Daisy nodded. ‘Yes, to our flat, but it always led to a corridor, never to our own front garden.’
Fi stared at her, eyes narrowed as she thought about Daisy’s comment. ‘Seriously?’
Daisy nodded. ‘It’s fine,’ she said honestly. ‘I suppose we’ve just grown up wishing for different things.’
‘You can say that again,’ Fi said. ‘You’re more than welcome to come and sunbathe at Seb’s house with me if you like,’ she added.
Daisy hoped she hadn’t caused Fi to be embarrassed. ‘Maybe one day,’ she said. ‘I really want to get on with my painting on my days off just now.’ She rested her hand on Fi’s arm and smiled at her. ‘I wasn’t having a go when I said what I did, you know?’
Fi returned her smile. ‘I know. I just hadn’t ever thought about something like a front garden before. Seb is always telling me how I should get out into the real world and experience other things, but then when I come up with ideas, he won’t let me try any of them.’
‘I’m sure he’s only looking out for you,’ Daisy said. ‘He sounds really lovely.’
Fi leant in closer to Daisy as if she was about to confide something very confidential to her. ‘He is,’ she whispered, laughing. ‘But I like winding him up. He can be a bit stuffy at times.’
Fi turned out to be correct with her prediction about the weather. The fog didn’t move from the ground and Daisy could tell that Gabriel was beginning to worry about the party. When he came through to Reception just before the end of her shift, she asked if he’d managed to contact everyone on the guest list.
‘Most of them,’ he said.
‘What do we do if Bryn and Soraya can’t make it to the island?’ Fi asked. ‘They are the hosts, after all. Do we get on with all the work we need to do to get the orangery ready for tomorrow evening?’
‘We carry on as usual,’ he said. ‘Daisy, please call the girls from Lapins de Lune, to check that they have everything they need to decorate the party room. Fi, you can call the musicians to make sure they’ll be there on time, and I’ll go and check that the kitchen and bar staff are ready for tomorrow.’
Daisy spotted her father hurrying down the corridor towards her. ‘Damn,’ she muttered under her breath.
‘What’s the matter?’ Gabe said, turning to see who she was talking about. ‘Ahh, do you want me to go and divert him?’
She shook her head. There was little point. She knew her father would find a way to come and talk to her if he wanted to, so she may as well get this over and done with. She checked her watch. ‘Only five minutes until the end of my shift,’ she said.
‘Go on,’ Gabe said. ‘I’ll stay here with Fi until the next shift takes over.’
Daisy got up and walked over to her father. ‘I can tell by the determined look on your face that you want to speak to me.’
‘Yes.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s not often I get a chance to speak to you without Stella being there and she’s in the bath. So, I hoped you wouldn’t mind giving me a couple of minutes to try and clear a few things up between us.’
‘I’ll need to go and change. I’ll meet you out the back by the steps to the gardens in ten minutes. I doubt anyone will be out there in this weather.’
She hurried to her room and quickly pulled on a pair of jeans, a thin jumper, and a cotton jacket.
‘That was fast,’ he said when she joined him shortly after. ‘Shall we go this way?’ He indicated a pathway that would take them to the edge of the grounds.
‘Yes, sure,’ Daisy said. They began walking. ‘So, what did you want to talk to me about?’
‘The thing is, Daisy, I don’t want you to think that you aren’t important to me.’
‘I know that,’ she admitted stepping over one of the small geometric pools dotted down through the valley gardens. ‘But it hurt when I met your wife and my half-brother and they had no idea I even existed.’ She’d been dreading speaking to him, not certain if she could keep her anger under control, but now it was happening, she was relieved to be able to share the feelings that had been troubling her.
They arrived at a small clearing where a weathered wooden bench nestled. ‘Let’s sit here,’ he suggested.
Daisy sat down and waited for him to do the same. ‘I know you’re in a difficult position, but it hurts to be someone’s secret.’
He sighed heavily. ‘I know and I’m sorry. Your mother and I were very much in love, but we were very young and I panicked and ran away. I’ll never forgive myself for leaving her when she needed me most. I wasn’t away long and did try to persuade her that we should be married once I’d come back, but she didn’t trust me not to run off again.’ He hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t have, you know?’
Daisy wanted to believe him. After all, he was the only family she had left and hadn’t he always remembered her birthdays and Christmas? Sometimes he’d even managed to pop in on those special days; sometimes, but not very often. ‘Mum always said she didn’t mind you marrying Clarissa so soon after I was born and I believed her for years.’ She thought back to the time when she was in her teens that it occurred to her that her mother had only told her that so she didn’t fret about her. ‘She knew that I wouldn’t have agreed to see you if I’d known how you’d hurt her, and she was right.’
‘It was good of her,’ he said. ‘I was always grateful and it was why I tried to see you as often as I did.’
Daisy sighed. ‘I understand you not mentioning me to your first wife,’ she said, wondering how she would feel if she had discovered her husband had a whole part of his life that he hadn’t shared with her. ‘But why not tell Stella about me? She had a right to know I existed, surely?’
He nodded. ‘You’re right, I know you are, but I was frightened that she wouldn’t agree to marry me if she discovered that I’d kept such a huge secret from Clarissa for all those years.’
‘Then she doesn’t know the real you, and she deserved to before making the decision to spend the rest of her life with you.’
He stood up and pushed both hands through his short hair, giving him the look of a confused cockatoo. Daisy softened towards him when she could see how upset he was. Then it dawned on her that maybe this was how he acted whenever things got difficult for him with his wife, and her sympathy waned.
‘Daisy, I know I’ve done wrong, but your mum didn’t want to share you with me most of the time. She liked the idea of me loving you and being there for you for birthdays and that sort of thing, but she was insistent that she was your only true parent.’
Daisy wanted to argue with him but could imagine her mother acting like that. Hadn’t she made a point of living an almost hermit-like existence for most of Daisy’s life? ‘Yes, but that doesn’t excuse your behaviour to Stella, or your son, does it?’
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘It doesn’t.’ He picked a daisy growing through a hole in between two stones making up the top of the wall and began pulling off the petals, one-by-one. Daisy cringed. It was as if he was pulling her apart because she’d appeared in his perfect second marriage and caused issues with his pretty young wife.
He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. Then glancing back down to the dismembered flower in his hand groaned. ‘Oh, that must look bad.’
Daisy shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ She stood up.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Back to my room; I’ve got things to do and you need to get back to Stella if you don’t want her wondering where you’ve got to.’ Daisy began walking along the path, relieved to be getting away from him.
He called after her, but she ignored him. Seconds later she heard his footsteps as he ran to catch up with her. ‘Daisy,’ he said from behind her. She stopped and turned to face him. ‘Where do we go from here?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘Maybe you need to talk this through with Stella. I’m not a part of your life. Let’s face it, I never really have been, and its fine,’
she said when he went to protest. ‘I like being independent. You carry on and I’ll do the same and if we meet again we’ll say hello and be civil.’
‘But you’re my daughter and I love you.’
Daisy closed her eyes, desperately trying to remain calm and not let him know now much this was taking out of her. ‘But I don’t really fit into your life any more, do I?’ she said wishing he’d leave her alone.
‘You could, if you wanted to,’ he argued, his voice quiet and strained.
‘Let’s leave it for now, shall we? I’m still recovering from Mum dying and trying to make a life for myself. Maybe in a couple of years, we could give it another try.’
‘But how will I know where to contact you?
She thought for a moment. ‘Write to me here. I’ll make sure they have a forwarding address when I move on.’
‘Peter,’ someone called from higher up the pathway. He stiffened and Daisy realised it must be Stella.
‘You’d better go,’ she said. ‘You don’t want her to discover we’ve met up in secret.’
She watched him head off into the hotel, thinking that she had no intention of being second best any more. His wife and son now knew about her and she had no intention of meeting him behind their backs ever again. She would hate someone to do that to her.
The following morning Daisy woke before her alarm went off. Her first thought was the chaos that would be caused to the party guests if the fog hadn’t gone. Willing the fog to have lifted, she got out of bed and took three strides to her bedroom window. She pulled back the curtains and winced. She could barely see a few feet ahead of her. Her heart sank as she wondered how the party was going to turn out when most of its important guests wouldn’t be able to attend. She hurriedly showered and dressed and went to find Gabriel to see if there was anything she could do to help.
‘Not good, is it?’ he said staring out of the front door of the hotel, his tanned arms crossed in front of his chest. ‘I spoke to Bryn and Soraya last night and explained that this sometimes happened. I tried to persuade them to book the ferry for them and their family to come across today. It’s the only way they’re going to definitely get here. I hope they did as I suggested.’
‘Me too.’
‘I saw the Lapins de Lune van on my way through here,’ she said recalling the two girls unloading their hampers with a tall fair man and two of the hotel barmen. ‘I thought they did chintzy weddings, or that’s what Fi said anyway.’
‘They do all sorts of events,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Shall we go and see if we can lend them a hand?’
They walked to the car park at the rear of the hotel.
‘They have vintage crockery with some nice Art Deco designs which they’ll use here,’ he said. ‘Izzy and Jess have only been going a couple of years, but they helped my parents out recently after the fire and they’re very hardworking girls,’ he said.
Daisy loved the idea of having her own business one day and said so.
‘What would you like to do?’ he asked holding open the back door and stepping back to let her pass.
‘I’m not really sure. I’d love my own gallery, but I know that’s expensive and out of my league.’
‘You shouldn’t ever doubt yourself.’ He frowned. ‘You can do whatever you wish, you know. You’ll find a way, I’m sure of it.’
She smiled up at him. ‘I wish I had as much faith in my abilities as you seem to,’ she said, spotting the two girls still unloading their van and giggling with the men helping them.
‘I know what you mean,’ he said.
Confused by what he’d said, she stopped. ‘What?’
He shook his head. ‘Only that my grandmother was saying something similar to me the other day.’
She relaxed. She probably shouldn’t be so defensive. She was aware that for some reason she always assumed someone was trying to put her down or making a derogatory remark. Especially Gabriel, but he’d only ever been kind to her, she realised. She wondered if it had something to do with the way her mum had always looked at things. She hoped she wasn’t becoming like her; it had been hard living with someone who only ever seemed to see the negative in things.
‘Lydia’s right: you should have more faith in yourself,’ she said eventually.
‘Ditto,’ he said, giving her a brief hug. ‘I think we could both learn a lot from her.’
‘Hey, Izzy, Jess,’ Gabriel called, taking Daisy by the hand and leading her over to the van to meet them. ‘Meet Daisy: she’s a friend of mine who’s working here on Reception for the summer. We’ve come to help unload your stuff.’
‘We met at the Sunset Concert, remember?’ Jess said, noticing Daisy’s hand in his.
Daisy recognised her and pulled her hand away, embarrassed that he was being so friendly. After all, she had only met these people once and they’d been witness to her embarrassment when she’d met Bella for the first time. It hadn’t been the best start to a friendship.
‘We’ve got a lot to do in the next few hours,’ her partner Izzy said. ‘We were hoping to come here and set up yesterday, but we’re running a bit late.’
As Daisy helped the others unload the crockery and linen, she began to feel something she’d last enjoyed when with Gabriel in Vietnam: a kinship with others her own age. It was a comforting feeling and one she wanted to last.
She looked up at Gabriel carrying three heavy hampers, one on top of the other, as if they weighed nothing at all. He must have sensed her watching him, because he glanced at her and gave her a quick wink.
Daisy couldn’t help smiling back at him, and noticed Izzy watching them. Gabriel took the hampers away and she bent to pick up a large bag containing linens when Jess whispered, ‘We were wondering who the lucky girl would be who’d capture Gabriel’s attention, but after the concert, well, we weren’t sure.’ She motioned her head to Izzy who immediately came over to join them.
‘What’s this?’ Izzy asked, her voice quiet.
‘You thought Gabriel was seeing Daisy.’
Daisy’s eyes widened, horrified that they had got the wrong idea. ‘No, it’s not like that at all. We know each other from our travels, that’s all.’ Even to her own ears her insistence sounded forced.
Jess laughed. ‘Yeah, yeah, we believe you, not.’
Daisy was about to tell them that they were wrong when she noticed Izzy pulling a face at Jess to get her to stop teasing. ‘Oh, very funny,’ she said, enjoying the banter. ‘I thought you were being serious for a moment.’
‘I did spot him winking at you though,’ Izzy said, picking up a hamper and walking with Daisy around the back of the hotel to the orangery. ‘He was looking at you before that too. I really do think he likes you, Daisy.’
Daisy felt her face reddening. She wasn’t used to confiding in others and didn’t want to have to admit to someone she’d only just met about their history together. ‘He is lovely,’ was all she’d say.
They arrived in the large room, with rounded windows on one side and a wall on the other. Daisy thought back to when she’d first arrived at the hotel and assumed this room must be a conservatory. She loved the plants growing up the back wall and the ceramic jardinières holding ferns that softened the sleek lines of the room. Fi had told her that even though this room was added only ten years ago, the light switches and chandeliers were authentic 1920s which Rick had sourced in a reclamation yard. The effect was stunning.
She watched as Jess and Izzy unpacked their stock and helped carry linen and crockery to where they indicated. A couple of hours later the room looked completely different and almost ready for the party to begin. It was like stepping into a scene from the Great Gatsby, but in much smaller scale, with the abundance of pale pink hydrangeas brought inside from the garden in tall square planters, the old-fashioned champagne glasses placed in tiers for a waterfall of champagne to cascade down, and groups of silver and purple metallic balloons placed in different areas around the ceiling.
Gabriel had had to lea
ve to go and sort out issues with guests who had been delayed by the weather but sent through a barman with a tray of lemonade for them to enjoy. The girls sat near the main door of the orangery and sipped at their cool drinks.
‘Blimey, I’m hot,’ Izzy said, fanning herself with a leftover napkin. ‘How can it still be this temperature when there’s fog sitting on the ground?’
‘No idea,’ Daisy said, ‘It does seem very humid.’ She relished the cool drink as the bubbles burst at the back of her throat. ‘Gabriel told me you cater for vintage weddings and parties,’ she said, wanting to know more about the girls and their business. ‘Do you do many Art Deco themed ones?’
Jess shook her head. ‘Not many, but we’re doing more now.’ She looked around the large room. ‘You couldn’t really do anything else in this place,’ she said. ‘It’s very glamorous here, don’t you think?’
Daisy nodded. ‘It is. I’d never been inside such a beautiful building before coming to work here. I still can’t get over the huge black and silver front doors each time I come into the hotel.’
‘It is a very beautiful old building,’ Izzy said. ‘My mum remembers it from when she was a child. She said it was so out of character from the granite farmhouses and cottages in the area that it caused quite a lot of consternation with the nearby locals as it was being built. Then they got used to it, but after a while it was neglected and the building decayed. She said it looks better now ever since Rick and Francesca renovated it. Apparently it took them a couple of years to ensure that everything was exactly how it should be. They sent off the light switches, door handles and other bits to be re-chromed, so that they could keep as many of the original pieces from the building as possible.’
‘It makes all the difference,’ Daisy said. ‘It’s like going back in time when you walk into this place. I almost feel like I should be dressed up in a pretty frock when I come in to work.’
‘What are Francesca and Rick like to work for?’ Izzy asked. ‘Fun I should think.’
Daisy thought about their slightly eccentric ways. She giggled. ‘They’re great to work for. They expect us to do our jobs well, which is only right, but they’re kind and hardworking themselves.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I especially love working for Mrs Grey.’
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