Blue Skies Over Wildflower Lock (The Wildflower Lock)

Chapter 21

Daisy had spent the evening baking as much as she could. Lemon muffins, along with fruit scones and chocolate-dipped shortbread, were all on a cooling rack, waiting for the morning. In getting everything prepared the night before, Daisy was going to allow herself a slight lie in, but at 5a.m. the next day, she was staring up at the ceiling.

The entire night she had been restless. One minute, her mind had been on Theo, and the fact he might turn up at Wildflower Lock any moment to surprise her, and the next second, she would think about her father. She thought about his paintings and how many of them might be out there in the world, unbeknown to her, but she also thought about what he would think of her making this journey, and whether he had moored up at any of the places she was planning on staying. Perhaps he had stared out at the exact array of constellations as Daisy as he’d stood with his arm around her mother and thought they’d have their entire future together.

By five-twenty, Daisy had had enough. With a slight huff, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, slipped on some clothes, and headed outside.

The last of the night’s stars were fading, dissolving into the pale-blue sky as the sun broke over the horizon. The world was so peaceful at this time of day, she thought, as the single melody of a bird accompanied the gentle lapping of the tide. It was hard to believe there had been a time in her life when she’d thought mornings in London were quiet. They weren’t a patch on this. And given how she had time to spare, she found herself struck with the sudden urge to explore the countryside.

With no real purpose, Daisy followed the river away from the town and over the path towards the marshland. She wasn’t sure how far or for how long she wanted to walk; all she knew was that she wanted to walk and take in the world around her. And, for once, she had the time and the space to do that.

It was a well-worn path, with high, brittle grasses rising along the edges of the stony terrain. On one side, the land was low. Grassy fields stretched out towards woodland, beyond which the tops of large houses could just be viewed. On the other side of the path was the river, where boats rocked lazily back and forth, the chimes of their masts a counterpoint to the birdsong. Daisy’s attention, however, was stolen not by the river water, nor by the delicate tufts of clouds that floated in the sky, but by the flowers that grew in those low-lying fields.

Daisy had always loved painting flowers. Since she had learned how to sketch, she had been mesmerised by all the colours and shades that could be found in a single petal. But since moving to Wildflower Lock, that passion had developed further, as had her knowledge of foliage. As she gazed out at the grasses, it was a particular shade of purple that caught her attention.

‘Please let that be what I think it is,’ she said to herself as she inched towards the edge of the path to get a better look.

Daisy would never tell the girls how she had developed this geeky love for all types of fauna, but she had, and her phone was filled with photographs of flowers. Mostly, she took them to aid her paintings and help ensure she was using as accurate a palette as possible, but Daisy had also developed a love simply of taking photos. The skill of catching the light, glimmering off the petals, was very different to the skill of painting, but it gave her a deep satisfaction to get the composition of the shot just right, especially on rare flowers like the one she was staring at. The marsh orchid. She was sure that’s what it was, with its trumpeted, magenta petals rising in pillars between the grasses. She had painted them before, but only from images on the internet. Never from one she’d taken herself.

Pulling out her phone, Daisy zoomed in on the flowers and tried to capture a shot.

The result was blurred and out of focus.

‘Come on, what’s a zoom for?’ Daisy said as she stretched her phone’s camera to its maximum capacity. She just needed to be a bit closer. A metre or two would do it.

Daisy considered what she was going to do next. She knew plenty of people who had picked wildflowers using the excuse that they dried and framed them as a reason to disturb nature, but she wasn’t one of those people. She knew that flowers were best left in the ground where they could continue to offer joy to everyone who saw them – not to mention aid the ecosystem. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to get a perfect shot of this rare specimen, and there was no way she was going to leave without taking it. The only problem was that everything off the footpath was private land.

Daisy looked around, wondering what her next move should be, but knowing that she only had two choices: not get the photo, or spend less than a minute trespassing.