Daisy Darker(32)

‘I’m sorry I shouted at you, Daisy,’ she said, wearing another one of her neon-coloured 1980s costumes. ‘It wasn’t fair of me to blame you for what happened. And I’ve got you a little surprise to make up for it. It’s in the cupboard under the stairs.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, because I didn’t – Lily was always telling fibs, and we were all a bit scared of the cupboard under the stairs. The reason why someone is lying is almost always more interesting than the lie itself.

‘Don’t then,’ she replied with a custom shrug of her shoulders. ‘Rose! Isn’t there a surprise for Daisy downstairs?’

Nana was out walking the dog, and had left Rose in charge because our mother was taking a nap. Rose was passing my bedroom with her nose in an Encyclopaedia Britannica that looked heavier than me, and she was clearly only half listening. Rose knew that she wanted to be a vet from a very young age, just like Lily knew that she didn’t want to be or do anything. Neither of them changed their minds over the years. It was different for me. My dreams changed shape as often as the clouds I liked staring at. One year I wanted to be a musician like my father, another I dreamt of writing books like Nana, but I never thought I’d live long enough to do either. Which might be why I stopped aiming for a life that felt too out of reach.

Rose was often left in charge because she was the oldest. It was a responsibility that she, like a lot of eldest siblings, came to resent. ‘Oh, yes, the surprise,’ she said. ‘We all know about it . . . the one downstairs?’

Looking back now, I don’t think she knew what was going on. But I trusted Rose, so I went down the creaky steps sideways and one at a time – they were steep, and my little legs were still rather short – completely oblivious to the fact that Lily was filming the whole thing.

‘That’s right, step inside the cupboard,’ she said. ‘There’s a secret fairy door in the wall, right at the back there, do you see it? You’ll have to go all the way in to find it.’ The idea of a secret fairy door in the skirting board was very exciting to four-year-old me. I soon overcame my fear and went inside. ‘Knock on the wood,’ said Lily. ‘The fairies might come out and say hello.’

I did as she said, but what appeared wasn’t a fairy. The tiny door shape in the skirting board was in fact a mouse hole, but the mouse that ran out looked enormous, more like a rat. As soon as I screamed, Lily closed the cupboard door, locking me inside.





Sixteen



SEAGLASS – 1980

I cried in the dark for what felt like hours, and I banged on that door until my knuckles bled. I was never afraid of the dark before then, but I have been ever since. I don’t think that’s childish or silly. I think it’s completely logical to fear what you cannot see. Our mother was sleeping off a vat of cheap wine she’d drunk alone at lunchtime, while I was locked inside the cupboard under the stairs. She’d taken a pill and put in earplugs to drown out the sound of her children – so it was only when Nana came back from walking the dog that anyone heard me crying. Her face was one of horror when she finally found the keys and unlocked the cupboard door. Lily was banned from roller-skating for two more weeks, and it was Nana’s idea that Rose and Lily should be further punished by having to take me to the beach on my fifth birthday.

The following week, after a breakfast of pancakes with hot chocolate sauce, that’s what they begrudgingly did, both holding one of my hands so that I could swing between them.

‘And do not take your father’s camcorder. I’ve told you before, it’s not a toy. If you get sand in it and it stops working, I’ll never hear the end of it,’ said Nancy, waving us off at the door.

‘Okay!’ yelled Lily, already marching down the causeway with the camcorder tucked inside her backpack. She held my hand as we headed for the beach, until she thought Nana and our mother could no longer see. I remember her grinning in my direction. Her smile had holes where the tooth fairy had stolen her teeth, a bit like the piano with its missing key.

‘You’re five now, Daisy. And I think you’re old enough to play with Rose and me more often,’ Lily said. Rose frowned as though hearing this for the first time. ‘Would you like that?’

I nodded. I would have done almost anything to get them to like me more. The age gap between them at nine and ten was minimal, but the years between them and me always seemed vast. I would often watch them playing clapping games, tapping their hands together, faster and faster, while chanting strange rhymes. There was one about going to a Chinese restaurant, to buy a loaf of bread bread bread. It made no sense to me, but I longed to be a part of it anyway. I had tried several times before to keep up with their big-girl games, and it rarely ended well. I was permanently covered in scratches and bruises, and my nostrils were frequently overcome by the smell of Savlon and TCP.

We played with an old skipping rope until Lily got bored, chanting the rhymes their friends had taught them, and they had taught me. I didn’t know what half of them meant, but I learned the words through repetition and a desire to join in, just like all children do. I remember my favourite rhyme we used to chant and skip to:

Lizzie Borden took an axe,

She gave her mother forty whacks.

After she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

Lizzie Borden got away.