Daisy darker, p.8
Daisy Darker, page 8
Trixie returns, Lily leaves, my dad pours another drink, and my mother tuts again.
‘Is that really a good idea, Frank?’ she asks.
‘No, it’s an excellent idea.’
‘Do you really think it was an accident?’ Conor asks him.
‘Enough!’ Dad snaps. ‘This isn’t a crime scene for a BBC correspondent to report on or a murder mystery story for someone to solve. She was my mother. She slipped and fell. Simple as that. There was no murder, there is no mystery. She was eighty, had already lost most of her marbles, and now she’s dead. That’s the end of it.’ His face closes like a door. The conversation is over. Then Dad frowns and stares out of the window at the sea lit by moonlight, almost as though he has forgotten the rest of us are here. ‘Forgive me, I think I need to be alone for a while,’ he says quietly.
Lily returns with some jumpers and blankets, and has dressed herself in jogging bottoms teamed with a tight top. Dad leaves the room as she enters it, taking his whisky with him and closing the door. We hear him go into the music room, and a few minutes later, we all hear the familiar sound of him playing the piano. Even though he is drunk, he plays perfectly.
‘I’m still cold,’ whispers Trixie, despite the jumper Lily has given her. It’s the pink jumper from last night, and matches her pyjamas.
‘I brought one of your books down for you,’ Lily says.
‘I’m too upset to read.’
‘Suit yourself. Here, play with this, see if you can beat my highest score,’ Lily says. Trixie takes her mother’s mobile phone and plays Snake, the glow of the screen reflected in her glasses and illuminating her sad little tear-stained face.
‘I’ll go and fetch some firewood,’ offers Conor. ‘I think we’re in for a long night.’
‘Thank you, Conor,’ says Nancy with uncharacteristic sincerity.
He’s gone a very long time. I think maybe I’m the only one to notice until my mother speaks again.
‘You don’t think Conor is doing a runner, do you?’
I think she was trying to make a joke, but it doesn’t quite land, and her face suggests she regrets it. Nana and Conor had a very special relationship, I don’t believe he could be capable of hurting her. At least, not like that. She was the grandmother he never had, and we all knew how much she adored him. There was a time when Nana didn’t just treat Conor like family, she treated him better.
A year after appearing in Blacksand Bay, Conor would regularly turn up at Seaglass, with or without an invitation. So did I. My mother often felt the need to ‘run away’ without much notice – sometimes visiting my father while he toured abroad, sometimes none of us knew where she went – but I was always sent to Seaglass when my existence wasn’t convenient for my parents’ lifestyle. Not that I minded. I loved spending time here with Nana. So did Conor.
I was a bit too young to hold his attention back then, so if my sisters were away at boarding school, he would amuse himself looking for crabs in the rock pool at the rear of the house. It was carved out, courtesy of the sea, from the natural stone Seaglass was built on – a private treasure trove of watery magic, starfish and crabs. Nana told us it was where fairies went to swim at night, while the rest of the world was sleeping. If the weather was bad, Conor could often be found indoors helping Nana mix her paints – he and I were the only ones allowed in her studio – or playing with his yo-yo and staring out to sea. But one morning, Nana and I found him outside the back door, curled up asleep in the log store.
‘Conor, it’s seven a.m. and it’s freezing, what are you doing out here?’ Nana asked, squinting at the boy in the shadows. His only blanket was the night sky, sequinned with stars. There are no views of the bay or the mainland from the back of the house. All that can be seen or heard is the Atlantic Ocean. As soon as the sun goes down, the world outside of Seaglass’s walls is cold and dark. The sea looked black, and the tide was in that morning. Which meant that Conor must have been out there for hours. He knew better than to risk the rips and tides hiding beneath the surface of an unforgiving ocean.
‘I didn’t want to wake anyone,’ Conor said, staring at Nana. They had a silent exchange, which five-year-old me was too young to understand.
‘Come on, let’s get you inside. I’ll run you a hot bath so you can warm up.’
‘Why are you limping?’ I asked Conor as he followed Nana up the stairs. He smelled pretty bad too, and his blonde hair looked shiny and wet with grease.
‘Go to your room, Daisy,’ Nana said. She could see that I was about to protest; being sent to my room was one of my mother’s favourite forms of punishment, not Nana’s, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. Nana’s face softened. ‘We can have jelly and ice cream with chocolate sauce for breakfast, but only if you go to your room,’ she said with a wink. So I did as I was told. But I couldn’t resist creeping out onto the landing a little while later, and peeking through the crack where the bathroom door was open just enough to see.
Nana used my bubble bath for Conor, not that I minded. The bottle looked like a smiley sailor called Matey, and it turned the water blue. I loved bubble baths, but Conor didn’t smile or look happy at all. I watched as Nana helped him out of his jumper and shirt – he dressed like a middle-aged man when he was ten – and I saw the cuts and bruises all over his back. Conor looked ashamed, as though it was his fault.
‘Who did this to you?’ Nana asked, already knowing the answer that Conor wouldn’t give.
She held his face in her hands. ‘You’re going to be okay, I promise. You take the rest of your clothes off and pop them in this bin liner. I’m going to find you some clean, dry clothes and start making us all some breakfast. Call me if you need anything.’
‘Mrs Darker—’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Please don’t tell anyone. He didn’t mean to do it.’
Nana had her back to him, and I could see she had tears in her eyes. ‘I had a dad who didn’t mean to hurt me too, once upon a time. I promise you can trust me. For now, just have your bath. There’s a clean towel and flannel on the side. Don’t forget to wash behind your ears.’
I ran back to my bedroom before Nana came out onto the landing, and listened to her march down the stairs. She was still wearing her fluffy purple dressing gown and pink slippers, but she looked really mad, and her face looking all cross like that made me feel a bit afraid. Nana was rarely angry about anything, but boy did everyone know about it when she was.
The only telephone at Seaglass in those days – or ever – was in the hallway. It was on a little round table along with a fancy notebook full of handwritten numbers. I watched from behind the banister at the top of the staircase, as Nana flicked through the book, found Conor’s dad’s number, and dialled. It was a rotary phone, so took forever. Her foot was tapping the way it did when she was proper cross, while she waited for someone to answer the call. Patience was never one of Nana’s virtues.
‘Hello, Mr Kennedy, how are you today? Oh, a little under the weather? I’m sorry to hear that. Is that why you beat your ten-year-old son with your belt last night?’
There was silence, in which I’m sure Conor’s dad and I were both busy putting together pieces of a puzzle we weren’t sure how to solve. Wondering if those pieces were in the right order. Not really liking the picture that they made. Nana went on.
‘I suspect you didn’t even know where he was overnight. Let me put your mind at rest and tell you that he’s here at Seaglass with me. Which is where he is going to stay, until I can reach social services and have him taken away from you forever.’
She was quiet again. I wished I could hear what was being said on the other end of the line.
‘He’s a child. It’s not his fault your wife died. You are supposed to be his father. You’re supposed to protect him from all that is bad and wrong about the world, not constantly hurt him and let him down. Doing your best? Well, your best isn’t good enough. You’re depressed? Aren’t we all. It doesn’t give you the right to do what you did. You are a disgrace to depression, and you don’t deserve to call yourself that child’s father. Either you get yourself some help or you will lose your son. I never met your wife, but I can only imagine that if she could see what you have become, she would be deeply ashamed and wish she’d never met you. He’s her son, all that is left of her; think of that next time you take your shitty existence out on your child.’
Then she hung up, and I was both scared and in awe of her all at once.
Nana never stopped looking out for Conor from that day on. His father went to AA, was in rehab for a while, and although there were months, sometimes years, when things would be okay, she always kept a close eye on Conor back then, trying to protect him.
Back in the present, I get up and leave the lounge to find out where he has disappeared to. I immediately feel the slap of cold air, and the sound of the sea is louder than before. Almost as though it is inside the house. When I step out into the hallway, I can hear the back door banging in the wind. Conor must have left it open when he went in search of wood. The quickest way to get to the log store is via the kitchen, but I don’t really want to go in there. I don’t want to see Nana’s body on the floor again, or the unkind chalk poem on the wall, so I avert my eyes as I hurry to the back door.
Conor walks through it before I get there, carrying a basket full of logs. He looks completely drenched, and I don’t understand what took him so long. I’m about to ask when I notice him staring at something behind me. I think I know what it is – Nana – but when I turn to look for myself, I see that her body has gone. Conor puts the logs down and stares at the kitchen table. There is a VHS tape on it. One of the ones I’m sure I saw on the shelf in the lounge last night. Someone has stuck Scrabble letters to the front of its white cardboard case, spelling out the words: WATCH ME. Next to the tape, there is a torn piece of paper. When I read the words that have been written on it, in handwriting I do not recognize, my whole body turns icy cold.
TRICK-OR-TREAT THE CHILDREN HEAR,
BEFORE THEY SCREAM AND DISAPPEAR.
Thirteen
31 October 1 a.m.
five hours until low tide
The clocks in the hallway all start to chime. Thankfully just once as it’s one a.m., but they are a little out of sync as usual. Conor stares at the space on the floor where Nana used to be, but there’s no body, and no blood, as though what we saw before might just have been a bad dream. Then he looks at the VHS tape and note on the kitchen table. He turns to look in my direction, but doesn’t say anything, almost as if he suspects me of putting them there. I can still hear my dad’s piano in the music room, he hasn’t stopped playing since he locked himself away from the rest of us. The men in my life have never been good at using their words, so I find a few of my own.
‘I understand why you’ve refused to see me for years, and why you still don’t want to talk to me now, and that’s fine, but can we please put what happened with us to one side, just for tonight? I’d really like to know what you think is going on here, because I’m scared,’ I say, quietly enough so that the others won’t hear. I used to think of Conor like a big brother, and I miss him playing that role in my life.
The look on his face is opaque; there is no reflection or even an acknowledgement of what I just said. I hate that things have become so awkward between us, but I have never managed to find the right words to fix things. I don’t understand why we can’t move on. Especially now. Everything we’ve just seen confirms that Nana’s death was not an accident.
I’m not naive. I know that everyone was upset about Nana’s will last night, and I do have a hunch about what might be going on here. But hunches aren’t just there to be had, they’re there to be thought about, analysed, agonized over and – most importantly – should rarely be shared. Conor stares at the words written on the piece of paper on the kitchen table, then at the VHS tape, then again at the place on the floor where Nana’s body was earlier. I just stare at Conor.
He grabs a red chequered tea towel from the kitchen worktop and does his best to dry himself off from the rain, then he reaches inside his pocket and takes out a mobile phone. It’s a dark blue Nokia, the best that 2004 has to offer, just like Lily’s, but Conor seems to have forgotten that there is no signal here. He holds it high up in the air, as though that will make it work, but of course it doesn’t. I watch as he strides out to the little table in the hallway where the landline used to live. The old pink rotary phone is still there, on a doily, but Nana wasn’t joking when she said she stopped paying the bill. She wanted peace and quiet and I guess she got her wish, because the phone is dead. I find the fact that Conor so clearly wants to call the police reassuring, despite knowing that he can’t.
There is a picture of me and my sisters by the phone. When they were here it used to ring all the time. Most calls were for them – friends from school wanting to catch up in the holidays, study partners for Rose, boyfriends for Lily – but occasionally it was my dad, calling from one city or another, between rehearsals and performances. He could never talk for more than a few minutes – long-distance calls cost a small fortune in those days – and it never took him too much time to ask Nana for more money. Sometimes publishers called for Nana, and her agent always called to wish her a happy birthday. But I can remember one Halloween when I was the only person here to help her celebrate, and the phone rang. The person calling was Conor. I suppose I must have been five or six. Nana had just blown out all of her candles – there were a lot, even back then – and we were about to eat pineapple upside-down cake with Angel Delight. The memory of that phone call is as clear now as if it had happened yesterday, not over twenty years ago.
‘Hello,’ Nana said, answering the phone with a big smile, expecting it to be someone calling to wish her a happy birthday. The smile slid straight off her face. ‘It’s going to be okay. You did the right thing calling me. Stay exactly where you are and I’ll be there soon.’
‘Who was it?’ I asked.
‘Conor. Something’s wrong, I need to go over there,’ Nana said, looking for her handbag. She could never seem to find it, even though it was both brightly coloured and enormous. The bag was made from pink and purple patches and was older than me. Nana shook her head while searching for it, and her curly white hair seemed to dance. I wondered if mine would look like that when I was older. Then I remembered that I would never be old enough to have white hair, and it made me feel so sad. It’s odd, the little things that used to upset me. Most people don’t want grey or white hair, but in that moment, I did. Maybe people wouldn’t complain about getting old all the time if they were scared that they never would. When Nana found her handbag, she slipped a wooden rolling pin inside it.
‘What should I do?’ I asked, a little scared of being left on my own at Seaglass.
Nana stared at me as though I had said something wrong. ‘Daisy Darker, do you care about Conor?’ I nodded. ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it. Caring about other people is more important than being curious about them. When someone you care about is in trouble, you do everything you can to help. Which means you are coming with me. Now find your shoes and let’s skedaddle.’
‘What about your birthday cake?’ I asked.
‘We’ll take it with us. Conor sounds like he needs cheering up.’
Ten minutes later, having crossed the causeway when the tide was already fast coming in, the two of us climbed the rocky path with wet shoes and socks. At the top of the cliff, behind the sand dunes, there was an old shed where Nana kept her only form of transport. It was an ancient bicycle with a large wicker trailer attached to the back, which, now that I think about it, can’t have been legal. I climbed into the wicker trailer and Nana climbed onto the saddle, dangling her handbag on the handlebars.
Nana pedalled faster than I knew she could along the coastal road, until we reached Conor’s cottage, a mile or so away on the other side of Blacksand Bay. The place was really nothing more than a dilapidated two-bedroom bungalow on a rocky stretch of the coast. One of the windows was cracked, and the blue paint on the front door was peeling right off. They’d moved there when Conor’s mum died, and the building was as abandoned and unloved as the two people who lived in it.
We didn’t knock. There was no need; the door was open.
I’d never been inside before – Conor always came to visit us, never the other way round – and I was shocked by what I saw. I think we both were. The front door opened straight into a little lounge and there was mess everywhere. The previously white net curtains were a grubby grey, and when Nana switched on the light, the place looked even worse than it had in the gloom. The old green sofa in the middle of the room had sunken seats, and holes in some of the cushions. There were dirty cups and plates stacked on the coffee table, and chip shop wrappers and crushed beer cans all over the stained carpet. Picture frames – which presumably used to hang on the rusty hooks on the walls – were smashed on the floor. They were all of Conor with his parents, before his mum died. A broken happy family. There were bits of glass and rubbish almost everywhere I looked. Conor was sitting in the corner of the room, hugging his knees to his chest.
‘Where is he?’ Nana asked.
‘In the bedroom,’ Conor whispered without looking up.
‘You stay with Conor,’ Nana said to me. ‘Be as kind to him as you would want someone to be to you if you felt broken.’ Then she took her rolling pin out of her pink and purple patchwork bag, and the way she held it made me think it wasn’t so she could do some baking. I wanted to be kind to Conor, and I knew what it was like to feel broken, but I followed Nana, even though I knew I wasn’t meant to. Curiosity doesn’t only kill cats.
The bedroom was dark and smelled bad. There were piles of clothes all over the floor, and a filthy-looking man lying on the bed with his eyes closed. Empty bottles of pills were on the stained bed sheets beside him. Nana dropped the rolling pin and used the phone on the nightstand to call for an ambulance.
