Chapter 41
D aisy stood at the kitchen sink, rinsing breakfast bowls and watched Miles through the window as he crouched beside the back gate, trying to fix the latch that had been sticking for weeks.
His sleeves were rolled up and he had a concentrated frown on his face.
The sight of the man in her garden was not bad, that she knew without anyone telling her.
The girls were upstairs, supposedly getting dressed, but by the sounds of it, having an argument about whose turn it was to use the hairbrush and whether Evie's cardigan was actually Margot's cardigan.
The sound of their voices drifted down through the ceiling, a mixture of negotiation and mild protest that formed the soundtrack to most of their mornings.
Daisy dried her hands on a tea towel and looked around the kitchen.
The breakfast chaos had been cleared away, school bags were packed and waiting by the door, and the bookshop was ready for another day.
The whole routine had become second nature and Daisy loved the fact that they could now walk to school.
Since Miles had become a proper part of their lives, not just the man who visited every now and then or helped with the odd bit of this or that, he was often part of the school run, albeit normally arriving for a cup of tea just before they left.
He was nowhere near moving in, but he was in and around Daisy and the twins' lives and had slotted in as if it had always been meant to be.
'Mummy! Margot's got my hair thing and she won't give it back!' Evie's voice carried down from upstairs, followed by the sound of feet thundering across the landing.
'It's not your hair thing, it's mine! You left yours at Grandma's!' Margot's reply came back at equal volume.
Daisy sighed and called up the stairs. 'Right, that's enough. Whoever's ready first gets to choose the route to school. Move yourselves! Henley girls are not late, ever!'
The threat of missing out on decision-making worked like magic. Within minutes, both girls appeared in the kitchen, hair relatively tamed, cardigans on the right way round, and school bags slung over their shoulders. They'd even managed to sort out the hair elastic situation between them.
Miles appeared at the back door, wiping his hands on his jeans. 'Right, that latch should behave itself now. Are we ready for the school expedition?'
'We're ready!' Margot bounced on her toes. 'And I was ready first, so I get to choose which way we go!'
'I was ready first!' Evie protested. 'I had my shoes on before you! Mummy! That’s not fair!'
Daisy held up a hand before an argument could gather momentum. 'Both of you were ready at exactly the same time, which means you'll have to take turns choosing the route. Margot can choose today and Evie can choose tomorrow. That’s the end of it.'
Daisy had learnt, as the twins had got a little bit older, that fairness, or at least the appearance of fairness, was crucial to maintaining harmony between them. Otherwise, all hell broke out.
Miles hovered by the back door. 'What are our route options then?'
Daisy rolled her eyes and looked at the time on her phone. 'We can go the normal way past the bakery, or we can go the long way past the duck pond and the old church, or we can go the really long way along the seafront and up the hill, but I don’t think we’ve got time for that now.'
Margot put her hand up as if she were at school. 'The really long way takes ages, but you get to see the boats.'
'And sometimes there are loads of fish, but mostly there aren't,' Evie added.
Miles nodded as if this was all vital information. 'Well, what's it to be then, Margot? You're the route commander today. Mummy says we don’t have time for the long way along the seafront.'
Margot considered her options with serious gravity as if she were deciding on world peace. 'The way past the duck pond, but we have to stop and look at the ducks to see if there are any good ones.'
Miles chuckled. 'We can't pass up good ducks. Never.'
They made their way out through the back gate, which now opened and closed without wrestling with it getting stuck, thanks to Miles's efforts with the latch.
Daisy locked the door behind them and tucked the keys into her jacket pocket, already running through the mental list of everything she needed to do once she got back to open the shop.
The air outside was crisp and clean, carrying the scent of Pretty Beach all the way along the lane; salt from the sea, woodsmoke from someone's chimney and baking bread drifting from the bakery. The distant sound of the ferry horn honked and the sky was a shade of pale blue that suggested it might stay clear, though with an odd few clouds here and there, Daisy wouldn’t have been surprised if by the time they’d done the school run, it would cloud over.
They walked down the lane behind the bookshop, the twins skipping ahead and then circling back every now and then, their conversation bouncing from topic to topic.
'Miss Pilkington said we're going to do a project about the seaside,' Evie announced. 'We have to find things and write about them.'
'What sort of things?' Miles asked.
'Seaside things like shells and seaweed and that. Boring stuff.'
'Seaweed's not boring! Some of it pops when you step on it. What about when it's really long and you can pretend it's a sea monster?' Margot insisted.
Evie conceded. 'I do like doing that.'
Daisy smiled as she listened to them. These were the conversations she'd been having with them on her own for years.
The endless back-and-forth about everything and nothing that formed the fabric of their daily life.
Having Miles there to witness and be part of it felt surreal sometimes.
Not bad surreal, just very different from the past. It took some getting used to.
'Can we get some cinnamon buns when you pick us up after school?' Margot asked.
'We'll see.’
'Mummy always says we'll see,' Evie explained to Miles with wide eyes. 'It usually means no, but sometimes it means yes if we're really good.'
'That's useful to know,' Miles said seriously. 'I'll file that information away for future reference.'
They reached the turning that led towards the duck pond, and Margot immediately picked up the pace.
Daisy winced, hoping that she wouldn’t go flying.
The pond with its little stream coming down from the Pretty Beach Hills glinted in the sunshine.
A morning jogger was making use of the path that circled the water, two dog walkers stood chatting by the far side and a good few ducks floated serenely on the dark water, occasionally dipping their heads underneath.
Evie pointed. 'Look, there's the one with the green head.’
They stood watching the ducks for a few minutes, the twins providing a running commentary on the various personalities and relationships they'd assigned to the regular inhabitants of the pond.
Daisy glanced at her watch and realised that they'd used up most of their buffer time for getting to school.
'Right, troops, we need to get moving if we want to make it before the bell. '
As they walked, Miles fell into step beside Daisy while the twins went ahead a little, still deep in discussion about the relative merits of different types of ducks and whether the pond would be a good place for a boat.
'This is nice. I like this part of the day.' Miles noted.
'Even with the chaos?' Daisy asked and rolled her eyes.
'It feels real and normal. Who would have thought?'
Daisy knew what he meant. There was something about the morning school run that felt like the most ordinary thing in the world and simultaneously like a small daily miracle.
The fact that she'd managed to get two small people dressed, fed, and equipped with everything they needed for the day, and that they were walking through Pretty Beach together on a clear morning, felt like an achievement. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe that she had twins and that she managed to get anyone dressed in the morning, let alone all three of them and get them out of the house and to places on time.
As they strolled in the direction of the school, Daisy thought about her day.
She had a delivery coming that morning, Lotta was coming over to get stuff ready for an event she was holding in the shop and she had a backlog of work to do for the bakery.
Daisy smiled at how her days had evolved to accommodate the various demands of single parenthood and small business ownership.
While it mostly worked, it required a level of organisation that sometimes felt exhausting and often she felt as if she was chasing her tail.
A tail that had its own home and didn’t pay any rent.
She didn’t mind chasing that tail in the slightest.
Miles swept his hand around. ‘Fancy that GayesBooks tried to get a grip on all of this.’
‘I know. It’s not good to even think about.’
‘Xian played her cards to her chest in that one.’ Miles noted. ‘Those posters were everywhere, but all the while the pair of them were working on sorting it out…’
‘I know. I had an inkling from something Chloe said but, to be honest, I never thought that would be the outcome.’ Daisy shuddered. ‘All that work I did. Having them threaten it was almost unbearable. I just tried to bury it. Little did I know the queens of Pretty Beach were on the case.’
‘You did tell me when I was first on the scene not to mess with them.’
‘Ha! I did.’
‘Clearly, they’re not to be underestimated.’
They turned onto the road that led directly to the school, and immediately, the character of their walk changed as other families converged on the same destination.
A stream of parents, some frazzled, some immaculate, and children all headed in the same direction.
Some parents looked calm and organised, others were clearly running late and trying to manage last-minute crises involving forgotten PE kits or misplaced homework.
Daisy recognised most of the faces, at least by sight, said hello to a few other mums here and there and waved to a dad whose daughter was in the same class as the twins.
Just as they were getting close to the gate, Daisy felt her jaw go tight on spotting Georgia up ahead, walking with another mum Daisy didn't recognise.
Both of them were dressed as if they were heading to lunch at an expensive restaurant rather than dropping children off at primary school.
Georgia's hair was perfectly styled despite the early hour, and she had a tiny white bag with a logo on the front facing outwards so all the world could see where she’d bought it from.
For a moment, Daisy felt a horrible flutter of anxiety at a potential encounter with Georgia and her circle of friends.
The memory of the overheard conversation on the ferry flashed in front of her eyes for a minute, but then she glanced quickly at Miles and thought that Georgia and her crew could poke it.
Here she was walking to school with the man she loved and the children who were the centre of her world.
She was still a little bit wary of what people might think and for sure not a hundred per cent that she was doing the right thing, but mostly she had given up caring.
She was happy and Georgia's opinion of her life choices had stopped mattering somewhere along the way.
'Mummy, there's Lucy from our class,' Margot pointed out a girl with plaits who was walking slightly ahead of them with her dad. 'Can we catch up with her?'
'Of course.'
The twins immediately accelerated, calling out to their classmate and chatting away.
Miles squeezed Daisy’s elbow. 'You're beaming.'
'Am I?'
'Yup.’
Daisy put her head to one side. 'I suppose I am.
It's just that all of this feels right. Walking to school together, the twins chatting to their friends, you carrying their bags like you've been doing it forever.
It surprises me sometimes how normal it all feels.
I did all this for so long on my own. I had Mum, Bells and Maggie to help, but still, yeah, it feels different now. '
As they reached the school gates, the regular organised chaos of drop-off time was already in full swing.
Teachers were positioned at strategic points to supervise arrivals and a few cars, as per usual, were illegally parked.
The twins hugged Daisy goodbye, and in a flash, they were gone in a jumble of blue school bags and little heads going in through the door.
Daisy smiled at Miles as they waited until the twins had completely disappeared and then turned and walked away. ‘Well, that’s another successful school morning where we are on time.’
Miles joked. ‘Another miraculous military manoeuvre has been successfully completed.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘I love being part of it.’
Daisy smiled. ‘Not as much as me.’