‘This is making me feel so great,’ said Daisy with an air of sarcasm.
‘But …’ Ginny went on, ‘wearesorry we made your life so difficult. It was wrong.’
Clearly Daisy hadn’t expected the ending to the speech, especially from Ginny. ‘It was my fault the quiltwent missing.’ She looked down at her hands, fingers clasped together, one palm on top of the other. ‘You should be angry.’
When Fern had seen the unsavoury characters Daisy was hanging out with as a teen she’d warned her sister to stay away, suggested she make other friends. But the more she’d offered her advice the more Daisy had pushed against it. Instead she’d hung out with them all the moreand the drinking got out of hand. One night Daisy had mixed vodka, gin and goodness knows what, and after a night of partying ended up in the hospital. The doctors had called the house. Fern and Ginny were there, it was a weekend and they’d both come to stay, and Fern would never forget how their dad’s face had drained of colour, how his voice shook when he spoke and told the doctor he’d be thereas soon as he could. He’d grabbed a bag with some of Daisy’s things after the doctor suggested she’d be kept in overnight.
Their dad had returned home from the hospital exhausted. Daisy had had her stomach pumped but she was recovering well. Harry and Loretta went back the next day and the day after that their dad had gone to collect Daisy and bring her home. He’d taken the special quilt he’dmade for all of them to curl beneath on movie night, something that had fallen by the wayside since Ginny and Fern moved out and Daisy got other interests. Presumably taking the quilt had been a vain attempt to provide comfort to his youngest daughter and remind her she didn’t need to be doing these things, that she had a family who loved her and always would. Nobody gave much thought to the specialquilt after that, Daisy was getting better and seemed to have been shocked into behaving herself, and Ginny and Fern both went back to their own lives.
A couple of months later, tragedy struck and their dad was taken from them after a sudden heart attack. The family focus had shifted, nobody questioned where the quilt was, their lives became all about survival and holding themselves togetherthe best they could. It was only when Fern was putting Harry’s car up for sale, her mother incapable of much at all, that Fern realised she hadn’t seen the quilt in its usual place, folded up on top of the trunk in her parents’ bedroom. She’d assumed it was still in the car, having been taken to the hospital for Daisy’s homecoming, but it wasn’t there either. And when she’d asked her mum about it,it had been fruitless, because Loretta was in no fit state to think about much at all, let alone a quilt they hadn’t used in years. And so in their grief, Fern and Ginny, rightly or wrongly, had both firmly laid the blame at Daisy’s feet for losing something so precious to all three of them. Fern had yelled at Daisy that day. She’d kept her cool up until that moment, shielded her sisters from herown grief, but the additional loss of something that meant so much was too much to process.If you hadn’t been pissed out of your head, we wouldn’t have lost something so special, so fucking irreplaceable,she’d yelled at her sister. Daisy had covered her ears, rocked back and forth, the hurling accusations topping up her own grief.I’ll never forgive you,Ginny had shrieked, venom lacing hervoice, not the way Ginny ever was to anyone, let alone a member of her own family.
Fern sunk down on the sofa in the sitting room now, next to her youngest sister. ‘It wasn’t really your fault, you didn’t leave the quilt anywhere. Dad took it out of the house, it just never found its way back to us. And Ginny and I were both wrong to take our hurt out on you. I’m only sorry it’s taken us untilnow to really get this out in the open.’
‘Don’t tell me, you were worried I’d overreact?’ said Daisy, her comment silencing them both.
But then Daisy smiled, even though she sniffed at the same time and the tears began to flow. ‘I’ve changed, I’m not that irresponsible little sister anymore.’
‘I know,’ Fern insisted.
Ginny crouched down in front of Daisy. ‘I know it too, Daisy. Grief affectsus all differently. My anger towards anyone at that time came from a place I never really knew existed. Unfortunately all three of us let our grief swallow us up whole. We all did it in different ways and didn’t turn to each other the way we should’ve done. We certainly never talked like we’re doing now, did we?’
When Daisy shook her head Ginny told them both, ‘I was angry at myself.’
‘For sayingthose things to me?’ Daisy wondered.
But Ginny shook her head and her voice wobbled. ‘I was angry at myself … because I wasn’t there.’ No matter how much she bit down on her lower lip she couldn’t hold back the tears now.
Fern put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. ‘What do you mean, you weren’t there?’
‘I was swanning around Europe on holiday. When Dad was taken to hospital I was off havinga grand time. I’ve never forgiven myself that I wasn’t here to kiss his cheek, tell him I loved him one last time. You both did. I didn’t. And I’ve never got over it.’ She sucked in air, trying to get the words out, and Fern wondered how much of her grief she’d held in in front of everyone else back then, the same way as Fern had.
Daisy launched at her first, then Fern, both hugging their sisterso tight she toppled over with them on the floor and tears became mixed with laughter. It was a gesture that hadn’t happened quite like this in years, but it felt right, it felt natural. It was as though with all of them being here in the family home something had at last unlocked and Fern knew they had their mum to thank for that. They didn’t like it when she meddled, but Fern was sure all threeof them were eternally grateful she had this time.
When they pulled apart Ginny dried her eyes and plucked another tissue from the box, just in case. ‘You know, I think if Dad hadn’t died I might have come back to Butterbury and become a community midwife.’
‘I could kind of imagine that,’ said Daisy.
‘Instead I found it painful to be here for too long, remembering what we’d all lost. I protectedmyself by being elsewhere and travelling.’ She looked at each of them in turn. ‘And that’s why I packed up my sewing machine.’
‘Because you couldn’t take it in your backpack?’ Daisy asked.
‘That’s not quite the reason,’ Ginny laughed. ‘I grew up loving anything to do with sewing and quilting, you both know that, but then I found out about midwifery and I found I really wanted to explore somethingtotally different. I wanted to forge a career for myself, get away for a while and try something completely different, but I know if Dad hadn’t died I would’ve kept up with my hobby at the same time and perhaps eventually followed in Mum’s footsteps at the Butterbury Sewing Box.’ She shrugged. ‘I always knew Fern never wanted the shop, I didn’t really think about whether you might, Daisy. Ican see it’s working really well, you know your stuff, you’re good with customers, it all worked out.’ She gave her younger sister a reassuring nod. ‘It’s just that I’d always assumed at some point Mum would bring us together and ask the question. That was until everything changed. We lost Dad, I stopped sewing, and here we are.’
‘I always knew you wanted the shop,’ said Daisy. ‘But then youchose a different career. I didn’t think I was treading on any toes when I was the one to take it on with Mum.’ She pulled a face. ‘Actually that’s not strictly true … I did it partly to prove a point to you both, that I could cope and be responsible, for once in my life.’ She sighed. ‘I wish you’d said something before.’
One by one they all moved from their positions on the carpet over to thesofa. Busker snored from his position curled up beside the tree.
‘I couldn’t,’ said Ginny. ‘I couldn’t say anything because I didn’t know I really wanted it. I found so much joy in the shop, in the fabrics, in the creativity. I’d sew in my spare time despite studying something totally different. But when we lost Dad I questioned how I could justify making such beautiful things and feeling sohappy surrounded by so much colour when life could be so terrible.’ She hung her head as though ashamed she’d blown it out of proportion. ‘Then I thought the best thing to do was keep moving forwards with the choices I’d made.’
‘I was happy in the shop for a while,’ Daisy admitted. ‘I still am. I have a job, I’m with Mum, I don’t hate it.’
‘But you don’t love it,’ Fern finished for her.
‘No,I don’t. I gave up on my own dreams to be the one to step in for once and mend things rather than make more of a mess. I’m glad I did it, I think I needed to for a while, but now? Especially after seeing my work in the newspaper, which I still can’t quite believe, perhaps it’s time I thought about what I truly want to do with the rest of my life.’
They’d all reacted differently to their dad’sdeath. Ginny had left, Fern had organised everyone, Daisy had changed her plans. ‘I wish we’d aired all of our feeling back then,’ said Fern. ‘We could’ve saved ourselves a hell of a lot of pain.’
Ginny braved a question, looking Daisy’s way. ‘I’m not saying this to upset you, Daisy, but may I ask why you were so wild back then?’
