Forever Love at Wildflower Lock (The Wildflower Lock #4)

Chapter 36

36

It didn’t matter how much she tried to ignore it. The lump in Daisy’s throat was going nowhere.

Even when the food had cooked and they were sitting outside, eating, it was there, stopping her from enjoying her meal.

‘Is everything all right?’ Theo asked. ‘You’ve been a bit quiet. Is it Mum and Dad still? Or was it me going to see Heather? Honestly, she was really pleased about our engagement. Genuinely. I couldn’t have imagined it two years ago, but I guess once she met the right person, she got it. When you know, you know, right?’

Daisy nodded, grateful that she could use chewing food as a reason not to offer a proper answer. She wouldn’t say she knew straight away with Theo, and neither did he. Not at their first meeting, at least. Sure, this relationship was very different from the one she’d had with Paul. But that was probably because she was older, too. More mature.

‘You and Heather talked about having children, then?’ she said, finally voicing the thought that had been niggling at her since Theo returned. ‘You knew she wanted twins.’

‘She always said she wanted twins; she didn’t want to have to spend years of her life lost to sleepless nights by having one after another,’ Theo explained. ‘I’ll be honest, the idea of it terrified me. I have a pair of cousins who are twins, and I remember all the horror stories my aunt would tell me about how the minute she got one to sleep, the other would wake up, and she could never remember which one she had fed and which she hadn’t. She was pretty sure she didn’t sleep for three years. I don’t think I could deal with that. But Heather insisted it would be easiest in the long run. I guess now she’ll find out.’

Daisy was only half listening. He had seemed to miss the point. It wasn’t that Heather wanted twins that had out her out of sorts; it was the fact that Heather and Theo had obviously talked about having children, and not just in a passing comment way. She couldn’t remember when, or even if, the comment had ever arisen between the two of them and if it had, there had certainly never been enough detail to decide how many or how far apart they would want them.

‘So you definitely want children?’ Daisy said, feeling the need to voice the question.

‘Of course. Don’t you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’ Theo’s brow furrowed deeply, and two long creases formed between his eyebrows. ‘I always assumed you’d want at least one.’

‘Why would you assume that?’ Daisy asked. She didn’t want to sound so sharp, but the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that they hadn’t ever discussed it, and yet Theo obviously had some very clear assumptions about what she would and wouldn’t want in the future.

‘Well, there’s the way you’re so close to Amelia, to start with,’ Theo said. ‘And you’re always so good with the kids who come to the coffee shop.’

‘It’s a bit different, smiling at a baby when you hand their mum a cappuccino, as opposed to having your own that you’re stuck with twenty-four seven.’

‘ Stuck with ?’ Theo said. ‘So I take it you don’t want children?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘I don’t think people who want children consider themselves as being stuck with them. Most people actually like their company.’

Daisy could feel a sense of ire rising inside her, and not just because of the assumption Theo had made. She had met plenty of mums when she had been working in London who very much felt stuck with their children. It wasn’t a long-term feeling, and it didn’t mean they didn’t love them, but she would need several more hands than her own to count the number who had found a sense of relief in coming back to work and having some adult company, even if it was just for one day a week.

‘I think parenting is a bit more nuanced than either wanting to be with your children every single second of the day, or not wanting to be with them at all,’ she said, trying to add a reasoned argument to her point. ‘I think staying at home works really well for people like Claire who are great at all those arts and crafts and homebody activities, but I think it’s a lot more complicated when you have a career or a business to think of.’

‘You mean like you have a business to think of?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’re saying you don’t want children because they would interfere with your business?’

‘Will you stop putting words into my mouth?’ Daisy couldn’t remember the last time she had shouted at Theo, or if she ever had. But the words left her mouth in the closest thing to a yell she had ever done. ‘I didn’t say that. I didn’t say I didn’t want children. I said I hadn’t thought about it properly, and to be honest, I think that type of thing requires a lot of thought. It is a lifetime commitment, after all.’

At this, Theo tilted his head to the side. ‘And you’re saying that Heather didn’t think about it properly?’

‘What? Why are we talking about Heather now?’ Daisy’s jaw was hanging open. ‘I was talking about us, because it feels like we haven’t done that enough.’

Theo was shaking his head, as if Daisy was the one being unreasonable.

‘I don’t understand where this has come from,’ he said.

‘No, that’s clear.’ Despite her plate still being half full, Daisy slammed it down on the ground beside her and stood up. Theo had spent a great deal of time marinating the meat and creating a salad to go with it, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t hungry any more.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said, picking up her phone from the ground.

‘But it’s going to be dark soon,’ Theo protested, looking as if he were about to stand up after her.

‘Then I guess I’ll walk in the dark.’