Chapter One Daisy #2
K, he replied. She should have left fifteen minutes ago and she wasn’t sure whether that response was an angry one or not. As
if he needed another reason to dislike her job.
Her computer pinged with a new message on the intranet.
JOB ALERT! Investigative Journalist for our news desk. Keep News Now! At the forefront of UK and world headlines. Identify and pitch compelling news stories. Highest standards of journalism required. Experience necessary. Click here to load your internal application.
Daisy leaned closer to her screen. It was the third time this job had come up since she started at Entertainment Now! five
years ago. It was the whole reason she’d joined the Now! Group, in the hope that one day she could switch teams, but the timing
had never been quite right. The first time, she was so new into the role that she hadn’t wanted to come across as flaky, and
when it appeared for the second time, she’d talked herself out of it. It would be such a big leap, and she’d gotten used to
her job. Enjoyed it. She had just waited and waited, watching as the job advert appeared, sat there and eventually closed
and vanished.
She’d mention it to Zack again. See what he said. Standing up, she switched off her screen and left.
There were delays on the Victoria line, which meant that when Daisy eventually burst through the doors of the Baptist Church
up from Oxford Circus, she was twenty minutes late.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to everyone, while scanning the circle of people to find Zack, throat dry. He looked up and locked
eyes with her, his face lighting up at the sight of her, eyes crinkling at the corners as he pushed his dark brown hair away
from his face. Phew. It hadn’t been an angry “K” he’d texted—or if it had been, she was forgiven. “Gary Newman died,” she
added as though that would explain anything to this group of people who knew very little about her except her first name and
her favorite chocolate bar. “My kryptonite would probably have to be a MARS Bar,” was not a sentence she ever thought she’d
have to say out loud.
Denise, who ran the weekly Weighing Down meeting, offered a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and didn’t acknowledge Daisy’s late arrival beyond that.
It wasn’t exactly an unusual occurrence. Three months ago, when they first started going to this, Zack had chosen the meeting
closest to where he worked as a human resources officer at a large hotel chain in central London so he could make it on his
lunch break. It meant that every week Daisy had a high chance of being late, depending on the news that day. Denise, it seemed,
was over it, despite the fact that Denise still got paid whether people were on time or not.
Daisy waited at the back of the room, as she was made to do when they were already mid-circle and eventually got summoned
forward. She picked up one of the overpriced packs of low-fat chocolate orange biscuits by way of apology and handed over
her money.
“Step on the scales,” Denise said, her voice monotone. She made no effort at eye contact.
Daisy stepped forward, then jumped off, putting her biscuits down so it didn’t impact her weight before getting back on.
Denise read the scales and picked up Daisy’s book, writing the numbers down.
“No change,” she said, finally lifting her gaze to run her eyes down Daisy’s body and back up, handing the book to her.
“Great,” Daisy said, forcing a big smile. It wasn’t great to Denise. She didn’t keep her return clients if they steadfastly
remained the same weight, so she shrugged and handed Daisy her biscuits.
Zack appeared behind her. “Shall we go?” he muttered into her ear. “I’m not sure I can be arsed to sit through an entire meeting
just to tell everyone I gained a couple of pounds.”
Daisy glanced around at the chairs that were still filled with people, hands clasped between their knees, as they waited for
a pep talk on the week ahead.
“You don’t want to stay?” Given I’ve rushed all the way here, she didn’t add.
“Nah,” he said, taking hold of her arm. “Rather hang out with you for a bit.”
He would have stayed for the meeting if he’d lost weight.
“I’m really sorry I was late,” she said, walking with Zack toward the exit.
“All good. Sounds like a big day.”
“It was.” She remembered what happened before she left the office. “And guess what? That job—it’s come up again!” She turned
to look at him, eyes wide with nervous excitement.
“The investigative one?” He raised an eyebrow. “Starting when?”
“End of November.”
He pushed the big oak door of the church open and held it so Daisy could step out onto the street ahead of him.
“Babe,” he said. “I love you and I think you’d be amazing at that job, you know I do.” He let the door slam behind him and
Daisy imagined Denise glaring toward them. “But we’re getting married in January. Or had you forgotten?” He smiled across
at her.
“No, of course I hadn’t. It’s just it doesn’t come up that often. It’s more money too . . .”
Zack started walking away from the direction of his work. Daisy was fairly sure she knew where he was going and fell into
step beside him.
“More money can quickly turn into no money if you don’t keep the job,” he said, taking her hand and squeezing it. “You didn’t
want it last time it came up. You said maybe it wasn’t right for you, and you were happy where you are. I just don’t want
you taking on something that you’re not completely sure of. It’ll put too much pressure on you and that’s never been good
for you, remember?” Zack fixed his eyes on Daisy’s face, as if trying to transfer a memory. She looked away.
“Plus,” he continued, “we’ve got a wedding to plan and we’ve both said we don’t want to wait much longer after that before we try for a baby. And it’s a big job, isn’t it? Loads of travel. Crazy hours—more crazy than you do now. You’d just be getting started and you’d have to stop again.”
As much as she hated to admit it to herself, he was right. If she did ever get the job, she wanted to stay in it. She wanted
to put her all into it. She wanted to be the best investigative journalist News Now! had ever had. She wouldn’t be able to
do that if she was also planning a wedding, or pregnant, or under pressure.
“You’re right,” she said, lifting his hand to her mouth, kissing it. She’d always wanted this. Someone to talk through plans
with and build a life with, together.
“We’ve both had to make sacrifices and I know it’s frustrating,” he said, looking down at her, eyebrows furrowed. “But like
we keep saying . . .”
“One day,” they both said in unison.
Zack stopped at a bin spilling over with fast-food wrappers and discarded leaflets.
“Shall we sack it off?” he asked, looking pointedly at their Weighing Down booklets.
Daisy didn’t want to go back. She’d never wanted to go. Zack was just one of those people who pushed for explanations for
every moment of her unhappiness and the last time she’d been feeling low and couldn’t put her finger on why exactly, she’d
thrown out there that maybe she was unhappy about her weight ahead of their wedding. Zack had set about organizing an immediate
fix for it and here they were, three months later, guilty about bailing on something she’d thought up on a whim.
He took the book from her and flicked to her page, scanning the numbers. She had fluctuated by the odd pound here and there,
but mostly she had remained the same weight. A weight she was broadly happy with. A weight she had no real intention of changing.
“We probably don’t need to keep going if you’ve leveled out,” he said, and before she could answer, he threw both their booklets
into the bin. “I’ve got time for a quick curry before I go back to the hotel if you fancy? We can go through the flowers we
want for the wedding. That’ll cheer you up.” He grinned and took her hand, leading her up the road to the curry house they’d
already been walking toward.
Daisy wasn’t that keen on curry, but just as Zack had given up his lunch break once a week to go to Weighing Down because it was important to his fiancée, she made compromises too. Early on, they’d spoken about what the key was to a successful
relationship and what was important to them. Making sacrifices—or compromises, as Zack had reframed it—was one of many that
had come up in the hours they’d spent discussing it. Now they held regular relationship audits under his guidance to discuss
whether each of them were meeting those needs and what they could both improve on.
Daisy wasn’t sure whether that was what other couples did, or if it was just what happened when you ended up engaged to your
therapist.