Windfallen

by Moyes, Jojo

  And then she’d mentioned the other girls.

  Daisy shuffled lower in her seat, feeling both angry and despondent. It was completely inappropriate. He was completely inappropriate. It was pointless getting hung up on someone who was, as the waitress had so eloquently put it, a complete slag. Daisy looked at him surreptitiously. She knew the type: “car-crash men,” Julia called them. “Strangely compelling, but you really don’t want to get involved. Just drive past and thank God you’re not stuck in the middle.” Even if Daisy had wanted to get involved, which she obviously didn’t, Jones would be wrong, even for a Rebound. His lifestyle, his history—it all pointed to Serial Infidelity and Avoidance of Commitment.

  Daisy shuddered, as if afraid that he could hear her thoughts. Because all this predicated on the idea that he even liked her, which, frankly, she was not sure he did. He liked her company, yes, and her ideas. But there was a whole genetic scale between her and that waitress, the slim-thighed, even-tanned girls that populated his world.

  “You warm enough? My jacket’s in the back if you want it.”

  “I’m fine,” said Daisy curtly, not looking at him. She’d begun to wish, despite the late hour and the renewed throbbing in her arm, that she had caught the train. I can’t do this, she thought, suddenly biting her lip. I can’t allow myself to feel anything. It’s too painful and too complicated. She had started to heal—until she’d spent time with Jones. Now she felt all opened up again.

  “Mint?” said Jones, and, as she shook her head, he finally left her alone.

  THEY ARRIVED BACK AT ARCADIA AT A QUARTER TO TEN, the car crunching loudly onto the gravel and leaving a louder silence when it stopped. There was a clear sky, and Daisy looked out the window, breathing in the clean salt air, hearing the distant rush and roar of the sea below.

  She felt rather than saw Jones look at her for a moment. Then, evidently deciding to say nothing, he climbed out the driver’s door.

  Daisy fumbled across herself trying to open the passenger side, her physical incompetence bringing her dangerously close to tears. She bit her lip, determined not to cry in front of him again. That would just about top her day.

  Some of the lights Mrs. Bernard had left on, to make the house seem less unwelcoming, sent pools of yellow onto the gravel. Daisy gazed up at the windows, feeling acutely the fact that she was about to spend yet another night on her own.

  “You okay?” said Jones, appearing beside her. His cheerfulness of the earlier evening had been displaced by something more contemplative. He looked, she thought, as if he was perennially on the verge of saying something grave.

  “Fine,” said Daisy, swinging her legs out as she held her arm protectively close to her chest. “I can manage.”

  “When’s Mrs. Bernard bringing the baby?”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  “Want me to go and get her for you? It’ll take five minutes.”

  “No. You get back. You’re probably needed in London.”

  He looked at her hard then, so that she blushed at her own tone, grateful that, in the badly lit driveway, he could probably not see it.

  “Thanks anyway,” she said, forcing a smile. “Sorry. Sorry about everything.”

  “It was a pleasure. Really.”

  He was standing in front of her, too big a presence to move past. She wished he would just go away. But he seemed equally reluctant to move.

  “I’ve upset you,” he said eventually.

  “No,” said Daisy, too quickly. “Not at all.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m just tired. The arm’s hurting a bit.”

  “You okay by yourself?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  They stood a few feet from each other, Jones tossing his car keys uncomfortably from one hand to the other. Why don’t you just go? Daisy wanted to scream.

  “Oh,” he said suddenly. “You left something in the boot.”

  “What?”

  “Here.” He moved around the car and, with a blip of his remote device, opened the back of the car.

  Daisy walked after him, her cardigan thrown over her shoulders, feeling increasingly tired and irritated. Her sling was beginning to rub on the back of her neck, and she reached her good hand around to try to adjust the knot. When she finished, Jones was still looking into the boot. She followed his gaze downward. There, on a large gray blanket, lay the stained-glass window, its image just visible in the shadow cast by the trunk lid.

  Daisy stood for a moment, then glanced up at him.

  “I saw you looking at it.”

  Jones was the one who appeared embarrassed now. He shifted on his feet. “So I bought it for you. I thought . . . I thought it looked a bit like your little girl.”

  Daisy heard the sound of the breeze in the Scotch pines and the dull whispering of the grass on the dunes. They were almost drowned out by the ringing in her ears.

  “It’s a thank-you,” he said gruffly, not meeting her eyes. “For what you’ve done. The house and everything.”

  Then he lifted his head and looked at her properly. And Daisy, her bag held loosely in her good hand, stopped listening. She saw two dark, melancholy eyes and a face whose coarseness was offset by the sweetness of its expression.

  “I love it,” she said quietly. And, her eyes still upon his, she moved a step closer to him, her bandaged arm lifting almost involuntarily toward his, her breath tight in her chest.

  Then she stopped as the front door swung open, sending an arc of light splaying across the drive onto them.

  Daisy turned toward it, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the silhouette that stood in the doorway, the silhouette that shouldn’t have been, and didn’t seem to be, Lottie Bernard’s. She shut her eyes and opened them again.

  “Hello, Daise,” said Daniel.

  PART FOUR

  SEVENTEEN

  “She’s really gone and done it this time.”

  Lottie was building Ellie a tower of bricks, gazing out at the two figures on the terrace. She turned to face Aidan, taking the weight off her knees as she moved. “Who has?” She’d forgotten how much time was spent getting down onto the floor and up again with small children. She hadn’t remembered everything aching this much with Camille. Or even Katie.

  “Your woman down the road. Mrs. Leg Warmers or whatever her name is. Have you seen this?” He walked over to the rug and passed her a copy of the local paper, pointing to the letters page. “Wants all right-minded people to picket the hotel. To stop auld Jonesy serving alcohol.”

  “She what?” Lottie studied the newsprint, absently thrusting colored bricks at Ellie as she did so. “Damn fool woman,” she said eventually. “As if a few decrepit old pensioners with placards are going to make a difference. She needs her head examined.”

  Aidan picked up a mug of tea from the sideboard, his plaster-covered fingers apparently oblivious to its heat.

  “Won’t be good publicity, though, for your man. Not quite the image he’d be wanting to project—fighting his way through a line of blue-rinse rebels.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” said Lottie dismissively, passing the newspaper back to him. “As if anyone around here is going to give two hoots about a few gin and tonics.”

  She turned as he leaned backward, his eye caught by the sight of Daisy with an unidentified man outside.

  “Aye, aye,” he began. “Our Daisy’s got a new one on the night shift, has she?”

  “Haven’t you got anything better to do?” said Lottie sharply.

  “That’d be a matter of opinion,” he said, and, waiting just long enough to get Lottie bristling, he sauntered off.

  It was the baby’s father. No doubt about it; she had known as soon as he appeared at the door the previous evening, his dark hair and deep-set brown eyes an echo of Ellie’s own.

  “Yes?” Lottie had asked, knowing full well what he was about to say.

  “Is Daisy Parsons here?” He’d been clutching an overnight bag. Something of a presumption, u
nder the circumstances, Lottie had thought. “I’m Daniel.”

  She had looked deliberately blank.

  “Daniel Wiener. Daisy’s . . . Ellie’s father. I was told she was here.”

  “She’s out at the moment,” said Lottie, taking in his strained eyes, his fashionable clothes.

  “Can I wait? I’ve just caught the train up from London. I don’t think there’s a pub around here I can wait in.”

  She had wordlessly shown him inside.

  It was none of her business, of course. She couldn’t tell the girl what to do. But if it had been up to her, she would have told him to head right back home. Lottie clenched her hands beside her, conscious that she felt inappropriately angry with this man on Daisy’s behalf. That he could leave her and the baby to face everything all alone. And then think he could just saunter back in as if nothing had happened. Daisy had been doing all right; anyone could see that.

  She looked across at the baby, who was meditatively gnawing at the corner of a wooden brick, and then out at the terrace, where the two figures stood stiffly, several feet apart, she apparently absorbed by some distant horizon, he by something on his shoes.

  I ought to wish you a life with your father, Ellie, she said silently. Me of all people.

  DAISY SAT ON THE BENCH UNDER THE MURAL, IN A SPACE between several jars of different-size brushes, as Daniel stood with his back to the sea, looking up at the house. She kept glancing at him surreptitiously, trying to take him all in, and awkwardly, in case she should be seen doing so.

  “You’ve done a great job,” he said. “I wouldn’t have recognized it.”

  “We’ve been working hard,” she said.

  He turned to her.

  “Me, the team, Lottie, Jones . . .”

  “Nice of him to give you a lift back from London.”

  “Yes. Yes it was.”

  Daisy sipped at her tea, carefully resting her other arm against her.

  “What happened to you? To your arm?” he said. “I wanted to ask last night, but—”

  “I cut it.”

  He blanched. She caught his thoughts a moment after.

  “No, no. Nothing like that. I fell through a glass door.” She felt a brief flush of annoyance that he still imagined himself that vital to her existence.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “A little. But they’ve given me some painkillers.”

  “Good. That’s good. Not your arm, I mean. The painkillers.”

  It had not begun this stiffly. On seeing him, the previous evening, she had thought briefly that she might faint. Then, as Jones discreetly offloaded the stained-glass panel and swiftly made his excuses, she’d walked inside and, catching hold of the banister, burst into uncontrollable tears. He had placed his arms around her, apologizing, his tears mingling with her own, and she had cried harder, shocked at how the feeling of his body against hers could be so familiar and strange at the same time.

  His arrival had been so unexpected that she hadn’t had time to work out what to feel. The evening with Jones had brought everything to the surface, and then suddenly she was confronted with Daniel, whose absence had colored almost every minute of the last months, whose presence now prompted so many conflicting emotions that all she could do was look at him and cry.

  “I’m so sorry, Daise,” he had said, his wet hands clutching her own. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Eventually, a long time later, she pulled herself together and, one-handed, poured them both a large glass of wine. She lit a cigarette, noting his expression of surprise as she did so and the efforts he made to hide it. Then she sat, staring at him, unsure what she should say to him, what she should dare to ask.

  He looked at first glance exactly the same: His hair was cut the same way, his trousers, his trainers the same ones he had worn on the weekend before he left. He had the same mannerisms: He ran his hand repeatedly over the top of his head, as if reassuring himself that it was still there. But as she looked more closely, he appeared different—older perhaps. Certainly more worn. She wondered briefly if she looked the same.

  “Are you better?” she asked eventually. It seemed like a safe question.

  “I’m not . . . I’m not so confused, if that’s what you mean,” he said.

  Daisy had taken a long swig of wine. It tasted acidic; she’d drunk too much already.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “With my brother. Paul.”

  She nodded.

  His eyes never left her face. They were anxious, blinking. The half-light revealed deep crevices under them.

  “I didn’t know you were actually living here,” he said. “Mum was under the impression that you were staying with someone in the town.”

  “And who would that be?” she said sharply. She closed her eyes, realizing that the anger was too close to the surface. She breathed deeply. “I had to leave the flat.”

  “I went there,” he said. “There’s someone else living there.”

  “Yes, well, I couldn’t afford the rent.”

  “There was money in the bank, Daise.”

  “Not for the whole time you were gone. Not to support me as well. Not when you took into account the rent rises Mr. Springfield landed on me.”

  Daniel’s head dropped. “You look well,” he said hopefully.

  She stretched her legs, rubbing at a spatter of browned blood on her left knee. “Better than when you left, I suppose. But then I had only just pushed a whole human being out of my body.”

  There was a long, complicated silence.

  She looked at the thick, dark hair on the top of his head, thinking of the times she’d cried on waking because it wasn’t there beside her. How she had lain in bed remembering what it had felt like entwined in her fingers. She had no urge to touch it now. She felt only this cold fury. And underneath it, entwined with it, fear that he was going to leave again.

  “I’m so sorry, Daise,” he said. “I . . . I don’t know what happened to me.”

  He shifted forward on his seat, as if preparing to make a speech. “I’ve been on these antidepressants,” he said finally. “They’ve helped a bit. In that I don’t feel like everything’s as hopeless as I did. But I don’t want to stay on them too long. I don’t like the thought of being dependent on them, I guess.”

  He took a long draft of his wine.

  “I also saw a psychiatrist. For a bit. She was a bit clogs and lentils.” He glanced down at her, gauging her reception to his use of an old, shared joke.

  “So what did she think? About you, I mean?”

  “It wasn’t like that, really. She asked me lots of questions and sort of expected me to work out the answers.”

  “Sounds like a good way to earn a living. And did you?”

  “To some things, I think.” He didn’t elaborate.

  Daisy closed her eyes, too exhausted to begin delving into what that might mean. “So. Are you staying tonight?”

  “If you’ll let me.”

  She took another long drag of her cigarette and tamped it out. “I don’t know what to say to you, Dan,” she said finally. “I’m too tired, and it’s all too sudden, and I can’t think straight . . . We’ll talk in the morning.”

  He had nodded, his eyes still wide, still watching her.

  “You can sleep in the Woolf suite. There’s a duvet still in its box. Use that.”

  The possibility of his sleeping anywhere else had evidently occurred to neither of them.

  “Where is she?” he said as she went to leave the room.

  Oh, you’re finally interested, are you? she thought.

  “She’ll be back first thing,” she said.

  SHE HADN’T SLEPT. HOW COULD SHE, WHEN SHE knew he lay, probably awake, too, on the other side of that wall? At one point she had berated herself for her response to him, for the fact that she’d effectively sabotaged what could have been a glorious reunion. She should have said nothing tonight, simply pulled him back to her, loved him, brought him home again. Other t
imes she wondered why she’d let him stay here at all. The anger felt like a cold, hard thing inside her, sporadically throwing up questions like bile: Where had he been? Why had he not rung? Why had it taken him almost an hour to ask where his daughter was?

  She rose at six, bleary-eyed and headachy, and splashed cold water on her face. She wished that Ellie had been here; it would have given her a focus, a practical series of things to do. Instead she moved silently around the house, conscious suddenly of its familiarity, the feeling of safety that it had bestowed.

  Until now. Now she would be unable to think about it without Daniel in it; the areas that had been free of him now held him imprinted upon their memory. It took her several minutes to realize she felt unbalanced by this because she was expecting him to leave again.

  He woke after Lottie arrived. She had handed back Ellie, who looked distinctly unperturbed by her unorthodox evening, and curtly asked Daisy if she was all right.

  “Fine,” said Daisy, burying her face in Ellie’s neck. She smelled different, of someone else’s house. “Thank you for looking after her.”

  “She was no trouble.” Lottie observed her for a time, raising an eyebrow at Daisy’s arm. “I’ll make tea, then,” she said, and went off to the kitchen.

  Several minutes later Daniel came down the stairs, his sore eyes and gray complexion testament to his own unrestful night. He had stopped when he saw Daisy and Ellie in the hall, his foot still resting on the step behind.

  Daisy felt her heart skip a beat at the sight of him. She had wondered, several times, whether the previous night had been an apparition.

  “She . . . she’s so big,” he whispered, shaking his head. Daisy fought back the sarcastic response that came to her lips.

  He walked slowly down the stairs and came toward them tentatively, his eyes still on his daughter. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said, his voice cracking.

  Ellie, with a child’s unfailing ability to defuse a moment, gave him the briefest of glances and promptly began to smack Daisy repeatedly on the nose, cawing to herself as she did so.

  “Can I hold her?”