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She went to approach him, but something about his posture stopped her. His arms were folded across his chest and his back was so straight, it looked rigid.

‘I think you need to head back home,’ he said. ‘You’ve had far too much to drink.’

‘I haven’t, I haven’t! I mean, I have had a drink, but that doesn’t change what I need to say, Theo. Please, if you’d justlisten to me. It wasn’t my fault. I was stupid. I listened to my mother, I?—’

‘Daisy, please. This is getting ridiculous. Go home. I’m not doing this.’

‘But you will, right? You’ll talk to me tomorrow, maybe? Can we talk tomorrow, please? Please?’

‘For crying out loud, Daisy, haven’t you already done enough?’

His raised voice stopped her in her tracks, and she looked up into his eyes as she had thousands of times before, normally just before he kissed her. But there was no hint of romance or love in his gaze. Instead, it was a stony glare that fixed down on her.

‘I can’t keep doing this, Daisy. I can’t do it again. I believed you once. I let myself believe you after all that stuff with Christian?—’

‘Theo, come on. You know there’s never been anybody else but you. That was a mistake, but it’s not like anything happened this time. I just wasn’t sure what I was feeling.’

‘I proposed to you. You said yes. You said yes to spending the rest of your life with me. And then, four days later, you said it was over. I can’t do it, Daisy. I can’t do a lifetime of this – a lifetime of not knowing. Of wondering when you’re going to change your mind again and decide you can’t do it. Like it’s the toss of a coin. I’ll be living on eggshells my entire life.’

‘No, no, you won’t be. I promise it wouldn’t be like that, Theo. It’s you. It’s always been you. You know it has. I just got so overwhelmed and so confused, and I let everybody get into my head. Ending things with you was never what I wanted.’

‘Really? Because you sure as hell made it sound like you did.’

Daisy was trying to respond. There were so many more things she needed to say to him, so many things she needed him to hear, but he just wasn’t listening. Why wasn’t he listening? She opened her mouth to try again, only to realise that wasn’tthe problem. Theo was listening. He had heard every word she’d said; he just didn’t care.

‘Go home, Daisy,’ Theo said again. ‘You’ve got what you wanted. This is over for good.’

78

Despite the girls’ assurances that things would feel better in the morning after some sleep, Daisy soon discovered that wasn’t the case.

‘He’s right to end things. I don’t blame him,’ Daisy snivelled. On the table beside her, a stack of used, scrunched-up tissues had formed, and she suspected it was going to get a lot higher. Bex was serving at the coffee shop, in between answering her own work emails, and rushing back and forth to check on Daisy. It was the epitome of multitasking. Claire, on the other hand, was the one supplying the words of comfort. Not that they helped. ‘It makes sense. I treated him so horribly.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Claire said. ‘You messed up. You did mess up. There’s no denying that. But so did he. He made mistakes too, and you forgave him.’

‘Yes, but he didn’t say he thought it was better not to be with me,’ Daisy countered. ‘He’d never have said something like that.’

There was no way around it. She had been an idiot. How did she possibly think ending their relationship would make things better in the long run? All that was going to happen was that she would spend her entire life regretting her mistake. She could seeit now. The old spinster Daisy, still living in theSeptember Rose, hobbling to make cups of coffee, and struggling to carry them in her withered, old hands. And she wouldn’t even be able to have cats either. Not if she was going to keep the café open. Health and safety rules wouldn’t allow it. Nope. Her future was panned out in front of her. And it was bleak.

‘Maybe I should move,’ Daisy said. ‘I can’t stay in Wildflower Lock, not with him so close. But that’s the point of a boat, isn’t it? I’m meant to be able to set up wherever I want. Maybe I’ll put it on the back of a lorry and move to the other side of the country. Stratford-upon-Avon is meant to be lovely. There are lots of boats over there.’

‘You’re not moving to Stratford-upon-Avon,’ Bex said, poking her head into the living room. ‘It’s way too far for us to travel when you’re having one of your breakdowns. You’re going to get through this. I promise you are.’

But Daisy didn’t want to get through it. What she wanted was to go back to a week ago, when she had known her life was perfect, or as perfect as a life could get, and not felt the need to mess it all up. She wanted to go back to when she had listened to her mother’s words of advice, and simply ignore her. What she wanted to do was to take back all the stupid things she had said and done. Yes, there were plenty of things that Daisy wanted to do, but getting over Theo just wasn’t one of them.

‘Maybe I should try to talk to him,’ Daisy said. ‘Now that I’m sober. He was angry. And I was drunk. You said that things seem better for people in the morning. Well, maybe that’s true for him too. I should ring him, maybe. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.’

Daisy reached for her phone, only to see the way Claire and Bex exchanged a look.

‘What? You think that’s the wrong thing to do?’

‘I think that’s definitely the wrong thing to do,’ Bex replied. ‘What are you going to do when he doesn’t pick up? If you startleaving hundreds of messages and voicemails, that’s not exactly going to convince him.’

Daisy could see what she was saying, but it only caused the panic to rise within her.

‘But I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to let him know I’m serious. That there’s nothing more I want than him.’

‘Okay, but ringing him isn’t the answer,’ Claire agreed. ‘We already know you tried to call him this morning. At least three times.’