Daisy Darker(60)

My mother’s idea of home schooling was to allow me to read the books Nana gave me. She wouldn’t even let me watch the news on TV, only cartoons like Bugs Bunny.

‘Daisy doesn’t need to learn about the horrors of the real world,’ Nancy would say, depriving me of the joy of learning. So I tried to teach myself. This Daisy was a self-raising flower. But my life was too quiet without my sisters in it. I was almost always alone, with nothing but novels and an overactive imagination for company.

Books can take you anywhere if you let them, and reading proved to be a big part of my education. But my sisters learned a lot of things that I didn’t. Things about real life, and social skills, and boys. I have always been a little awkward around real people. I don’t know how to talk to them, and even now, I still prefer the company of characters in books. I suppose it is a hangover from my childhood, when I was so often drunk with solitude. ‘Doesn’t play well with others’ is to be expected when playing with others was rarely an option. And I have always been a little over the limit with my own opinions, without the views of others to dilute them.

‘Can I watch Labyrinth again?’ I asked Nancy, when she tried to shoo me out of the kitchen for the tenth time. It was my favourite film that year, and Conor had managed to get me a bootlegged copy, but my sisters only wanted to watch Top Gun and drool over Tom Cruise, so I had to watch it on my own.

‘Yes, but not tonight, because the only TV is downstairs, as you well know. Go on, skedaddle,’ she said, wearing her enormous shoulder pads – a very strange invention, then and now. She started blowing up a blue balloon and left the room.

‘Don’t waste your life being sad about things you can’t change,’ Nana said when my mother was gone.

‘I’m just sick of being such a loser,’ I replied. Lily had started calling me that name on a regular basis, and always made an L-shape on her forehead when she did. She called me a loser so often I had started to believe that I was one. ‘Rose will go off to university one day, Conor will probably be a brilliant journalist . . . and I want that to happen for him, he’s so talented, he deserves it—’

‘Don’t spend all of your ambition on other people’s dreams,’ said Nana.

‘Why not? What kind of future do I have to look forward to? I’m a nobody.’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘The only nobodies in this world are the people who pretend to be somebody; the people who think they are better than other people because of the way they choose to look, or speak, or vote, or pray, or love. People are not the same but different, they are different but the same.’ I was too young to understand what she meant at the time, but I think I do now.

‘And Daisy . . .’ Nana said, as we heard the sound of people arriving at the front door.

‘Yes, Nana?’

‘Best to leave the scissors in the drawer this family birthday.’

She knew. Nana knew that it was me who cut off Lily’s hair, but she had never said anything about it before. I’ve no idea what my face did – I’ve never had much control over the expressions it pulls – but the rest of me froze.

Nana smiled. ‘I’ll always keep your secrets, my darling girl. And you’ll always be my favourite. You just have to prove all those doctors wrong for me. As for your sisters . . . Albert Einstein once said that weak people revenge, strong people forgive, and intelligent people ignore. It was one of the few things he was wrong about. Success is the best revenge. Try to remember that.’

Before she could say any more on the subject, a small but perfectly formed group of fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds arrived at Seaglass. They had been shepherded across the causeway like lost sheep by Rose before the tide came in. Every one of them was dressed to impress. The only teenager I recognized amongst them was Conor, doing a not bad impression of Tom Cruise in Top Gun. He wore aviator sunglasses indoors even when it got dark, so was constantly bumping into things and people, but he thought he looked cool.

I was allowed to stay downstairs until Rose blew out the sixteen candles on her birthday cake. Nancy, with a lot of help from Nana, had created a magic-looking Malteser cake, which looked like the bag of chocolates was hovering in mid-air. The number sixteen was spelled in chocolate balls too. It really was very impressive. When the bowls were all cleared away, Rose started opening her presents, surrounded by friends and people who loved her. My mother gave her a beautiful pale blue designer dress, and I felt the jealousy growing inside me until it hurt. But I wasn’t the only one. Lily looked at that dress as though it should have been hers, which might be why Rose immediately put it away in her wardrobe upstairs. When Rose opened Nana’s present – the bronze, silver and gold ring that Rose still wears today – I remember how hard it was not to cry. The ring was so beautiful, just like my sister. I wished it was mine.

‘Time for bed now, Daisy,’ my mother said in front of everyone, and I hated her a little bit. I didn’t feel like a child, even though I was one, and I didn’t like the way she spoke to me in front of everyone else. I was old enough by then to notice that my mother always wanted to hide me away from the world, as though I were something to be ashamed of. At least that’s how it felt.

Ten-year-old me did go upstairs, but I didn’t go to bed as instructed.

Instead I sneaked into my sisters’ bedroom, while everyone else was having too much fun downstairs to realize. I opened their wardrobe and found the pale blue dress my mother had given Rose for her birthday. The tags were still attached. I didn’t care that it didn’t belong to me, or that it was several sizes too big. I was sick of wearing hand-me-downs that were years old and faded from being washed too many times. I put the dress on and admired my own reflection.