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Daisy nodded, the lump in her throat gigantic. Walking the rest of the way home in fits and starts, the girls chatted about something one of the boys had said at lunchtime. Daisy made all the right noises, even though her brain was somewhere else.At the bookshop door, she fished for her keys and let them in. The twins threw their bags down in the hall and raced upstairs to get changed, shouting about whether they could have toast or crumpets and whether the orange squash had run out.

Daisy stood in the kitchen, both hands flat on the worktop, and stared at the kettle and wondered if she should have said anything at the school gate. She hadn’t even let the mums see her or how their words had landed. The kind of comment that came from people who had no idea what it cost to keep going every day of the week when you were on your own. How it felt to build something from scratch. To have children and open up your life to someone new, while the rest of the world watched and whispered.

Six months.Daisy reached for a mug, filled the kettle, slipped a packet of wine gums out of her pocket and popped three red ones in her mouth. Let them watch and mutter. She’d show them, and anyway, she was way too busy to worry or care. She had toast to make, plaits to redo, washing to sort, a business to run, a heart to look after and a life to live that was not theirs to comment on. The thing was, their whispered words had cut and sharply. Right to her core.

9

In her cleaning clothes, Daisy walked along the pavement in the area of Pretty Beach where Pete’s holiday cottages were situated. As the road changed from tarmac to gravel and a little stream ran down beside the pavement, she pondered the words of the school mums further. She knew both of them vaguely, but only one of them, Georgia, was a Pretty Beach True Blue and a person Maggie had known from school.

Daisy tried not to think about it too much, but it was a hard ask not to wonder if what they had speculated about was true. It had to be said that a part of her questioned whether or not Miles would hang around. She had thought it from the word go, too. She sighed to herself that the two women had voiced their opinions in the first place, but Pretty Beach was a small town and whether you liked it or not, people talked. Most of the time, living in Pretty Beach was fabulous and the tight-knit community was good, but at times, like now, Daisy hated the way everybody knew each other’s business. People just somehow knew things. She wondered how her romantic business was even known about. How come they were talking about her at the garden party, too? The fact that she’d been wearing Annabelle’s beautiful dress hadn’t gone unnoticed, either. The Pretty Beachnetwork worked in many ways; ninety-five per cent of the time, it was nice, comforting and good to be part of it, sometimes, like now, not quite as much.

Arriving at her first cleaning job of the day, Daisy keyed a security code into the pad and checked that the key was in the compartment. Right away, she sighed as she got to the inner door. The guests hadn’t exactly made it easy for her to clean; she had to shove aside a pair of discarded flip-flops and a sun-bleached lilo just to get to the door. It never ceased to amaze her that people left all sorts of things in holiday cottages and who they thought was going to dispose of them.

Inside, the cottage was dim and stuffy, the curtains had not been drawn, the air was heavy and smelt of fried breakfast and sun cream. Someone had left a half-eaten biscuit on the arm of the sofa and what looked like orange juice had been knocked over on the kitchen worktop and ignored entirely. Daisy sighed as she felt grit underfoot, and she started flinging open the windows. There was often sand in the cottages, people couldn’t stay that close to the beach and not bring in half the bay with them, but it irritated her sometimes. It wasn’t that hard to take outdoor shoes off by the door, surely?

Putting her bag down on a chair by the door, Daisy pushed up the sleeves of her old cleaning sweatshirt and put her earphones in her ears. She’d lined up a podcast about starting a small business to listen to while she worked. She didn’t mind the work for Pete. There was something about making a space clean again, setting it up fresh for the next guests, that felt straightforward and mildly satisfying. You knew what needed doing and when you’d finished, you could actually see the result. She quite liked the accomplished feeling at the end of it of a clean floor, neat beds, a sparkling sink and full loo roll. Tick, tick, tick.

Pressing go on the podcast, she went into the bedroom to strip the sheets, pulled back the duvet and stared at a mess ofcrumpled sheets. Someone had clearly been busy and not just sleeping. The pillowcases were twisted, the bottom sheet half off, and there was sand in the folds. Pulling off the bedding, she bundled it into a pile and carried it out to the small utility room by the kitchen, stuffing it in the bag for the linen company. Then she returned to the next bedroom and started again. Stripping the beds, opening the windows, shaking out the cushions, and wiping the sills, all with the podcast playing in her ears.

Her body moved on instinct and she was meant to be concentrating on the podcast, but her mind wasn’t in the cottage or the podcast, not in the slightest. It was back at the school gates, hearing the same blooming words all over again.

I give it six months. These men never stick around.

Daisy tried and failed to push the words down, to let all of it roll off her, but it stayed right where it was, front and centre. The words and what they meant had crept into everything she was doing, making her question what she’d done. Here she was in a holiday cottage, scrubbing toothpaste from a basin and wondering whether Georgia from the school had been right. The other woman had irritated her, too. Daisy didn’t even know her name. She wasn’t someone Daisy had ever spoken to properly. Just one of those faces you saw at the school raffle or waiting outside the nativity. For sure, the woman knew about Daisy, though, and liked to discuss her business outside the school gates.

Moving into the lounge, Daisy scooped up discarded wrappers from the side table and folded a blanket that had been kicked halfway under the coffee table. She lifted the sofa cushions, finding crumbs, a ten-pence piece, and a rogue hairband. As she reached for the polish and gave the mirror a going over, the words continued going around.Six months.

It wasn’t even as if she thought the two women were correct. It was just that there was a part of her deep in her chest thatwondered whether people like her got the sort of love that stayed and that someone like Miles would like her. She was a nobody in a seaside town running a bookshop, mothering two children, folding sheets and refilling toilet duck in other people’s houses. Not exactly that special and making it up as she went along.

In the kitchen, she cleaned the sink, wiped down the splashback and refilled the little jar of dishwasher tablets by the fridge. Someone had spilt coffee granules near the kettle and they’d stuck to the worktop in clumps. She scraped them off with the side of a spoon and muttered under her breath as she pondered. She’d let herself fall in love with Miles. It had happened slowly, in between school drop-offs and working and now he was in her life and other people were making observations about it. Ahh.

She shook her head. The trouble with cleaning was that it gave your mind too much space to think. Too much time to prod at things you hadn’t asked to be prodded. Taking the rubbish out to the bin by the side of the house, she then came back in and started on the bathroom and tried not to think about it. Hair in the plughole. Toothpaste splatters on the tiles. A damp flannel hanging on the tap. She thought about the way Miles looked at her, the way he touched her, the way he always noticed when she was tired and brought something small to cheer her up. A pastry here, a bottle of wine there, a book she hadn’t seen yet. All little companionable things she loved and him acting like someone who loved her.

She moved back to the bedrooms and remade the beds with fresh linen, smoothing out the corners and tucking the duvet just right. After plumping the pillows, she hoovered the rugs, emptied the bins, reset the table for two, and checked the fire alarm with the broom handle. The place smelled better as the sea air whipped through open windows. The problem was that the cottage was reset butshewasn’t and neither was the mess thatwas zipping and zapping its way around her head. The mums at the school had opened a can of worms and Daisy, instead of shoving them back in as fast as she could had done the opposite. She’d rested the lid on the side and had let them wriggle about on the inside of her brain.

10

Daisy had just finished wiping down the patio furniture outside the cottage; four weathered wooden chairs and a little round table that wobbled if you leant on it too hard. Someone had left a napkin wedged under one of the legs to stop it from doing exactly that. Honeysuckle ran along the back fence, ivy crept over a small shed roof and lovely weathered terracotta pots lined up along steps were filled with plants that Daisy needed to give a good watering.

Sitting down at the table, she pulled her flask from her bag and poured the last bit of her coffee into the cup. The garden was quiet and calm and a nice little sitting spot after her morning of hard graft. The beds were stripped and remade, the windows were open, bins were empty, the kitchen was spotless and the little welcome pack was sitting neatly in its basket on the table in the kitchen. Another turnaround clean for Pete, where he got the comfort of knowing someone he trusted had made sure everything was okay and she would be paid handsomely. What they both referred to as a win-win.

Watching a little bird in a bird bath and wind charms from a neighbouring garden, she rolled her head from left to right and sighed. Her neck ached, her arms were tired, but it was the goodkind of tired that came from doing something useful. It was her brain that was the most tired though and the school mum worms and their gossip reverberated around her brain as she sat with her coffee. It wasn’t as if she could just decide not to care. That was the part that annoyed her the most. It was as if their words had crawled under her skin and set up camp. But sitting there in her old sweatshirt and the scent of cleaning spray still on her hands, she realised she had a choice; suck it up buttercup, or let it stew and grow arms and legs. She just had to try and put it to bed and forget about it.

Topping up her coffee, she decided that the Henley sisters would be able to do their usual thing of giving advice. Annabelle and Maggie were coming over the next evening to catch up, have a bit of a natter, a few glasses of wine and to help with the rest of the kitchen makeover. They were bringing a few things for the kitchen: more brass hooks, something Annabelle had found in a vintage shop, and some baskets that Maggie had ordered that she’d said would fit on the reclaimed shelf. Daisy nodded to herself as she pondered the Miles sticking around thing. She would ask Annabelle and Maggie for their opinion. They would be full of advice and tell her precisely what was what. Just as they’d always done all her life. Her lovely older sisters would have her back and make her see sense, that she knew for free.

Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her hoodie. She took it out, tapped on the screen, fished in her bag for a new packet of wine gums and smiled.

Miles:Any chance the girls could do a sleepover with Susannah or Annabelle one weekend? I thought we could maybe do a night away, or you could come and stay in the flat with me for the night. Just us. Nothing fancy because I know you don’t like straying too far from PB. Thought it might be nice. xxx

For a minute, Daisy stared at the screen and didn’t tap straight away. She just sat there, holding the phone, eyes scanning the words and then looked away from the phone and over the fence. The neighbour’s hydrangea bush’s heavy flowers were bowing slightly under their own weight and rustling in the breeze. She read the message again. It was the sort of message that ought to have made her smile. A night away, just the two of them. He had thought about it and was being nice, but all she could hear were the school mums that had taken up residence in that place she called her brain.

Daisy:Sounds nice. Thanks. I’ll see what I can do. Will ask Maggie or Bells tomorrow evening. x

If he was asking, then that meant he liked her, surely. Asking someone to go away for the weekend and renting a flat, albeit a temporary one, surely weren't the actions of a man who was about to do a runner. Were they?Six months.For heaven’s sake, he’d kissed her in front of people, wanted to go on a night away and generally all around was giving the vibes that he was in it for the long haul. How had one overheard, snarky, nasty little bit of grapevine gossip made her question him, her and everything else in between?

Daisy closed her eyes, held her face up to the sun and tried to push away the image of the backs of the heads of the women in the playground. The spiteful, snipey little nods filled her brain and though she’d not actually seen their eyes roll, she would have laid money on the fact that they’d both done just that. Looking around at the garden again at the ivy, the floppy heads of the hydrangea and the lopsided table, she put her flask back together and shook her head. Really, she wasn’t going to worry about it. All she had to do was take the Miles thing one step at a time. She’d for sure survived without anyone up until this point in her life, and if push came to shove, she’d be able to do it again.

Nodding, she decided to put her head down and get on with it. She’d done her job for the morning, Pete’s holiday cottage was clean, and she was good to go. There was little to no point in worrying about something that she didn’t even know was true and certainly had no control over. There was nothing else she needed to do or worry about except making sure things were okay for her and the girls and in the past few months, she’d been exceptional at doing that. All she had to do was rinse and repeat and make sure she avoided any bumps in the road. Hopefully there weren't any more coming her way.