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‘Yes, but we were going to be spending the first night of that with your parents anyway. Honestly, I don’t mind. Besides, I’ve been wanting to get a few sketches of the landscape down since we first turned up here. This way, I don’t have to worry about you disturbing me.’ She flashed a smile as she finished speaking, just so he knew she was joking.

‘You are amazing, you know that?’ Theo said as he wrapped a hand around her waist and pulled her into him. ‘I don’t know what I did to deserve someone as amazing as you.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Daisy said. ‘I mean, you started by doing all the carpentry on my boat. That was definitely a good place to start.’

Theo let out a deep laugh as he stared into Daisy’s eyes. It was the type of laugh that set her stomach into butterflies and left her thinking exactly the same thing – how did she get so lucky? Of course, it didn’t matter if Theo wanted to see his ex. It wasn’t like it was going to become a regular thing.

As if reading her thoughts, Theo stepped away from her and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

‘Heather’s over in the yurts, you say?’ he asked.

Daisy nodded. ‘Yes, they’re over on the luxury side of the campsite.’

‘Great, well, I’ll head over there now. It’ll give you some peace so you can get a couple of sketches done, and by the time I come back, the coals should have cooled enough for me to get on with the cooking.’

After one more long and slightly lingering kiss, Theo dropped Daisy’s hands, turned around, and headed off in the direction that Daisy had come from. Back towards Heather.

34

For a moment, Daisy simply stood there watching as Theo strode off to the other side of the campsite. Off towards Heather. Only once he was out of sight did she turn back to look at the lake. The clouds had grown denser since they had arrived, and muted the light of the setting sun, yet it was no less beautiful than it had been before. Each breath of air felt cleaner than the previous. Whether it was because of the altitude or the lake water or the lack of narrowboats, Daisy didn’t know, but it was undeniably different to the air she had grown used to at Wildflower Lock. And whatever the reason, she knew it would be impossible to capture in her paintings the way she really wanted to.

With her mind flickering away from painting, she glanced down at her finger to look at the ring. It really was stunning, but now, even more than ever, she was seeing Heather in it. She couldn’t help but imagine what it would have been like if it was this ring on Heather’s finger, rather than the large solitaire she had just seen. Was that really how she wanted to start her engagement? Feeling the shadow of Theo’s ex everywhere they went?

‘You’re not doing this, Daisy,’ she said to herself as she felt her mood slipping. She was in a beautiful place and she was going to make the most of it.

Pushing her shoulders back and determined to remain positive about the situation, she turned back towards the tent, ready to grab her sketch pad and start doodling away, when her phone started ringing.

Daisy groaned. It was lovely that the girls wanted to make sure she was doing okay, but she had spoken to them when Theo was in the supermarket and she really didn’t feel like filling them in on the latest development. Her plan was to switch the phone to silent and let it ring out. Only when she glanced at the screen, it wasn’t Bex or Claire’s name flashing boldly. It was Mum. For a second, Daisy considered sticking with her original plan and switching the phone to silent, reasoning that she could always send a message in five minutes or so saying she was in the shower. But no sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she dismissed it. Her mum would want an update on how everything had gone sooner or later, and would likely keep ringing until she got one. Especially if she’d had a drink. There was no point delaying the inevitable.

‘Hey, Mum,’ Daisy said, adding an extra layer of cheeriness to her voice. ‘How are you?’

‘Hey, love. I didn’t ring to tell you about myself. Now come on, how’s the trip going? Let me guess, Theo’s parents are as madly in love with you as we all are.’

Daisy lifted her eyes to the sky and the swathes of white clouds as she drew in a long breath.

‘It’s been interesting,’ she said, the idea of painting now completely abandoned.

35

The good news was that by the time Daisy finished the conversation with her mum, she was feeling slightly better, but that was mainly because she’d felt like she had to put a positive spin on everything.

There was a time in her life when she would have told her mother the absolute truth, no matter what, but it became difficult to maintain such a practice when she learned her mum had been lying to her for most of her life. They still spoke regularly, of course, and still had a relationship far better than a lot of mothers and daughters she knew, but it was changed. Different from what it had been only three or four years before. Now she felt the need to keep herself slightly distant from her mum. Emotionally, at least. Especially when she could already tell her mother had had a drink. The last thing Daisy wanted was everyone in Wildflower Lock knowing her business, and Daisy suspected that if she said anything too negative, Pippa wouldn’t manage to keep it to herself.

‘There’s a reason Theo moved away from his parents,’ Daisy said, parroting what Theo had said to her. ‘Honestly, they just weren’t particularly nice. And after a few snide comments, wedecided we didn’t want to spend the night in the house with them, so we’ve come out camping instead, and it’s absolutely beautiful.’

‘What do you mean, snide comments?’ her mother said, latching on to the part of the comment Daisy had hoped she would skip over.

‘Well, I guess it’s because they haven’t met me. I’m sure you’d be a bit funny if I told you I was marrying someone you had never even met.’

Pippa huffed down the line. ‘They could have come down and visited you two.’

‘Yes, they could,’ Daisy said, wishing there was a way she could steer the conversation in a different direction, although before she had considered how, her mother was already on a different topic.

‘So what’s this campsite like? I take it there are lots of hills? And lakes too? Switch the video on so I can see it.’

Following her mother’s instructions, Daisy flicked to a video call and promptly swivelled the camera around so it faced the lake.

‘Look at that,’ her mum said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Nicholas, come and look at this. It’s stunning. Look at the size of those hills.’