Chapter 56
56
Daisy waited for her mother to reply, yet all she did was stare at Daisy in silence with her jaw slack, as if in complete disbelief.
‘Did you not hear what I just said?’ Her mother shook her head. ‘He’s trying to make all these demands on me.’
‘He’s trying to have a grown-up relationship with you,’ Daisy replied. ‘That’s what he’s trying to do, but you don’t understand that because you’ve never actually had one. The moment things get too tough, or you have to give a little bit more than you want to, you run.’
‘Pardon?’ Pippa’s eyebrows rose, but Daisy couldn’t stop, because she was finally letting herself speak the truth she had kept in for over half her life.
‘That’s what you do, Mum. You either run, or you pick complete losers with whom there’s no hope of forming a proper relationship. But I don’t think it’s that with Nicholas. I think you’re scared, and that’s why you’re making up all these excuses. It was exactly the same last summer when he said he’d like it if you moved closer to Wildflower Lock. You bolted then, and now he’s asking for more commitment from you, and you’re bolting again.’
Silence filled the boat and for a split-second, Daisy wondered if she had made a mistake. If she should have kept her thoughts to herself. But then, it was like she had said to Theo – for so long, she had been the only person her mother could lean on and Daisy owed her this. Because maybe hearing the truth would be enough for Pippa to finally stop bolting every time she got a little scared and start taking that next step in a relationship.
Daisy waited for her mother to respond. To admit that Daisy was right. But instead, her face turned a notable shade of puce.
‘You don’t know anything about the relationships I’ve been in,’ she said eventually. ‘You don’t know a damn thing.’
The harshness of her tone caught Daisy.
‘I do, actually,’ Daisy said, refusing to back down. She was right and drunk or not, she was going to make sure her mother heard her. ‘I know quite a lot. Because I was there for most of them. Remember Eric, the postman? He was nice. He wanted us to go on holiday with his family. You bolted then.’
‘Eric was needy.’ Pippa scoffed.
‘It’s called loving, Mum. And what about Artie, the landscape gardener?’
‘Oh yes, who liked to spend weekends trawling garden centres because he couldn’t switch off from his job.’
‘Or because he wanted to share a part of his life that he loved with you?’ Daisy countered. ‘Did you ever think that could be a reason he wanted to do that with you all the time?’
With a loud huff, Pippa stood up.
‘I didn’t come here to be attacked, Daisy. I thought I taught you better than that.’
‘I’m not attacking you. I want you to be happy. I’m trying to make you see you don’t have to just give up every time things get tough. Maybe if you’d just try to compromise a little bit?—’
‘Compromise is just a nice way of saying no one gets what they want,’ her mother scoffed. ‘And thank you for the pseudo- psychology analysis of my love life, but quite frankly, I’m not in the mind to take relationship advice from someone who can’t even see that their own situation is going to end in heartbreak.’
‘Sorry?’ Daisy tipped her head to the side, not sure she had heard her correctly. ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me. I said that you and Theo are destined to be a disaster, and the fact you can’t see it makes it all the more painful to watch.’