Daisy Darker(84)

‘No!’ said Conor. ‘No, it’s just a sheet.’

‘Sheets don’t bounce off bonnets,’ said Lily.

One of them pulled the sheet back. I think it must have been Rose, because I heard her scream first. It was a gentle scream, if there is such a thing. I wanted to reassure her that I was fine. But that was the moment when I realized that I couldn’t speak, or open my eyes, or move at all. I was only thirteen years old, but I had already died eight times before. Even if my heart had stopped beating, I knew there were ways to make it start again. There always had been in the past. They just needed to get help.

‘What have we done?’ Rose whispered. ‘What. Have. We. Done?’ She screamed the words a second time, sounding hysterical.

‘We didn’t do anything,’ said Lily, sounding more sober all of a sudden. ‘Conor was the one driving.’

‘This isn’t helping,’ said Rose. ‘We have to help Daisy.’

She checked for a pulse, and I remember that her trembling fingers felt so warm on my cold skin. I wanted her to hold my hand and tell me that everything was going to be all right.

‘She’s hit her head. It’s very bad. There’s a lot of blood . . . a lot.’ Rose leaned down over me, and I could smell the alcohol on her breath. ‘I can’t find a pulse and . . . I don’t think she’s breathing.’ Rose started to sob loudly. ‘We need to find a phone and call an ambulance.’

‘How?’ said Lily, and I could hear that she was crying too.

We all knew that they couldn’t call for help without either driving into town or driving to Seaglass, then scrambling down the cliff path and across the causeway to use Nana’s landline. Both options would take at least twenty minutes, by which time it might be too late if it wasn’t already. None of us had mobiles in 1988. Even now, there is no phone signal on this corner of the Cornish coast.

‘Wait,’ said Conor. ‘We should think about this before we do anything we might regret.’

‘What are you talking about? Haven’t you already done something that you regret?’ Rose screamed at him. ‘You’ve killed Daisy!’

‘I didn’t pass my driving test,’ Conor said quietly.

‘What did you say?’ Rose asked.

‘I didn’t pass my driving test, but I didn’t want to tell you that I’d failed. How could I confess to my genius girlfriend – who was about to head off to Cambridge – that I couldn’t pass a simple test? I lied. For you. And I didn’t ask to borrow my dad’s car tonight because he would have said no – he knows I don’t have a licence.’

‘Oh my god,’ Rose whispers.

‘I’m going to jail,’ Conor says. ‘They’ll say it’s manslaughter. I’ve been drinking. They’re going to lock me up. My life will be over . . . I’ll never get a job after this. I just wanted to drive my girlfriend to a party before she left for university, a girlfriend who was probably going to dump me anyway, and now I’m going to jail.’

‘I was never going to dump you, why would you think that?’ Rose says. ‘This was an accident—’

‘An accident I am going to regret for the rest of my life.’

Silence followed. All I could hear was the sound of the sea. It was like a lullaby, and I could feel myself drifting away to somewhere else. Then Conor spoke again.

‘Do we have to make things even worse than they already are?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’ said Rose. ‘Daisy is dead. Nothing could be worse. I’m sorry that you lied about having a licence, and I’m sorry that you’re going to get in trouble, but this is your fault.’

‘Is it? You both knew that your little sister was at the party tonight when she should have been safe at home. Your parents will find out that neither of you looked after her, or tried to take her back to Seaglass. You let her drink alcohol, then left her alone on the beach, despite her being underage and having a heart condition. You bullied her and made her run away. Your family will hate you just as much as they will hate me, for the rest of your lives.’

I wanted to tell them that I was fine. That they didn’t need to worry. But I still couldn’t move.

‘He’s right,’ said Lily. ‘They will hate us.’

‘Have you both lost your minds?’ said Rose. ‘What are you suggesting? That we leave her here on the street like roadkill?’

‘No,’ Conor said, and I felt such an overwhelming sense of relief until he spoke again. ‘I’m suggesting we throw her over the cliff.’

Even if I could have spoken at that point, I don’t think I would have been able to.

‘Think about it,’ he said gently. ‘I know how upsetting this is, but Daisy really didn’t have much longer to live anyway. We all know that. Every doctor she ever saw said her broken heart wouldn’t last forever. She was a good person. She wouldn’t want you, or me, or Lily to have this hanging over us, like a noose around our necks for the rest of our lives. Her life is over whatever we do, but ours don’t have to be. It will look like an accident. All we have to do is go home and keep quiet. Say that she wandered off and left the beach without us realizing.’

I could hear my sisters crying. Both of them. I imagined myself sitting up and us all hugging, with our arms wrapped around each other. I knew they would never be mean to me again, not after this. I thought maybe we would become the best of friends, and that one day we might even laugh about the night Conor accidentally hit me with his dad’s car.