‘Thank you everyone for coming, it means so much to both of us.’ She spoke so genuinely she nearly nominated herself for an Oscar.
Redhead piped up again. ‘Where are her friends though?’ Again, another conveniently loud stage whisper. ‘I mean, maybe she’s a bit of a loner.’
Or maybe I didn’t even know I was at my boyfriend’s birthday party until I walked into this pub, you yappy little red thing…
‘Cheers, everyone.’ She held up her croakingly empty glass.
‘To Ali,’ they cheered.
At which point Daisy, so caught up in the moment, was startled to feel a very firm hand on her left arm and, noticing that Alistair had use of both of his, she guessed it might be redhead or the filly Samantha.
Turned out it was neither. She was face to face with William the landlord.
‘I thought you weren’t Esmerelda…’ His face had coloured up like a beetroot and he whispered heatedly. ‘I thought I discussed this with you and your husband. I can’t have who think it’s alright to dance exotically and try and burn down my Michelin-starred pub.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘And what would your husband say if he knew you were pretending to be someone else?’
She looked at his hand searing her skin and shot him a warning look. He dutifully dropped his hand but he was so angry he was practically frothing at the mouth.
‘Why, are you going to tell him?’ Daisy challenged, her heart pounding.
‘I may just do that. You’re clearly cavorting and playing around.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ William nodded. ‘That is right and I’ve always held the Ronaldson family in high regard so I feel it’s his right to know.’
‘Well, good luck with that.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears.
William’s confidence clearly ebbed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You going to phone up to the castle in the sky?’ Daisy glared at him. ‘He’s dead. My husband is dead.’ Spittle flew from her lips. ‘So unless you’re psychic…’
William paled, his previously burning cheeks of rage disappearing, as if with an on and off button.
Daisy realised only then that the whole room had fallen silent and it was, of course, the bundle of redheaded joy who announced, ‘Oh my God, she’s been married before.’
Daisy looked at Alistair, tears streaming down her face, then pushed past him and his friends out the pub door. Once outside, she gulped in huge breaths of cool air. The sound of the double doors opening and closing behind her spurred her to move forward. She didn’t want to talk to anybody, she didn’t want to have to explain that all she wanted was her real husband to hold her tight and whisper her in her ear that it was all going to be alright.
She could hear his voice singing in her head, a tune he used to sing quietly to her even when he thought she was asleep as he stroked her hair.
‘Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do…’ She could almost feel his breath on her neck and closed her eyes. ‘I’m half crazy all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage…’
‘Daisy?’ Alistair’s voice broke the moment. ‘Daisy? I’m so sorry, I’m sorry. I should never have…’
She wanted answers but she also wanted to go home and lie on Hugh’s sofa, and wrap herself up in his tartan throw.
‘Just take me home,’ she said quietly. ‘You can explain tomorrow. I just want to go.’
Chapter 14
They didn’t speak on the journey back home. Alistair went to explain but Daisy put her hand up. She had had enough for one night, maybe for one lifetime.
Wordlessly, she allowed Alistair to open the front door and they both walked inside. Not quite the ‘happy couple’ of an hour earlier. On the stairs outside their neighbouring bedrooms, she looked up and said, ‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Daisy.’ He paused. ‘And I am truly sorry. Please let me talk to you tomorrow.’
She nodded. ‘I’m going to Hugh’s study for a bit.’ She indicated the room on the other side of his bedroom. ‘It’s where I go when I need to think.’
‘Of course.’ He stood aside to let her through. ‘And thank you for tonight, for being such a sport about it all.’
Despite the emotion, she smiled. ‘What were you going to say when we were no longer an item?’
He shrugged. ‘I hadn’t got that far.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘The whole thing is quite bizarre. I’m sure you’ve got a perfectly good explanation.’ She watched him hang his head and she offered, ‘But I know that one day you will find someone who is perfectly suited to you and you’ll be very happy.’
‘Try telling my mother and father that.’
Daisy shook her head. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying but you don’t look like you’re young enough to be caring what your parents think anymore.’
He looked sheepish. ‘I know. I’m forty-five, I should have got over it by now. But they’ve always had this hold over me. Especially my father.’ He cleared his throat. ‘They spend their lives asking me when I’m going to meet someone nice, get married, join the set to go skiing and so on.’
‘Surely, by now, you’ve met that person?’
‘No, I’ve met the people my parents think suit me.’
‘Ah yes,’ Daisy thought of her own mother but how in her case her mother felt she had married above her station. ‘Parents have a funny idea of who we should end up with.’
Alistair stared off into the middle distance. ‘I met this girl, a long time ago. We were both studying at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester.’ He glanced at Daisy. ‘I told my parents and, of course, they were thrilled because she studied at the college, back in the days when your parents needed to have a certain amount of money to send you there. From the outset I knew that any woman I met must be educated and the right sort. Only, I knew in my heart, I should never have put this girl through what I did. Clare, her name was. She came from just outside London, her mother worked in the admin department for some big company and her father was a postman. She got a scholarship to the college because she was bright, bloody clever actually.’ He paused, as if remembering was in fact too painful. ‘Anyway, I didn’t tell my parents anything about her, maybe in the vague and naïve hope they would see how beautiful she was. How beautiful her spirit was and how she made me so happy.’
Daisy, now captivated, leant up against the door to the study. ‘Then what happened?’
‘So we were both twenty and I invited her to my parents’ house up in Edinburgh for a long May bank holiday weekend.’ He sighed. ‘From the moment my parents looked at Clare, I could tell they had made their minds up.’
‘Why?’ Daisy asked, although her own experience of introducing Hugh to her mother flashed through her mind.
‘Clare had a London accent, she wore ripped jeans, had a piercing in her tongue and would occasionally drop an F-bomb.’
Daisy laughed loudly then put her hand over her mouth as she realised everyone else was trying to sleep.
‘But that’s what made her who she was.’ Alistair smiled. ‘She was beautiful, honestly, to look at as well as her spirit. She was the light of my life.’
His words clung to Daisy like a familiarly haunting rhetoric. Hugh, she had often said, had been the light of her life.
‘Well, then you need to find her.’
‘Ach,’ he said, ‘she’s probably married and then why should she put up with the snobbery of my parents and friends?’
‘You know what?’ she said, tiredness making her eyes close. ‘I say bugger everyone else. Do your parents have to live with her? They may not even like each other. Your parents, I mean.’ She chuckled quietly. ‘My parents looked like the perfect, hardworking married couple who ran a successful farm. My dad died of a heart attack when I was young. But I can tell you now, that marriage was far from perfect. Dad used to say to me, “If that woman goes on at me anymore, I’ll get the vet out and bloody put her down”.’
Alistai
r laughed, then looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry, maybe it wasn’t meant to be funny.’
Daisy laughed at his expression. ‘Oh yes, it was funny and so ironic that he went first.’
She stifled a yawn and he apologised. ‘God, sorry, you go to bed.’
‘I’ll go in here first but we can chat more tomorrow?’ She smiled. ‘You know I should be furious with you for what you put me through this evening…’
He nodded.
‘But in a bizarre sort of way, it’s the most fun I’ve had since Hugh died. Anyway, as you gathered, the landlord is a jumped up hunting type. Unless your name begins with Lord or Lady, you’re nothing.’
After a moment’s silence, he said, ‘Goodnight,’ and opened and closed his bedroom door. Daisy let herself into the study and flicked the small desk lamp on before settling onto the sofa.
‘Hugh, are you there?’
She imagined him turning over from the depths of sleep.
‘Sorry, darling, didn’t mean to wake you.’ She stroked the arm of the leather sofa with her hand as she spoke. ‘Hugh, I don’t know if you saw what happened tonight.’ She smiled. ‘I should be so angry but I imagine you laughing, saying “these things could only happen to you”…’ She chuckled. ‘You’d say, “You’re just like Bridget Jones” and tonight it felt like it. I mean I went to my own boyfriend’s party even though I know nothing about him or a relationship…’ She grew serious and frowned. ‘But the thing is, Hugh, I thought it was a date, and I feel guilty for even contemplating another man, let alone a date.’ She shrugged her shoulders and looked around her. ‘I mean everyone keeps telling me it’s what you would’ve wanted, that you would’ve wanted me to be happy. But I’m not sure if there is a man who could make me happy and do I really need that?’ She sighed. ‘I know I’m babbling but I’m confused, Hugh, why can’t you come back and then I wouldn’t even think about other men?’
The desk lamp flickered – another brown out – and she smiled. ‘I knew you were here.’ Then being so tired and wanting to be near Hugh, she kicked off her shoes and dragged the tartan throw over her body and lay down, nestling into the slowly warming leather. She wanted to escape to dreams and sleep and, within seconds, she had dozed off.
A couple of hours later, Daisy woke with a start. She tried to figure out where she was, why she was lying on Hugh’s sofa and then the evening’s events flooded back. She turned over and tried to settle back into sleep but then realised she could hear voices. They were outside the door, whispering in a loud, drunken manner. She got up and padded quietly towards the door and listened. It was Annabelle and James. Daisy looked groggily at the clock on Hugh’s desk. It was 1 a.m.
‘I think you’re fabulous…’ Annabelle purred and Daisy rolled her eyes. ‘You’re like my James Bond…’ She fell about laughing. ‘Get it? Because your name is James.’
Daisy prayed James wouldn’t react but he did: he laughed. Then there was some more whispering she couldn’t hear.
‘Oh, James…’ Annabelle’s husky voice. ‘Kiss me again.’
Again, Daisy thought, alarm bells ringing. Then she had strong words with herself: Daisy Ronaldson, it is none of your business what James does and nor should you care.
Then why did it feel as if her heart was being twisted?
‘Annabelle, come on, let’s go to bed…’
Daisy couldn’t take anymore and pulled the study door open with more force than she had intended and catapulted out of the door.
‘Oh!’ Annabelle shouted. ‘What on earth?’
‘Sorry,’ Daisy mumbled, daring not look at James’s face. ‘I fell asleep in the study and—’ she pointed at her room ‘—I’m just on my way to bed now.’ She paused. ‘Like you two are… on your way back to your bedrooms.’ She watched them exchange looks and she offered, ‘Or bedroom?’
James smiled. ‘Yep, I should be going to bed.’
‘Oh, oh,’ Annabelle said, shooting Daisy a look. ‘You’re not going to let her ruin our fun, are you?’
‘I am tired,’ James admitted. ‘It was a fun night, though, thank you.’
‘Where did you go?’ Daisy berated herself for showing so much interest.
‘We,’ Annabelle was quick to offer, ‘went out to a simply marvellous cheese and wine tasting event in Cirencester.’
‘Oh, that sounds nice.’ Daisy tried desperately to hide the overwhelming desire to slap Annabelle across the face.
‘Yes, I came to ask you if you wanted to go. It was an event for hotels and guesthouses in the area.’ He paused. ‘A chance to meet local suppliers.’ He looked at her intently under his thick eyelashes. ‘But you had gone out.’
‘With that Scottish man,’ Annabelle was keen to confirm.
‘Yes, we went out…’ Daisy stopped. ‘And…’ How could she explain she had unknowingly attended her own ‘boyfriend’s’ birthday party?
‘Dinner?’ James asked, his voice had a slight tremble in it but Daisy put it down to laughter. James was probably laughing at the idea that Daisy Ronaldson would have been taken on a date.
‘No, not dinner, much more interesting than that.’
‘Oh,’ cooed Annabelle. ‘Do tell.’ She flashed James a sexy smile. ‘We were only talking earlier about when and how you might, you know, move on…’
‘Well, I don’t think we did actually talk about that, Annabelle,’ James said, his voice full of warning.
‘You were saying how it would be good to see Daisy move on.’ Annabelle fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘No,’ James said firmly. ‘I said that I want to see Daisy happy.’
Annabelle frowned; she didn’t like being told off. ‘Well, same thing.’
‘Not really.’ James shook his head, his jaw visibly tightening.
Daisy looked hard at both of them. ‘Maybe you two should concentrate on your own lives instead of prying into everyone else’s, particularly mine.’ She looked at James. ‘I thought you were different. I thought…’ Her voice faded. What had she thought? She didn’t really know because it was her heart that was thinking, not her head. Maybe James had felt compelled to carry out Hugh’s wishes as his friend lay dying but actually he would have preferred to stay in London.
‘In fact,’ Daisy said quickly, ‘you two are well suited, aren’t you? Both have houses in London, both have as much tact and sensitivity as Trump.’ Annabelle stood with her mouth open and James shifted under her stare. ‘Actually, why don’t you both just sod off back to London? No offence, Annabelle, we’re so grateful you and your family love this house and have agreed to pay a higher rate but I will happily refund two nights’ worth and James…’ She felt disappointed tears cascading down her cheeks. ‘I thought that you were here, you know, because Hugh and you had agreed mutually but I see now that Hugh just made you feel guilty. You don’t want to be here at all.’ She started to turn but James put out his hand and gently held her shoulder.
‘Please, Daisy,’ he whispered. ‘That is not true. I want to be here more than anything in the world.’ He glanced at Annabelle who was not about to budge. ‘Can we talk tomorrow?’
‘Well, you’ll have to form an orderly queue.’ She wiped her nose and eyes with the back of her hand.
‘Oh?’ James asked.
‘Yes, I have to speak to my good friend Alistair first thing.’
‘The Scottish man?’ Annabelle had perked up. ‘He’s attractive, isn’t he?’ You could practically see the oestrogen emanating from Annabelle’s pores. Daisy thought that if she had been a dog she would have had her spayed. ‘Did your date not go to plan?’
‘What? Our date?’ Daisy looked at James and Annabelle in turn. ‘No, our date was a great success. Which is exactly why I have to speak to him tomorrow.’ She smiled sweetly at them both. ‘We’ve agreed to go on another date together.’
‘What?’ Annabelle shrieked. ‘Another one?’
‘Shhh…’ Daisy warned, holding her finger up to her lips, she didn’t want Alistair to com
e out and clarify that it was all make-believe.
‘Wow, and to think James was worried about your lack of a love life.’ She winked at James.
James’s face hardened and he remained silent.
‘Have you two…’ Annabelle tilted her head coyly to the side. ‘…you know?’
‘No,’ Daisy said honestly. ‘We’re so in love that we’re happy to wait until the time is right.’
Annabelle laughed; she was having far too much fun. ‘Isn’t the time always right? Imagine holding back like that. You must have amazing self-discipline, Daisy.’
‘Yes, Annabelle, imagine that…’
Annabelle looked blankly at her. ‘Imagine that.’
‘If you’ll excuse me I’m going to bed now.’ James glanced at Annabelle. ‘My bed.’
‘Oh.’ Annabelle looked disappointed and Daisy wanted to shout with glee. It had worked: her interruption had stopped them from sleeping together.
Only, she realised, it hadn’t entirely worked. She had now told people about a relationship with Alistair that didn’t actually exist. She realised she was quickly convincing herself about their relationship even though Alistair was due to check out tomorrow and return to his friends and family, and, at some point she presumed, to tell them it was over. But if Alistair was that lonely and she wanted companionship, wouldn’t it make sense that he moved into the guesthouse. He could still have his own room but conversation and sex on tap could be a good thing, couldn’t it?
Daisy put her hand to her forehead as she watched James open and close his door and Annabelle forlornly head back up the stairs in the direction of her own bed and husband. What had she just done?
As she went back into the study to turn the lamp off, it flickered again and she looked at it. ‘I know, I’m an idiot, Hugh, a complete idiot. You see you’ve left me and I’ve gone mad. Quite mad.’
She flicked the switch, felt her way out of the room and to the light of the landing and her bedroom. As she nestled under the sheets, she realised Alistair lay asleep on the other side of the wall to her. Little did he know what she had just said… Though, she thought, maybe all was fair. He had coerced her into a relationship and now he could have a taste of his own medicine.
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