Daisy Darker(26)

‘What should I do?’ I asked, a little scared of being left on my own at Seaglass.

Nana stared at me as though I had said something wrong. ‘Daisy Darker, do you care about Conor?’ I nodded. ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it. Caring about other people is more important than being curious about them. When someone you care about is in trouble, you do everything you can to help. Which means you are coming with me. Now find your shoes and let’s skedaddle.’

‘What about your birthday cake?’ I asked.

‘We’ll take it with us. Conor sounds like he needs cheering up.’

Ten minutes later, having crossed the causeway when the tide was already fast coming in, the two of us climbed the rocky path with wet shoes and socks. At the top of the cliff, behind the sand dunes, there was an old shed where Nana kept her only form of transport. It was an ancient bicycle with a large wicker trailer attached to the back, which, now that I think about it, can’t have been legal. I climbed into the wicker trailer and Nana climbed onto the saddle, dangling her handbag on the handlebars.

Nana pedalled faster than I knew she could along the coastal road, until we reached Conor’s cottage, a mile or so away on the other side of Blacksand Bay. The place was really nothing more than a dilapidated two-bedroom bungalow on a rocky stretch of the coast. One of the windows was cracked, and the blue paint on the front door was peeling right off. They’d moved there when Conor’s mum died, and the building was as abandoned and unloved as the two people who lived in it.

We didn’t knock. There was no need; the door was open.

I’d never been inside before – Conor always came to visit us, never the other way round – and I was shocked by what I saw. I think we both were. The front door opened straight into a little lounge and there was mess everywhere. The previously white net curtains were a grubby grey, and when Nana switched on the light, the place looked even worse than it had in the gloom. The old green sofa in the middle of the room had sunken seats, and holes in some of the cushions. There were dirty cups and plates stacked on the coffee table, and chip shop wrappers and crushed beer cans all over the stained carpet. Picture frames – which presumably used to hang on the rusty hooks on the walls – were smashed on the floor. They were all of Conor with his parents, before his mum died. A broken happy family. There were bits of glass and rubbish almost everywhere I looked. Conor was sitting in the corner of the room, hugging his knees to his chest.

‘Where is he?’ Nana asked.

‘In the bedroom,’ Conor whispered without looking up.

‘You stay with Conor,’ Nana said to me. ‘Be as kind to him as you would want someone to be to you if you felt broken.’ Then she took her rolling pin out of her pink and purple patchwork bag, and the way she held it made me think it wasn’t so she could do some baking. I wanted to be kind to Conor, and I knew what it was like to feel broken, but I followed Nana, even though I knew I wasn’t meant to. Curiosity doesn’t only kill cats.

The bedroom was dark and smelled bad. There were piles of clothes all over the floor, and a filthy-looking man lying on the bed with his eyes closed. Empty bottles of pills were on the stained bed sheets beside him. Nana dropped the rolling pin and used the phone on the nightstand to call for an ambulance.

He wasn’t dead, he just wished that he was. Even though I was very young, the thought of anyone feeling that unhappy made me feel overwhelmingly sad. When the nice paramedics had taken Conor’s dad to hospital, the three of us ate Nana’s birthday cake. It seems like a strange thing to have done, looking back. But then my childhood was rarely normal.

Mr Kennedy lived to tell the tale, and Nana paid for him to go to rehab. ‘We all get broken sometimes and if you can help fix someone, you should always try,’ she said. I think Conor’s dad was a bit like me in that way. But he wasn’t born with a broken heart; his heart broke when his wife died. Conor said he rarely drank at all before then and that he used to be happy. They all were.

Conor stayed at Seaglass for a little while, and the three of us – him, Nana and me – spent a week straightening out the cottage where he and his father lived. We cleared out all the rubbish and washed everything that could be cleaned. Nana pulled up the old carpet, sanded the floors, painted the walls – inside and out – and bought some new cushions and bed linen. Nana was always of the opinion that if you could help change a life, you could help change the person who leads it. She put fresh flowers in every room, and filled up the fridge and freezer with food before Conor’s dad returned. She even paid for us all to take a taxi to collect him from rehab. He looked like a different man to me, so much so I thought we’d picked up the wrong person. He’d put on some weight, his clothes were clean, he’d shaved off his horrible beard, and he didn’t stink of booze or cigarettes.

‘Are you sure you’re Conor’s dad?’ I asked in the car, and everyone laughed even though I hadn’t been joking.

‘Thank you,’ he said when he stepped inside the bungalow and saw how much work we had all done to make their house a home. ‘For everything. How can I ever repay you?’

‘Just stay well,’ Nana replied.

Then she shook hands with him, kissed Conor on the cheek, and we left them to try again.

‘Everyone deserves a second chance,’ Nana said when we were alone.

‘Even bad people?’ I asked.