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‘Well, what happened?’ Bex asked, not wanting to accept ‘it’s over’ as an answer.

‘What didn’t happen? My mum thinks it’s a terrible idea. His family despise me. We have vastly different financial situations. He thinks a small wedding is sixty people, and we don’t even know if we want the same things in life, like children. That’s a big deal. And then you need to add to that the fact he doesn’t even trust me.’

This was the one that stung the most. This was the thing she couldn’t get her head around. Though Bex merely shook her head.

‘That’s not true. He does. Theo trusts you implicitly.’

‘You didn’t hear what he said.’

‘Well… in his defence, you did come into my flat saying that you’d spent the morning having fun downstairs with my hot neighbour.’

‘That was not how I worded it,’ Daisy said indignantly.

‘It was pretty close.’

Daisy pouted. ‘Fine, but did you take that to mean I’d cheated on Theo?’

‘No, of course I didn’t,’ Bex said, shaking her head. ‘ButIknew where you were.Ihadn’t spent the morning looking for you. Look, can I be honest with you?’

With a shake of her head, Daisy drew a deep breath in. Honesty came without question in their friendship, so the fact that Bex had to clarify it didn’t make her feel good.

‘Of course you can,’ Daisy said.

‘I think you’re putting too much pressure on the idea of getting married. You said you want to go back to how things were, so why don’t you do that? Forget about the engagement. Just go back to how things were before.’

‘But we can’t, can we? It’s not possible. The truth is out there now. There’s no real future for us. Not with the way our families feel.’

‘Your families don’t matter in this. That’s the whole point of getting married, isn’t it? That you get to choose the family you want to spend your life with, rather than having to survive the one you were born into?’

At this, Daisy let out a sad chuckle. She’d said something remarkably similar to Theo the night he proposed, and it had felt so true at the time.

‘Maybe, but it doesn’t change how I don’t know what I want in terms of children while he’s dead-set. It doesn’t feel right stringing him along if I might decide I never want them. Looking at it objectively, I can see why our parents don’t think it’s going to work.’

‘Why are you looking at it objectively?’ Bex asked. ‘This is love. It’s the least objective thing there is out there. Please don’t do this to yourself. I meant what I said last night. If I had found my Theo, I would have settled down years ago.’

‘Maybe,’ Daisy said. She couldn’t even look her friend in the eye any more. ‘Or maybe you’re just wise enough to see that it’s nothing more than an illusion. And we had a good run. That’s for sure. But I think it’s better this way. It’s better now, before we’re any more committed. This way, he’s got time to find someone who can give him what he really wants in life.’

67

Heartbreak was such a funny term, in Daisy’s mind at least. Everyone who had ever said they were heartbroken knew that it wasn’t a physical ailment. Their heart was perfectly intact, pumping blood through their body the way it was meant to. And yet it didn’t feel that way. It felt like with every breath, sharp needles were puncturing your chest. As though every muscle behind your ribs had been ripped to shreds and would never repair. And for Daisy, the pain extended well beyond where her heart sat. Her head pounded while waves of nausea struck at the most random times, and more than once on the journey out of London, she had to stop to pull over just to let the tears out, like that might be the solution for all this hurt she was feeling.

‘You can stay here for longer,’ Bex said as she walked Daisy to her car, but Daisy shook her head.

‘There’s no point in not facing it,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to work out logistics. Johnny, living so close, that type of thing.’

‘Okay, but you can come back at any time you want. You know that?’

‘Thank you. Thank you for everything.’

Bex pulled her in for a tight hug, but even when they broke away, she held Daisy by the shoulders.

‘Think on this, okay? Don’t rush this decision. You can take all the time you want.’

‘Only that isn’t fair on him, is it?’ Daisy replied. ‘I get what you’re saying, but it’s okay. I’m going to be all right.’

As she climbed into her car and buckled the seatbelt, she wondered just how true that was.

‘This is for the best,’ she told herself repeatedly. ‘This is to make sure it doesn’t hurt even more in the future.’