Chapter IX
IX
DAISY
Throughout the years, Daisy had learned that life is one of the most ironic and contradictory experiences. The worst years stretched endlessly, while those meant to be savoured slipped away too quickly.
A month after her thirty-first birthday, she moved to Sicily. She’d not long broken up with Idris after he’d laid into her while drunk, giving her injuries no woman should ever have inflicted at the hands of a partner.
Russell, wanting her to get away from prying eyes for a bit, suggested a break from journalism and taking a two-year copyediting gig at his brother’s firm in Italy.
She was nervous at first; she couldn’t speak Italian, and she’d never travelled out of England, let alone to a country where she didn’t know a single soul.
But after some coercion from Edie that Russell wouldn’t replace her, she went.
Uprooting her life on a whim was one thing; realising that running from something didn’t mean it wasn’t still there was another.
She grieved for Idris, not for who he was, but for the life she’d imagined with him.
She searched for a way back to happiness in empty bars and strangers' beds, only to find the door locked at every turn. And by the time her days were up—all seven hundred and thirty-one of them—she realised she’d given away the last fragments of her youth chasing a fool’s dream.
Six months into her stay, she’d found herself daydreaming of Logan and decided to send him an email.
They hadn’t spoken, not since they’d argued on her birthday, but to her surprise, his reply came almost instantly.
He’d attached a photo of himself in a suit with his hair trimmed below the ear, labelling it his new look, and asked if she approved.
She replied with a heartfelt yes, adding a bittersweet congratulations on his wedding.
Moments later, he wrote back, teasing that he hoped she’d soon find her own Raoul Bova lookalike, making her promise that, when she did, he’d be on the guest list for the wedding. But she never found her Italian Mr Darcy and returned to London empty-handed.
Not long after her return, Russell messaged her, asking if she wanted her old job back.
Copyediting for her had been steady enough.
It was a quiet, undemanding job that made sense while she pieced her life back together, but it didn’t feel like her.
Journalism had always been her drug: euphoric, addictive, and all-consuming.
So, of course, she agreed without hesitation until Russell blindsided her with a suggestion: a short placement in the Middle East.
“It’ll be rewarding for you,” he said, watching her closely. “Professionally and personally.”
She wondered if this was his way of telling her she needed something radical to, as he put it, live a life where her “soul was on fire.”
“You’ll learn a lot,” he added, tapping his pen.
“Isn’t it dangerous over there?”
“Everywhere is dangerous.”
She shot him a look. “You know what I mean.”
He sighed. “I’m not sending you to the frontline war, Daisy. I’m giving you an opportunity. Is it without risk? No. But if you were my daughter, I’d have no qualms about sending you.”
She’d always known Russell as the man who stayed late at work to avoid his parental duties. His words should’ve fallen flat, but for some reason, they didn’t.
The pull of it all, the temptation of something new, something unpredictable, overcame the voice inside her that told her to run in the opposite direction. And before she knew it, she was saying yes.
Daisy had never told anyone about Logan until the day before she went to Afghanistan. Morbidly, she felt it was better to explain to someone now in case the unthinkable happened and he took it upon himself to show up to her funeral.
It felt strange, almost embarrassing, to admit that she’d developed feelings for someone she’d only shared a handful of hours with.
Stranger still, to confess that she thought about him constantly.
Whether she was stuck in traffic, driving to work, or even standing in line at the supermarket, he lingered in her mind.
She would see strangers on the street, and for a split second, the way they moved, the tilt of their head, would send her heart into a frantic lurch.
He was everywhere, yet nowhere at all, and it left Daisy feeling like a love-sick millennial teenager pining over a man she’d met in some AOL chatroom.
It was as if she was caught between two worlds: one where he was simply a passing stranger, and another where he was someone she was desperately missing, someone who had never truly been hers.
“Wait, who is this guy?” Edie had asked as Daisy recounted their story.
“He’s some…” Daisy hesitated, rubbing the back of her neck, trying to recall the details. When they met, he’d just graduated from Cambridge, but she couldn’t remember what discipline. “He’s a brain doctor of sorts.”
“And you interviewed him?” Edie raised an eyebrow.
Daisy nodded, her fingers idly tracing the edge of her glass. “A while ago.”
Edie took a moment to consider, tapping her fingers lightly against the table. “And since then?”
“We’ve had these…I don’t know…weird moments, and we email.”
“You email?”
“Oh, stop it!” Daisy said with a laugh, giving her a light-hearted shove. “I actually quite like it.” She hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Do you believe in soul mates?”
“Is that a loaded question?”
“No! I mean, kind of.” Daisy laughed again, this time covering her face with both hands.
“Do I believe in soul mates?” Edie repeated, her voice soft as she seemed to drift into her own thoughts. “Yeah, I do. It certainly was the case for my parents. They knew within a day of meeting each other that it was the real thing. Me? I haven’t been so blessed.”
Daisy raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Oh, come on. Look at you and Alec.”
Edie’s shoulders tensed, and her lips pressed into a thin line. “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you. It sounds…complicated.”
Daisy felt her chest tighten, unsure how to read Edie’s reaction. She exhaled long and slow, her hands folding nervously in her lap. “It is,” she admitted with a resigned sigh. “But none of that matters now. He’s married—”
“He’s married?” Edie’s voice cut through, sharp and disbelieving, her eyes wide. “Oh, Daze, don’t be that girl. Don’t go down that road. You don’t want to be the other woman.”
“I’m not,” Daisy said quickly. “We haven’t spoken in forever, it’s just—”
“Probably best to keep it that way, pet,” Edie interrupted. She placed a hand over Daisy’s, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You never know; you might find yourself some muscled military lad.”
Little did she know, Edie was right.