Page 13 of Wanting Daisy Dead

Dan

‘Well, that was awkward!’ I try to joke, but no one responds.

Everyone gasped when Georgie read out the last favourite memory.

‘Which one of you wrote that?’ I ask. ‘It’s presumably a joke?’

‘A sick joke,’ Georgie mumbles.

‘Yeah, but someone at this table wrote it,’ I say.

Still recovering from the shock of reading it out, Georgie rolls her eyes. ‘It’s obvious who wrote it.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes, it’s you , taking the piss, but it’s not funny, Dan .’

I shrug, but before I can continue to irritate her, our phones ping.

‘Okay. We didn’t expect a full confession so early – but I suspect someone might have been serving us a red herring,’ Tammy trills.

There’s a long pause, nobody looks at anyone else, and we all find something very interesting to look at on our plates.

‘So, a final question, and it’s a little deeper and darker,’ Tammy continues, over dramatic music. The tension is unbearable. It’s now deathly quiet, and none of us dares speak. We’re on tenterhooks, but I think deep down we all know what the final question is going to be.

Even I don’t want to make a joke because I feel like we’re back to being suspects again. It’s just like before, when they realised Daisy had been murdered – the police and the public just went for us ... especially me .

Then, after several torturous seconds that feel like hours, another voice note arrives.

‘Tammy here – please write down your answer to this question. If David Montgomery didn’t kill Daisy, which of the five housemates did?

We won’t make you read these out – even we aren’t that cruel.

We want you to feel secure enough to be honest. And if you know one of your ex-housemates is guilty, we’re hoping you will say who and why without worrying about repercussions. ’

‘No, no, I’m not going to put anyone’s name on this piece of paper.

It’s not for me to decide who did or didn’t do it,’ Maddie’s saying, almost in tears.

I can see her distress – she doesn’t want to upset anyone – and I want to get up and give her a hug.

But if I do, Georgie will probably flay me alive, so I resist, and offer her a get-out instead.

‘Look, Maddie, if it really upsets you, just put my name down. I really don’t mind.

’ I give her a reassuring smile. I’m genuinely trying to make it easy for her.

I hate seeing women distressed, and, if I’m brutally honest, it won’t do me any harm when the podcast goes out.

Two million listeners will hear me trying to appease Maddie, and sacrificing myself.

If I were the killer, would I do that? I guess me offering my name is a good double bluff.

‘That’s kind of you, Dan,’ Maddie replies, ‘but I want to put David Montgomery. His DNA was all over her and—’

‘Yeah, he had motive ,’ Lauren adds, nodding. ‘And though most of the evidence was circumstantial, it was pretty damning.’

Georgie’s agitated. ‘But the question was “If David Montgomery didn’t kill Daisy, which of the five housemates did?” So we have to put one of our names down.

That’s the rule!’ Georgie’s a stickler for rules, and can’t bear the thought of someone not adhering to them.

Perhaps she has her own suspect and wants to play cat-and-mouse with her ?

Then there’s the possibility that my wife knows more than she’s letting on, and wants to stay under the radar.

Well, if she really wants us to stick to the rules and say who we think killed Daisy, I’ll put Georgie’s name down – see how she likes that.

‘I’m not happy putting one of my friends’ names on here,’ Lauren’s muttering as she picks up her pen.

‘You can put my name down – I’m not your friend, Lauren,’ Georgie says. She means it.

‘You still have that cruel streak, don’t you, Georgie?’ Lauren shoots straight back.

‘Georgie didn’t mean she isn’t your friend. She just meant you haven’t kept in touch,’ I offer, trying to pour water on the flames.

‘Don’t you dare apologise on my behalf. I’m stating a fact! Lauren and I are not friends, and we’ve never been friends,’ Georgie yells as she hurls her pen across the table.

‘No, Dan’s right,’ Lauren says supportively. ‘We haven’t kept in touch, probably because we don’t like each other,’ she says with a sweet smile, which I find quite funny, but I daren’t react.

‘Alex did the right thing coming late, didn’t he?’ I say, to remind the others of him in the hope they write his name down.

‘Did you say he was coming tomorrow, Georgie?’ Maddie asks. Georgie nods, deliberately avoiding my eyes.

Lauren and Maddie start talking about the food, but I’m confused about the Alex thing.

‘Are you in touch with Alex then?’ I ask. I mean, what the hell?

‘I just called because I wanted to know if he’d be here.’

She continues to drink her wine as the other two chat to each other.

‘But you didn’t call either of them to ask if they’d be here?’ I nod in Lauren and Maddie’s direction.

‘No, because I didn’t care . I liked Alex, we were friends.’

‘Friends? You were lovers ,’ I whisper in her ear.

‘Before you, yes.’

I still feel a frisson when I remember I took her from Alex. He was a bit of a junkie, but a handsome, charming junkie. All the girls fancied him.

I’m aware my jealousy is hypocritical, considering the way I’ve behaved all these years. But this Alex thing makes me wonder how well I know my wife.

‘Ooh, another voice note!’ Maddie calls.

‘Please can you hand in the answers to your question, so dessert can be served. Daisy used to love this dessert as a little girl, and we hope you do too!’

I don’t know how much more I can take. It’s stressful coming back here – I knew it would be, but I’d thought it was a celebration of Daisy’s life.

I assumed the whole blackmailing thing about ‘everyone will know why you wanted Daisy dead’ was more of a bluff to get us here, a sick joke.

And it worked – I came because I didn’t want to be exposed – but I never expected this.

‘So, we’ve come to what we thought was a birthday party for an old departed friend,’ I say, ‘and it’s turned into a murder mystery party, where we’re the murderers!’

‘Only one of us is,’ Maddie corrects me.

‘Allegedly,’ Lauren corrects her.

I’m trying to be cool and light-hearted, but inside I’m screaming.

I feel like everything I say is being monitored and analysed – either by the women on the podcast or the women at the table.

Especially my wife! Then there are the two million ‘armchair detectives’ – or trolls, as I like to call them – and they’ll take no prisoners.

It’s just a bit of fun to these people, something to while away a long afternoon.

Even the podcasters have no real skin in the game; they have nothing to lose, but they’ll pore over every inch of this weekend and presumably hurl accusations at one of us for the climax.

This could ruin our lives, and the only reason we all came here was to prevent that happening.

‘What if I write down someone’s name and they aren’t the murderer? They could end up in prison,’ Maddie says, her eyes wide in alarm. Has this only just occurred to her? Probably.

‘No, because no one here is the killer,’ I point out.

‘David Montgomery was tried and convicted. And unless his innocence can be proved, or someone else owns up to it, nothing changes. This is all a game, as Lauren said earlier – it’s just entertainment.

’ I wave jazz hands at Maddie and she breaks into a slow smile.

‘I remember seeing a documentary a few years ago,’ Lauren says, ‘and the forensic psychiatrist said Daisy’s killer was someone close – someone who was emotionally involved with her.’

‘He couldn’t know that, it’s just a presumption.’ I shake my head doubtfully.

‘Why do you assume the forensic psychiatrist was a man?’

‘Shit. I walked right into that one,’ I chuckle. Then I take a deep breath. ‘All I was saying was the psychiatrist obviously didn’t know the killer was emotionally involved. It’s guesswork.’

‘No, not necessarily.’ Lauren is warming to her theme.

‘She said that Daisy’s body had been covered with an old child’s blanket from the beach hut.

It’s called “undoing behaviour” – the killer wanted to cover the face or body because they couldn’t look at what they’d done.

It’s like they wanted to symbolically reverse the murder. ’

‘Oh God, that’s so creepy. Imagine ...’ Maddie murmurs.

‘It’s horrific,’ Lauren continues. ‘Killers sometimes position the body so it’s face down, or they even wash it, or put a pillow under the head. It distresses me to even think about it.’

It can’t be that distressing for her – she’s still talking about it.

But the more she talks about ‘the body’ and ‘the blood’, the more uncomfortable I feel, and I have to stop her talking. ‘Yeah, well, like I told Maddie, write my name. I really don’t mind, because obviously I’m not the killer.’

‘Don’t feel bad, Maddie, I’m putting his name on my card,’ Georgie smirks.

‘What? But you’re my wife.’

‘Yeah, but not your alibi,’ she replies, making it sound loaded. WTF is she doing to me? And at this rate, all three of them are going to write my name down as the killer. I mean, there’s being kind and there’s being buried, and I’m treading a fine line here.

‘Yeah. Georgie, if you don’t want to write Dan’s name, you can use a name from my book, A Day in the Life and Death , if you like?’

A nice little book plug there from Lauren.

Georgie gives her a look of incredulity. ‘Why would I use a fictional character from some book? We’ve been asked to name a real person, one of the housemates. Besides, I don’t know any names from your book because I’ve never even read your book.’

I can’t help but smile. My wife’s an uptight, anxiety-riddled snob who comes out in hives if there’s a towel on the bathroom floor.

But tonight I’m actually enjoying her vicious takedown of Lauren.

To add to the frisson, I’m winding Georgie up even more by pretending to be Lauren’s biggest fan and constantly admiring her ‘work’, which I haven’t read either.

But that’s how we roll, Georgie and I – we play twisted games with each other. We always have.

Georgie sees most women as a huge threat, but she’s always had a big problem with Lauren, and I love it because it makes it so easy to get her back up.

Lauren’s good-looking, successful, intelligent, and obviously lives an exciting life of book launches and media glitter.

Lauren was always receptive to my outrageous flirting in front of Georgie, and tonight is no different.

Mind you, looking at Georgie now, in a red sleeveless dress, with her red lips and that dark shimmery hair, she’d even win over Lauren tonight.

I think the fact that Georgie might have a thing for Alex is making her even more attractive to me.

I can feel a glimmer of something I haven’t felt for years; it’s more than lust, it’s about being here and remembering how we were – who we were.

I gently slide my hand on to her leg, feeling for the thigh-high split in the silk.

She’s grabbed my pen and written her answer, put the piece of paper in the envelope, and is now licking the envelope slowly, looking at me from under her long lashes.

I want her right now, here, on the table .

.. and for once it looks like the feeling might be mutual, but I take a breath, and grab my piece of paper as a distraction.

I fully intend to write Kylie Minogue or Beyoncé for a laugh, but instinctively I write someone else’s name.

Why waste the opportunity to throw someone else under the bus and take the heat off me?

We all hand our sealed envelopes to Greta and the other waiter, who then place exotic-looking desserts in front of us.

‘I don’t suppose it matters who or what we wrote on those pieces of paper. It’s not like they’re going to be handed to the police, is it?’ Georgie says, which worries me slightly.

Tammy said our answers would remain anonymous, but they must have marked them in some way.

I know the listeners will have heard me suggesting Maddie write my name, and the sane ones will understand that Georgie probably wrote my name as an easy way out.

But still, the optics aren’t good, and the crazies will be straight on it thinking there’s a clue in the fact that my own wife doesn’t trust me.

Perhaps she doesn’t? After all, I don’t trust her .