Chapter 13
SCARLETT
Mum hasn’t yet arrived back from the hospital appointment she’s taken Granny to.
It’s a relief. I want to unload the car before they get home to save the tears another door closing on Daisy’s life would bring.
I wish I could cry like Mum. It must be healthier to let go of all that emotion.
But I’m not the type. Never have been. I bottle things up until the pressure gets too much, and then I explode.
I suggested that we store Daisy’s stuff in the garage, but Mum wouldn’t hear of it. So I lug the suitcases and boxes inside. I need to get them upstairs before Mum gets home. I have visions of her going through them all, and she doesn’t need to be doing that just yet.
The air is thick with heat. I’m dripping with sweat by the time I’ve dumped the final box in Daisy’s room.
After going down to the kitchen and gulping down a pint of water, I return upstairs and go to my bedroom.
This house is too big for Mum now. She’s going to have to sell up at some point.
I slip into my swimsuit. There’s an open-air pool down by the river.
It’s ninety metres long, so great to get in a good swim.
Daisy and I used to train there together when we were younger.
The cool water will be a relief, and it’ll give me the chance to destress and the much-needed time to think.
Before heading out to the pool, I fire up my laptop.
I’d planned to go back to London this evening.
But plans have changed. While I was packing up Daisy’s room, one thing became as clear as day.
The same as George, I can’t let what happened to her go.
The unanswered questions are eating away at me like a cancer I can no longer fight.
I need more time off work. In one way it’s not ideal when you run your own business, because the pounds won’t come in, but at least I have the flexibility not to show up.
I message the clients who have one-to-one training sessions booked at the small studio space I lease close to my London flat, or in their homes.
They already know about my sister’s death as I moved their sessions online for the foreseeable future after Mum called me with the news.
Most of them understand. I’ve been training them for months now.
Many for over a year. I offer them further online sessions for the remainder of the week.
A couple of people reply straight away, telling me not to worry.
I contact the clients who I’ve already moved online this weekend, cancelling their Saturday sessions and reassuring them that their weekday ones next week will go ahead as planned.
I leave the house and powerwalk to the pool.
It’s only half an hour. Normally, I’d run, but the heat is too much today.
I could take my car but parking is a nightmare, and expensive in Cambridge.
Anyway, despite the heat, the exercise will be welcome.
AirPods in, I start another Marcus Aurelius podcast. His voice is full of energy.
It’s addictive, inspirational. He sure knows his stuff.
When I get to the pool, they turn me away. The sun has brought the youngsters flocking. It always was an after-school hangout spot for the local teenagers and kids on warmer days. The attendant tells me to try again in an hour.
I buy a bottle of water from the kiosk and lay my towel out in the shade of a horse chestnut tree in the park.
A blackbird sings from somewhere between the branches.
A mother and her daughters are having a picnic, spread out on a tartan blanket under the adjacent tree.
It reminds me of when Mum used to bring Daisy and me here for tea in the summer.
Two young girls are playing with a Frisbee, not a care in the world. I have to look away.
I get out my phone and find Daisy’s Instagram page I didn’t know existed until today.
I still can’t comprehend why she didn’t tell me she’d set an account up.
It’s painful, but I force myself to scroll through her mainly happy-go-lucky posts.
I flick the screen upwards to find the ones of when she was at A Meeting of Minds the day she died.
I gasp. She took a selfie with another young woman both wearing that turquoise baseball cap.
The one I saw hooked over the side of the dressing table mirror in her bedroom.
So Mum never bought her that cap. MOM is an abbreviation for A Meeting of Minds.
I scroll through other posts from that day.
Several other people are wearing the same cap.
I read each post, scattered with phrases along the lines of: channelling positivity; unleashing my inner strength; this place is the best; I can’t wait to come back in August.
Little did she know that by the time August arrived, she’d be dead.
When I finally get in the pool, I think back to when I trained with Daisy.
We’d ride our mountain bikes to the pool, swim for half an hour, then perform drills.
Afterwards, we’d go for a bike ride along the towpath – ten kilometres there and back – and two laps of Jesus Green to finish on a five-kilometre run.
Daisy was fit. Always had been. She was strict with herself.
Never cheated with what she put in her body. Never.
I thrash out length after length, each stroke firing my resolve. Saturday can’t come quickly enough.