Daisy Darker(50)

‘I’ll check my diary,’ Mr Kennedy said with a straight face.

When he smiled, and my mother realized he was joking, she laughed. I noticed again what a rare sound it was to hear. It was strangely beautiful, just like her.

I might never have gone to school, but I felt like I learned a lot of valuable lessons that day, including that people aren’t always what they appear to be. A middle-aged man with a drinking problem might just be a person poisoned by an all-consuming grief. While a middle-class woman with nice manners and nice things might just be a failed actress who can’t handle being a dress size bigger than she wants to be. Life is a performance, and we don’t all like the scripts we’re given; sometimes it’s best to write your own.

Conor and his dad did visit us at Seaglass that Easter. They wore suits and ties, and brought chocolate eggs for the whole family. Mr Kennedy spent a lot of time out in the garden with Nancy, and we listened to the sound of her laughing all afternoon. Bradley Kennedy never gave up drinking for good, but at that moment in time he seemed to know when to stop, and he never laid a finger on Conor again.

When I look at that picture of the Darker family women on Nana’s mantelpiece now, I remember that Conor took it that Easter, using the Polaroid camera my father had given him. In the photo, Nana is wearing a pink dress and a purple Easter bonnet. Lily, Rose and I are all wearing matching dresses for the first and only time. They are the navy blue velvet ones from Debenhams. Nancy is dressed in one of her Audrey Hepburn ensembles, and she looks very pleased with herself indeed. She is gazing just off camera. I think she was looking at Conor’s dad.

I smile too when I look at the image of her back then, because I was so proud of her for what she did that day, ready to stick up for Conor, no matter what. She was protective of those she cared about. And if she loved something, or someone, she loved them with all her heart.

I just wish she had loved me that way.

My mother might never have fulfilled her ambition of becoming an actress, but at least some of her dreams came true. She had a good life, a nice home and a beautiful family. What happened a few years later was not her fault. Neither is anything that is happening now. Sometimes we have to let go of what we had in order to hold on to what we’ve got.





Twenty-five



31 October 2:45 a.m.

less than four hours until low tide

‘Shouldn’t we at least look for Nancy?’ Lily says, and the rest of us stare at her.

‘It feels safer to me if we all just stay here,’ Rose replies.

They both look at Conor, who is busy checking that the windows are locked. ‘Is that what you think too?’ Lily asks him.

‘We searched the whole house when we were looking for Trixie. If Nancy had wanted to be found, we would have found her. I agree with Rose.’

Lily pulls an ugly face. ‘I guess some things never change.’

I understand why the others suspect Nancy, but they’re wrong.



The fourth time I died, I was here at Seaglass. It was spring 1984, and Nancy and I were sitting on her favourite bench in the garden, pressing flowers. It was something she liked to do. But not when they were perfect and pretty, only when they were dead. Ideas are sewn in our heads, just like seeds. Some are scattered and soon forgotten, others take root and grow to become something much bigger than they were in the beginning. Sometimes we make notes in the margins of our minds, thoughts and ideas that are just for us alone to read and ponder over. Thoughts and ideas we do not share. I’ve never forgotten what my mother said that day.

‘We only really acknowledge the beauty and brilliance of someone or something when they die,’ she said, holding her pruning shears and deadheading some roses.

Snip.

She handed me a ball of dark crimson petals before moving onto some white lilies. ‘I’ve always found that strange, the way people don’t appreciate what they have until it is gone.’

Snip. Snip.

Then she bent down and cut a few dead daisies from the lawn. Seconds later, it was as though they were never there.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

The silver heart-shaped locket my father had given her one Christmas dangled from her neck. She’d worn it every day since, and I imagined pretty pictures of my sisters inside. My mother used to hold it between her thumb and her index finger when she was thinking. I wondered if she thought of them when she did.

I don’t remember why we were together at Seaglass without my sisters. Normally Nancy dropped me off alone when they were at school and she needed to disappear. She had joined an amateur dramatics group in London, and spent an increasing amount of time getting out of parental duties and getting into character for performances at the town hall. The local newspaper once described her as ‘a hard act to follow’. They did not mean it kindly. Nancy said we weren’t allowed to see her in a show until she was cast in a lead role, which meant we never saw her on stage.

I know Nana liked having the adult company when my mother came to stay at Seaglass. The two women had more in common than either of them realized or cared to admit. Acting and writing are surprisingly similar, and the wish to walk in someone else’s shoes – which is what actors and writers do – is a very human desire. But if they forget to take those shoes off, or forget who they really are, it can be a dangerous obsession.

Sometimes London was a little too loud for Nancy. Whenever she was having one of what she called her ‘blue days’ she needed to hibernate. Those days frequently coincided with her not getting a part she had auditioned for, or finding grey hairs, or not liking how she looked in a photo. But there were often times when I couldn’t tell what triggered my mother’s melancholy. When she was low, she preferred silence and solitude to hustle and bustle, and Seaglass became a place of sanctuary. Nancy would disappear into a world of her own when we were by the sea. When the tide rolled in, surrounding Seaglass with salty waves, it felt like a moat, separating her from the rest of mankind and the people who had hurt her. Because someone hurt my mother; it’s the only explanation I can think of for why she was the way she was.