Chapter 8
A n earlier wind had dropped since the morning, leaving the air still as Daisy turned out of the lane behind the bookshop and started her walk through Pretty Beach heading for the school.
From the bookshop, the school run wasn’t long, fifteen minutes on foot at most via the quick route.
As she strolled along, the walk always gave her a chance to shift out of bookshop mode and into mum mode.
She liked that it took her past the bakery, the florist, along past the wharf and the wide verge near the duck pond where the grass was always a little damp underfoot.
The route always made her slow down mentally, even when she was in a hurry.
Today, she wasn’t in a hurry; in fact, it was the opposite.
She was deliberately strolling, taking in as much of the fresh salty sea air as she could.
Stopping for a moment to look out at the sea, a fishing boat’s engine coughed somewhere off the coast and gulls wheeled overhead, loud and squawking.
She passed a cottage with an overgrown gate, and a fat ginger cat asleep on a windowsill eyed her lazily.
She smiled as she passed a corner shop where plaits of garlic on a hook outside the door looked as if they had stepped out of a market.
It all felt very Pretty Beach. Ordinary and lovely in a way Daisy had loved when she was a girl and had grown to love more and more since moving back into the centre of the little town by the sea.
Smiling and shifting into mum mode, she adjusted the strap of her bag and tucked her scarf snugly under her Breton top.
As she strolled, as it often did when she was walking, her mind decompressed and her thoughts drifted to Miles.
The kiss in the shop earlier that day had caught her off guard.
Not because it had been dramatic, it wasn’t even anything to speak of.
In fact, it was simple, nice, happy, fine.
Just a kiss in front of a handful of people, but it had meant something from Daisy’s side of the fence.
It had said more than the words that had been dancing around her head for weeks.
Something about it had wiggled a little antenna on her head, telling her to proceed with caution.
He’d slowly slotted himself into the nooks and crannies of her world.
He was still around, still showing up, being consistent and unless she was completely barking up the wrong tree, Daisy was beginning to realise something; he wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. They were an item and he was here to stay, at least that’s what everything he did pointed to. Gulp.
Passing a little parade of shops, she glanced at a chalkboard outside: “Dahlias, late bloomers and going strong”, it read.
She smiled to herself. That was how it felt with Miles.
Late blooming, steady and now going strong.
It had grown in the background of her day-to-day life, threading its way in and out without her quite noticing.
Turning down the hill past some bunting, it flapped lazily, a little faded, but cheerful.
She passed a group of teenagers sitting on a low wall by a post box, all oversized jumpers and loud laughter, and gave them a polite nod.
As she strolled and held up her face to the sky, she mulled over the kiss in what felt to her like the middle of the bookshop.
The shop had been full of chat and customers and energy and Miles hadn’t hesitated for a second.
The way he’d acted like it was the most normal thing in the world to show affection in front of a room full of strangers, which it probably was to other people.
Daisy couldn’t get her head around it. She’d spent so long keeping things safe, making, or at least attempting, to put neat lines around everything that the kiss had felt odd.
She’d kept the girls separate and her real-mum ups and downs apart from Miles just in case things went wrong.
She’d told herself it was sensible, protective, that she didn’t want to confuse the twins and that they always had to think that everything was okay.
Maybe, though, it was time to ease off a little.
To stop thinking of her and Miles as an experiment she might need to back out of.
She nodded to herself as she snapped a piece of lavender off a bush, held it under her nose and inhaled; it wasn’t a test, nope, it was her life.
Her real, full, busy, noisy life and Miles was becoming a part of it, whether she drew lines or not.
At some point, she would need to think about how Miles would become part of her life with her girls.
Having decided to detour and take the long way round to the school, she crossed a small road that led past allotments.
Someone had left a crate of windfall apples on a bench with a note reading “Help yourself”.
A pair of elderly women stood by the gate discussing how much rain was forecast for the weekend.
‘It’s supposed to bucket it down on Sunday. Oh hey, Daise!’
Daisy smiled at her mum, Susannah's, friend Sue, and kept walking. ‘Hi Sue. Sorry, can’t stop.’
‘How are things?’ Sue called over the road.
Yep, great, thank you.’
‘Shop’s going well?’
‘Yes, I can’t believe it.’
‘The new man? How are you getting on?’ Sue cackled.
‘Yes, that too!’
‘Fabulous. Just what we like to hear!’
Daisy reached the top of the road leading to the school and paused for a second on seeing the roof of the school hall, the bright blue fencing around the reception playground, and a line of scooters already parked up outside the gates.
A group of parents was beginning to gather, mums and dads, grandparents, prams and an odd illegally parked car.
She didn’t walk any faster; instead, she slowed to enjoy the final stretch and inhaled.
The weather had turned a tiny bit. There was a just about evident crispness that always made her think of new school pencils, apple crumble and Sunday roasts.
She reached the gate just as the bell sounded and the clatter of children and feet came from inside.
As the door opened and the first lot of children began pouring out, some running, some still fastening cardigans, some already waving at their parents, Daisy stood back slightly, hands in her pockets and mused her new life and how sometimes before she’d lived at the bookshop, on the school run she’d always been waiting for the anxiety to drop in.
Oddly, that feeling was no longer there.
For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel quite as much like she was standing on the edge of something.
She didn’t feel like she had to brace herself for a huge bill or for something to unravel.
She felt so much more settled and centred and that she didn’t have to have a plan.
Having come from the other direction than normal, she was in a different spot from where she usually waited on the other side.
Standing quietly behind a group of mums, she suddenly went cold when she realised that not only had they not seen her, but that they were openly, but quietly, discussing Margot and Evie.
‘They’re really nice little girls. My sister said twins are often disruptive in a class. She had a pair in my nephew’s class and it was a nightmare from the word go.’
‘Right, really? I haven’t heard that myself.’
‘Yes, I thought we might have to do something about it when I saw they were in our class, but so far, so good. I had visions of having put forward something to the committee.’
‘I mean, they look like angels. Apple doesn’t fall far from that tree, right?’
‘I know. Lovely little poppets, too.’
Daisy tried not to listen but couldn’t help herself. The two mums were just in front of her. ‘Did you see Daisy at the garden party?’
‘Didn't everyone? How good did she look? That dress. Do the Henley sisters ever look anything other than knockout? It’s not fair, really…’
‘I know.’ The voice got lower. Now more of a whisper. ‘Did you see who she was with?’
‘I did. How could anyone have missed him? I wouldn’t say no. I give it six more months. These men never stick around. How many times has Pretty Beach had blow-ins? I can’t believe she’s letting herself do that, to be honest. I mean, it’s none of my business whatsoever, but...’
There was a long pause, then the other one replied, her tone clipped and knowing.
‘Shame, really, because those girls are so sweet and they will be the ones who end up copping it, won’t they?
What is she thinking? I’d be concerned about my kids if I were in her shoes, not gallivanting with any old one. ’
‘Yep. There’s no way he’ll stick around. No way in the world. I’d actually lay money on it, wouldn’t you? As if he’s going to take on those twins! You’d need a medal to take on her and two children or clearly he has his own baggage. Am I right?’
Daisy didn’t turn away or step forward to make herself known.
She didn’t speak, flinch or do anything.
Instead, she swallowed, breathed for a bit, then gave them a very wide berth and moved to the other side of the fence.
Her mouth had gone dry and the back of her neck prickled as if she’d just waded through something hot.
Even though she couldn’t see them, she could imagine the looks on their faces.
The judging pursed lips and the slight shake of their heads.
What they'd said zoomed around the inside of her skull.
Miles was a passing distraction. Another man who would breeze in, get bored, and disappear, leaving her and the girls to get on with it.
Daisy felt as if someone had slapped her around the face.
The words sat in her chest, on her cheeks and slammed into her shoulders.
She didn’t know what stung more, the judgment or the fact it had been said oh-so-very casually as if they were discussing the weather.
Like it was a fact that she was stupid and that the relationship was nothing. Totally and utterly dismissive.
The twins came out in a flurry of schoolbags bumping against knees, plaits a bit lopsided, jumpers already half-off before they’d reached the line of parents. Margot spotted Daisy first, and she broke into a run. Evie, just behind her, was doing up the last button of her cardigan.
‘Mummy!’ Margot flung herself into Daisy’s arms like they hadn’t seen each other in days.
‘Hello, darling.’ Daisy crouched slightly as she caught her. ‘Good day?’
‘Miss Pilkington said my letters are good. She even put a sticker in my book!’
Evie arrived beside her, pink-cheeked and slightly out of breath. ‘We had story time.’
Daisy smiled and straightened the collar of Evie’s dress. ‘That’s nice. Did you remember your recorder?’
‘It’s in my bag. I didn’t leave it in the library like last time.’
Daisy stood up, took both their hands, and started the shuffle away from the gate and towards the footpath that led down past the community centre and back home.
‘Mummy?’ Evie tugged at her hand. ‘Can we go through the alley with the swishy trees?’
Daisy blinked. ‘Yes, sweetheart. Of course.’
They turned right and slipped down a narrow lane that eventually ran behind the parade of shops with the florist. Ivy on the wall had started to turn red at the edges, leaves curling slightly from the weather.
Margot skipped ahead a little, humming something under her breath.
Daisy followed, smiling when she was supposed to, nodding in the right places when the girls spoke, but she wasn’t really there.
Her head was full of the horrid words she hadn’t been meant to overhear.
Playing over and over again in a loop, the words swirled, up, down and around her head. Six more months.
It wasn’t even about Miles, not really. It was the attitude of the two mums. The idea that they’d seen the same old story time and again before.
That Daisy was predictable and bound to fail.
Another woman with children and a man who wouldn’t stick around.
They’d spoken about her as if she was blind, stupid and didn’t know the risks.
What they’d said fully rattled her. As if she hadn’t already spent ages second-guessing every step, questioning whether she was doing the right thing, wondering if she was getting carried away or opening up too much.
As if she didn’t lie awake at night some days, wondering whether her heart had got ahead of her brain and now here they were calling her out for it, though just not to her face.
They turned left at the florist, where on the corner, someone had chalked a heart on the pavement in pink.
Margot pointed it out. ‘Look, that’s from yesterday. It’s still there.’
Daisy nodded, the lump in her throat gigantic.
Walking the rest of the way home in fits and starts, the girls chatted about something one of the boys had said at lunchtime.
Daisy made all the right noises, even though her brain was somewhere else.
At the bookshop door, she fished for her keys and let them in.
The twins threw their bags down in the hall and raced upstairs to get changed, shouting about whether they could have toast or crumpets and whether the orange squash had run out.
Daisy stood in the kitchen, both hands flat on the worktop, and stared at the kettle and wondered if she should have said anything at the school gate.
She hadn’t even let the mums see her or how their words had landed.
The kind of comment that came from people who had no idea what it cost to keep going every day of the week when you were on your own.
How it felt to build something from scratch.
To have children and open up your life to someone new, while the rest of the world watched and whispered.
Six months. Daisy reached for a mug, filled the kettle, slipped a packet of wine gums out of her pocket and popped three red ones in her mouth.
Let them watch and mutter. She’d show them, and anyway, she was way too busy to worry or care.
She had toast to make, plaits to redo, washing to sort, a business to run, a heart to look after and a life to live that was not theirs to comment on.
The thing was, their whispered words had cut and sharply. Right to her core.