been going wrong long before.
She tried to pinpoint exactly when. After they’d bought a house together? Or had the cracks begun to show before that? If so, they’d just papered over them when they’d rented the spare room to Alma.
Daisy blew her nose and washed her face, trying to minimise the puffy-eye look.
As she cycled to work, she realised that they’d eventually have to sell their house too. Her vision blurred, and she stopped at traffic lights, hastily pulling her bike off the road, and pressing the heels of her hands under her eyes in an attempt to stop the tears from coming again.
Reaching their building, she locked her bike, but knew she wasn’t ready to face Fionn. Instead, she walked up a couple of streets and found a café, where she slipped into a window table and ordered a flat white and a large slice of lemon drizzle cake.
For a few moments, she simply allowed the background chatter of the café drift over her, before tuning into the weather report on one of the radio stations being played over the sound system. She sighed. Two more storms, Henry and Iris, were duein swift succession over the next couple of days but, by the sound of it, Storm Henry would be gone by Friday morning and Storm Iris wouldn’t appear until Sunday morning. Kayley’s concert would escape unscathed.
If only she could talk to someone. Not Laura. She’d warned her to come clean about Matt from the start, and she felt like a complete failure now James had walked out. It was probably a sign to change her life – it just wasn’t the one she’d been expecting.
She could phone her mother, but Miriam would just tell her not to worry because it was all part of the cosmic plan.
She could phone Rosie. She’d never confided in her about James, and there was a strong possibility that Rosie would lecture her. But they’d got on better than usual the weekend Rosie had stayed. Before she could talk herself out of it, she scrolled through her contacts and hit the dial button.
“Daisy, is something wrong?”
Sometimes she wished her sister wasn’t so good at reading her from the other side of the country.
