Hoicking her leg over her rusty steed, she glanced at the windows of her parents’ house. It was certainly the shabbiest in the road and no doubt the one everyone discussed at the Christmas drinks parties to which they were no longer invited. And she understood, figuring people feared that what ailed her mum might be contagious or, at best, that she’d have nothing to say, having been in bed for the best part of three years. On the latter point they might be right.
Lisa was her mum and yet sometimes even she found they had nothing to say to each other. This fact alone sent shivers of sorrow through her limbs. How she hated those moments when her mum would stare at her, silently pleading, as if she needed something urgently. And yet their words were calm and predictable.
‘You okay, Mum?’
‘Yep.’ Her whispered response.
They’d then stare at each other for a beat or two, both entirely helpless, mute, and floundering. Daisy didn’t know what it was her mum needed, didn’t know how to make it better, and her mum, it seemed, felt the same. In these situations, she often imagined how much easier it would be if her mum’s peril were more apparent.
She’s fallen in . . . throw her a life preserver!
She’s on the very edge . . . secure her with a rope!
Fire! Fire! I need a bucket of water over here right now!
But it was not apparent, and this was why they engaged in the silent, desperate dance of stillness that left Daisy feeling sometimes like she might be on the very edge and in need of securing with a rope.
Every street had a dwelling like theirs. One in the grip of decay or decorated with questionable taste. How she hated that it was their house. She often wondered if there was a correlation between her not having friends and the state of their home. I mean, how could she invite people in or have a sleepover?
It wasn’t that she was ashamed of it or even angry about it, but more that it made her unbearably sad. The state of the place was indicative of the fractured relationships and broken marriage that lived inside its walls.
When her gran died, her dad had gone to town, rubbing down banisters, plugging holes in the roof, knocking up a bin store out of old planks he found in the shed, and whistling while he did all three. This industry had come to a dramatic halt a few years ago, along with his whistling. It was as if some unseen force had pulled a plug on the family. They used to play boardgames: Scrabble, Cluedo and Monopoly, holding tournaments and leaving the game set up on the kitchen table so they could continue after work/school. They’d lovingly bicker, debate and jest, wildly celebrating wins, and were not above bribery and coercion if it meant moving forward. Daisy wasn’t sure she’d recognise that family now.
Yes, theirs was a sad building where paint clung in thin strips of pale lemon, the front door let wind and leaves whistle through a gap at the bottom and the original wooden garage doors hung off-centre to the right. This allowed sight of the oil-stained floor and brick walls of the room that was a haven for cobwebs and things that scuttled in the dark. It was a space too small for modern cars and which the Kelleways had long ago cleverly converted into a study on their side of the fence – of course they had. No doubt a study from where Mr Kelleway ran his linen business, supplying hotels and restaurants as far north as Wolverhampton, apparently.
Her dad gave a calm yet constant running commentary on all the things the perfect Kelleways did or acquired that annoyed him. Their shiny replacement windows, the fancy hot tub nestling in its own little open shed in the corner of the garden and the grand kitchen extension with lantern roof.
‘Here we go again!’ he’d huff as Mrs Kelleway greeted builders with trays of tea and bacon sandwiches before they’d so much as lifted a hammer. He seemed to particularly obsess over their ostentatious barbecue sitting under a wooden bandstand structure that was artfully strung with fairy lights, and from where the tinkle of glassware, the subtle rise of communal laughter and the waft of good meat filtered over the fence and through their windows. He disliked it all.
Of course, he didn’t dislike any of it, not really. What he disliked was living in his deceased mother-in-law’s house with his wife, Lisa, son Jake and her, Daisy, watching helplessly as the roof leaked, the fence rotted, weeds popped up between the cracks on the uneven crazy paving and the kitchen clock ticked ever louder. And so she’d verbally agree with his huff-laden observations, offered with a rasp of disappointment to his voice, as he peered from behind the curtain.
‘Another delivery! Can you believe it? What could they possibly need now? Place must be bursting at the seams!’
But she didn’t agree, not deep down, and would lie beneath the duvet at night wondering what it might feel like to be a Kelleway just for a day . . . She’d sit in that hot tub for a start and then Zoom her whole class from the marble work surface in the kitchen, the installation of which Mrs Kelleway had told her all about. And Daisy would do this with a fancy latte in her hand and Cassian in the background. In his underwear. He was a bit of a legend around school, what with having lived in Australia and everything. Picking up speed, she pedalled fast, her legs moving automatically and rhythmically, the handlebars tilting and turning as if her bike knew the way, while her thoughts stayed firmly in that hot tub . . . She could but dream.
As ever, she arrived at the back of the restaurant on the high street without remembering the ride. The heady aroma of garlic and fresh herbs wafted from the building, making her mouth water. No matter what was going on at home, this food, free when she was working, filled her with joy.
With her transport locked and propped up in the alleyway, she removed her beret and cotton scarf, both to be placed in the bottom of her locker at the back of the restaurant next to the staff bathroom. It wasn’t that it was cold, far from it. Dusk, mid-June, and the weather was clement with a sun that seemed reluctant to retire for the evening. No, she wasn’t cold, but preferred to hide as much of her body and face as possible. A hat and scarf helped shield her a little from view. She wanted so badly to be attractive and popular but was, in her own rather diminished view, without the traits that might give her a fighting chance.
Her hair was thin with a cow’s lick on the top that prevented her from perfecting nearly all the styles she favoured. Her skin was greasy, prone to breakouts, her breasts non-existent and her knees were one of her most hated body parts. Great clumping lumps of bone that drew the eye, meaning minis, shorts, swimming costumes and any item that might reveal her ‘wrestler’s knees’, as Jake had once described them, were not an option. Having spent more time than she was willing to admit googling medical interventions that might make her knees presentable, she was convinced surgery was not an option. In fact, just the memory of the images she’d seen in her quest to discover how to achieve the perfect knee was enough to make her feel queasy.
She was also smart. Seriously smart, and yet most of the boys she liked the look of were pretty and dumb. Her intelligence, she figured, might be less than alluring. Who wanted to go out with a wannabe astrophysicist when girls like Julianna Norton and Katie Priest were all bouncy curls, white teeth, fits of giggles and normal knees? Not that it would bother her, going out with a stupid boy. Not in the least.
Unbidden, and not that he was especially stupid, a picture of Cassian flew into her mind, as it did when she first woke up, again on the bus to school, during lessons, break time, over lunch, on the journey home and right before she fell asleep, when, for good measure, her dreams were peppered with delicious stomach-warming images of the two of them. Sometimes they were entwined on a beach or bed, or walking hand in hand, but always with him staring at her with a look of such intensity it caused the words to stutter in her throat and made her shiver with a longing that she carried with her for much of the following day. Cassian . . .