She hardly knew Camille, not really knew, in the way that friends knew each other’s histories, each other’s likes and dislikes, a shared emotional shorthand. If anything, Camille was slightly too reserved for Daisy’s comfort; Daisy felt easier around people who laid themselves out in front of her, who spilled out their emotions, like Daniel. But there was something about Camille that seemed to put Daisy at ease. She didn’t feel competitive, in the way she often secretly did with other attractive women. And it wasn’t because of Camille’s lack of sight. There was just something accepting about her, something calm. Some kind of intrinsic goodness that managed not to be nauseating or make Daisy feel inadequate for the lack of her own.
Or perhaps it was just the head massage, the gentle, alternating pressures of thumb and finger around her head and neck loosening her thoughts along with her physical tensions. Here she didn’t have to think about Daniel. Here she didn’t have to think at all.
“You’re very good at this,” said Daisy dreamily. “I think I could fall asleep.”
“You wouldn’t be the first.” Camille paused to take a sip of her wine. “I had to stop doing it for the men, though. Sometimes it had a different sort of effect.”
“Oh. Ah. Not a reputation you want as a masseuse.”
“They think because you can’t see, you can’t tell. But you can, you know. Just from the breathing.” She put her hand to her chest and imitated the increased rapidity of desire.
“Really? Oh, my God. What did you do?”
“Called Rollo out from under the table. A big smelly old dog usually did the trick.”
They laughed companionably.
“Your dad was up at the house this evening.”
“Dad? Why?”
“He invited Hal out for a drink.” Daisy paused, suddenly aware of Camille’s stilled hands. “I think Hal wanted to keep going on the mural. He . . . he’s terribly conscientious.”
“Dad invited Hal out for a drink?”
“That’s what he said. Oh, God, have I put my foot in it?”
“No, don’t worry.” There was a new steeliness in Camille’s voice. “It’s not Dad. That’s Mum, interfering again.”
The pleasurable haze of the past minutes evaporated rapidly.
“It
might
have been just a drink,” Daisy ventured.
“No, Daisy, with Mum it’s never just a drink. Mum wants to know what’s wrong with Hal, why he’s taking the whole business thing so badly.”
“Oh.”
“She was on his case to wind the business up, and now she’s on his case again, because he’s not handling it as positively as she thinks he should be.”
“I’m sure she means well,” said Daisy, weakly.
“I know she means well. But she can never just leave me and Hal to sort things out ourselves.” She sighed, a practiced expression of exasperation.
“Only child?”
“Yup. Which doesn’t help. I think Dad would have liked more, but I think Mum had quite a rough time with me, and it put her off.”
“Ouch,” said Daisy, thinking of her own epidural. “Sorry if I’ve said the wrong thing. I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Daisy. It’s not the first time. No doubt it won’t be the last. Comes of living so close to one’s parents, I suppose. Perhaps Hal and I should have moved away when we first got married, but we didn’t, and then with Katie and everything . . . I needed the help.”
“I know that feeling. I don’t know what I would have done without your mum.”
Camille’s hands had started moving again, a gentle, repetitive pressure.
“You’re quite tense, aren’t you?” she said. “I suppose it’s no surprise with the hotel opening so close and everything. I don’t know how you’ve done it.”
“I haven’t yet.”
“Is it easier? With Ellie’s father here?”
It was subtly done. Daisy toyed with the idea that Lottie had sent Camille to inquire about her relationship, too.
“Not really, if I’m honest. I’m sure Lottie told you, he left us when Ellie was a few months old. I haven’t really got used to him being back yet.”
“So you’re back together?”
“I don’t know. He’s here, I guess.”
“You don’t sound very convinced.”
“I suppose I’m not. I don’t know what to feel, really.”
She was grateful that Camille didn’t try to offer any solution, any course of action. Julia could never hear a problem without feeling obliged to fix it, and she was usually mildly offended at Daisy’s failure to take her recommendations to heart.
“If Hal ever did anything really bad to you—if he ever just walked out, for example—would you be able to take him back? With open arms?”
There was a lengthy pause. Camille’s hands stopped and rested, palms down, on Daisy’s forehead.
“Hal never does anything wrong,” she said dryly. “But I suppose, if it came down to it, with a child involved, I guess it depends on the greatest degree of happiness. If you’re all going to be that much happier by being together, even though it’s difficult, then it’s probably worth fighting for.”
Daisy felt Camille’s hands move, as if she were shifting her weight.
“I don’t know. When you’re young, you tell yourself you won’t put up with anything, don’t you? That if your marriage isn’t passionate enough or if he doesn’t live up to expectations, that you’ll just go. You’ll just leave and find someone else. And then you get older and the thought, the thought of starting again . . . the sheer awfulness of it all . . . well, I guess I’d put up with quite a lot before I pulled it all apart. The family, I mean. Maybe you just get used to compromise.” She seemed to be speaking to herself.
She paused again. And when she spoke this time, Daisy heard a different timbre to her voice. “That said, if it’s impossible to make someone happy, whatever you do, I suppose that in the end you just have to admit defeat.”
L
OTTIE PLACED HER BAG ON THE CHAIR IN THE HALL
, noting with irritation that Joe’s coat was hanging up on the peg.
“I thought you were going out for a drink,” she called, hearing the radio in the living room.
Joe emerged and kissed his wife on the cheek. “He didn’t want to come.”
“Why? He can’t spend
all
his time working on that painting.”
Joe took hold of Lottie’s coat by the shoulders as she slid out of it. “Can’t make him come, love. You can lead a horse to water and all that.”
“Yes. Well. Something’s up with him. He’s been funny for days. And that boyfriend of Daisy’s has been hanging around all day, lounging about as if he owns the place.”
Joe held the living room door open for his wife. She could see he still fought the urge to place his arm over her shoulders. She had finally told him several months ago that it had always made her feel uncomfortable.
“He is the child’s father, love.”
“Well, it’s a bit late for him to start realizing that now.”
“That’s for Daisy to decide. Let’s leave that for a moment, shall we?”
Lottie glanced at him sharply. Her husband looked down, then up at her.
“This house stuff . . . I . . . I don’t like it, Lottie. It’s stirring everything up again. Getting you all agitated.”
“No it’s not.”
“You pitching yourself against Sylvia Rowan. When you’ve spent the last God knows how long steering well clear of the lot of them.”
“I didn’t ask her to start causing trouble.”
“And all that business with the mural. It’s not that I mind, love. You know that. I’ve never said anything against you heading down there. But you’ve not been yourself these last couple of weeks. I don’t like to see you getting yourself in a state.”
“I’m not in a state. It’s you getting me in a state, going on about everything. I’m fine.”
“Well, all right. But either way. I just wanted us to have a little chat. About after.”
Lottie sat down, looking at her husband suspiciously. “After what?”
“The hotel and everything. After it opens. Because Daisy will go back to London, won’t she? With or without her man friend. And you won’t be needed up there anymore.”
Lottie stared at him blankly. She hadn’t thought about life after Arcadia reopened its doors. She felt suddenly chilled. She had never thought about what she would do without it.
“Lottie?”
“What?” She saw her life stretching ahead of her; the Round Table dinner-dances, the small talk with neighbors, the endless evenings in this house . . .
“I got us some brochures.”
“What did you say?”
“I got us some brochures. I thought we could make it an opportunity, you know, to do something a bit different.”
“Do what?”
“I thought we could go on a cruise or—”
“I hate cruises.”
“You’ve never been. Look, I thought we could even take a trip around the world. You know, stop off in lots of places. See some sights. It’s not like we’ve ever been very far, and we’ll have no responsibilities now, will we?” He didn’t say the words “second honeymoon,” but Lottie felt them hanging in the air, and it made her snap.
“Well, that’s just like you, Joe Bernard.”
“What?”
“No responsibilities indeed. Who’s going to look after Katie, eh? While Camille’s at work? And who’s going to help Camille?”
“Hal will help Camille.”
Lottie snorted.
“They’re fine now, love. Look at how he was with her over this mural business. Like a pair of lovebirds, they were. You told me yourself.”
“Well, that just shows how much you know. Because they’re not fine at all. In my view he’s five minutes off leaving her again. And that’s exactly why I wanted you to take Hal out tonight and find out what’s going on in his damn fool head. But, oh, no, you’re too busy thinking of cruises and suchlike.”
“Lottie . . .”
“I’m going to have a bath, Joe. I don’t want to discuss it any further.”
She trod heavily up the stairs toward their bedroom, wondering as she did why tears had sprung so easily to her eyes. It was the second time this week.
T
HE NOISE OF THE RUNNING WATER HAD DEAFENED HER
, so she didn’t hear Joe’s footfall as he came up the stairs, and his unannounced appearance in the doorway made her jump.
“I do wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me,” she yelped, her hand to her chest, furious that he had caught her unguarded.
Joe halted for a moment, briefly stalled by his wife’s tearful face. “I don’t often disagree with you, Lottie, but I’m going to say one thing.”
Lottie stared at her husband, noting that he was standing straighter than normal, that his voice held just a touch more authority.
“I’m going to take a trip. After the hotel opening. I’m going to book a ticket and take a trip around the world. I’m getting on a bit, and I don’t want to get old and feel like I’ve done nothing, seen nothing.” He paused. “Whether you come with me or not. Obviously I’d prefer it if you did, but just for once I’m going to do something
I
want.”
He breathed out, as if his short speech had been the product of some huge internal effort.
“That’s all I’m going to say,” he said, turning back to the door and leaving his wife silenced behind him. “Now, call down when you want me to put the chops under the grill.”
O
N THE FIFTH EVENING
D
ANIEL AND
D
AISY FINALLY
talked. They took Ellie for a walk down on the beach, tucking her firmly into her buggy and swaddling her with a cotton blanket, despite the fact that it was a still, balmy evening. Daisy found it difficult to think straight in the house these days, she told him. She had begun to see it not as a home, or even a hotel, but simply a list of problems that needed solving: a loose window catch, an unsecured floorboard, a faulty plug socket, a deadline ticking away. Outside, in the fresh air, she found she could gradually clear her head.
She had begun to breathe. This is what I wanted, Daisy thought, seeing them as if from the outside: a handsome young couple and their beautiful child. A family unit, tight, encompassing, exclusive. She hesitated and then, biting her lip, took his arm. He had closed it to him, so that her hand was warmed, enclosed on both sides.
And then Daniel began to talk.
He had first known there was something wrong when one of his old colleagues had shown him a picture of his own baby and Daniel realized that not only was he not carrying a photograph, but he looked at the man’s face, convulsed with pride, and became aware that he didn’t feel a tenth of what his colleague evidently felt.
He had finally, painfully allowed himself to admit that he felt simply hemmed in. Trapped in a situation that was not of his making, his beautiful girlfriend vanished and in her place this tearful blob (he didn’t actually say “blob,” but Daisy knew what he meant) and this squalling child. There seemed to be no beauty, no order in his life anymore. And beauty and order were vital to Daniel. This was a man, after all, who had once been unable to sleep because of a picture rail that had been affixed at a fractionally wrong angle. Daisy had woken at four in the morning to find him meticulously pulling the thing from the wall and replacing it with the aid of no fewer than two spirit levels and several pieces of string. But babies did not care about order. They didn’t care that their stink and their noise and their diapers polluted Daniel’s little haven. They didn’t care that the demands they made on their mothers ripped them away from larger, stronger arms who needed them just as much. They didn’t care what time they woke you up or about the fact that you needed four hours sleep in a row just to be able to earn the money to live. “And the thing is, Daise, you’re not allowed to complain, are you? You’re just supposed to accept it and believe everyone when they say ‘It’ll get easier,’ even when it feels like it’s getting worse, that you’ll love them blindly when actually, actually you look at these rather ugly, screaming trolls and you just can’t believe they’re anything to do with you at all. If I’d have said . . . If I’d have said what was in my thoughts in those early weeks, the real truth, I’d probably have been arrested.”
It had been the vest that finally did it. He had stumbled into the living room one morning, half delirious through lack of sleep, and trodden on a discarded undershirt that squelched. He had sat, his unclean foot resting on their once-pristine rug, and known that he could just not do it anymore.