Daisy Darker(19)

She knocks and we all wait, but there is no answer.

Rose knocks again, before gently turning the handle and pushing the door open.

‘The room is empty,’ she says, looking back at us all. ‘The camp bed hasn’t been slept in. Dad isn’t here and neither are his things.’

Lily rushes forward and grabs Rose’s hand, just like she did when we were children. ‘I know he was upset about Nana and the will, but you don’t think that—’

‘Let’s try not to jump to conclusions,’ says Rose, even though I’m sure we’ve all hurdled over several. ‘I’m going to find a sheet to cover Nana’s body, I’d rather remember her the way she was. Can someone else go upstairs and wake Nancy?’

I volunteer and Conor comes with me. I expect he just doesn’t want to be left alone with my sisters, but I’m glad of the company. The house doesn’t feel the same to me now, as though it too is grieving. Seaglass is colder, and stiller, and quieter than before. All I can hear is the sound of ticking clocks in the hallway, and the gentle lapping of waves against the rocks outside. When I was a little girl, I used to imagine the sea coming in through the cracks in the walls, and the doors, and the windows, and rushing down the chimney while we slept in our beds, until Seaglass was full to the ceiling with seawater, and we were all floating and trapped inside. I used to imagine a lot of bad things happening to my family in this house, but only at night. I might not be a child anymore, but I am still afraid of the dark.

Conor stops on the landing and I notice that there is some chalk on his jeans. He sees it too and tries to brush it away. I don’t say anything. The door to my mother’s bedroom at the other end of the hall is slightly ajar. I freeze, and realize that I simply don’t have the right words for this situation. Conor, as though sensing my apprehension, steps forward and clears his throat. He knocks ever so gently, but the door swings open a little further, and despite the gloom, we can both see the shape of someone in bed. I don’t understand how anyone could have slept through Trixie’s screaming, but my mother has always been a deep sleeper. Never less than eight hours a night, or she thinks it will be bad for her skin. A good night’s sleep is something pills and alcohol have often helped her to achieve.

‘Nancy? I’m sorry to disturb you . . .’ Conor says.

‘What? Who is that?’ says a voice in the darkness. But it isn’t my mother sitting up in the bed. It’s my father, and he looks just as surprised as we are to find him there. Nancy sits up seconds later, lifting her eye mask and removing her earplugs before squinting in our direction. When she sees Dad in the bed next to her, she practically leaps out of it.

‘This isn’t what it looks like,’ she whispers in our direction.

‘Yes, it is,’ Dad says with a sigh, before holding his head in his hands.

The idea of my divorced parents sharing a bed leaves me speechless.

Conor clears his throat again. ‘There’s been an incident . . . and I think it might be best if you both come downstairs to the kitchen when you are . . .’ I fear he is about to say decent. ‘Ready’ is the word he settles on, and we leave them to it.

Back downstairs in the kitchen, the mood has changed from disbelief to fear. Nana has been covered with what looks like a red-and-white tablecloth, and my sisters are staring up at the chalk poem about our family.

‘The chalk was in her hand,’ Rose says.

Nana’s handwriting is beautiful and very distinctive, the poems in her children’s storybooks were all handwritten with ink. I used to try and write the same way, with sloping joined-up letters, but it never looked as good. Nana had an explanation for that, just like she did for everything else: ‘Of course we all have different handwriting. Just like fingerprints or DNA, it’s to remind us that we are individual beings. Our thoughts and feelings are there to be expressed and they are our own: unique. I don’t feel the same way as you about the world, and that’s fine, we’re not designed to always think and feel the same. We are not sheep. Agreeing with someone about something is a choice, try to remember that. Don’t waste your life wishing to be like someone else, decide who you are and be you.’

‘I’m not convinced that the poem was written by Nana . . .’ I say. ‘I don’t think this looks like her handwriting. Maybe someone just wanted it to look like—’

‘It’s impossible to know who wrote this for sure,’ Rose interrupts.

‘But why would Nana write that?’ asks Lily. ‘And if she hated us all so much, why invite us here?’

‘I’m not precocious,’ says Trixie, my precocious but wonderful niece, staring up at the words written about her. It’s almost a relief when my parents enter the room, looking like a couple of teenagers who’ve been caught behind the bike shed.

‘Oh no,’ Dad says, rushing to Nana and pulling back the cloth that was covering her. His reaction seems staged, and I notice that the dog starts to growl again.

‘It’s going to be okay, Frank,’ says my mother, coming to stand by his side, still wearing her black silk pyjamas. Her matching black eye mask that she can’t sleep without is still on her head too. ‘We’ll get through this, together.’ It feels like an odd thing for her to say, given they’ve spent most of the last twenty years apart. I wonder whether she might still be drunk.