Tom shrugged. “I’m not sure she was ever a snake, but yes, I guess so.”
“I thought Daisy loved you,” she said, kicking her legs under the chair and flinging them back so that the toe of one foot landed right on Tom’s kneecap, enhancing the jolt he already felt at Martha’s words.
He paused, trying to process what she was saying. Martha thought Daisylovedhim? Where had she got that from?
“No,” he said, correcting her. “We were just friends. Still are.” Were they? Nothing had happened that meant they weren’t, so why did it feel like she was gone from his life for good, except for that one big date in the diary? He owed her that. He owed her more than that.
“Oh.” She knocked the tower down and immediately started rebuilding it. “When I love someone he’ll be funny, he won’t fight with me and he will never tell lies. And—” she looked over to the door and back “—he’ll love Pokémon.”
“I think that sounds like a winning combination for love,” Tom said. Had he ever asked himself the same question about what he’d choose? How was Martha so much wiser at six years old?
“And it wouldn’t be hard to love him. No one should try hard to love someone,” Martha said, her eyes widening like saucers as the hot chocolate was placed in front of her. Tom had gone all out with whipped cream as well. Laura would kill him.
“Where on earth did you hear that?” Tom asked, frowning.
“Don’t know,” Martha said, squeezing her eyes closed as she thought about it. “I think maybeeee...Barbie Dreamhouse?”
Tom nodded, his expression serious. “Barbie knows her stuff,” he said, wondering what she meant bytrying. Maybe he’d have to hunt down that episode and give it a watch.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Daisy
For anyone at the airport on Christmas Eve, their hearts would have lit up when they caught sight of the reunion between Dan and Daisy. The moment her eyes landed on him walking through the double doors with his backpack, she was jumping up and down at the metal barrier of Heathrow Terminal 3, holding her hands to her face. Daisy was relieved to see that he still looked like Dan, but tanned. A bit looser in his body, somehow. Some longer facial hair, but otherwise the same. He scanned the various people waiting and when he spotted Daisy leaping in the air, he laughed and started jogging to the exit as she ran alongside him.
When he got to the end of the barriers, he dropped his bag and threw his arms around her as Daisy held him tightly back.
“Oh my God, it’s so good to see you,” she said, squeezing whatever parts of him she had her arms around as hard as possible.
“You too, Daise,” he said, standing back and laughing. His laugh. What was different about his laugh? God, that laugh could be photographed and put immediately into Tom’s exhibition. It shook Daisy, that sudden thought of Tom infiltrating her reunion with her brother. She’d done well, recently, to notthink about him at all. Or at least to trick herself into believing she wasn’t. She closed her eyes when the bus went through Angel to ease the disappointment that he wouldn’t be stepping onto it. That he probably never would again.
Fine, so she might have imagined him and Sophie together a few times, laughing and happy, and that brought with it some very confused emotions. She really was happy for him; he got what he wanted, and he was a good person. A great person. One of the best, and he deserved that happiness he’d been fighting for. And it was good, wasn’t it, that she’d helped him to get it. In some small way, she’d played a part in Tom’s happiness. That he was living. With someone else. It made things easier anyway. It meant she could fully focus on Zack and their life together.
“Why are you staring at me?” Dan asked, grinning, and Daisy kept her eyes on him. He was her brother. She could look at him as much as she wanted. He washerhappiness right now.
“You look different, but you don’t. I’m trying to figure out what’s changed.”
He sighed. “Everything, I think. Thanks for coming to get me.”
They walked out of the airport toward the car park.
“Of course,” Daisy said. “Zack’s picking Mum up from Paddington, so we’ll all meet back at ours. Is that okay?”
Dan turned to Daisy. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s gone on for you.”
She searched for a lightness to his expression, but didn’t find it. He walked ahead of her, following signs for the car park.
“I met this guy when I was traveling, and he told me about this psychedelic retreat in Escondido.”
Daisy nodded. She’d got that part right then—a tick against her investigative skills. She put the ticket in the machine and paid for the parking, leading Dan out to the car.
“He invited me along. Said it would be ‘a laugh.’ That’s whathe said. He implied it would just be a load of fun, so I said sure, I don’t have to go right to Big Sur right now. I’ll come on this retreat with you. Fucking hell... it wasnotfun. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. It fucked me up a lot. It fucked me up so bad I couldn’t leave.”
They reached the car and Daisy unlocked it, lifting open the boot so she didn’t have to look at Dan. She should ask him. She knew she should ask him what went on there, but she couldn’t do it. If she did, she’d have to talk about it, and she wasn’t ready. She was never ready. She needed to protect herself, the way Zack had always advised her to.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, reaching for his backpack and putting it in the boot before getting into the car. Dan climbed into the passenger seat and Daisy checked the mirrors, reversing as she played through her ways out of the conversation. “Oh my God, you won’t believe what happened,” she said, launching into the story about the three drunk men on the bus. He was still Dan, which meant he didn’t call Daisy out on the abrupt subject change, he just listened.
