Page 11 of Wanting Daisy Dead

Georgie

We walk into the old café bar, now decorated and transformed into a dining room, where a table has been laid with several bottles of wine and champagne on ice. There are four name tags at the place settings. I’d feel better if Alex was here – but hopefully he’ll arrive tomorrow.

Dan starts pouring drinks, and Maddie and Lauren gratefully take a glass from him.

He’s always the life and soul, which is another marital irritant that chafes after ten years – something else I once loved about him that I now find unbearable.

He’s forcing champagne on everyone like he’s the bloody host and it’s all on him.

I fancy another glass of champagne, but I go for apple juice just to piss him off.

Suddenly our phones ping, and Dan rushes to grab his but Lauren beats him to it with her own. She’s so competitive. ‘Voice note!’ she sings, pressing play. Tammy’s voice rings out into the room.

‘So, is everyone sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

‘Here at The Killer Question , we have always believed without question that David Montgomery’s conviction was a miscarriage of justice.

His life was ruined, and he finally saw death as his only escape, and took his own life.

But now it’s time to clear David’s name, and hopefully reveal who really killed Daisy.

We are convinced that someone at your table watched an innocent man go to prison, and did nothing.

So, not only did they kill Daisy, they now have David’s blood on their hands too. But which one of you was it?’

This hits me like a punch. ‘So this is a trap,’ Dan blurts, clutching the table.

I shush him and discreetly glance around the group, but no one is giving anything away – including me .

‘Insiders have been spilling secrets and telling tales, and hopefully we will know by Sunday evening who the killer is, but not before you’ve enjoyed a nostalgic trip down memory lane.’

‘Who says it was a wrongful conviction?’ Dan sounds like he might burst, the panic and outrage in his voice evident.

‘Dan,’ I admonish him. He’s making himself look guilty.

‘So please take your seats and let’s celebrate your old friend Daisy.’

‘I’m scared,’ Maddie’s saying, and despite his own panic Dan gives her a reassuring smile. It makes me want to spew.

‘Oh, wait, guys.’ Lauren’s holding up her hand like a fucking schoolteacher. ‘The message is still going.’ She turns the volume up.

‘Daisy Harrington was a second-year English student at Exeter University when her life was cruelly taken. She was young, intelligent and pretty, with the rest of her life stretched before her ... until on November 22nd 2005, after a night out, she never returned to her student accommodation.

‘Daisy was missing for six days, four hours and seventeen minutes – and, according to police files, all her friends, fellow students and housemates tried to help the police in any way they could. Along with everyone else, one of you combed the nearby fields, searched empty buildings and wandered the river and the beaches looking for a sign. And all the time you knew exactly where she was, didn’t you? ’

She pauses. This is awful. I feel like she’s speaking directly to me, and can’t look at anyone. But then I glance up briefly, expecting all eyes on me, and realise that every single one of us looks guilty as hell .

The voice note resumes, echoey in the hard silence.

‘Daisy’s body was eventually found in a beach hut on Exmouth Beach.

Her head had been battered by a blunt object, later revealed to be a hammer.

And it seems from forensic records that the frenzied attack on her face and skull weren’t the only injuries inflicted.

Ligature marks were found around her neck, most probably antemortem wounds, which suggested this occurred before death. And her underwear had been removed.

‘Once Daisy’s body was found, the police seemed interested in a member of the university faculty.

Professor M, as he was known to his students, was a handsome and charming English lecturer.

At forty-four, this sophisticated older man was popular with the young female students, and Daisy was no exception.

She had attended Professor M’s creative writing lectures and tutorials since her first year at Exeter.

The professor lived in a beachfront home in Exmouth with his wife and children, and, like many other faculty members, he’d been interviewed when Daisy first went missing.

However, on that occasion he rather stupidly hadn’t revealed his relationship with Daisy, which the police discovered soon after the murder inquiry was launched.

When questioned again, he admitted they’d had a relationship, and he’d met her on the night she died, and she’d told him she’d met someone else.

She’d said she still loved him, but if he didn’t leave his wife she would go away with her other lover, and never see him again.

Consequently, he’d never really believed she was missing, and thought she’d turn up, which is why he hadn’t admitted their relationship to the police.

‘I didn’t want to cause any more problems for my family,’ he said.

But his problems were only compounded by the circumstances of Daisy’s discovery, following reports by Exmouth locals of an unusual smell near the Montgomerys’ beach hut.

When police investigated, the hut showed no signs of being broken into, so whoever had gone into the hut with Daisy that night must have had a key. ’

Suddenly, a door opens at the far side of the room, and two figures dressed in black emerge carrying trays, each with two silver-domed cloches. The man and woman walk to the table, lay down their trays and place a cloche-covered plate in front of each of us.

‘Enjoy your starter,’ the waiter says. ‘It’s chicken liver parfait with wholegrain toast. It was Daisy’s favourite!’

They then lift the cloches in unison, with a flourish, and leave.

‘Was it something we said?’ Dan asks the table. My husband’s trying to hide his nerves by behaving like a cocky idiot. I’d almost forgotten how good he is at that. The other two giggle nervously. They don’t find him funny either; they’re obviously just humouring him.

The starter sticks in my throat. The others are eating and chatting like they’re at a bloody wedding, but it’s not a wedding.

‘Yes, they’re definitely getting off on playing a cat-and-mouse game with us,’ Lauren agrees.

‘You even talk like a writer,’ Dan says admiringly. ‘I loved A Day in the Life and Death , by the way. Just brilliant writing.’

‘Thanks.’ She smiles, batting her eyelashes, loving my husband’s attention.

‘My father wrote a book.’ Not this again. I yawn, pointedly.

‘Really?’ Lauren says, but I doubt she’s listening.

‘Yeah, he was a royal physician, treated the Queen once.’ I’m watching him watching her. He can’t take his eyes off her.

‘From what I remember, he was practically royalty himself,’ Lauren says. Dan beams, presumably taking this as a compliment, but Lauren’s always been sarcastic. How dare she take the piss out of my husband? That’s my job.

Poor old Dan – he still brags about his father, but when he was alive he hated being in his dad’s shadow. He flipped between loathing him, loving him and wishing he was him. So conflicted.

‘I always knew you’d be a writer.’ He’s still fawning over Lauren.

‘I think we all knew that,’ I add. She looks up, smiling, waiting for the accolade, so I go for the kill. ‘I remember you wandering around our apartment in halls clutching your notebook like Virginia Woolf.’

‘I wouldn’t compare my work to Woolf’s,’ she says graciously.

‘Neither would I!’ I gasp, genuinely surprised at her arrogance. In what fucking world does she think her name would ever be associated with one of the greatest and most influential writers of the twentieth century?

But Dan moves the conversation along at a pace, developing his eulogy on her first novel. I cringe at his excited enthusiasm and her feigned modesty. Lauren really needs to get over herself. And my husband needs to back off.

‘I’m working on my novel,’ she used to say, holding notebook and pen like they were surgically attached to her.

But one day she left her notebook in the kitchen, and I couldn’t resist taking a look.

When I opened it, I was genuinely shocked to see page after page of doodles.

Not one single word was written in there.

I was flicking through thinking WTF? when she ran into the kitchen all anxious and accusatory, which was usually more my style than hers.

‘Were you looking at my work ?’ she screeched.

And that’s when I saw her. Lauren was a chameleon, a pretender, and she’d not been writing anything, just copying Daisy and the way she wrote everything down, leaving scraps of paper around with her thoughts on.

Lauren just took Daisy’s habit, and formalised it with a notebook and pen. I wanted to slap her.

My irritation for Lauren is building all over again, just remembering how fake and pretentious she was ... Is. Then our phones suddenly ping.

Everyone flinches.

‘Honestly, I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff,’ Maddie says. ‘And every time I hear that noise I’m going to fall off,’ she adds with a heavy sigh, as she plays the voice note on her phone.

‘So, the starter is finished, and we’re gonna give you a little palate cleanser. The new evidence, which our team are compiling for the police, proves so far that David Montgomery is clean as a whistle.’

The sharp, invasive sound of a whistle intrudes upon us and we all wince.

‘So what’s the new evidence?’ Dan asks. He’s looking up at the ceiling like he’s talking to God.

The voice note continues. ‘We are getting closer to finding the answer to the killer question!’ Cue a few bars of dramatic music, which was used in the previous notes like a full stop.

We look at each other with puzzled faces, like we’re all thinking: How can the podcast find the answer, because we all know David Montgomery did it – don’t we?

‘But this weekend isn’t just about finding the killer – it’s about remembering Daisy, and who she was to each of you. She was the friend, lover, frenemy you lost on that cold November night, and you’ll all have your own special memories of her.’

At this, the waiter reappears and walks around the table, placing a card, an envelope and a pen in front of each of us. As he does, the voice note continues.

‘So, what did you love about Daisy and what is your favourite memory of her? Write two short answers on the cards in front of you and put them in the envelopes. Answers are anonymous, which is why the cards and envelopes are identical, as are the pens. If you think someone might recognise your handwriting, then disguise it. We want you to be honest and know you’re in a safe space. ’

I tremble slightly as I pick up my pen.

I nudge Dan for some kind of support, and he turns to look at me, but there’s an extra glint of nothingness in his eyes tonight.

I turn away from the dying embers of his gaze. ‘This is such a waste of time,’ I mutter to myself. ‘Why are we even doing this shit?’

Not missing a golden opportunity to patronise me, Lauren sets off, in that voice: ‘Georgie, it’s just a podcast. They can sell it as “finding a killer”, but it’s entertainment. Pure cat-and-mouse, and we’re the mice, sweetie.’

Fuck you, Lauren. And don’t call me sweetie.

‘Entertainment? Two people died for this “entertainment”, Lauren ,’ I say, echoing her own voice back at her. I push my plate away. ‘And that parfait was too fatty!’

‘Ooh, steady on, girl.’ Dan’s chuckling. He sounds like his father undermining his mother in those upper-class tones. ‘Don’t start on the defenceless parfait.’

‘Fuck off , Dan.’

He looks at the others with a pantomime shocked face, hoping for allies, but they choose to ignore him. It is never my intention to publicly embarrass my husband, but if he insists on playing the village idiot, he leaves me no choice.

It’s all very tense, but like good schoolchildren the others start to fill in their answers obediently. I need to play the game too, or risk being singled out, so I start to write.

‘Gosh, it’s easy to think of things I loved about Daisy,’ Maddie’s saying in her childlike voice. I don’t agree, and I’m not sure I believe her.

‘Yeah, for me too,’ Lauren replies, climbing on the bandwagon. ‘So many happy memories with her. Too many to choose.’

Is now the time to remind Lauren about the night she pulled a clump of hair from Daisy’s head when they had a fight? Perhaps not, so I go for something more subtle.

‘She wasn’t as perfect as you guys are making out,’ I say. ‘Sorry, but someone has to be honest. Daisy could be a pain. She’d steal food from the fridge and blame it on Maddie ...’

Maddie gasps at this.

‘And she’d flirt with other girls’ boyfriends and cause no end of problems – didn’t she, Lauren?’

‘I don’t remember,’ Lauren says through gritted teeth.

‘I remember. You used to fight all the time over boys. And she’d sometimes bring strangers back at three a.m. and have noisy parties in our apartment.’ I turn to Dan. ‘That drove you mad.’

‘No, it drove Alex mad.’

‘Alex? No, he’d forgive her anything. I reckon Alex is the only one who didn’t have any issues with Daisy.’

Maddie squirms in her seat, starts twirling her pen. ‘I think Alex had a few issues too ... She owed him money.’

‘My point is – Daisy was just as flawed as the rest of us, and we don’t have to pretend she was perfect just because we’re being recorded and don’t want to sound suspicious.

We can be honest – we all had a reason to dislike her at some point, but it doesn’t mean any of us killed her,’ I add bluntly. Dan gives me a look, which I ignore.

‘Bit harsh,’ Lauren mutters.

‘I know what Georgie means,’ Maddie offers, reluctantly. ‘We all loved her but she wasn’t perfect. She was quite mean to me sometimes .’

Lauren pulls an awkward face at this. She’s compromised, because when Daisy was being mean to Maddie, Lauren was usually cheering her on.

‘Exactly!’ I say. ‘Like I said, she was as flawed as the rest of us.’

Dan’s fidgeting next to me, and whispering in my ear. ‘We’re being recorded, be very careful what you say.’

‘Calm down, your dirty little secret’s safe with me.’ I turn to look at him. ‘For now.’