Page 77 of Daisy Darker


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“I was born with a broken heart too,” Trixie says with tears in her eyes. “They think it might be hereditary, but nobody knew about mine until I was ten. I was at school when it happened. Mrs. Milton, my bully of a PE teacher, made us do cross-country on a really hot day. Around the school field and through the woods. After the first lap, I said I didn’t feel well. I tried to tell her that my chest hurt, and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. But Mrs. Milton is one of those women who only sees what she wants to see, and only hears what she wants to hear. She made me keep going even when I said I felt a bit broken. I didn’t want to let anyone down, so I kept running. I collapsed beneath a huge oak tree, and it was a few minutes before one of the other girls found me. They thought I’d fainted from the heat, but then my heart stopped. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital two days later with this scar down my chest, and seeing you sitting at the end of my bed, watching over me. I died that day in the woods, and I think that’s why I can see you. I was only dead for a couple of minutes before an ambulance arrived, but that’s when I saw you for the first time. I’ve been able to see and hear you ever since.”

It still feels as though I am falling, again and again, and nobody is ever going to catch me.

“Can anyone else see me?” I ask.

“No. Except Poppins the dog! She can see and hear you too. I bet she ran out to greet you when you arrived at Seaglass yesterday! People seem to see you just before they die. Like the residents in the care home you visit—I know how much you like to comfort them in their last few moments—but there have been other instances. You visited the hospital once, and sat talking to a little girl who had been in a car accident. Her parents were killed in the crash, she was in a critical condition, and you stayed with her until it was time for her to… leave. But seeing children die made you too sad, so maybe that’s why you only visit the elderly these days. We both know that Rose saw you downstairs, briefly, just before she… passed away.” Something like remorse makes itself at home on Trixie’s face. “I told my mum when I first started seeing you, and she got super cross about it. She didn’t believe me and said she never wanted to hear me say your name again. That’s why she tipped the Scrabble board on the floor last night, because she was scared that I was playing with you. Sometimes if she heard me talking to you, I would pretend that you were an imaginary friend. She was more comfortable with that than the idea of me talking to her dead sister. The one she threw off a cliff.”

I know what she’s telling me is true. All the times my family ignored what I said this weekend were because they couldn’thearme. Nobody hugged me when they arrived because they couldn’tseeme. My family has treated me like a ghost for years because I am one. Clarity comes like one of the waves I can hear outside Seaglass, crashing all around me, over me and into me, before knocking me down. The lucidity of the moment cannot be ignored or forgotten. I believe it, but still can’t quite accept what happened then or has happened now.

“Butwhydid you kill them? I don’t understand why you would do such a terrible thing? You’ve been crying all night, as though you were as scared as the rest of us!”

“Iwasscared and I did cry. What I did tonight was truly horrible, so of course it upset me. I’m not a monster.” Trixie stares at the floor. “I didn’t mean to scareyou.I really thought you’d figure it out once you saw the Scrabble letters stuck to the VHS tapes: WATCH ME, HEAR ME, NOTICE ME, SEE ME. Those are all the things you wanted your family to do since you died. But even before you died, they didn’t reallyseeyou. And Scrabble was a game we always played together, so I thought you might guess it was me. Try not to be too sad about all of this, Aunty Daisy. Some people are ghosts before they are dead.”

I stare at her and notice the open suitcase on the bed again. There are some things inside that I couldn’t see before: a reel of red ribbon; some Scrabble letters, including a squareBmade from seaglass and wood; the missingBpiano key; a handkerchief with the letterBstitched onto it; a bumblebee necklace; and some pages torn from my mother’sThe Observer’s Book of Wild Flowers:buttercups, bellflowers, and bluebells. I understand now thatBis for Beatrice, Trixie’s full name. She was leaving clues the whole time, as though she wanted someone to know it was her. Maybe she wanted someone to stop her.

“What’s that?” I ask, seeing something else in the suitcase.

“This book?” she replies, picking up a battered-looking old novel. “It’sAnd Then There Were None,by Agatha Christie, one of my favorites. Would you like to borrow it?”

“No. And I meant the sheets of paper with all of our names on them.”

Trixie smiles. “Poems. About each member of the family. Like the one written in chalk on the kitchen wall last night—I wrote thattoo. Did you like it? I’ve written one about everyone except you. I even wrote a poem about myself as a little red herring! But I decided not to share them in the end. Would you like to read them?”

I feel as though I am staring at a monster and have to look away, but she still takes the sheets of paper and lays them out on the bed for me to see. Each page is a poem about a member of the family. I don’t want to read them, but can’t seem to stop myself.

“You said you had help. Who?” I ask.

“I did say that. Come on, let’s put you out of your misery.”

I follow her in stunned silence as she hurries down the staircase. But I hesitate when she walks past the cupboard beneath the stairs. The door is closed again, and Rose’s body has disappeared from the hallway. I’m not as good at herding my thoughts as I used to be; they tend to come and go as they please. But the ones inside my head right now are loud, and clear, and frightening. I follow Trixie into the kitchen.

Only a moment ago, I believed that the rest of my family were all dead.

But now one of them is sitting at the table, smiling at me.

Once again, it feels like I am falling.

“Hello, Daisy.”

49

October 31, 6:45 a.m.

low tide

“Hello, Daisy,” Nana says with a smile I spent my whole life trusting.

It takes a while for me to think of anything to say, and even when I do, it isn’t terribly articulate. “I don’t understand what is happening.”

“Nana can’t see or hear you. Do you want me to tell her what you said?” Trixie offers.

“Yes. I’d like you to ask Nana if she has completely lost her bloody mind.”

“Did she swear?” Nana asks, and Trixie shrugs. “Daisy, you know I don’t like any bad language under this roof. You must remember to use your words. But I do understand why you might be feeling a bit upset,” she says.

Nana stands up from the kitchen table, careful not to disturb Poppins, asleep at her feet, and I see that she is wearing a new pink-and-purple dress covered in a pattern of birds. She starts to shuffle toward the sink in her pink-and-purple slippers. “I’ll explaineverything if you’ll let me. But I might just put the kettle on first. I’m a little parched, and it is officially my birthday!” she adds. Nana still has a bit of blood and brain matter in her hair, and a big bloody gash on the side of her face. She looks like a ghoul.

“I’ll make the tea. You two have a lot to talk about,” says Trixie, going to fill the kettle.

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