Daisy Darker(25)

Conor walks through it before I get there, carrying a basket full of logs. He looks completely drenched, and I don’t understand what took him so long. I’m about to ask when I notice him staring at something behind me. I think I know what it is – Nana – but when I turn to look for myself, I see that her body has gone. Conor puts the logs down and stares at the kitchen table. There is a VHS tape on it. One of the ones I’m sure I saw on the shelf in the lounge last night. Someone has stuck Scrabble letters to the front of its white cardboard case, spelling out the words: WATCH ME. Next to the tape, there is a torn piece of paper. When I read the words that have been written on it, in handwriting I do not recognize, my whole body turns icy cold.

TRICK-OR-TREAT THE CHILDREN HEAR,

BEFORE THEY SCREAM AND DISAPPEAR.





Thirteen



31 October 1 a.m.

five hours until low tide

The clocks in the hallway all start to chime. Thankfully just once as it’s one a.m., but they are a little out of sync as usual. Conor stares at the space on the floor where Nana used to be, but there’s no body, and no blood, as though what we saw before might just have been a bad dream. Then he looks at the VHS tape and note on the kitchen table. He turns to look in my direction, but doesn’t say anything, almost as if he suspects me of putting them there. I can still hear my dad’s piano in the music room, he hasn’t stopped playing since he locked himself away from the rest of us. The men in my life have never been good at using their words, so I find a few of my own.

‘I understand why you’ve refused to see me for years, and why you still don’t want to talk to me now, and that’s fine, but can we please put what happened with us to one side, just for tonight? I’d really like to know what you think is going on here, because I’m scared,’ I say, quietly enough so that the others won’t hear. I used to think of Conor like a big brother, and I miss him playing that role in my life.

The look on his face is opaque; there is no reflection or even an acknowledgement of what I just said. I hate that things have become so awkward between us, but I have never managed to find the right words to fix things. I don’t understand why we can’t move on. Especially now. Everything we’ve just seen confirms that Nana’s death was not an accident.

I’m not naive. I know that everyone was upset about Nana’s will last night, and I do have a hunch about what might be going on here. But hunches aren’t just there to be had, they’re there to be thought about, analysed, agonized over and – most importantly – should rarely be shared. Conor stares at the words written on the piece of paper on the kitchen table, then at the VHS tape, then again at the place on the floor where Nana’s body was earlier. I just stare at Conor.

He grabs a red chequered tea towel from the kitchen worktop and does his best to dry himself off from the rain, then he reaches inside his pocket and takes out a mobile phone. It’s a dark blue Nokia, the best that 2004 has to offer, just like Lily’s, but Conor seems to have forgotten that there is no signal here. He holds it high up in the air, as though that will make it work, but of course it doesn’t. I watch as he strides out to the little table in the hallway where the landline used to live. The old pink rotary phone is still there, on a doily, but Nana wasn’t joking when she said she stopped paying the bill. She wanted peace and quiet and I guess she got her wish, because the phone is dead. I find the fact that Conor so clearly wants to call the police reassuring, despite knowing that he can’t.

There is a picture of me and my sisters by the phone. When they were here it used to ring all the time. Most calls were for them – friends from school wanting to catch up in the holidays, study partners for Rose, boyfriends for Lily – but occasionally it was my dad, calling from one city or another, between rehearsals and performances. He could never talk for more than a few minutes – long-distance calls cost a small fortune in those days – and it never took him too much time to ask Nana for more money. Sometimes publishers called for Nana, and her agent always called to wish her a happy birthday. But I can remember one Halloween when I was the only person here to help her celebrate, and the phone rang. The person calling was Conor. I suppose I must have been five or six. Nana had just blown out all of her candles – there were a lot, even back then – and we were about to eat pineapple upside-down cake with Angel Delight. The memory of that phone call is as clear now as if it had happened yesterday, not over twenty years ago.



‘Hello,’ Nana said, answering the phone with a big smile, expecting it to be someone calling to wish her a happy birthday. The smile slid straight off her face. ‘It’s going to be okay. You did the right thing calling me. Stay exactly where you are and I’ll be there soon.’

‘Who was it?’ I asked.

‘Conor. Something’s wrong, I need to go over there,’ Nana said, looking for her handbag. She could never seem to find it, even though it was both brightly coloured and enormous. The bag was made from pink and purple patches and was older than me. Nana shook her head while searching for it, and her curly white hair seemed to dance. I wondered if mine would look like that when I was older. Then I remembered that I would never be old enough to have white hair, and it made me feel so sad. It’s odd, the little things that used to upset me. Most people don’t want grey or white hair, but in that moment, I did. Maybe people wouldn’t complain about getting old all the time if they were scared that they never would. When Nana found her handbag, she slipped a wooden rolling pin inside it.