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‘Of course I’ll be there, silly. I’ll make the rings, my gift to you both. Send me his finger size, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Daisy clung onto the phone, wishing her sister were there, wishing she could tell her the truth.
‘I have to go. There are a million and one things to do. Talk soon. Call me if you need anything.’
‘I will. Bye.’
Daisy clicked the phone shut, oddly bereft as the connection cut. Rose had been abroad for so long—and when she did come home she worked.
‘That was my other sister.’
Seb was leaning against the wall, arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other. ‘I guessed.’
‘She makes rings, as a hobby although she’s so good she should do it professionally. She’s offered to make ours so I need to send your finger size over.’
She half expected him to say he wasn’t going to wear a ring and relief filled her as he nodded acquiescence. ‘Why doesn’t she—do it professionally?’
It was a good question. Why didn’t she? Daisy struggled to find the right words. ‘She’s good at PR. Mummy and Daddy have always relied on her, and on Vi, to help them. They’re so incredibly busy and it’s easier to keep it in the family, with people they trust.’ Her loving, indulgent, generous but curiously childlike parents.
‘What about you? What do you do?’
‘Me? I take photos. That’s all I’m good for. They don’t need me for anything else.’ She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
He looked her curiously. ‘That’s not the impression I got today. They were bowled over to see you, all fatted calves and tears of joy.’
‘That’s because I don’t go home enough.’ The guilt gnawed away at her. ‘I don’t involve them in my life. It drives my mum crazy as you can probably tell. She doesn’t trust me not to mess up without her.’
‘Why not?’
Daisy looked at him sharply but the question seemed genuine enough. She sighed. ‘It always took me twice as long as my sisters to do anything,’ she admitted. ‘I was a late talker, walker, reader. My handwriting was atrocious, I hated maths—I was always in trouble at school for talking or messing around.’
‘You and half the population.’
‘But half the population don’t have Rose and Violet as older sisters,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t think I had a single teacher who didn’t ask me why I couldn’t be more like my sisters. Why my work wasn’t the same standard, my manners as good. By the time I was expelled that narrative was set in stone. I was like the family kitten—cute enough but you couldn’t expect much from me. Of course actually being expelled didn’t help.’
‘It must have been difficult.’
‘It was humiliating.’ Looking back, that was what she remembered most clearly. How utterly embarrassed she had been. ‘It was all over the papers. People were commiserating with my parents as if my life was finished. At sixteen! So Mum and Dad tried to do what they do best. Spend money on me and paper over the cracks. They offered to send me to finishing school, or for Mum to set me up with her modelling agency. I could be a socialite or a model. I wasn’t fit for anything else.’
‘But you’re not either of those things.’
‘I refused.’ She swallowed. ‘I think the worst part was that the whole family treated the whole incident like a joke. They didn’t once ask me how I felt, what I wanted to do. To be. I heard Dad say to Mum that I was never going to pass any exams anyway so did it really matter.’ She paused, trying not to let that painful memory wind her the way it usually did.
It had hurt knowing that even her own parents didn’t have faith in her.
‘I didn’t want them to fix it. I wanted to fix it myself. So I went to the local college and then art school. I left home properly in my first term and never went back. I needed to prove to them, to me, that they don’t have to take care of me.’ She laughed but there was no humour in her voice. ‘Look how well that’s turned out.’
‘I think you do just fine by yourself.’
‘Pregnant after a one-night stand?’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe they’re right.’
‘Pregnant? Yes. But you faced up to it, came here and told me, which was pretty damn brave. You’re sacrificing your own dreams for the baby. I think that makes you rather extraordinary.’
‘Oh, well.’ She shrugged, uncomfortable with the compliments. ‘I do get to be a countess and sleep with a king for social advantage after all.’
‘There is that.’ His eyes had darkened again. ‘Where were we, when your sister phoned and interrupted us?’
