Chapter XXIX
XXIX
DAISY
She couldn’t stop thinking about what her therapist had said.
Since the dawn of time, people had been warned not to live with regret.
“Live like today is your last,” some would say.
“Nothing is promised,” others would chime in.
But it was never that simple. Daisy had come to know that better than most.
When faced with a choice that could completely alter the course of one’s life, it was na?ve to believe that a part of oneself wouldn’t splinter off, trapped forever in the grey space of what might have been.
If she left Callan, she wasn’t sure she would ever forgive herself.
They hadn’t been together long, and his mother still questioned the authenticity of their relationship, but Daisy loved him.
Then came the harder question: if she stayed, would some future version of herself come to resent the decision, knowing what dreams she had sacrificed, buried, and burnt as a result?
When Christmas Day arrived, Ida had been battling a cold for the better part of a week, and Callan’s mood swings had worsened; they’d become violent outbursts, during which he would throw things in frustration whenever he failed to communicate what he wanted.
Daisy spent more time awake than asleep at night, worrying about whether his mother was truly safe in that house. She never admitted to struggling—she was too proud for that—but it was obvious, even to an outsider, that the cracks were beginning to show.
As Daisy walked through the front door, she found Callan’s mother sweeping shattered glass off the kitchen floor, mascara smudged beneath her eyes, and a tea towel wrapped tightly around her finger.
She set Ida down and hesitated, debating whether to ask what had happened.
But then she glanced up, shaking her head.
“Please,” she said, her voice unusually quiet. “Don’t ask. Not today.”
Daisy nodded and shifted her focus to the unbaked ham resting on the bench. “Does this need to go in?”
“I haven’t glazed it yet.”
“Would you like me to do it?”
She hesitated, wiping at her eyes. “Actually, it would be really helpful if you could take Callan out for a bit of fresh air. He’s a bit off this morning.” Another pause, then a deep breath. “He’s in the lounge, Daisy. He just needs his jacket on.”
Callan didn’t flinch when she dressed him. He didn’t make a sound or even look at her when she hoisted him down the stairs. She wished someone had warned her about this part. Nobody told you about the pain of watching the soul you once loved vacate a body, leaving only a shell behind.
They walked in silence to the end of the street, the quiet growing unbearable. She found herself speaking to him, filling the void. To an outsider, she must have looked absurd—an emotionally invested woman carrying out a one-sided conversation.
“Sometimes, I think about it,” she admitted, glancing across the road at a woman unloading a boot full of presents. “What it would have been like if you’d come back…come back as you. I know you haven’t a clue who I am, Callan, but I remember you—I remember us.”
They crossed the road towards the canal, where houseboats sat moored with their chimneys smoking. A couple wrapped in thick coats walked a small terrier through the snow.
“Sometimes,” she went on, “I wonder if you even want to be here. I see it in your eyes—you’ve given up.
It’s the same look my mother had in hospice when they tube-fed her after she stopped eating.
” She inhaled deeply, the cold air biting at her lungs.
“And maybe it’s selfish of me to say this, but I can’t lose you, Callan.
Our daughter needs you, however that looks. You’re my family. You’re all I have.”
There was no response. His eyes remained vacant, his face unreadable. And then he made a noise, a small sound, barely audible, like a breath caught in his throat.
She stopped walking, her heart pounding, and turned to him. His eyes were still glassy, but something in the way he blinked, the way his lips trembled made her pause.
“Callan?” she whispered. “Do you…do you know who I am?”
For a fleeting moment, she thought she saw it, a flicker of recognition. Her breath caught, tears stinging the corners of her eyes. Maybe—just maybe—it was there.
But then, as quickly as it had come, it vanished. The moment slipping through her fingers like it’d never happened at all.
Later that night, Daisy sat by the window, watching the snow drift down like paper planes across the sky, when Callan’s mother entered the room.
She eased into the seat beside her, and Daisy caught the familiar scent: Sherry on her breath, mingled with the sharp tang of menthol cigarettes. It had been a bad day.
“I wouldn’t blame you if one day you packed a bag and left,” she murmured after a moment of tense silence. “I doubt even God Himself would hold it against you.”
Daisy swallowed hard. They’d had this conversation before, but something about it being on Christmas Day made it feel heavier.
“I’m not leaving him,” she said quietly, eyes dropping to the floor. “He needs me.”
“That may be true. No one is denying that. But what about Ida? Have you stopped to think about what she needs? Kids need stability, Daisy. And nothing about this is stable.”
“And tearing her away from everything she’s ever known—that’s stability?”
“Maybe not at first. But in time, it might be the best thing for her.”
“Why do you want me to leave him?”
Callan’s mother hesitated. “Because maybe, just maybe, you’re still young. I’ve seen this story before, and it rarely ends well. People love to play the virtuous role, but let me tell you, very few can survive that path. It’s long and it’s hard. And this isn’t just about you; it’s about her.”
“Don’t,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “Don’t sit there and act like you wouldn’t be at your coffee group, telling everyone how I walked away the moment things got tough. I’m not doing it. End of story.”
She rose to her feet, watching as his mother lifted her glass to her lips. Everyone seemed to want her to leave him, and Daisy could no longer tell if it was truly out of care for her or if the tide had simply turned against her. Then, to her surprise, his mother began to cry.
“He’s not coming back, is he?” she said, wiping her face with the sleeve of her shirt, her voice breaking as the words escaped. “This is it; this is our life now.”
Daisy stood frozen, her body heavy with the weight of unspoken truths.
His mother was no longer the staunch woman she’d come to know, the one who’d always held everything together.
Instead, she was the picture of a terrified young girl, desperately trying to hold on to a shred of certainty.
And in those seconds, between the silence of their shared grief and stifled cries, Daisy realised for the first time, she wasn’t alone. She never had been.