‘It’s been good. Nice. Easy. I really cannot complain…’
Annabelle narrowed her eyes. ‘But? I am feeling there is a “but” here.’
Daisy twisted her tea mug slowly. ‘No “but”, really. I would only say this to you, I just still feel like I’ve got one foot out the door half the time. Like if I let myself get too comfortable, something will go wrong. Do you know what I mean?’
Annabelle leant both elbows on the island and looked at Daisy intently. ‘Daise, I love you dearly, but if you’re waiting for the universe to send you a handwritten guarantee that nothing will ever hurt you or go wrong again, you’re going to be waiting a long time.’
‘I know. It’s just… I can’t go back to not feeling like I, well, I don’t know.’
‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So, what’s the plan tonight?’
‘As I said, he’s bringing Thai.’
‘Sounds awful,’ Annabelle deadpanned. ‘Thai and a sleepover with a very nice man. While I will be up to my elbows in glitter glue and bath time negotiations.’
‘You love it.’
‘I do. But I also love that you’re having something good happen finally. It’s so nice to see you happy with someone.’
Daisy looked around again and thought about the fact that the kitchen behind the bookshop was cobbled together, half-finished and always at the bottom of her to-do list. Annabelle’s kitchen was just so and very finished; bowls in the right places, copper pots hanging from a rack above the cooker, stools tucked in at perfect angles. The kind of place where you could throw open the doors to guests and not have to do a mad five-minute dash clean before anyone arrived. ‘I do. I hope. How do you keep it all like this all the time?’
‘I don’t have twins, or a bookshop, or half the amount of chaos you do.’
Daisy raised her eyebrows. ‘You also have a very nice husband who does his fair share.’
‘He’s my secret weapon.’
Daisy stood and stretched her arms above her head. ‘I'd better head back.’
She called the girls, hugged and kissed them goodbye, reminded them not to leave their toothbrushes on the floor, and promised to collect them after breakfast.
Annabelle walked her to the door, slipping her feet into sandals as they went. The sky had darkened a touch more and the wind had picked up further. Daisy could smell the storm that had been threatening all day. ‘A storm is coming in. I can smell it. I’ll message in the morning. If the girls start climbing the walls, just feed them toast and stick on a Disney film.’
‘We’ll be fine. I know what to do. You go and have a nice evening.’
Daisy kissed her on the cheek and stepped out onto the path. She heard one of the girls yell something incomprehensible from upstairs, followed by a gaggle of giggles.
She smiled to herself and headed off, popped one green and one red wine gum in her mouth and made her way through the back streets of Old Town Pretty Beach as the sky began to shift to a blue-grey shade that she knew always came before rain. The wind had picked up a little bit more, lights were glowing behind windows and the air smelled of a late summer evening and the sea. As she strolled, she nodded. A good day and a feeling of calm that she’d built a nice little life and was back in Pretty Beach. It wasn’t perfect, but for Daisy Henley, it was pretty close. All she needed was for nothing to change, but what were the chances of that?
4
The kitchen behind the bookshop had seen better days. Daisy stood in the middle, one hand on her hip, the other holding an old tea towel that was on its last legs, and surveyed the space with a mixture of affection and mild exasperation. It had been perfectly serviceable when she and the girls had moved in, especially because it had made itself known in her life rent-free. A bit of a scrub, some elbow grease, and a few of her bits and bobs had done the job. She’d cleaned and disinfected everything that didn’t move, added strings of lights and stuck up a chalkboard on the far wall for her lists and the twins’ scribbles, and had called it done. It had worked well enough, but really, now in the cold light of day-to-day life, it left a lot to be desired.
The place could do with a bit more than just a wipe over and tidy up. Really, it needed some thought, a fancy pot of paint or two and a bit of a sprinkling of Annabelle’s style and a good few of her well placed cast offs. Flicking on the kettle, Daisy moved about the space, straightening the tea towels, wiping a few crumbs off the worktop and opening the window to let in some of the cool evening air. The sea breeze swept in, definitely carrying the smell of impending rain and the ever-present hum of Pretty Beach doing its evening shuffle; the ferry in thedistance honking its horn every so often, the shop next door locking up for the night, waves crashing in off the sea and the odd seabird calling out.
Lighting dozens of little battery-operated tealights, Daisy distributed them liberally throughout the kitchen and smiled at the thought of a nice night in and a takeaway. The tealights, some in little jam jars she’d saved, others tucked inside metal and glass lanterns and a few in old candle holders, hid a multitude of the kitchen’s battered old sins. With them all lit, the room looked cosy, not perfect, but comfy in the way Daisy liked. Warm, low light bounced off the slightly wonky cupboards and the tiled floor that had definitely seen a fair few feet over the years. She pondered and let her mind decompress from the day as she cleared the little table in the corner, added a tablecloth, folded up a pile of tea towels, put unread post to be dealt with another day in the drawer and wiped the windowsill clean. Plonking a jug of flowers from her mum Susannah’s garden in the centre they were a bit lopsided and leggy, but pretty all the same.
Once the last lantern had been lit, she stood back, hands on her hips again, and looked around.
‘It could be worse,’ she said out loud as she shook her head. It could, and it had been, but still, the idea had started to root in her brain that the kitchen was crying out to be more than just a pass-through space and that it needed a serious makeover. It could be nice and not just functional, but actually lovely, too. It could be a kitchen like the ones in the interior books Annabelle always left lying about or the ones she’d saved on a Pinterest board on her phone marked Dream House Stuff. All muted tones, open shelving, baskets of vegetables, pots and pans and giant mugs hanging from neat rows of hooks.
Taking a few steps across the room, she opened one of the cupboard doors to have a closer look and the bottom hingecreaked like it had done since the day she moved in. The inside was perfectly fine; stacks of mismatched plates, a few princess mugs that the girls loved their hot chocolate in and a stock pot that she mostly used in winter. But it was all crammed in, cluttered and overall, the kitchen and its contents were tired and teetering on the edge of grubby looking.
Opening her Pinterest board, she studied an eclectic-looking kitchen where the caption told her it was owned by a writer who lived in a small country town in Somerset. The image had an old-fashioned sink under a window, saucepans hanging from a rod, kitchen cabinets with their doors removed, hooks galore and floral fabric skirts obviously covering all sorts of not-so-nice issues. Daisy enlarged the image with her finger and thumb, studied and then peered up at the kitchen with her eyes squinted. The more she peered, the more she realised it would be fairly easy to bring the image to life and give her, while not the kitchen of her dreams, at least something less resembling the ghost of her Uncle Dennis.
