Chapter 9
I n her cleaning clothes, Daisy walked along the pavement in the area of Pretty Beach where Pete’s holiday cottages were situated.
As the road changed from tarmac to gravel and a little stream ran down beside the pavement, she pondered the words of the school mums further.
She knew both of them vaguely, but only one of them, Georgia, was a Pretty Beach True Blue and a person Maggie had known from school.
Daisy tried not to think about it too much, but it was a hard ask not to wonder if what they had speculated about was true.
It had to be said that a part of her questioned whether or not Miles would hang around.
She had thought it from the word go, too.
She sighed to herself that the two women had voiced their opinions in the first place, but Pretty Beach was a small town and whether you liked it or not, people talked.
Most of the time, living in Pretty Beach was fabulous and the tight-knit community was good, but at times, like now, Daisy hated the way everybody knew each other’s business.
People just somehow knew things. She wondered how her romantic business was even known about.
How come they were talking about her at the garden party, too?
The fact that she’d been wearing Annabelle’s beautiful dress hadn’t gone unnoticed, either.
The Pretty Beach network worked in many ways; ninety-five per cent of the time, it was nice, comforting and good to be part of it, sometimes, like now, not quite as much.
Arriving at her first cleaning job of the day, Daisy keyed a security code into the pad and checked that the key was in the compartment.
Right away, she sighed as she got to the inner door.
The guests hadn’t exactly made it easy for her to clean; she had to shove aside a pair of discarded flip-flops and a sun-bleached lilo just to get to the door.
It never ceased to amaze her that people left all sorts of things in holiday cottages and who they thought was going to dispose of them.
Inside, the cottage was dim and stuffy, the curtains had not been drawn, the air was heavy and smelt of fried breakfast and sun cream.
Someone had left a half-eaten biscuit on the arm of the sofa and what looked like orange juice had been knocked over on the kitchen worktop and ignored entirely.
Daisy sighed as she felt grit underfoot, and she started flinging open the windows.
There was often sand in the cottages, people couldn’t stay that close to the beach and not bring in half the bay with them, but it irritated her sometimes.
It wasn’t that hard to take outdoor shoes off by the door, surely?
Putting her bag down on a chair by the door, Daisy pushed up the sleeves of her old cleaning sweatshirt and put her earphones in her ears.
She’d lined up a podcast about starting a small business to listen to while she worked.
She didn’t mind the work for Pete. There was something about making a space clean again, setting it up fresh for the next guests, that felt straightforward and mildly satisfying.
You knew what needed doing and when you’d finished, you could actually see the result.
She quite liked the accomplished feeling at the end of it of a clean floor, neat beds, a sparkling sink and full loo roll. Tick, tick, tick.
Pressing go on the podcast, she went into the bedroom to strip the sheets, pulled back the duvet and stared at a mess of crumpled sheets.
Someone had clearly been busy and not just sleeping.
The pillowcases were twisted, the bottom sheet half off, and there was sand in the folds.
Pulling off the bedding, she bundled it into a pile and carried it out to the small utility room by the kitchen, stuffing it in the bag for the linen company.
Then she returned to the next bedroom and started again.
Stripping the beds, opening the windows, shaking out the cushions, and wiping the sills, all with the podcast playing in her ears.
Her body moved on instinct and she was meant to be concentrating on the podcast, but her mind wasn’t in the cottage or the podcast, not in the slightest. It was back at the school gates, hearing the same blooming words all over again.
I give it six months. These men never stick around.
Daisy tried and failed to push the words down, to let all of it roll off her, but it stayed right where it was, front and centre.
The words and what they meant had crept into everything she was doing, making her question what she’d done.
Here she was in a holiday cottage, scrubbing toothpaste from a basin and wondering whether Georgia from the school had been right.
The other woman had irritated her, too. Daisy didn’t even know her name.
She wasn’t someone Daisy had ever spoken to properly.
Just one of those faces you saw at the school raffle or waiting outside the nativity.
For sure, the woman knew about Daisy, though, and liked to discuss her business outside the school gates.
Moving into the lounge, Daisy scooped up discarded wrappers from the side table and folded a blanket that had been kicked halfway under the coffee table.
She lifted the sofa cushions, finding crumbs, a ten-pence piece, and a rogue hairband.
As she reached for the polish and gave the mirror a going over, the words continued going around. Six months.
It wasn’t even as if she thought the two women were correct.
It was just that there was a part of her deep in her chest that wondered whether people like her got the sort of love that stayed and that someone like Miles would like her.
She was a nobody in a seaside town running a bookshop, mothering two children, folding sheets and refilling toilet duck in other people’s houses.
Not exactly that special and making it up as she went along.
In the kitchen, she cleaned the sink, wiped down the splashback and refilled the little jar of dishwasher tablets by the fridge.
Someone had spilt coffee granules near the kettle and they’d stuck to the worktop in clumps.
She scraped them off with the side of a spoon and muttered under her breath as she pondered.
She’d let herself fall in love with Miles.
It had happened slowly, in between school drop-offs and working and now he was in her life and other people were making observations about it. Ahh.
She shook her head. The trouble with cleaning was that it gave your mind too much space to think.
Too much time to prod at things you hadn’t asked to be prodded.
Taking the rubbish out to the bin by the side of the house, she then came back in and started on the bathroom and tried not to think about it.
Hair in the plughole. Toothpaste splatters on the tiles.
A damp flannel hanging on the tap. She thought about the way Miles looked at her, the way he touched her, the way he always noticed when she was tired and brought something small to cheer her up.
A pastry here, a bottle of wine there, a book she hadn’t seen yet.
All little companionable things she loved and him acting like someone who loved her.
She moved back to the bedrooms and remade the beds with fresh linen, smoothing out the corners and tucking the duvet just right.
After plumping the pillows, she hoovered the rugs, emptied the bins, reset the table for two, and checked the fire alarm with the broom handle.
The place smelled better as the sea air whipped through open windows.
The problem was that the cottage was reset but she wasn’t and neither was the mess that was zipping and zapping its way around her head.
The mums at the school had opened a can of worms and Daisy, instead of shoving them back in as fast as she could had done the opposite.
She’d rested the lid on the side and had let them wriggle about on the inside of her brain.