Daisy darker, p.20
Daisy Darker, page 20
Rose tries to reassure them both. ‘It might not mean anything . . .’
‘Of course it means something!’ Lily snaps. ‘And I think we all know what that might be. We should have looked for Nancy. We should have done something. Oh my god,’ Lily says, staring at Rose and taking a step away from our sister. ‘It was you. You’re the only one who left that room, and now more of the poem has been crossed out. You were always making up weird rhymes when we were children. It was you, all of it. You injected Trixie and then pretended to fix her! How could you? Why would you?’
‘Injected me with what?’ whispers Trixie.
‘It wasn’t me!’ says Rose.
‘Where is Nancy?’ Lily shouts.
‘I don’t know!’
‘I don’t believe you! You were the one who said we shouldn’t look for her and now I know why!’ Lily steps in front of her daughter, who looks terrified. Rose takes a step towards them and we all stare at the gun in her hand. ‘Stay. Away. From. My. Child,’ says Lily.
‘I didn’t do anything!’ Rose replies, hiding the gun behind her back.
‘Wait!’ says Conor.
‘You stay out of this. You’re probably helping her. I don’t trust any of you,’ Lily says.
‘This isn’t the time to start turning on one another,’ Conor replies gently.
‘Why not?’ Lily snaps.
He holds his hands up in surrender. ‘Because look at the footprints.’
We all stare down at the floor then and see what he is talking about. There are muddy footprints leading to and from the back door. It reminds me of all the times Conor’s dad forgot to take off his gardening boots when he came to visit. The dirt Bradley Kennedy dragged inside drove my mother mad. I look at Rose’s feet and the small, pristine white trainers she is wearing. Only a pair of large muddy boots could have made this mess. The sound of an alarm keeps ringing in the distance, and the open kitchen door that leads to the garden bangs on its hinges again, battered by the wind. We all watch in silence as Conor starts walking towards it.
‘Please don’t go out there,’ I say.
He hesitates, but then steps outside into the rain, turning on the torch. He picked it up when we were all still in the lounge, even though the power is back on now. Almost as though he knew he might have to go out in the dark.
My sisters and I watch from the doorway as Conor walks out onto the patio, slowly shining the torch around the garden. The beam is too faint to light up the sea crashing on the rocks beyond the wall, only illuminating a metre or so ahead. The rain is light but persistent now, as though the sky is spitting in Conor’s face, but he moves through the gloom until the torchlight stops on the bench in the distance. It’s where my mother always liked to sit and admire her flowers, beneath the magnolia tree she planted here with Conor’s dad. The tree that Nana thought was a symbol of hope always looks a little bit dead in winter.
The old magnolia is the only tree on our tiny tidal island, and has grown quite big over the last twenty years. Fat raindrops cling to its bare branches, giving an illusion of miniature lights, and it’s so cold I wonder if they might freeze before they fall. I can’t quite process what I am seeing when I spot my mother sitting on her garden bench. Wearing her black silk eye mask on her face, the one she always wears to help her sleep. Outside. In the dark. In the rain.
‘Nancy?’ Conor calls, his voice a little strangled by the sound of the sea. He walks towards her and the rest of us start to follow.
‘What’s wrong with her? Why is she sitting in the rain wearing an eye mask?’ Trixie asks.
‘Go back inside,’ Lily says. ‘Stand in the doorway where I can see you and don’t move.’
Trixie does as she is told and the rest of us walk towards my mother. The rain is relentless now, much heavier than it was only a few moments ago, and so hard that the water seems to be falling up as well as down. Nancy’s normally perfect hair is dripping wet and clinging to her face. Her clothes are soaking too, she’s clearly been out here for a long time. The rain must have smudged the thick black eyeliner and mascara she always wears; it looks as if she has been crying black tears behind her mask. Even stranger is the sight of her red alarm clock. It is balancing between the branches of the magnolia tree just above her head, and still ringing.
Conor reaches up to turn it off. The clock says three a.m. but it’s already twenty minutes past. I can’t help wondering if that was why Nancy was never on time for anything; maybe the clocks she used were wrong. Or maybe someone just wanted to make a point. It seems my mother was late for her own murder, because I think we all know that’s what this was and that she is dead.
Nancy’s hands are by her sides and her sleeves have been rolled up. Her left hand is holding onto her beloved copy of The Observer’s Book of Wild Flowers, the little green book that she always carried around like a Bible, and used to choose our names. Her right hand is holding what looks like a small bunch of lilies, roses and daisies tied to her fingers with a red ribbon. A string of ivy is wrapped tightly around her neck, not quite covering the silver heart-shaped locket she always wears. It is unclasped to reveal the pictures inside. All this time, I had presumed that it contained two tiny photos of my sisters. But now that it is open, I can only see a tiny black-and-white picture of myself as a child on one side, and a pressed daisy on the other.
Rose slides her gun into her jacket pocket. I find myself replaying Lily’s words in the kitchen – when she accused Rose of having something to do with all of this – and for a moment I do wonder, as my eldest sister, once again, takes charge of a situation most people would be overwhelmed by. She leans over Nancy on the bench as though she were a stranger, not our mother, and I can’t help noticing that the gun is within my reach. I could take it. Not that I’d know what to do with it. I’ve never even held a gun before.
‘She’s dead,’ Rose confirms, having checked for a pulse.
Lily starts to wail, staring up at the night sky. It is a level of grief and despair that none of us have seen her display before, and nobody knows what to say as a mix of tears and rainwater stream down her face. The sound of ticking is still so loud, it makes me think of a cartoon bomb. Conor is holding the red alarm clock that was in the tree, and as he shines the torch on its face, we can all see that something has been written on it: THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR TRUTH.
‘What does that mean?’ I ask.
‘I don’t understand what is happening here tonight. Who is doing this and why?’ says Lily.
‘I don’t know,’ Rose replies. ‘But I think this confirms it.’
‘Confirms what?’
‘Someone else did this. It couldn’t have been any of us. There is someone else here at Seaglass, and they’re killing us one by one.’
Nancy
Daisy Darker’s mother was an actress with the coldest heart.
She didn’t love all her children, and deserved to lose her part.
An unexpected pregnancy resulted in marriage and three girls,
But instead of loving her family, Nancy longed to see the world.
She had wanted to be an actress, but life cast her as a mum instead.
Her leading role took its toll, and made her want to stay in bed.
Her favourite daughter was pretty, and the eldest one was smart,
But the youngest child was always a burden, having been born with a broken heart.
Nancy blamed herself for this tragedy, though no one understood why.
Her guilt made her lonely, bitter and sad, but she was still unable to cry.
When the time came, no one knew who to blame when she was poisoned by her own flowers.
By the time she was found, in the rain-soaked grounds, Mrs Darker had been dead for hours.
Thirty-two
SEAGLASS – 1987
We are getting soaked by the relentless rain as we stand and stare down at my dead mother, and the weather reminds me of the last terrible storm at Seaglass, almost twenty years ago. Nana was planning a big launch for her tenth book at her favourite bookshop. We were all invited, but my father was very busy – as usual – and said he might not be able to be there. So when the telephone rang, we all presumed it was him, calling to apologize from whatever corner of the world he was in with his orchestra. But it was a call from the hospital instead, and not about me for a change. My parents were long divorced, but Nancy was still registered as my dad’s next of kin, and he’d been in an accident.
Most people in the UK can remember the great storm of 1987. We’ve all laughed about the BBC weatherman, Michael Fish, who got the forecast so spectacularly wrong and never lived it down. There’s a fantastic clip of what he said that day: ‘Apparently a lady rang the BBC and said she heard that there was a hurricane on the way. Well, don’t worry, if you’re watching, there isn’t.’ But he was wrong. There was. That October, a hurricane devastated huge parts of the country, and Seaglass nearly disappeared beneath the waves for good. Dad had been on the way to join us to celebrate Nana’s latest children’s book when his car was hit by a falling tree. His visit was meant to be a surprise, but the storm had a bigger one in store.
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ Nancy said when the hospital called. Love always trumps hate when you fear you might lose someone for good. She and Nana left immediately, the book launch was cancelled, and Mr Kennedy came to look after me and my sisters for the night, along with Conor.
One night turned into several. Mr Kennedy soon ran out of things to do with a house full of children – even though one of them was his own – so when the weather allowed, he encouraged us to spend as much time as possible outside. He taught us about the flowers and plants he and my mother had introduced to Seaglass – the magnolia tree wasn’t much taller than him back then – but our interest and concentration soon started to fade.
‘Gardening is boring,’ declared Lily, who never liked Conor’s dad. She called him ‘the narrow man’ because he was tall and had grown thin. In some ways I agreed with her assessment. He did look as though life had squeezed him into wearing only narrow thoughts, jumpers and jeans, almost all of which had pockets and holes in. His words were coated in cynicism, even the kind ones, so I could sort of understand why Lily wanted to stay inside and play on her computer.
‘Gardening isn’t boring,’ said Mr Kennedy with a strange smile. ‘One day you might regret spending your life staring at a screen instead of seeing the real world.’ Then he told us a story that was unlike anything I’d heard before. ‘Did you know that spies use plants?’
‘Like James Bond?’ Conor asked.
His father nodded. ‘Yes, but in real life. You were all probably too young to remember, but in 1978, a BBC journalist was killed by a poisoned umbrella.’
There was a brief silence while we processed his unfamiliar words.
‘An umbrella isn’t a plant,’ said Lily.
‘Did he open the umbrella indoors?’ I asked. ‘Nana says it’s very bad luck to do that.’
‘No, Daisy,’ Mr Kennedy replied. ‘Someone walked up to him on Waterloo Bridge, pointed the umbrella at his leg, and then the journalist felt a sharp pain.’
‘Why did someone want to hurt him?’ asked Rose.
‘Because he defected to the West.’
‘What does defected mean?’ Lily asked.
‘Cornwall is in the west . . .’ I started to say.
Mr Kennedy shook his head. ‘It means that he . . . decided to change sides.’
‘Like when people get divorced?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I suppose defecting is a bit like divorce, but even more deadly. The journalist became very ill, very quickly. He was taken to hospital but he died. The point of this story is what was on the tip of that umbrella?’
We all stared at him, feeling a little clueless, but then Rose’s hand shot up as though she were in class. ‘Poison.’
‘Yes, but where did the poison come from?’ None of us knew the answer to that one. ‘The poison on the tip of that umbrella was called ricin, and it came from the seeds of a castor bean plant. The castor bean plant isn’t a rare species, or terribly difficult to grow or find. In fact, it can sometimes be found in gardens. Just like this one.’
Mr Kennedy pointed at the red and green plant in my mother’s garden, and there was a collective – and rather dramatic – intake of breath.
‘So I hope we can all agree that gardening is not boring,’ he said, looking at Lily. ‘Plants can be the perfect partners in crime. Do you know why?’ We all shook our heads again. ‘Because they’ll never grass. Get it?’ His dad jokes were even worse than our father’s. ‘Don’t forget to wipe your feet and take your shoes off before going inside the house. You know how much your mother hates muddy footprints.’
Later, when we were all back indoors, Mr Kennedy made himself busy in the kitchen, trying to cook us some sort of dinner. We ate a lot of fish fingers, chips and beans when he was left in charge. As he rummaged about in Nana’s freezer, I heard Rose and Conor whispering about him.
‘My dad is really upset about your dad,’ Conor said.
‘We’re all upset. The doctor Nancy spoke to today said it was serious. Apparently, Dad’s car is a write-off and he’s lucky to be alive.’
‘My dad isn’t upset about your dad being in hospital. He’s upset that Nancy rushed to be by his bedside. They’re divorced. They basically defected from each other years ago. She’s supposed to be with my dad now.’
‘I don’t think it works like that,’ Rose said. ‘When you love someone, you can’t just turn it off, there isn’t a switch. Even if you hate someone that you once loved, there is still a little bit of love there. Love is like the soil that hate needs in order to grow. I think it’s rare in relationships to have one without the other.’
Sixteen-year-old Rose was ridiculously mature, but I think she might have been born that way. She and Conor were in a relationship of their own. It was almost as though she wanted him to know that she would always love him, even if she hated him one day. Just like our parents. Lily and I watched as Rose held Conor’s hand. I could tell it made Lily feel uncomfortable too.
When Nancy returned two days later, our dad was with her. He needed to rest, and Seaglass was where he wanted to do it. His head was bandaged and he had a broken arm. He could have gone to his London home – a flat in Notting Hill – just like my mother could have gone to hers, but she chose to look after him and he chose to let her. My sisters and I were delighted to have him with us for so long. Rose and Lily even put their feud to one side.
They decided to cook together one night – a meal for the whole family – and chose to use one of Nana’s recipes for spaghetti bolognaise. I wasn’t allowed to help them at all, for reasons I didn’t understand, but I watched from the doorway. When Lily shouted at me for the tenth time to go away, I sulked in the garden. Rose did almost all of the cooking: chopping onions, carrots, garlic and chilli, adding all the herbs to the meat, tomatoes and stock. She grated cheese and – because this was one of Nana’s recipes – had a bowl of hundreds and thousands ready to sprinkle on top. All Lily did was open a packet of dried spaghetti and pour some boiling water over it in a saucepan.
We sat down in our individually painted chairs when dinner was served, but I didn’t take a bite. Instead I just waited. My mother put a fork full of spaghetti into her mouth and spat it out seconds later. My father swallowed his, but then drank an entire glass of water. Nobody took more than one bite. I’d helped with the meal after all, adding a full jar of hot chilli powder and a bottle of hot chilli sauce to the spaghetti. Lily blamed Rose, and Rose blamed Lily. I think only Nana guessed that it was me.
Apart from the occasional sibling-shaped squabble, we were happier than we had ever been before. But not everyone was pleased to see the Darker family reunited. It was the beginning of the end for Nancy and Mr Kennedy. He was furious about the new living arrangements and didn’t hide it well. He stayed away from Seaglass the entire time that my dad was there. Days turned into weeks, and weeks stretched into months. Nancy’s garden was neglected, the flowers faded, wilted and died. But she barely noticed.
During that time while my dad recovered, we were like a real family again. We spent time together playing board games (Cluedo was a firm favourite), went for walks along the coast, and watched old movies. Dad – unable to play his beloved piano – completed lots of jigsaw puzzles with just the one hand. And Nana cooked a lot of her ‘special chicken soup’. It was what she made whenever one of us was ill. The secret ingredient was mashed banana, and the soup was always served with home-made crusty bread slathered in Nutella.
We were a real happy family for a while, and I thought we might stay that way forever. Christmas in 1987 was very much a Darker family affair, and everyone was a little more grateful for what we all had. Not that the sentiment lasted . . . gratitude tends to go off quicker than milk in our house.
Thirty-three
31 October 3:30 a.m.
less than three hours until low tide
‘We need to get Nancy inside,’ says Conor. ‘We can’t leave her out here in the rain.’
I realize I have drifted back in time again. Life feels a bit like a movie at the moment. Maybe when the present is too painful, it’s only natural to disappear inside flashbacks of happier times. It reminds me of something Nana used to say: if you spend your present focusing on your past, you will never change your future.
‘Why is someone doing this to us?’ Lily asks again, and Rose is the only one to answer.
‘We need to keep it together for just a couple more hours until low tide. You and Trixie are going to be okay. Do you hear me?’ Lily looks more vacant than usual. ‘Lily, do you hear me?’ She still doesn’t answer. ‘Do me a favour and go inside. I want you to find your diabetic kit and check your blood sugar. We all need to be well enough to leave when the tide goes out.’
‘Okay,’ says Lily. She looks like a person who has had their plug pulled out, and is surviving on a dwindling battery. ‘Can you wait a couple of minutes before you bring Nancy indoors? I don’t want Trixie to see her like this – she’s already seen far more than she should have tonight – I’ll get her back into the lounge and keep her there while you do whatever you have to do.’
