Martha started furiously pressing the button on her orange hippo, balls flying into its mouth. Tom started to copy her with slightly less enthusiasm.
“When all the bad things happened,” Martha explained.
“Allthe bad things?” Sophie asked.
“He was only happy once. With Daisy.” Martha pressed faster and faster on her hippo, very few balls now remaining.
“Who’s Daisy?” Sophie asked, and Tom could tell she was making a special effort to keep her voice light as she finally pressed her green hippo with such force it popped off the board completely before she could get a single ball and flew into her lap.
“She’s just a friend, who’s getting married next month. I’m taking the photos for her wedding,” Tom explained, relieved by how innocent it sounded.
Sophie frowned. “You don’t normally do wedding photos?”
“No, it’s a favor, really.”
“Why?”
“I think I’m the only one still playing,” Martha said, still pressing her hippo as one ball wobbled slowly around the board, with no one getting it.
And so, as Martha released the balls again and again, Tom told Sophie the story of the bus and how he had fought some men off and helped Daisy escape and they had become friends, but just friends. He didn’t mention Daisy’s own actions, orOrlando, or all the ways in which she had helped him since. He didn’t mention that because he didn’t want Sophie to think he’d continued to pine after her, long after her Converse landed on his windscreen. And he couldn’t have mentioned it even if he wanted to, because on hearing about his heroic actions she dived across the board, telling him how amazing he was for being so tough and brave, and kissed him hard on the mouth, exactly the way he’d always suspected she would.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Daisy
The weight Daisy had felt in the past few months at every thought of the wedding had grown heavier within her, sinking her to such a level that, with just a fortnight to go, it had almost flattened her. She had to keep reminding herself of her attachment style and how predictable this made her behavior, but it didn’t make it any easier to accept. She should be excited. Shewantedto be excited. Zack was not her dad, and she was not her mum, but despite knowing that, there was a feeling she couldn’t shake. Daisy just wasn’t sure what that feeling was, so while she waited for it to rise up and reveal itself, she continued with the wedding plans.
Last on her list was collecting her dress, and despite things still not being quite back to normal with Clara, she’d agreed to go with Daisy as she tried it on one more time. Daisy had also invited her mum, but she’d had to stay home as Billy From Next Door had organized for someone to fix her boiler.
Once inside the boutique in Soho, it was clear they were normally used to quite a gathering for the final fitting. As Daisy and Clara entered, there was a tray of champagne on a table and the dress on a hanger behind it, spotlights shining on it.
Clara let out a whistle, nudging Daisy as the woman in theshop approached them, all peroxide blond hair and sharp cheek bones.
“How are we feeeeliiiiing?” she asked, her voice nasal, wearing a fixed smile that definitely didn’t reach her heavily made up eyes.
“Goooooood,” Clara said, looking across at Daisy, her expression one of pure confusion that Daisy would ever purchase a dress from somewhere like this.
She turned from Clara’s perplexed face to the dress that hung up outside the dressing room. She hardly recognized it and had no idea what had possessed her to choose something so... nothing. So boring. You couldn’t even describe it as a classic; it really did just look like a piece of white material. Daisy thought back to the day she’d gone in there. Zack had kept on asking if she’d found her dress yet and she couldn’t handle his disappointed face every time she said no, so she’d gone to Soho after a full-on shift at work and selected something solely with him in mind. Zack had always preferred her in more plain clothing—he said with a laugh that it meant there was less chance of other men fancying her—but now Daisy wished that she’d cared a little bit more, and she knew why. Because now she wasn’t just picturing Zack as he watched her walking down the aisle. Now Tom would be there too.
She reached for a glass of champagne, downing some and carried her dress into the dressing room.
“I’ll just pop in and zip you uuuuup,” the lady said a few minutes later, appearing in the cubicle and pulling up the zip. She made some attempt to fluff the two layers and then, realizing very little could be done to enhance things, left again.
“How’s it looking?” Clara shouted, as Daisy stood in front of the mirror, staring at her reflection. The dress had short sleeves and a V-neck, and for an extortionate price the shop had adjusted it so it pulled in slightly more at the waist, with a long flowingskirt. It wasn’t awful, it just wasn’t what she would have chosen now. There wasn’t time to change it, but she could maybe improve it with some silver jewelry and some dazzling shoes. Perhaps some long dangling earrings and a teardrop diamond necklace.
“Great,” she shouted out to Clara, largely because the shop assistant there today was the same one who’d told her she looked stunning a few months earlier, before running a few hundred pounds through the till.
For one second Daisy allowed herself to imagine Tom standing at the end of the aisle with his camera pressed to his face, watching as she came into focus at the end of his lens. What he’d think when he saw her. But this wasn’t about him. It was about Zack.
The dress will do for Zack, is what she thought.
She pulled back the dark purple velvet curtain and walked toward Clara, holding her arms out. “Ta-da!”
Clara was exactly the right person to bring along because she had no interest in dresses whatsoever. She leaped from her seat as though Daisy had just appeared in a Vera Wang, wide eyes glistening as she clapped her hands together. “I. Love. It,” she said. “Give us a twirl.”
Daisy twirled and then disappeared back into the changing room as fast as she could, pulling the curtain closed behind her.
With the dress in tow, the two of them walked around the corner to Soho Theatre where they ordered cocktails and took one of the booths on the edge of the bar.
