Chapter Twenty-Three Daisy
Chapter Twenty-Three
Daisy
For anyone at the airport on Christmas Eve, their hearts would have lit up when they caught sight of the reunion between Dan
and Daisy. The moment her eyes landed on him walking through the double doors with his backpack, she was jumping up and down
at the metal barrier of Heathrow Terminal 3, holding her hands to her face. Daisy was relieved to see that he still looked
like Dan, but tanned. A bit looser in his body, somehow. Some longer facial hair, but otherwise the same. He scanned the various
people waiting and when he spotted Daisy leaping in the air, he laughed and started jogging to the exit as she ran alongside
him.
When he got to the end of the barriers, he dropped his bag and threw his arms around her as Daisy held him tightly back.
“Oh my God, it’s so good to see you,” she said, squeezing whatever parts of him she had her arms around as hard as possible.
“You too, Daise,” he said, standing back and laughing.
His laugh. What was different about his laugh?
God, that laugh could be photographed and put immediately into Tom’s exhibition.
It shook Daisy, that sudden thought of Tom infiltrating her reunion with her brother.
She’d done well, recently, to not think about him at all.
Or at least to trick herself into believing she wasn’t.
She closed her eyes when the bus went through Angel to ease the disappointment that he wouldn’t be stepping onto it. That he probably never would again.
Fine, so she might have imagined him and Sophie together a few times, laughing and happy, and that brought with it some very
confused emotions. She really was happy for him; he got what he wanted, and he was a good person. A great person. One of the
best, and he deserved that happiness he’d been fighting for. And it was good, wasn’t it, that she’d helped him to get it.
In some small way, she’d played a part in Tom’s happiness. That he was living. With someone else. It made things easier anyway.
It meant she could fully focus on Zack and their life together.
“Why are you staring at me?” Dan asked, grinning, and Daisy kept her eyes on him. He was her brother. She could look at him
as much as she wanted. He was her happiness right now.
“You look different, but you don’t. I’m trying to figure out what’s changed.”
He sighed. “Everything, I think. Thanks for coming to get me.”
They walked out of the airport toward the car park.
“Of course,” Daisy said. “Zack’s picking Mum up from Paddington, so we’ll all meet back at ours. Is that okay?”
Dan turned to Daisy. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s gone on for you.”
She searched for a lightness to his expression, but didn’t find it. He walked ahead of her, following signs for the car park.
“I met this guy when I was traveling, and he told me about this psychedelic retreat in Escondido.”
Daisy nodded. She’d got that part right then—a tick against her investigative skills. She put the ticket in the machine and
paid for the parking, leading Dan out to the car.
“He invited me along. Said it would be ‘a laugh.’ That’s what he said.
He implied it would just be a load of fun, so I said sure, I don’t have to go right to Big Sur right now.
I’ll come on this retreat with you. Fucking hell .
. . it was not fun. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.
It fucked me up a lot. It fucked me up so bad I couldn’t leave. ”
They reached the car and Daisy unlocked it, lifting open the boot so she didn’t have to look at Dan. She should ask him. She
knew she should ask him what went on there, but she couldn’t do it. If she did, she’d have to talk about it, and she wasn’t
ready. She was never ready. She needed to protect herself, the way Zack had always advised her to.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, reaching for his backpack and putting it in the boot before getting into the car. Dan
climbed into the passenger seat and Daisy checked the mirrors, reversing as she played through her ways out of the conversation.
“Oh my God, you won’t believe what happened,” she said, launching into the story about the three drunk men on the bus. He
was still Dan, which meant he didn’t call Daisy out on the abrupt subject change, he just listened.
“With a book?” he said, laughing as hard as she knew he would when she was done. “I’m sorry, is that actually you in there or has some
stranger dressed in Daisy’s body come to pick me up? You’d never do something like that.”
“I know! I don’t know what came over me. They were just so awful and drunk that I figured they probably wouldn’t remember
or care.”
“Or the opposite,” Dan said. “In my experience, drunk men aren’t the best targets for violence, with a book or otherwise.”
Daisy could feel the familiar rush of adrenaline filling her body, the same way it had that day.
“It just felt so good! To be that wild and free,” she said, not realizing that that was what was missing until she said it.
She thought it was meeting Tom that had started an unsettling change in her, that had caused everything to feel just a tiny bit different ever since, but maybe it wasn’t just him.
Maybe it was also what she did that day.
“I bet,” Dan said, and she was so happy he was home. Now that he was back, everything could go back to normal.
“Nothing has felt right with you gone,” Daisy blurted out. “I don’t want that to feel like pressure. I’m glad you went away.
I’m so happy for you. I just didn’t realize how much I love having you around.”
“Well I’m happy to be back, sort of,” Dan said. “But also . . . that needs to come from inside you, my friend.”
“What does?” Daisy asked, frowning.
“Happiness.”
Daisy turned in slow motion to stare at her brother as she slowed at a roundabout, and he laughed.
“It’s true. Most of us never stop to ask ourselves if we’re okay. If we’re happy. We just keep going. So . . . are you?”
Daisy’s mouth had turned dry. She and Dan laughed together and checked in about their mum, but they didn’t talk. Not like
this. She pulled out onto the motorway, leading them back toward Stoke Newington. It was like he’d gone away and aged ten
years. Or had he been like this before and she’d just never noticed? Continued to see him as the little brother he once was,
without acknowledging the moment he grew up.
“Am I what?”
“Are you happy? You don’t need to answer me, you just need to start asking yourself. And please can we go past a Marks she just needed to get through Christmas Day. And her wedding. She was going to need more strength than she could
currently offer, but it was Dan. He’d be okay until then.
Instead, to show how pleased she was to have him home and probably, more realistically, to distract herself, Daisy threw herself into making the best Christmas roast she could.
Her mum happily allowed it because it meant she could talk at Dan in the sitting room while Zack lit candles and played carols and every so often appeared in the kitchen to half-heartedly offer some assistance.
Daisy knew better than to actually accept because he didn’t really mean it.
She was happy, anyway. In that moment, preparing Christmas Day lunch for her family, she could honestly say she was happy.
She even checked as she added the potatoes to a pan full of hot goose fat, sprinkling them in Maldon salt flakes.
She asked herself the way Dan had advised her to and yes, there was nothing more she could possibly want.
Nothing. Especially not Tom. She hadn’t thought once about how he might be spending Christmas.
Whether he and Sophie might be cuddled up with Martha on the sofa watching The Grinch, hands interlocked.
“Are you going to do Dad’s carrots?” her mum had asked, and Daisy had said that of course she would. She always did. Her dad
had done the greatest roast carrots glazed in honey and orange, and every time Daisy made them, her mum would look all proud
and say they tasted just the way he made them. It was a small thing Daisy could do to bring her mum some peace within a meal.
Dan came through to help her lay the table.
“Needed to escape for a minute,” he whispered, and God it felt so nice to have her brother there. To be able to joke with
him about the intensity of their mum. “She’s cried about ten times.”
“She really missed you,” Daisy said. “I don’t think she knew what to do with herself.”
“Well she should,” Dan said, with more anger than Daisy had ever heard from him. “She can’t put that on me. It’s fucking bullshit.”
Daisy watched as he threw place mats down on their table, his jaw locked. He reached for the white wine on the counter and
downed some before putting it back.
“It is, I agree,” Daisy said, keeping her voice steady as she waited for a stillness to wash over her. She’d never seen Dan
like this before, and it was unsettling. Unsettling, while also being a little too reminiscent of her childhood. How quickly
she knew to stay calm to stop something from escalating. It seemed to work, as Daisy watched Dan’s shoulders relax. That was,
until their mum walked into the kitchen.
“I was wondering where you got to?” she said to Dan, moving to stand beside him.
“Just helping with the table.” He locked his jaw, walking past her to get knives and forks. She followed him and he swung
back around. “You go relax, Mum, we’ll call when it’s ready.”
“I’m okay,” she said, smiling and not moving as Daisy watched, her chest tightening as her eyes scanned Dan, an energy building
inside her. He stood with his hands on the forks and took in a deep breath with his eyes closed, before exhaling and turning
back to the table.