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Her lack of focus meant that Daisy was travelling out of the city bang on rush hour, although in some ways, she was grateful. She didn’t feel so bad crying when the traffic was moving so slowly. It felt far less dangerous than crying at speed.

Hundreds of thoughts were rolling through her head as she finally turned into Wildflower Lock, though the prominent one was that she hoped her mother wasn’t still in theSeptember Rose. She had received several messages from her mum during the day, but she hadn’t read any of them. She hadn’t even opened her phone. There was no one she wanted to speak to.

Yet as she walked towards theSeptember Roseand was flooded with the memory of how it looked only a few nights ago, covered in fairy lights with Theo kneeling on one knee with a ring in his hand, she knew that wasn’t entirely true.

68

It was just gone nine when Daisy heard the knock on the door of theSeptember Rose. Despite the urge to message Theo, she had resisted, and had spent the evening sorting out Theo’s belongings. Of which there were a lot. She’d hoped to fit them all into a couple of plastic bags but had needed to dig out a large packing box too.

‘Can I come in?’ Theo said when she opened the door.

The sun illuminated his silhouette like he was part of an ethereal painting. Daisy’s chest jolted at the sight. How she had thought Ezra was good-looking was a mystery to her. She had never been attracted to anyone the way she was with Theo. But attraction wasn’t enough to make a marriage work, was it?

Unable to speak, she nodded once then stepped out of the way, giving Theo room to move into the boat. He was barely two steps in when he stopped again.

‘What’s this?’ he said, looking at the box and bags which Daisy had piled up by the door.

‘They’re your belongings,’ Daisy replied, her voice cracking as she spoke. ‘I thought it was best to do this quickly, you know, so that we can move on. There’s probably a lot more of my thingsat yours, you know, with all the nights I’ve stayed there and everything.’

The look of hurt and disbelief on his face was enough to bring tears to the back of Daisy’s throat. She tried to swallow them back down, but it didn’t work. A stray tear caught in the corner of her eye and trickled down her cheek.

‘Why are you doing this, Daisy?’ Theo said, stepping towards her.

Daisy stepped back. She couldn’t let him touch her. If she did, she knew all her resolve would crumble.

‘It’s best in the long run,’ she replied. ‘I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but it’s easier this way. We want different things.’

‘I want to make you happy,’ Theo replied. ‘That’s all I want to do. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. What is it you want that can be so different from that?’

‘Please, Theo, don’t make this any harder than it already is.’

Theo shook his head. Still, that same look of disbelief filled his face.

‘And what about Johnny? What happens there? He just lives with me? You just forget about him? That’s great for a dog who’s already been abandoned once.’

The tears were streaming down Daisy’s cheeks now, so hard and so fast that she couldn’t stop them, but she had already thought through the Johnny issue.

‘He’d have to stay living with you, of course,’ Daisy replied, trying to keep her voice steady as she spoke. ‘And go to work with you. But I was hoping perhaps I could just do his evening walks. You know, like we used to do together.’

‘For God’s sake, Daisy.’ Theo’s voice rose. ‘I get it. I screwed up this last weekend. I said some things that weren’t great, I know that, but please, you can’t want to end everything because of a couple of bad days. Couples have bad days.’

‘I don’t want to end things,’ Daisy said through her sobs. ‘I love you. But we have to think about the future. You want children, lots. You’re young enough to find someone to still do that with. And I… I will just figure me out. It’s for the best. It is, I promise.’

For a second, she assumed Theo was going to offer more protests, try to plead with her again, but instead, he stepped back and looked at her as if he had no idea who she was. It was in that moment that his face hardened.

‘You know what Heather said to me this weekend when I was congratulating her and telling her how I’d proposed to you? She said, “I guess I was wrong then. You know, I always thought she would break your heart.”That’s what Heather said, and I replied that you nearly did once, but you put it back together and it was forever. That’s what I told her. But God, how wrong was I.’

The hardness in his expression had transformed to anger that Daisy could see simmering away beneath the surface. She stepped toward him, only to stop herself. It wasn’t her place to comfort him any more.

‘You broke my heart before, Daisy. You did, and I promised myself I would never be foolish enough to let you do that again. But you have. You know that? You have broken my heart in ways I didn’t know it could be broken. So I hope whatever the terrifying future you envisioned was, it was bad enough to destroy everything we’d made. Goodbye, Daisy. I won’t be giving you the chance to break my heart again.’

69

Daisy could hear the birds singing outside. Sunlight streamed through the gap in the curtains, and yet she rolled over, wishing she could ignore it.

‘That’s odd. They’re normally open by now,’ a voice said outside. ‘Perhaps they’re just running late. I’m sure we’ll be able to grab a coffee on the way back.’

It wasn’t the first voice she’d heard that morning wondering why the coffee shop was closed and questioning when she would open, but the truth was, Daisy didn’t know when she was going to open it again. She wasn’t even sure she could.