Chapter Five Daisy
Chapter Five
Daisy
How had Daisy gone from outright ignoring this man for months to walking alongside him to her workplace? Walking with Tom, for she now knew that was his name from the altercation he’d had with the group of men. It was endearing, really, that he
answered such an aggressively rhetorical question with such a genuine response: “I’m Tom.” A man who responded in that way
could perhaps be trusted, just a little.
“You get off at Goodge Street normally, right.” He said it as a statement rather than a question, just after they passed the
British Library. “Can I—” he signaled with his arm to the long road that went all the way from King’s Cross to Euston and
beyond “—walk you, on this . . .” Stopping, he put his hands in his pockets as he looked up to the night sky and back down
at her. “This dark, slightly creepy night. Just in case those guys pick up speed at some point.”
Daisy frowned, enjoying the breeze on her face.
“Would you have described it as creepy without those men? Just . . .” She looked around, trying to take in everything and put it into words.
“I always find this time of day quite special. It’s like for a small moment in time, London is only for the people who woke up early and got outside.
Look at it,” she said, holding out a hand.
“In a couple of hours it’ll be a completely different city.
My dad used to say that dawn is when you get the best weather, and most people miss it. ”
He looked at her, a slow smile forming. “That’s why I’ve always liked it,” he said.
“Well then you passed the test. Yes, you can walk me. Thank you.” She took off back on the street toward Euston.
It was going to be okay. Felicity was already on her way to the office and Daisy wouldn’t be too far behind her. Although,
with the pace they were walking, she was going to be later than she’d planned, but somehow that wasn’t making her want to
speed up. And it should . . . Shouldn’t it?
“Can I ask you something . . . ?” Tom said, trailing off as a woman with a suitcase ran past them toward St. Pancras, most
likely to catch an early Eurostar to Paris or Brussels. Somewhere exotic. Somewhere more exotic than where they were, although
Daisy wasn’t sure about that. She meant what she’d said to Tom. Even now, after years of getting up at this time, there was
still nothing for her that beat London at dawn.
“Daisy,” she said, pointing to herself. “And of course.”
“Well, Daisy, you said your dad used to say . . .” He raised his fingers, forming quotation marks.
“Oh yes. He died.”
Tom nodded once, more of a dip of the head. Daisy glanced across at him, waiting.
“Well? Aren’t you going to say ‘I’m sorry to hear that’?” she asked.
“Do you want me to?” he said back, locking eyes with her. His were a pale blue, and when he looked at her, it was almost as
though he knew what she was thinking. “My mum died when I was ten,” he added, by way of explanation. So he did know a bit about what she was thinking. “I’ve got secret scores for each reaction and the sorry one comes up the most, so I think I’m now immune to it.”
“I know what you mean,” Daisy said. “Though it isn’t the worst by way of response.”
“True,” he nodded. “I think my absolute favorite I once got was ‘were you close?’ Like it made it less sad if we weren’t.”
Daisy covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a laugh. “I’ve not had that one, but I did get ‘what did he die of?’ once,
before any sympathy was offered.”
“A fair question. Cancer,” Tom said, just as Daisy said, “Car accident.”
“Shit, I think you win,” Tom added, and they both gave matching slightly sad smiles. They walked directly across a road that
in an hour or two would be filled with cars and pedestrians waiting to cross, but for now didn’t even require a second glance,
and onto a stretch of road leading toward Euston Station.
The copy of Orlando slipped from Tom’s hand as they reached the other side and he bent down to pick it up, an ambulance passing silently, its
blue lights flashing.
“Can I ask why?” Daisy asked gently, pointing at his book, the journalist within her unable to hold back. He looked across
at her, his eyes warm; reassurance that he didn’t mind her asking.
“It’s going to sound ridiculous.”
“I live for ridiculous,” she said. “Try me.”
Tom took a deep breath, glancing ahead toward a restaurant, its windows filled with potted plants. “My ex-girlfriend broke
up with me four months ago.” He coughed. “On the day I was going to propose to her,” he added after a pause. It seemed like
it was a story he’d told many times before, knowing exactly how long a pause to leave for dramatic impact.
“Oh God, I’m sorry to—” She stopped herself from saying the rest of the sentence that Tom apparently didn’t like to hear.
“Well done,” he said, smiling. “Great save on the sympathy.”
“Were you close?” Daisy responded instead, and he leaned his head back and laughed.
“Much better question,” he said and then his face turned serious as he reached up to pull at his lip.
“I know you’re joking, but honestly, that’s all I keep thinking about.
Because, yes. So fucking close. We planned everything together.
We had a holiday to Portugal booked for next year.
Theatre tickets to that new Benedict Cumberbatch play on our pinboard for Christmas.
Shared savings toward our dream home in Hampstead.
Then she just . . . she ended it, and when I asked her why .
. .” He paused again. “I say asked. Cried and begged for a reason would probably be more accurate, but, you know . . . I’m tough. ” He hit his chest with his
fist and Daisy had the urge to reach out and squeeze his arm, offer him some sort of reassurance. “I asked her why, and she
said it was because of this.” He lifted the book and tapped it with his other hand as though it was no big deal, when she could tell it was actually
quite a huge deal.
“Orlando?” Daisy frowned, taking in the cover. It was a painting of a man—presumably Orlando—with one Frida Kahlo type eyebrow and
long dark brown hair.
“Orlando,” Tom replied, nodding.
A waft of freshly baked bread filled the air for a moment, seemingly from nowhere, before fading away just as abruptly. “I
don’t know it, but it seems . . . an odd choice.”
“Are you saying that based on the title or the image of this very dashing young man on the cover?” he asked, holding the book
up beside his face and then dropping it again.
“Both, I think.”
“It is an odd choice,” he said. “I’ve read it over and over and I just . . . I can’t find anything in there. It’s a dude who gets
his heart broken repeatedly, swears off all humans for life, lives alone for, no exaggeration, hundreds of years with dogs for friends, and then becomes a woman.
It wasn’t even the type of book she’d usually read.
She was obsessed with sad romances.” He was just spilling out all the thoughts in his head now and Daisy knew not to stop him.
That on some level, he needed to get this off his chest. “Sometimes we’d go to that book market down by the Thames on the Southbank—you know the secondhand one?
—and compete to find a book which sounded the most sad.
We’d give each other points for the best,” he added, smiling.
“It had to say devastating or heartbreaking or tore my soul out. This one isn’t any of those things. ”
They were opposite Euston Station, the bus stops outside lit up by neon lights while the streets themselves were relatively
empty. The odd person passed them, but for the most part London, for now, felt entirely theirs.
“What if it was just something stupid like . . . growing your hair out,” Daisy said, holding her hand out for the book, reveling
in the mystery of it all.
“I feel like if it was, she’d have just dropped hints about how much she fancied Jason Momoa.”
“Nice reference.”
“Two days before she broke up with me, on The Worst Day, she woke up telling me she had a new favorite baby name. A week before
she’d said ‘we should go there’ when we were watching some TV show set in Greece.” He was frowning and she could see how much
this was all tormenting him. “The day before, she left a pack of vitamins on the table with a note saying ‘don’t forget to take me. I love you’ beside them.” He
moved to step aside for a street cleaner strolling slowly toward them, leaning on his cart and biting an apple. “People could
get in her head sometimes. I just think if I can figure out what she saw in the book, I can fix this somehow, or change it.
Help her to see what a massive mistake she’s making. That maybe breaking up isn’t what she wanted. But, well, I’m a photographer.
Words aren’t my bag. Nothing in this book makes sense to me.”
He seemed so confused . . . and maybe there was something he was missing.
Daisy knew that if there was, she could find it.
She liked a challenge. Plus, she realized with a jolt, she liked him.
He was easy to talk to, and they seemed to just get each other in some intangible way.
Maybe it was the dead-parents thing, or meeting in the way they had, a mix of adrenaline pumping and a sense of euphoria at their escape.
Daisy took Tom’s copy, flicking through the pages that were left. “There must be something,” she said. “What about . . .”
Daisy’s eyes landed on a sentence and she cleared her throat before reading aloud. “Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.” She frowned. “That’s . . . deep?”
He muttered the words to himself, twice. “Fuck!” he said. “How did I not pick up on that?”
She shrugged. “It’s literally my job to pull apart long pieces of text and find the important details. I could . . .” She
stopped. Was it weird, what she was about to offer? “I kind of owe you after destroying your copy and I don’t want you banned