Father Unknown (49 page)

‘It’s just nature’s way of giving you time to come to terms with what’s happened to you,’ one doctor explained. ‘Don’t try to fight it, Daisy. Just go with the flow of it.’

Gradually she began to understand what he meant as she found herself sifting through her mind, picking up previous incidents, experiences and even conversations and examining them. She thought it was a bit like sorting out her bedroom, chucking out the rubbish, polishing up the things which were of value to her, rearranging it all in a tidy fashion. She found she wasn’t sorry she began looking for Ellen any more, she knew the truth now, and however bad it was, the cobwebs had been cleared.

She knew the value of her adopted family too. She loved them, and they loved her. Nothing else mattered.

When Josie’s death was announced, the press were desperate to discover what the connection was between Daisy and her, and made a real nuisance of themselves, waylaying, Lucy, Tom and John at the house and the hospital for information. But John, with Joel’s help, eventually managed to convince them it was just a friendship which had turned sour, and insisted they left Daisy alone. Fortunately the once famous model’s resurrection after being thought to be dead for so long, and the fact that she had murdered her family, was more than enough for them to feed on, and they soon lost interest in Daisy.

John kept all the press clippings for her to read once she was able to cope with them. Along with all the old stuff about Josie’s past, there was a great deal about Ellen too. Old friends from Bristol had been interviewed, and there were photographs of Ellen and children she worked with at the school. It was heartening to read how distressed they were to hear what had really happened to her. Many of them told touching stories about what she had meant to them.

Through this, Daisy was able to put a few further pieces back into the jigsaw to complete the picture of her mother.

The police in turn had sifted through the records and reports on the fire at Beacon Farm, and it seemed that Mavis’s theory of how Josie engineered it was probably a fairly accurate one. In the Fire Officer’s report there was a mention of an unusually large amount of paraffin stored in the farmhouse, but at the time this had been put down to Albert’s eccentricity, as he was known for keeping fuel for his lamps indoors.

The reason why the coroner had found no reason to consider that the body of the younger woman found at the farm was anyone other than Josie was because of a lack of any dental records. It seemed neither girl had ever visited a dentist.

Yet throughout all this, it was the love and concern Daisy received from her family and friends that helped her on the road to full recovery. And above all it was Joel to whom she felt most indebted. He had not only rescued her in the nick of time, and supported and protected her family under the barrage of press interest, but he’d been a constant visitor, making her laugh again and encouraging her to talk through her feelings about Ellen and Josie.

Daisy told him about the book Josie had claimed to be writing, and expressed her fears that if it existed it might fall into the wrong hands when her belongings were disposed of. Joel used his connections to discover which solicitor had been appointed to wind up her estate, and got an assurance that if it was found, it would in due course come to Daisy.

With his work commitments, Joel couldn’t visit Daisy so often in Sussex, but he telephoned her daily. When she returned home, hardly a day passed without him popping in.

In late July, when Lucy and Tom finally saw that their sister really was on the mend, they decided to go off on their planned round-the-world trip. Seeing them off with her father at the airport, Daisy knew the time had come to start on some plans of her own.

Her first priority was to seduce Joel.

It had become more and more obvious to her that she did truly love him. The misgivings she’d had in the past seemed absurd now, for since waking up in hospital, all the fine qualities – his strength, kindness and sense of humour – which had attracted her in the first place seemed to have been expanded. She knew without any doubt that he was the only man for her, but although she was sure she could always count on his friendship, she wasn’t convinced he still fancied her the way he had. She guessed it was hard to feel desire for someone with their head bandaged, but she was afraid she might have hurt him too badly for him to take the risk again with her.

So it was up to her to make the first move, and as her father was going away for a week’s sailing, and Joel had a few days off starting around the same time, she invited him to come round for a meal that Saturday night.

Saturday arrived with the promise of another long hot day, and Daisy spent most of it lying in the sun in the garden, contemplating the night ahead. She was only making a simple meal, pasta with a creamy prawn sauce, salad and garlic bread, strawberries and cream to follow. But food wasn’t on her mind, that was secondary to how she had to look for Joel.

She wanted him to see the girl he’d fallen for nearly two years earlier. In those days she’d been pretty sensational – slinky dresses, four-inch heels, a
femme fatale by
anyone’s definition. But as time had gone by she’d modified her appearance. She had always claimed this was because he didn’t approve, but in her heart she knew the truth was that she’d grown lazy.

It wasn’t going to be that easy. After the operation her hair had been a mess, for she had a large shaved area on the left side of her head. A visiting hairdresser in the convalescent home had cut the other side short to even it up, and cropped her curly hair on top so it partially covered the bald section. For a while, she felt ill every time she looked at herself and despaired of ever looking nice again. But the hair had begun to grow at last and now the scars were hidden.

She had washed her hair that morning and let it dry naturally in the sun and for the first time since she left the convalescent home, she could see the old Daisy was coming back. She stayed out in the garden until four o’clock, then went in to prepare the food, tidy up and lay the dining-room table. She opened the French windows wide, moved the table closer to the doors, and cut a bunch of heavily perfumed pink roses as a centrepiece for it.

Later, as she lay back in a scented bath, she felt happy and secure in herself, the way she used to when her mother was alive.

Daisy smiled to herself as she remembered how in her late teens she had rejected all her mother’s standards and thought her parents were so terribly starchy and old-fashioned. She could remember watching her mother preparing for a dinner party, wondering why when it was only neighbours and old friends coming in she found it necessary to polish the silver, arrange flowers and have candles on the table – not to mention scrub out the bathroom, polish the furniture and put new pot-pourri in dishes everywhere. Daisy had once stated that no one would ever catch her doing such unnecessary things. But now, a few years on, she seemed to have acquired those same values, wanting the whole house to look beautiful, the dinner to look and taste perfect.

She supposed she had finally grown up. The last year might have been fraught with sadness and hurt, but she had probably learned more about herself, her family and the world in general than she’d learned in the previous twenty-five.

‘Wow! You look gorgeous!’ Joel exclaimed as Daisy opened the door to him at seven-thirty.

Daisy blushed. Her emerald-green lacy dress was an old one, and she had been a bit shocked by how tight and revealing it was, but by the gleam in Joel’s eye, it was going to have the desired effect.

‘You look pretty gorgeous yourself,’ she retorted. He was wearing a white polo shirt and chinos, his face and arms golden from the sun. She kissed him on the cheek, and he smelled as delicious as he looked.

They sat outside in the garden for a couple of drinks before eating, and Daisy asked him about his work. He had just been moved on to the Vice Squad, and he was enjoying it immensely.

She went back into the kitchen and put the pasta on to cook, and reheated the sauce in the microwave. Everything else was ready. Within fifteen minutes they were sitting down to eat.

‘Mmm, this is the business,’ Joel said as he tasted the prawn sauce. ‘I’ve been living on those oven-ready meals for so long I’d forgotten what real food looked like, let alone tasted like.’ He speared a piece of avocado in the salad. ‘Ah, what’s this? Something alien.’

Daisy laughed. When they first met and she began cooking for him, he claimed everything was alien. He’d been brought up in a home where even pasta was considered exotic and weird. In the navy, like in the police force, he’d had ordinary canteen-type food, and when the ship had docked in foreign countries he’d always been too suspicious to try anything he didn’t recognize. He’d overcome this prejudice very quickly after meeting Daisy, but then she had bludgeoned him into trying everything.

It was so lovely being alone again with him. It was such a warm evening, only the lightest of breezes making the candles flutter. As the daylight gradually slipped away into darkness, the scent of the roses on the table, the good food and the wine made it easy to talk.

He said that when Daisy shut him out of her life his world had fallen apart. ‘Everything seemed so pointless, getting up in the mornings, cleaning the flat, washing my clothes. I didn’t know until then how attached I’d got to your family or how you’d coloured every aspect of my life. My mates soon got tired of me being miserable, at work they said I was a grouch. I’d always prided myself on being so self-contained too. I suppose I imagined that I was too tough to go to pieces over a woman.’

Daisy reached out and stroked his cheek tenderly. ‘I’m sorry I put you through that,’ she whispered. ‘Yet it’s nice to find you can be so emotional. That was one of my misgivings about you. I got the idea sometimes that you didn’t
feel.
You did seem very self-contained.’

‘I suppose I got the idea that I had to be masterful and bossy with you, because you seemed to be so dizzy and frothy,’ he admitted.

‘Frothy!’ she giggled.

He smiled and took her hand in his, kissing the tips of her fingers. ‘Yes, frothy. And you still are sometimes, like that day I got to the convalescent home and found you in tears. I thought you’d had some terrible news, that you needed another operation or something. You were only upset because you couldn’t bend to paint your toenails without your head throbbing.’

‘A girl’s toenails are important,’ she laughed.

‘Am I important to you too?’ he asked, his dark eyes looking right into hers.

‘Extraordinarily so,’ she whispered.

‘Then let’s go to bed,’ he said, getting up and pulling her up too. ‘Right now, before we have pudding or coffee.’

‘I planned to put on some soul music and dance with you,’ she said.

‘We can do that later. We’ve got all night.’

She looked at his face and his brown eyes were pools of mischief, so sexy they made her shiver. His lips were soft and full, pink and moist from the red wine. Then she looked at his hand in hers, so big, so capable, and she remembered how sensitive those fingers could be.

‘Kiss me,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve forgotten what a real one is like.’

His arms came round her and his lips down on to hers. The kiss began gently, his tongue teasing hers, but his arms tightened around her and all at once it was fierce and passionate, with more fire than she ever remembered before. Scooping her up in his arms, he carried her upstairs and laid her on the bed. He stood for just a moment looking down at her.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Just thinking how much I want you.’ His voice was husky with emotion.

It was even better than when they first met, all the raw excitement yet the security of familiarity too. Joel undressed her, kissing her shoulders and arms, unhurried, wanting to make it last.

As he made gentle love to her, she could feel the last of the tension inside her ebbing away. There was no room in her mind for anything else but him – time, place or tomorrow didn’t exist as he brought her to a fierce climax.

‘I love you,’ she heard him murmur at the height of it, and his body and hers seemed to flow into each other in a way she’d never felt before, then suddenly she was crying at the sheer beauty of it.

‘No tears,’ he whispered, licking them away. ‘Fred will think I’m hurting you and savage my backside.’

Daisy glanced to the side of her bed to see Fred sitting there, his head on one side, ears cocked, as if questioning what they were doing. All at once she was laughing.

‘The new model Daisy goes from tears to laughter in one point five seconds,’ Joel said, imitating the voice of a man who did car adverts on a local radio station. ‘A smooth ride, with plenty of excitement, that’s what you can expect with the new Daisy.’

They were still laughing later when they went downstairs again to eat the strawberries and cream and drink more wine. Taking a bottle with them, they went out into the now dark garden and swung on the swing seat, Joel in his boxer shorts and Daisy wearing just her knickers and his polo shirt.

‘We could make love again here,’ he said, swinging fast. ‘With the added thrill of not knowing whether the neighbours are watching.’

Daisy lay back looking up at the stars. ‘We’ve had this swing as long as I can remember,’ she said. ‘Mum would never part with it even though it’s a bit rusty and the cover’s shabby. I wonder if that’s because she and Dad used to frolic around out here when we were little?’

‘I expect so.’ Joel smiled, lying down beside her. ‘One of the first things I sensed in this house was the feeling of love. It kind of wraps itself round you. Shame we could never afford to buy it from your dad if he sells up and moves on.’

Daisy looked at him questioningly.

Joel smiled again. ‘I suppose I ought to ask you to marry me before discussing buying houses. Would you marry a poor copper who can’t keep you in the manner you are accustomed to?’

‘Is that a proposal or just a fact-finding mission?’ she asked.

‘It’s a proposal.’

Daisy giggled. ‘Yes, I would marry a poor copper. I’d even live in his dirty little ex-council flat. That’s if he asks me properly.’