Daisy darker, p.27
Daisy Darker, page 27
‘Are you okay?’ Trixie asks. ‘I can see you’re lost in those thoughts I know you’d rather forget. But everything will be all right now, you’ll see.’
I don’t know how to respond to that, but I am not okay. I have been hoaxed by my own memories on more than one occasion, but I have never felt this lost to myself. I feel like I just watched a scene from my past, performed with a new backdrop. It looked out of place, left there by someone else, so that the memory seemed all wrong. I’ve tried so hard to exchange it, to give it back. I don’t want to remember what really happened that night. But then I have always found fiction more attractive than real life.
‘They killed me. Rose, Lily and Conor killed me,’ I whisper.
‘Yes. We’ve had this conversation many, many times. But for reasons I don’t understand, you always forget,’ says Trixie.
There are surreal moments after any tragedy when you forget what has happened. The mind often tries to delete files it can’t process. When you remember, it’s as though whatever caused that grief happens to you all over again. And I feel as though I am falling. But I never really forget, I just choose not to remember.
‘If I died that night, why am I still here?’ I ask. ‘How can you see and hear me?’
‘I’m not an expert in the afterlife, but I’m guessing this has something to do with it.’
I look up and see that Trixie has undone the top few buttons of her shirt. I stare at the pink scar down the middle of her chest, almost exactly like my own.
‘I was born with a broken heart too,’ Trixie says with tears in her eyes. ‘They think it might be hereditary, but nobody knew about mine until I was ten. I was at school when it happened. Mrs Milton, my bully of a PE teacher, made us do cross-country on a really hot day. Around the school field and through the woods. After the first lap, I said I didn’t feel well. I tried to tell her that my chest hurt and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. But Mrs Milton is one of those women who only sees what she wants to see, and only hears what she wants to hear. She made me keep going even when I said I felt a bit broken. I didn’t want to let anyone down, so I kept running. I collapsed beneath a huge oak tree, and it was a few minutes before one of the other girls found me. They thought I’d fainted from the heat, but then my heart stopped. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital two days later with this scar down my chest, and seeing you sitting at the end of my bed, watching over me. I died that day in the woods, and I think that’s why I can see you. I was only dead for a couple of minutes before an ambulance arrived, but that’s when I saw you for the first time. I’ve been able to see and hear you ever since.’
It still feels as though I am falling, again and again, and nobody is ever going to catch me.
‘Can anyone else see me?’ I ask.
‘No. Except Poppins the dog! She can see and hear you too. I bet she ran out to greet you when you arrived at Seaglass yesterday! People seem to see you just before they die. Like the residents in the care home you visit – I know how much you like to comfort them in their last few moments – but there have been other instances. You visited the hospital once, and sat talking to a little girl who had been in a car accident. Her parents were killed in the crash, she was in a critical condition, and you stayed with her until it was time for her to . . . leave. But seeing children die made you too sad, so maybe that’s why you only visit the elderly these days. We both know that Rose saw you downstairs, briefly, just before she . . . passed away.’ Something like remorse makes itself at home on Trixie’s face. ‘I told my mum when I first started seeing you, and she got super cross about it. She didn’t believe me and said she never wanted to hear me say your name again. That’s why she tipped the Scrabble board on the floor last night, because she was scared that I was playing with you. Sometimes if she heard me talking to you, I would pretend that you were an imaginary friend. She was more comfortable with that than the idea of me talking to her dead sister. The one she threw off a cliff.’
I know what she’s telling me is true. All the times my family ignored what I said this weekend were because they couldn’t hear me. Nobody hugged me when they arrived because they couldn’t see me. My family has treated me like a ghost for years because I am one. Clarity comes like one of the waves I can hear outside Seaglass, crashing all around me, over me and into me, before knocking me down. The lucidity of the moment cannot be ignored or forgotten. I believe it, but still can’t quite accept what happened then, or has happened now.
‘But why did you kill them? I don’t understand why you would do such a terrible thing? You’ve been crying all night, as though you were as scared as the rest of us!’
‘I was scared and I did cry. What I did tonight was truly horrible, so of course it upset me. I’m not a monster.’ Trixie stares at the floor. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I really thought you’d figure it out once you saw the Scrabble letters stuck to the VHS tapes: WATCH ME, HEAR ME, NOTICE ME, SEE ME. Those are all the things you wanted your family to do since you died. But even before you died, they didn’t really see you. And Scrabble was a game we always played together, so I thought you might guess it was me. Try not to be too sad about all of this, Aunty Daisy. Some people are ghosts before they are dead.’
I stare at her and notice the open suitcase on the bed again. There are some things inside that I couldn’t see before: a reel of red ribbon, some Scrabble letters – including a square B made from sea glass and wood – the missing B piano key, a handkerchief with the letter B stitched onto it, a bumblebee necklace, and some pages torn from my mother’s The Observer’s Book of Wild Flowers: buttercups, bellflowers and bluebells. I understand now that B is for Beatrice, Trixie’s full name. She was leaving clues the whole time, as though she wanted someone to know that it was her. Maybe she wanted someone to stop her.
‘What’s that?’ I ask, seeing something else in the suitcase.
‘This book?’ she replies, picking up a battered-looking old novel. ‘It’s And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, one of my favourites. Would you like to borrow it?’
‘No. And I meant the sheets of paper with all of our names on.’
Trixie smiles. ‘Poems. About each member of the family. Like the one written in chalk on the kitchen wall last night, I wrote that too. Did you like it? I’ve written one about everyone except you. I even wrote a poem about myself as a little red herring! But I decided not to share them in the end. Would you like to read them?’
I feel as though I am staring at a monster and have to look away, but she still takes the sheets of paper and lays them out on the bed for me to see. Each page is a poem about a member of the family. I don’t want to read them, but can’t seem to stop myself.
‘You said you had help. Who?’ I ask.
‘I did say that. Come on, let’s put you out of your misery.’
I follow her in stunned silence as she hurries down the staircase. But I hesitate when she walks past the cupboard beneath the stairs. The door is closed again, and Rose’s body has disappeared from the hallway. I’m not as good at herding my thoughts as I used to be, they tend to come and go as they please. But the ones inside my head right now are loud, and clear, and frightening. I follow Trixie into the kitchen.
Only a moment ago, I believed that the rest of my family were all dead.
But now one of them is sitting at the table, smiling at me.
Once again, it feels like I am falling.
‘Hello, Daisy.’
Forty-nine
31 October 6:45 a.m.
low tide
‘Hello, Daisy,’ Nana says, with a smile I spent my whole life trusting.
It takes a while for me to think of anything to say, and even when I do, it isn’t terribly articulate. ‘I don’t understand what is happening.’
‘Nana can’t see or hear you. Do you want me to tell her what you said?’ Trixie offers.
‘Yes. I’d like you to ask Nana if she has completely lost her bloody mind.’
‘Did she swear?’ Nana asks, and Trixie shrugs. ‘Daisy, you know I don’t like any bad language under this roof. You must remember to use your words. But I do understand why you might be feeling a bit upset,’ she says.
Nana stands up from the kitchen table, careful not to disturb Poppins, asleep at her feet. I see that she is wearing a new pink and purple dress covered in a pattern of birds. She starts to shuffle towards the sink, in her pink and purple slippers. ‘I’ll explain everything if you’ll let me. But I might just put the kettle on first. I’m a little parched, and it is officially my birthday!’ she adds. Nana still has a bit of blood and brain matter in her hair, and a big bloody gash on the side of her face. She looks like a ghoul.
‘I’ll make the tea. You two have a lot to talk about,’ says Trixie, going to fill the kettle.
‘Well, I suppose it’s always best to begin at the beginning,’ Nana says, sitting back down in her pink and purple chair at the table. ‘It began when Trixie told me that she could see and hear you a couple of years ago. At first, I presumed she was making it up. But then she started knowing things, things that she couldn’t possibly have known unless someone had told her. I thought about all the times after you were gone, when books went missing from my library and then would sometimes turn up in your bedroom. Pages folded down just the way you used to when you couldn’t find a bookmark. The clues were always there. They always are.’ She smiles. ‘One day – Halloween last year – I saw Trixie playing Scrabble, and I watched the pieces move all by themselves on the board when it was your turn! But then she told me what really happened the night that you died. You told her your secret, and she told me.’ Nana’s face darkens. ‘That’s when we started to plan all of this.’
‘What did you think happened to me that night?’ I say.
‘Daisy wants to know what you thought happened the night she died,’ Trixie relays without waiting to be asked, then puts the kettle on the stove.
Nana looks so sad. ‘Your sisters came home from the Halloween beach party and went to bed without saying a word. Your parents and I didn’t even know that you were missing until the next day – we thought you were in your room the whole time, and had no idea that you had sneaked out to join them. My agent was still here. Do you remember that he gave me the Scrabble board that night? It was a birthday gift, and you played a game with him after dinner. It was the last time I saw you alive. He and I found you the following morning. Your broken little body had washed up on Blacksand Bay. The tide at the time when you fell – which was what we thought had happened at first – should have dragged you out to sea and along the coast. But there you were, face-down near the causeway, almost as though you had tried to swim home to Seaglass.
‘The police were called, and we were all questioned. They visited Conor and his father too . . . that’s why the silly fool killed himself soon afterwards. Mr Kennedy found a streak of your blood on the front right headlight of his Volvo. Conor had taken the car without his dad’s knowledge or permission, so Bradley Kennedy thought he’d accidentally hit you himself when driving home from the pub. He was too drunk to remember that he hadn’t driven anywhere the night before, and threw himself off the cliff in a tragic case of misguided guilt. His body was never found. Even the police believed that he was responsible for your death. That’s when I invited Conor to move in here for a while. His father had just committed suicide, and Rose had just dumped him – though none of us knew the real reason why – and he had nowhere else to go. I didn’t know he killed you.
‘I really wasn’t sure if Conor would come when I invited him here this weekend, but I’m glad that he did. Nobody else outside of this family knows the worst things about ours, and there are some things I would prefer to take to my grave. Anyone who lives long enough starts to worry about their legacy, and I didn’t much like the look of mine. The Darker family will be remembered for the right reasons now, instead of the wrong ones. Conor arriving by boat was a surprise, but I just cut the rope attaching it to the jetty once you had all gone to bed.’
‘I wondered what happened to the boat,’ says Trixie. She smiles, but Nana doesn’t.
‘When I first found out what really occurred the night that you died, I confided in my daughter-in-law, your mother. I invited her here to Seaglass and said there was something very important we needed to talk about. I didn’t tell Nancy how I suddenly knew the truth – she was already waiting for any excuse to call the men in white coats – I just told her that I was sure. That’s when she confessed that she already knew. Lily had told her. Years earlier. Your mother started sobbing, and revealed that one of the last doctors she took you to see in London thought you had a chance to live a longer life. It involved groundbreaking heart surgery, but she never shared that information, the choice, or the opportunity with anyone else, for reasons I still don’t understand. If you’d had that surgery, everything might have been different. You might still be alive now.’
‘I know,’ I whisper, but Nana doesn’t hear me.
I was here at Seaglass when they had that conversation.
That’s how I knew.
I remember Nana and my mother sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea, and talking about the doctor who might have changed my life. I remember Nancy crying, I remember Nana sounding so upset, and I remember how neither of them noticed me sobbing in the corner of the room.
Because they couldn’t see me.
They behaved as though I wasn’t there.
But maybe I was always here. Maybe I never left.
‘It turned out everyone knew what really happened that Halloween, except me,’ said Nana. ‘Even my son, your father. They all kept quiet to protect your sisters, the Darker family reputation and their future inheritance. Which is why none of them deserved a penny of it. I am not foolish or blind. I knew that my family were selfish and unkind. But they took you away from me, then they lied about what happened, and I could never forgive them, or Conor, for what they did. You were always my favourite, my darling girl. You inspired me to write my own stories, you gave me something to live for, and you made me want to be a better person. They had to pay for what they did to you.’
The kettle boils and it sounds like a scream.
Nana glances up at the chalk poem on the kitchen wall.
Daisy Darker’s family were as dark as dark can be.
When one of them died, all of them lied, and pretended not to see.
Daisy Darker’s nana was the oldest but least wise.
The woman’s will made them all feel ill, which was why she had to die.
Daisy Darker’s father lived life dancing to his own tune.
His self-centred ways, and the pianos he played, danced him to his doom.
Daisy Darker’s mother was an actress with the coldest heart.
She didn’t love all her children, and deserved to lose her part.
Daisy Darker’s sister Rose was the eldest of the three.
She was clever and quiet and beautiful, but destined to die lonely.
Daisy Darker’s sister Lily was the vainest of the lot.
She was a selfish, spoilt, entitled witch, one who deserved to get shot.
Daisy Darker’s niece was a precocious little child.
Like all abandoned ducklings, she would not fare well in the wild.
Daisy Darker’s secret story was one someone sadly had to tell.
But her broken heart was just the start of what will be her last farewell.
Daisy Darker’s family wasted far too many years lying.
They spent their final hours together learning lessons before dying.
‘Did you like Trixie’s poem?’ Nana asks, but I don’t answer. ‘She wrote more – one about each of you – but was too shy to share them all. When I told Trixie my plan, she agreed to help me. The two of you have a lot in common, and she loves you, just as much as I do. I wanted, no, needed to make things right for you and for her before it was too late. While I still could. I killed Frank. He was a terrible son and a dreadful father. Being the only one in the family who ever touched whisky made him surprisingly easy to poison. As soon as your dad locked himself away in the music room, I revealed that I wasn’t dead after all. I told him the whole thing with me on the kitchen floor was nothing more than a Halloween prank. We had a bit of a laugh about it, I encouraged him to drink even more of the whisky, then I had the piano play a pretty tune while he died choking on his own blood.’ Nana looks down at the floor as though avoiding eye contact, even though I know she can’t see the way I am staring at her. She wipes away a tear, and I’m relieved that telling this story is making her feel as sad as I do hearing it. ‘Frank was too heavy for me to move by myself, so Trixie helped me drag his body into the cupboard. Nancy was busy ransacking my studio at the time – I think she was worried I might have written about her in a new book – and you were all upstairs, looking for Trixie.
‘I was worried about people suspecting Trixie – she’s always been a little too clever for her own good – so the additional red herrings seemed necessary. She stole Lily’s diabetic kit, took what she needed, then left it in Nancy’s bedroom for someone else to find. She sneaked out of the lounge while you were all watching old home movies and joined me in the cupboard under the stairs, locking herself inside with a spare key. Injecting herself with insulin was her own idea after Rose mentioned it at dinner, but I would never have let anything bad happen to her. We had a spare shot of glucagon in case none of you found her in time.’
Trixie puts a cup of tea down on the table in front of Nana.
‘The rest was easy,’ Nana says, taking a sip. ‘Nancy was busy looking for her missing granddaughter when I called her out into the garden. When I told her the whole thing was an elaborate Halloween joke, she got very upset. So I suggested a cup of tea – that was almost always her answer to everything. It was poisoned using plants that she grew herself here at Seaglass. She died a little later than she should have, but punctuality was never Nancy’s strong point.
‘Everyone else died on time, and they were found once an hour, just like we planned. That part was one of Trixie’s ideas. She was full of them, after reading so many murder mysteries. Lily killed herself by spraying her neck with perfume, which we had replaced with a deadlier poison than the one she preferred. Conor took an unfortunate topple down the stairs, then suffocated on his newspaper article. Trixie shot Rose with her own gun. I had no idea she would bring one this weekend. That changed our plans and we improvised—’
