Daisy spotted her father hurrying down the corridor towards her. ‘Damn,’ she muttered under her breath.
‘What’s the matter?’ Gabe said, turning to see who she was talking about. ‘Ahh, do you want me to go and divert him?’
She shook her head. There was little point. She knew her father would find a way to come and talk to her if he wanted to, so she may as well get this over and done with. She checked her watch. ‘Only five minutes until the end of my shift,’ she said.
‘Go on,’ Gabe said. ‘I’ll stay here with Fi until the next shift takes over.’
Daisy got up and walked over to her father. ‘I can tell by the determined look on your face that you want to speak to me.’
‘Yes.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s not often I get a chance to speak to you without Stella being there and she’s in the bath. So, I hoped you wouldn’t mind giving me a couple of minutes to try and clear a fewthings up between us.’
‘I’ll need to go and change. I’ll meet you out the back by the steps to the gardens in ten minutes. I doubt anyone will be out there in this weather.’
She hurried to her room and quickly pulled on a pair of jeans, a thin jumper, and a cotton jacket.
‘That was fast,’ he said, when she joined him shortly after. ‘Shall we go this way?’ He indicated a pathway that would take them to the edge of the grounds.
‘Yes, sure,’ Daisy said. They began walking. ‘So, what did you want to talk to me about?’
‘The thing is, Daisy, I don’t want you to think that you aren’t important to me.’
‘I know that,’ she admitted, stepping over one of the small geometric pools dotted down through the valley gardens. ‘But it hurt when I met your wife and my half-brother and they had no idea I even existed.’ She’d been dreading speaking to him, not certain if she could keep her anger under control, but now it was happening, she was relieved to be able to share the feelings that had been troubling her.
They arrived at a small clearing where a weathered wooden bench nestled. ‘Let’s sit here,’ he suggested.
Daisy sat down and waited for him to do the same. ‘I know you’re in a difficult position, but it hurts to be someone’s secret.’
He sighed heavily. ‘I know and I’m sorry. Your mother and I were very much in love, but we were very young and I panicked and ran away. I’ll never forgive myself for leaving her when she needed me most. I wasn’t away long and did try to persuade her that we should be married once I’d come back, but she didn’t trust me not to run off again.’ He hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t have, you know?’
Daisy wanted to believe him. After all, he was the only family she had left, and hadn’t he always remembered her birthdays and Christmas? Sometimes he’d even managedto pop in on those special days; sometimes, but not very often. ‘Mum always said she didn’t mind you marrying Clarissa so soon after I was born and I believed her for years.’ She thought back to the time when she was in her teens that it occurred to her that her mother had only told her that so she didn’t fret about her. ‘She knew that I wouldn’t have agreed to see you if I’d known how you’d hurt her, and she was right.’
‘It was good of her,’ he said. ‘I was always grateful and it was why I tried to see you as often as I did.’
Daisy sighed. ‘I understand you not mentioning me to your first wife,’ she said, wondering how she would feel if she had discovered her husband had a whole part of his life that he hadn’t shared with her. ‘But why not tell Stella about me? She had a right to know I existed, surely?’
He nodded. ‘You’re right, I know you are, but I was frightened that she wouldn’t agree to marry me if she discovered that I’d kept such a huge secret from Clarissa for all those years.’
‘Then she doesn’t know the real you, and she deserved to before making the decision to spend the rest of her life with you.’
He stood up and pushed both hands through his short hair. Daisy softened towards him when she could see how upset he was. Then it dawned on her that maybe this was how he acted whenever things got difficult for him with his wife, and her sympathy waned.
‘Daisy, I know I’ve done wrong, but your mum didn’t want to share you with me most of the time. She liked the idea of me loving you and being there for you for birthdays and that sort of thing, but she was insistent that she was your only true parent.’
Daisy wanted to argue with him but could imagine her mother acting like that. Hadn’t she made a point of living an almost hermit-like existence for most of Daisy’s life?
‘Yes, but that doesn’t excuse your behaviour to Stella, or your son, does it?’
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘It doesn’t.’ He picked a daisy growing through a hole in between two stones making up the top of the wall and began pulling off the petals, one-by-one. Daisy cringed. It was as if he was pulling her apart because she’d appeared in his perfect second marriage and caused issues with his pretty young wife.
He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. Then glancing back down to the dismembered flower in his hand groaned. ‘Oh, that must look bad.’
Daisy shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ She stood up.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Back to my room; I’ve got things to do and you need to get back to Stella if you don’t want her wondering where you’ve got to.’ Daisy began walking along the path, relieved to be getting away from him.
He called after her, but she ignored him. Seconds later she heard his footsteps as he ran to catch up with her. ‘Daisy,’ he said from behind her. She stopped and turned to face him. ‘Where do we go from here?’ he asked.
