Chapter 1
Daisy puffed out her cheeks and then swore as she stepped on a plug lying innocently on the floor.
She hopped around holding her foot and gave the plug an evil stare as if it was the cause of her predicament.
She was trying to forget about her broken relationship, the distressing way she’d found out that her errant husband had died, and the hushed voices of her neighbours.
The tiny apartment she lived in, on a pretty street in the south-western city of Carcassonne in France, seemed oppressive all of a sudden.
She’d spent years creating a safe haven there for herself and her four-year-old daughter, Bronte, but looking around now she realised that she’d been kidding herself that she’d made the right choices.
She shivered and wished she’d remembered to put on an extra pair of socks.
Daisy felt her bottom lip wobble, but then her doorbell chimed.
She angrily brushed any stray tears aside and when she opened the door her lips curled into a genuine smile.
Nico, a dreamboat and part-time model, lived a few doors down.
She guessed that he flirted with her because they were the youngest tenants in their block of flats by at least twenty years.
There was no way she’d ever take him up on his offers of a sleepover, because love hurt.
She’d learned that the hard way – twice! She’d be thirty next year and she knew he didn’t want love, just some fun.
His friendship meant too much for her to risk it, however tempting his knowing smile and sparkling blue eyes were.
‘You’re here!’ he said happily, leaning forward and kissing her on both cheeks.
Daisy closed her eyes for a second and inhaled his spicy aftershave, wondering what it would be like to open the door to a handsome lover like Nico and not worry about the consequences.
‘Are you busy?’ he asked, his sexy French lilt making Daisy forget her problems for a moment and step back to let him inside.
Bronte was playing happily in her room, so Daisy shook her head and led him into the tiny kitchenette, clicking the switch on the wall as there was hardly any natural light in the building, even though the sandy coloured walls were beautiful and made of local stone.
‘No.
I was just thinking about Harrison and wondering what the hell to do with my life,’ she sighed, taking two mugs out of the cupboard, wishing she’d bought some bottles of beer.
His forehead creased and he pulled her into a hug, which she sank into.
He sat her in one of the few chairs in the apartment while he made them both a cup of tea.
She looked around and wondered if it was weird that she had more flowering plants in the house than she had chairs.
Most of the other colourful things in her apartment were about Bronte and her happiness.
It wasn’t exactly as if Daisy had many visitors, so what was the point of spending money on furniture, she reasoned. The plants kept her company.
Nico handed her the steaming mug of tea and perched his pert bottom on her tiny work desk, placed under the living room window, which was half obscured by condensation.
The window faced a wall, so wasn’t exactly inspiring to work from, but at least she tried.
‘You still thinking about starting a gardening business?’ he asked with interest, moving a few of the mood boards and design ideas she’d printed using the old printer that Harrison had left behind when he’d moved out.
‘I don’t know…’ she dithered.
‘I’ve got to do something,’ she said, jumping up as she’d also left her paltry bank statement on the desk and Nico could probably read that too from his position.
She quickly scooped up the papers and shoved them in a floral storage box on one of the shelves she’d built next to the desk.
‘I just don’t think I’m ready.
I need to sort out a school for Bronte soon and most of this…’ she pointed to the mood board, ‘is just daydreaming.’
‘Your ideas are spot on, though,’ Nico insisted.
‘What about when you helped the neighbours on this floor grow indoor gardens and herbs and spices? We don’t miss not having outdoor spaces so much now.
Your designs were genius!’ he applauded, making her blush.
‘That was just practice,’ she brushed off.
‘Plus you all paid for your own plants and planters.
And I would never have made the designs if you hadn’t badgered me for months,’ she added.
Nico chuckled.
‘We all wanted to live in your apartment,’ he waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her and finally she laughed.
‘It’s a mini oasis in here, even though it’s tiny.’
Daisy flushed at the praise.
For now, creating more indoor gardens was out of reach – as were her dreams of designing outdoor spaces.
She was just about managing to function and keep a roof over her daughter’s head, and there was nothing left over for a gardening business.
She didn’t have anyone to help her with Bronte and she couldn’t ask Nico.
He was always flying across the globe on modelling assignments and wanted to spend the next year abroad – another reason why romantic entanglements were off the menu.
‘Come travelling with me,’ he asked, not for the first time.
‘Bronte needs stability,’ she said, shaking her head at his mad ideas.
Had things been so simple when she was his age? She thought back, then winced.
She’d been twenty-four when she’d had Bronte.
She’d got pregnant, married in haste, and then been persuaded that a new life abroad was the answer to her broken heart.
She still found it difficult to think of her best friend Arthur.
When their relationship had changed, so had he.
Meeting Harrison soon after had been a disaster. Except for her precious daughter, of course. It hadn’t taken Harrison long to tire of his little family and move on. She felt bile hit the back of her throat and quickly sipped her tea.
She’d love to go back home to her beloved Windsor and her family in the U.K., but her credit card bill told her that would never happen.
Anyway, she’d let her parents down and left her friends, including Arthur, behind.
She felt her lip wobble again.
She watched Nico pick up a framed photo of her and Bronte and wondered what he thought of the fact that there were no pictures of her with friends.
What friends? She barely had time to wash, let alone find friends, and she certainly couldn’t afford to splash out on the trendy frothy coffee and cakes that social outings seemed to involve these days.
Plus, while Bronte spoke French fluently and adored chatting away to Nico and their other neighbours, Daisy’s own language skills were embarrassingly lacking, although she could get by when she needed to.
Harrison had only spoken French to Bronte, which meant she’d grown up bilingual.
It also meant that Daisy had been shut out of those moments.
She’d struggled to grasp the nuances of what they were saying, until Nico had begun to gently help her understand the beauty of the language.
Harrison’s strict regimes hadn’t been fun for anyone, but at least her precious daughter would have a wider world and more opportunities now.
It was one thing Harrison had given his daughter before he’d moved out last year, if nothing else.
‘Nico,’ Daisy said as she reached for her phone.
‘I know you hate having your photo taken…’ she teased, ‘But can I take a picture of us together? I’ve just realised I don’t have many of friends.’
Nico fanned his face with his hand and laughed, giving her one of his standard model pouts.
‘Are you going to post it on social media and finally inform the world I’m your lover?’ he teased.
‘I’ve been telling you how good we could be together for months!’ He took the phone out of her hand and leant in to kiss her on the cheek, whilst expertly snapping a few photos on her phone.
She felt her skin grow warm as he brushed her blonde hair out of her face and then pressed his lips to hers softly, making her insides squirm.
He stepped back and took her hand.
‘I’m really sorry about Harrison,’ he said, his tone becoming serious.
‘Even though we all hated him,’ he added.
She flinched.
She knew her neighbours hadn’t liked her ex’s brusque manner, not that he had been at home much.
‘It’s ok,’ she shrugged, even though her shoulders suddenly felt heavy.
‘We’d been separated for almost a year.
It was just a shock to find out how he died.’
Nico’s face hardened and he went to look out of the window, despite the uninspiring view, while she thought back to her disaster of a marriage.
Opening the door to a police officer and being informed her husband had died had sucked the breath out of her.
She’d had to hold onto the door for support.
The fact that he’d been staying with a woman and a child had been a knife to her heart.
He barely saw his own daughter.
It made Daisy’s head pound and her eyes smart with tears.
This in turn made her blood boil, as she angrily dashed them away.
She’d spent enough negative energy on that man to last a lifetime. Bronte didn’t really know her dad, so when Daisy had gently explained that Daddy was now an angel, Bronte had just gone quiet for a few hours and then carried on playing with her toys. She didn’t ask questions and after a few days actually appeared happier. Now she shook her head when Daisy asked gently if she’d like to talk about Harrison.
Harrison had told her he was moving out and had left devastation behind.
Discovering he had died in a simple accident – slipping on a child’s toy and hitting his head on the kitchen counter of all things – had been like a punch to the solar plexus and she’d doubled over, winded.
‘He’d been living with one of his indiscretions when the accident happened,’ she explained to Nico.
‘Though visits to his own child had dwindled to nothing,’ he replied angrily, just as Bronte realised he was there and rushed into the room, to be swung up into his arms as they began to chatter excitedly about her day in French.
Daisy could literally feel the fires of hell radiating from every pore of her body as she pictured her husband crouching down to offer a kind word to another child, those precious hours and days when Bronte should have been his sole focus.
She recalled her husband being charm personified on occasion and she’d been suckered in along with everyone else, so the joke was on her.
‘You need to get outside more and stop staring at nothing but these four walls, however beautiful you have made the room,’ said Nico as he propped Bronte on his hip.
‘Let’s go out for hot chocolate!’ he said loudly and Bronte whooped with joy, making Daisy wince because a hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows wasn’t cheap, from the fancy corner shop Nico liked to frequent.
She knew he would offer to pay, but her pride wouldn’t allow that.
Harrison had kept the purse strings tight.
Now she did some online design work for a small gardening company to keep them afloat.
She had never told Harrison about that because he would have scorned her for even trying.
The company often used her designs, even though she didn’t get credit for them and they sometimes forgot to pay her invoice for ages, but the photos they posted on their website of the finished gardens looked beautiful.
One day she might have her own business and customers, but for now her most pressing worry was how to pay for her daughter’s choco chaud .