Chapter Seventeen Daisy #2
picked up the karaoke folder sitting by the card machine, and went through the songs as though they didn’t already know what
they were singing before they walked in.
“All Saints?” Clara said.
“Obviously.”
She wrote it down and took it over to the woman running the karaoke while Daisy looked on.
She saw how Clara interacted with her, talking and laughing.
The DJ put a hand on Clara’s arm, pushing her hair away from her face with the other; all sure signs she was interested.
Daisy wondered how Clara could ever give up a real human connection like that for someone she’d never met.
It didn’t make any sense to her. She was in love with someone she’d never touched.
Clara didn’t know what her girlfriend smelled of or whether her skin was soft.
She hadn’t felt that stopping of her heart when their eyes met as they glanced across a room at each other.
Hadn’t felt the weight of Leisha’s body as she climbed into bed next to her, or seen their toothbrushes side by side at the sink.
What then, had she experienced, that made her so sure?
That would, she could see now as Clara turned away from the DJ and back toward her, make her so easily turn down a potential connection with someone she’d met in real life?
“I promised Leisha I’d send her a selfie if I convinced you to come here,” she said, pulling her phone out of her back pocket
and holding it in the air.
“What? When? I thought you just thought of it when we were in the pub?”
Clara looked at Daisy, whose mouth had fallen open in shock and burst out laughing. Glancing at her phone, she started to
laugh even harder at the photo she’d just taken, which had caught that exact moment of Daisy’s horror.
Her own phone lit up with a message from Zack.
Back soon? x
“Okay, next up we’ve got Daisy and Clara. Daisy and Clara?”
Clara whooped and a few of the women turned to them in horror, unsure how they’d managed to bag the next spot when there was
a queue of people who’d clearly been waiting for ages. Daisy knew how. It was the Clara effect.
Both of them were handed a microphone as the familiar first beats of “Never Ever” filled the air.
Clara took the rap at the beginning, helped out by the DJ and most of the room, and then Daisy reluctantly took up the first verse.
By the time they reached the chorus, the whole pub was screaming the words so loud that it didn’t really matter who was on the microphones or what they sounded like.
At the bridge, Daisy stared at the words in front of her, wondering if she’d ever properly taken in the song before.
It was about someone so lost and confused.
So helpless. It was her. Things hadn’t been making sense for a while, but that was compounded when Tom met Zack that morning. Everything felt slightly
off, and she wasn’t sure why, and the more she tried to avoid thinking about it, the worse she started to feel. She’d been
lying to everyone and the weight of that was too much. It wasn’t who she was as a person.
As the lyrics in front of her spoke about searching within your own soul, Daisy blinked, the words starting to spin, circling
in her head. She looked across at her best friend, giving it her all, curly hair bouncing back and forth as she sung with
all her might into the microphone, and she reached out and pulled Clara toward her.
“He was my therapist,” she shouted directly into Clara’s ear.
She frowned. “What? Who was?”
The crowd around them burst into the alphabet running right from A to Z as Clara held her microphone away from her, staring
at Daisy.
“Zack. That’s how I met him. He was my therapist.”
All Saints knew what they were singing about. It was true. Sometimes the way you were feeling, it just didn’t feel right.
Clara dropped her microphone, grabbed Daisy’s wrist and pulled her outside, the cold air smacking against Daisy’s face.
“Did I hear that right?” Clara asked, the silence of the street almost deafening in comparison to the muffled screams of All
Saints that continued through the door.
She didn’t want this. She wanted to tell Clara, keep singing and never mention it again. She didn’t even know why she’d said
it at all. Everything was suddenly feeling like too much.
“Daisy?” Clara clapped her hands in front of her face. “What the fuck?”
“I went to him after my dad died.” She glanced down the street and back. “I was having flashbacks of some stuff and I needed someone to talk to and he was so good, Clara. So helpful and supportive and . . . we fell in love.”
Clara’s eyebrows creased in the middle as she listened. “You were paying him to be those things,” she said, her voice gentle.
“It’s a therapist’s job to be helpful and supportive. They aren’t meant to marry you afterward.” Her eyes widened as she stood
taller. “There are laws in place for shit like that, Daisy. To stop it from happening because it’s so common. It’s got a name,
it’s so common. You know that right? It’s called—” she started moving her head from side to side, as if shaking out the word
“—transference. It’s a thing.” She covered her face with her hands, stepping back. “Fuck, I knew he was dodgy. I’ve always got bad vibes from him. It’s like he’s trapped you. What are you going to do? Because he shouldn’t have . . . He should never
have—”
The words were piling up inside Daisy and she couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t let any more of them land, because it wasn’t
true, what Clara was saying. Maybe it was for some people, but that wasn’t who Daisy was. She wasn’t some textbook patient
with a transference label. It was different for her. For both of them. Zack loved her back. That made them a special case, didn’t it? That they
had acted on it, together?
“You can talk,” Daisy burst out, stopping Clara’s words. “At least Zack is real! At least I can touch him and hold him and he
isn’t conning me in some way. Lying about having no signal and being away with work. At least I’m in love with someone who actually exists.”
Clara stumbled backward, her eyes widening before they became laser-focused. Any signs that she was drunk were now gone, replaced
with total cold sobriety. “I knew it,” she said, nostrils flaring.
“I knew you didn’t believe in me and Leisha.
” Clara flung her arms out to the side, slamming them back against herself.
“You think I’m stupid enough to fall for some catfish?
Maybe take a look at your own fucked-up relationship before you start commenting on other people’s.
” She leaned forward, pointing her finger in Daisy’s face.
“And don’t even get me started on whatever weird, beautiful thing is going on with that golden retriever man of yours.
With Tom. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other.
” Daisy flinched, the words cutting into her.
What did Clara mean? She knew what was going on with Tom.
That she was helping him. Helping him to win back his girlfriend. She opened her mouth to say
as much. “And by the way,” Clara continued, walking away and then turning back. “Conning you is exactly what Zack did.”
Clara swung around and marched away, back toward the main road as Daisy watched on, biting down hard on her lip as tears started
streaming down her face.
Reaching into her bag, she got out her phone.
Coming now, she typed to Zack. I love you. x