Lily appeared in a sheet mask with little eye holes. She held up a wine glass and grinned. ‘Wednesday wine and collagen. You know how it is.’
Darby smiled. ‘I do now. I might have to take your lead. For sure, I could do with some help. Collagen or anything, really.’
‘Aww, rubbish, you know how everyone is always saying you look amazing and they can’t believe you have us three. Which, to be fair, I can’t either. You’re still so young, Mum.’
‘Yes, I wish I actuallyfeltthat way. Young is not how I feel.’
Lily tapped the mask. ‘It’s Korean. It’s meant to help with texture and make you glow.’
‘Yes, I hear Polyfilla is quite good at that too. Probably a whole lot cheaper,’ Darby joked.
Lily laughed and leaned closer to the screen. ‘How’s the house? How areyou? You look brighter.’
Darby paused. It was clear to her that her girls had been communicating that she was not okay and needed check-ins. ‘I’m fine. It's cold in the house and I was just thinking about what to do for supper. Other than work, I haven’t got a lot going on.’
‘Yes, it’s really chilly, still. I thought the worst of the cold weather had passed. You should make one of your nice soups. Or make something weird and film it. Is the channel thing happening?’
Darby had told all three of her girls about her channel idea and all three of them had been more than enthusiastic. She picked at the sleeve of her jumper. In a way, she wished she hadn’t said anything because it would be another thing she failed at. She didn’t want to say that, though, because Lily was already concerned about Darby. Plastering on a smile, she pretended to be casual and breezy. ‘Yeah and no. I’m still mulling it over.’
‘You love that kind of thing. Books, interiors, random opinions about throws and olive oil. You’re basically a lifestyle channel already and you have the Radio 4 voice. Penny always says that. She said you had it at school, even.’
‘That’s not the same as actually filming yourself and putting it online for people to watch while they’re in bed with AirPods. It’s quite confronting. I’ve started a few videos, but I need tolearn how to do everything. I’m going to upload them, but keep them private. You and Penny can watch them.’
‘That would be a good start. I think you’d be brilliant at it.’
‘I’ve thought of a name.’
‘What?’
‘Love from Pretty Beach.’
Lily clapped her hands together. ‘Oh, yes. Brilliant! I really like that, Mum.’
Darby swallowed. Her eyes flicked away for a second. ‘I’d feel a bit nervous about actually publishing it, but yeah, it’s a good start. I quite enjoy talking to the camera.’ There was no way Darby was going to tell Lily that speaking to her phone was a step up from the wall. ‘It’s therapeutic.’
‘I get it.’
Darby was fairly certain that Lily had little to no idea what it felt like to think that talking to a phone was better than having a conversation with a wall. ‘It will be good for me to get on with something. I can learn editing and such. You never know where that might lead.’
Lily softened. ‘Yeah. Just do it for yourself. You’ve got nothing to lose.’
Inside, Daisy felt deflated. Even her own daughter thought she had nothing to lose. Blimey. That was a new low. ‘No. I guess I haven’t.’
The conversation, thankfully, moved swiftly away from putting videos online and they chatted for another few minutes. Lily talked about a girl in her office who chewed with her mouth open and how Lily had felt like killing her by the end of the day. Darby laughed along, but really wasn’t able to concentrate much. When the call ended and the screen went black, she thought about what Lily had said.Nothing to lose.Nice. Lily was nothing if not honest. Technically, it was true. She had nothing to lose.
Adjusting a pile of books, she propped her phone on top, sat on the edge of the armchair and shifted a cushion. Pulling the neckline of her jumper straight, she swallowed, coughed, smiled and pressed record and had another go at introducing herself. Take three.
‘Hi. I’m Darby. I’m forty-one and this is Love from Pretty Beach. I live in a slightly falling-down house in Pretty Beach, and I have no idea what I’m doing with my life now that my children have moved out. So, I thought I’d start a channel, because, well, why not? As I have just been told. What have I got to lose?’
She paused, blinked at the lens, then blew out a long breath. ‘I like books. I like tiramisu. I like nail polish and crying over songs from 1997. In an old life, I went to concerts, art galleries and exhibitions. I don’t like marzipan. I don’t understand people who do. I live alone. I miss noise, which is incredibly odd when you think about it, because when I had it around me twenty-four-seven, I couldn’t wait to see the back of it. I’m trying to build something new out of what’s left over.’
She stopped the recording, watched it back, cringed so hard her face actually hurt and then played it again andhatedthe sound of her voice. Pondering what Lily had said, she decided she’d put a vlog together as a way of learning how to use the software and to give her something to do. Really, as had been so rightly pointed out to her in no uncertain terms, she had nothing but nothing to lose.
11
It hadn’t taken Darby long at all to conquer the video editing. If she could do it, anyone could. Really, she’d just shoved a load of snippets of herself together into a twenty-minute draft video and left it at that. In some of it, she’d left the camera rolling while she’d been chatting to both the wall and Lola about how it felt to be her age and on the cusp of a whole new existence. There was some footage of her on the beach and some snippets of her attempt to make the bread when the smoke detector had gone off.
She laughed to herself as she watched it back; here she was, forty-one years old, talking to her rescue dog about making a YouTube video. If that wasn't rock bottom, it was certainly within spitting distance of it. Despite that, she’d actually enjoyed putting the video together and had found it creative. She’d added little tunes here and there and found a really good piece of music to use as her intro. Before watching the videos on how to start a channel, she’d not even known that intros were a thing. She’d not had a clue about any of it; accompanying audio, fading in and out, how to add text, but now she did.
