Chapter Three Daisy
Chapter Three
Daisy
Daisy held on to the Investigative Journalist job in her mind like a treasured stone for the rest of the week, not mentioning
it again to Zack. Every day, just to see how it felt, she would click the link to apply. Her fingers would start fizzing as
she held them over the keyboard, imagining what she would write. Why she had the skills. Why she wanted the job. Investigative
journalists didn’t just react to stories like she did now, they created them. They made headlines that otherwise wouldn’t
exist. It was all about digging up things that were meant to stay hidden and Daisy would find them. She’d find them, because
she knew how it felt to hide things.
She really thought the fact it was more money might have meant Zack would push her to consider it, but didn’t that just show
how much he prioritized her happiness? Especially because they were only just affording the mortgage on their little flat
in Stoke Newington and Zack was having to limit their spending and religiously check their joint account to make sure they
kept up the payments. Daisy loved their flat. She’d spent years nurturing it and making it a sanctuary for them both. Finding
furniture for cheap or free. Saving up to buy paint or plants. One small change at a time, she’d transformed their home into
the safe space she’d always wanted.
“Please can we go get lunch? I’m starving and if I have to write one more story about Britney’s Instagram feed I’m going to scream.” Clara appeared behind Daisy, pulling
her attention away from her screen. She quickly closed the job application and spun around on her chair, jumping up.
“Yes! I’m officially finished for the day. Let’s go.” Clara was on the late shift for the week, and when that happened, they
made sure to have at least one lunch together . . . Sometimes five.
They walked to the only decent place to sit in locally–a fish-and-chips restaurant around the corner from the office. It was
far too glamourous for the food it served, with wineglasses on the table and ambient music playing in the background, all
with a serving of mushy peas. Daisy mentally ran through the menu, working out what she could get with her seven-pound lunch
budget. Zack had reduced it for both of them now that the wedding was drawing closer. They needed every penny they could get.
Clara linked her arm through Daisy’s, black curly hair bouncing up and down as they walked. They didn’t often get to speak
in the office, because everything was so fast-paced. There was no time to gossip about themselves when celebrities needed
gossiping about.
“Please can we get wine?” Clara said, pulling open the door to the restaurant. “It feels like one of those days. Or maybe
I’ve just covered so much Britney news, she’s seeped into my veins.”
A glass of wine alone cost five pounds, but Daisy didn’t want to let on how much she and Zack were struggling financially.
A couple of times she had suggested asking their family for some support with the wedding and Zack had dismissed the idea.
In fact he’d more than dismissed it; he’d been horrified.
“I’m not having our family think that I can’t afford to pay for our wedding,” he said.
“Or anyone else, for that matter.” He’d taken her hand.
“I know this is your first relationship, but this kind of stuff is what couples keep between themselves. It’s what brings us closer together, solving this, just the two of us. ”
“Sure!” Daisy said to Clara, forcing a smile. “Wine it is.”
They walked to their usual autumn table, next to the radiator, and summoned the waiter immediately.
“Small or large?” the waiter asked when Clara ordered two glasses of the house white.
“Large,” Clara said loudly over Daisy’s “small.” She swallowed. A large was eight pounds and that was on top of the ten-pound
fish-and-chips. It was okay. It wasn’t like she did it every day. Daisy tapped her card on the machine, closing her eyes as
the number came up.
The waiter returned with their wine and Clara leaned back in her seat. “Talk to me about wedding plans.”
A fist always materialized around Daisy’s heart at the mention of the wedding, squeezing tightly. When Zack had got down on
one knee in their garden on the first sunny day of spring last year, her mouth had said yes while her brain had said no. In fact, her brain had been even more polite than that. It said, “No, thank you,” which she’d remembered ever since because
it was so unexpected. It had nothing to do with Zack; it was the thought of the day itself. The dress and makeup. The aisle.
Everyone turning to stare at her like she was someone worth looking at. The loud saying of vows. Being told to kiss for a
photograph. And another one. The first dance, where people formed a circle around you and watched as you tried to express
how much you loved someone by swaying slowly to “2 Become 1” by the Spice Girls. The thought of it made her want to crawl
out of her skin. She didn’t know how to say any of that to Zack, so instead she just said yes and hoped it would go away,
or that she’d get used to it, or that an asteroid would wipe out the world and she wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.
“Wedding plans are . . . going,” Daisy said carefully. “Obviously the venue is sorted because we’re just using Zack’s hotel, so we get a discount. Dress is ordered. Um . . .” She thought about what else to say. “We looked at flowers the other day.”
Clara screwed her nose up. “I don’t even know what that means. How do you look at flowers?” She reached into the center of the table, spinning the salt with both hands.
“Well I don’t know how other people do it, but we just googled wedding flowers and went through photos until we found one we liked, then Zack took a screenshot and ordered a second round of popadams to
celebrate. So now I need to hunt down a florist that can match the photo.”
There was the slightest flash of a grimace on Clara’s face as Daisy said the word popadams.
“What kind of flowers did you both agree on? Wait, surely you have to go huge on the flowers? That’s how you met, right? When
he visited that flower shop you worked in?”
Daisy swallowed and looked down at her phone, grateful for the distraction. She hadn’t told anyone, not even her best friend,
the truth about how she and Zack met. One day soon after Clara started at Entertainment Now! Daisy had told her a story about
Zack coming into Perfect Bunch and Clara had misunderstood it as the moment she and Zack met. Daisy never corrected her. Scanning through the WhatsApp chat
with Zack, she scrolled up past the wouldn’t use the bathroom for half an hour if I were you and the cup of tea coming up babe x to the photo he’d sent her. A bouquet of purple flowers, with sprays of white, tied in a pale purple ribbon. She showed it
to Clara, who nodded.
“Yup, that looks like flowers to me.” Clara grinned across at Daisy. “Kidding. I love them. Very . . . purple? Sorry. I honestly
don’t know what to say about flowers. Show me Zack’s suit and I’ll be all over it.”
“He’s keeping it a secret. Wants it to be a surprise.”
Clara frowned. “I thought the bride did that, not the groom. Anyway that’s . . . the only update, is it? Flowers.”
Daisy shrugged.
“Look,” Clara added, pulling at her curls and tying them into a bun at record speed. “I’m just going to presume that I’m a
bridesmaid and you’re going to ask me at some point because the wedding is, what, three months away?”
Daisy swallowed. “Of course you’re a bridesmaid, I just haven’t even thought about that part.”
“What do you mean ‘that part’? You mean the wedding part? The entire day part? What part are you thinking about?”
Daisy put her head in her hands. The closer the date got, the harder she was finding it to hold everything in. “None of it,”
she muttered through her hands. “Every time I think about it, I just . . .” She put her hand to her chest, struggling for
breath, just as the waiter arrived with their fish-and-chips.
“Hey . . . hey,” Clara said, getting out of her seat opposite to sit beside Daisy, putting an arm around her. “It’s okay.
We don’t have to talk about it right now, just breathe.” She lifted her head, doing an exaggerated breath in through her nose
which Daisy copied, blowing it out of her mouth. She lifted her finger and started outlining the shape of a square. “Breathe
in two, three, four, five. Hold two, three, four, five. Breathe out two, three, four, five. Hold two, three, four, five,”
she said, one for each side of the square.
“Isn’t that the breathing you do with your niece and nephew?” Daisy asked, and Clara laughed.
“Doesn’t matter what age you are, so long as it works.” She glanced down at Daisy’s plate and then across to her own.
“Go. Eat,” Daisy said. “I’m okay.”
Clara jumped up and moved to sit opposite her again, immediately starting on her fish-and-chips.
“So, how are things going with Leisha?” Daisy asked, keeping the same tone to her voice that Clara used when asking about Zack.
Clara was pretty logical for everything in her life except for one thing: love.
Daisy was trying. She really was. She had genuinely never seen Clara as happy as she’d been since she met Leisha, except Daisy couldn’t exactly use the word met.
Because they hadn’t actually met. So far the whole of their two-year relationship had existed entirely online.
Clara’s face lit up as she pushed some fish and mushy peas onto her fork. “Really good. She’s out near Antarctica at the moment,
so her reception’s a bit dodgy.”
“Oh no,” Daisy said, stabbing her own fork into a chip. Ever since Clara had met Leisha at some online casino where they kept
sending each other virtual cocktails, Leisha’s phone reception had been dodgy about fifty percent of the time. Daisy had repeatedly
witnessed Clara run out of the office all excited with her phone in her hands, only to return seconds later, deflated. In