Chapter 1
TWO WEEKS AGO
SCARLETT
My sister died from a drug overdose, they told me.
They’re wrong.
I stand by the empty grave watching the six pallbearers carry the coffin effortlessly along the meandering tree-lined path. There was nothing of my beautiful sister. She was as slim as a pin. This isn’t right. We’re burying her without answers.
I swallow. My throat aches. I can’t break down. Not yet. Mum needs me. My gorgeous, loving, vivacious sister, Daisy, has left a hollowness nothing can fill for us both. A void from which I fear we will never recover.
I should’ve tried harder. I’ll never forgive myself for that.
We’d become distant in the months before she died.
Before the police found her body by that canal.
But life had got in the way for both of us.
Her university work, with increasingly imminent deadlines.
Me with my heavy training schedule and trying to build my health and wellness business. What was she even doing at that canal?
George. The man Daisy spent every spare moment with.
He got in the way, as well. She gave up competing when she met him.
I miss us spurring each other on in the triathlons we completed together, even when it was a race to the finish line.
I recall how effortlessly she ran. That graceful long stride.
Her wiry legs floating along, feet barely touching the ground.
She could always run faster than me. I was better in the pool.
I glance around me. People stand back respectfully, silently. I pick out faces in the gathering. Daisy’s childhood friends, my aunt and uncle, other young people I’ve never met, probably her university crowd.
George stands with the coffin, trying to hold it together. His jaw is clenched, fists the same, his pain evident in the paleness and physical exhaustion dragging at his face.
A quiet sadness hangs heavy in the air. The weather isn’t helping.
It can’t make up its mind. Showers a moment earlier have given way to bright sunshine.
A rainbow forms across the cloudy sky. Daisy loved rainbows.
When we were young, we always ran outside trying to claim that pot of gold whenever we saw one arched over the fields bordering the back of our house. I inhale deeply.
The coffin is lowered into the ground. The vicar mutters words, but my mind is elsewhere.
Mum sobs quietly. I draw her towards me and hug her.
I don’t know how long we stand there. The minutes don’t matter at a time like this.
When I finally lift my gaze and look around, people are turning, heads hanging, walking away.
Tears blur my vision. I wipe them away and swallow another sob.
Mum slips from my grip and wanders over to the vast array of bouquets.
She reads some cards. I join her, inhaling the smell of freshly cut grass.
It marries well with the flowers. My sister was well loved, that’s for sure.
It’s another reason why none of this makes sense.
‘You coming?’ Mum says eventually. ‘We should get back for the wake. People will be arriving.’
‘Give me a minute,’ I reply.
She walks off to a waiting car as I step back to my sister’s plot.
I kneel at her grave. The sun dances behind another cloud.
A dark shadow falls over me, matching my mood.
‘I’m not sure what happened here, Daisy, but it’s not what the police are saying,’ I whisper.
Specks of rain brush my face. ‘But I’ll find out what happened to you.
I promise I will. And I swear those responsible will pay. ’