Page 2 of Wanting Daisy Dead

Georgie Fraser, Daisy’s Friend and Housemate

I can’t find my fucking phone. I left it here on the kitchen counter last night – I’m trying to detox and having it on my bedside table was making me really anxious.

But now I’m even more anxious because I can’t find it.

One of the kids must have moved it, or perhaps he ’s been trying to access it again?

My stomach drops at the thought of him flicking through my phone, probing around in all my secrets.

Ironic, because I use my phone to probe around in his secrets.

I have a really important meeting this afternoon with a potential new client, and need to get going.

Dan did the school run like it was a big deal, but I packed the lunches and the sports kits and made sure they had all their books.

Dealing with the detritus of everyone else’s lives makes me late for my own.

The envelope is thick, white, embossed and damning.

It keeps catching my eye from its place on the kitchen counter.

My eyes are drawn to it, and I’m compelled to reach across and pick it up, wishing it didn’t exist. This envelope contains a virtual bomb waiting to go off in my kitchen, tearing everything apart – my marriage, my long-hidden secrets, everything.

I found it on the mat earlier, with no stamp, no return address.

Someone must have delivered it by hand, which gives me the creeps.

How dare they just walk up to my front door and push their nasty little note through?

It’s opened up old wounds I never thought I’d have to deal with again after all these years.

Daisy Harrington’s bloody birthday. I presume Dan has one too – perhaps he picked his up when he left.

I’m glad he’s gone, I don’t want to talk about it with him. I can’t bear to dredge it all up.

Despite it being the most horrific thing that’s happened since .

.. well, since the murder, I must compartmentalise.

For now I need to put it in a box in my head marked ‘Later’, and work out what I’m going to do about it then.

Today is a big day: I have to pitch a glamorous, gourmet wedding buffet to a big new hotel.

I need to be at my best – smiley, shiny and sharp. So, hiding the envelope in my trouser pocket, I try to forget it for now and concentrate on what’s ahead, but first I need to find my bloody phone.

‘Where the fuck is it?’ My head’s starting to get hot, my chest is filled with rage; I need to calm down, but I can’t.

I was inexplicably angry from the moment I woke up this morning, which has been exacerbated by the bloody invite.

I feel rage building, like an oncoming wave, and I know that once it hits I can’t control it; I’ll be drowning in fury.

I do another lap of the kitchen, searching frantically with hands and eyes. I start moving the coffee machine to see if my phone got stuck behind there. But nothing. Fuck!

I dash into the hall, still scanning all areas for the phone while grabbing my jacket off the coat rack.

And suddenly, weirdly, there’s my phone, on the side table in the hall. Relieved but puzzled, I grab it. How on earth did it get there?

I didn’t put it on the hall table, I just know I didn’t. I stand for a moment trying to remember when I last had it, and wonder if I’m going mad. I mean, literally having a breakdown.

But I don’t have time for madness now, so I push my arms into my jacket, and my phone into my trouser pocket next to the folded-up envelope. Then, with keys in one hand and handbag in the other, I let myself out into the freezing-cold day.

Work isn’t exactly glamorous, a prefab near an industrial estate that’s seen better days, but inside we have a great kitchen and all the latest equipment. It cost a fortune – I had to get a bank loan – but I know I’m going to make this work, and one day I’ll be rich, even richer than bloody Lauren.

I find a discreet parking space and apply concealer to the emerging cracks around my eyes.

All the while I’m aware of the envelope now lying on the passenger seat next to my phone and handbag.

I feel like there’s another person sitting there, and as much as I try to ignore it, my eyes and mind wander back to the envelope.

It’s addressed to Georgie ; no surname. Whoever pushed it through my letterbox knows me and my address – and apparently so much more.

The fact they stood on my doorstep, just feet away, feels so intimate. Too intimate.

I put another layer of concealer on, as if covering my wrinkles will erase what happened.

My secrets have lived with me since I was nineteen years old; they were at my graduation, my wedding day – they were even there, in the shadows, when my children were born.

Daisy never had kids, never married; she didn’t even get her degree.

And consequently, every golden moment, every defining life event, has been tarnished by her .

I can just imagine her seething resentment – I have what she wanted.

Wherever she is now, she must hate me. I doubt that she rests in peace.

I dared to hope this catering business would be a new beginning for me – that the past was buried now and I could move on.

Who was I kidding? I may have got what Daisy wanted, but I’ve paid the price, and it’s been a living hell. ‘Be careful what you wish for, love,’ my nan used to say. I think about that every time I look at him.

Bang bang . I’m shaken from the past by a sharp and sudden knock on my car window, a face looming in the glass.

‘Come on, you’re gonna be late!’

Sam, my new catering manager, loves ‘having a laugh’. I don’t find her funny.

‘I’ll be with you in five.’ I put five fingers up at the window, palm facing her, which a body language expert would correctly interpret as ‘Go away!’ I add a half-smile to soften this.

I don’t want to lose any more staff. Apparently, strong leadership is considered to be ‘bullying’ these days.

It was only a plastic spatula that I threw .

.. God, the fuss they made – anyone would think it was a carving knife. Fucking snowflakes!

I find people difficult to work with; I don’t have time to micromanage their feelings. I just need to get the job done.

I wait until Sam’s gone inside before I pick up the envelope. I take out the card. Her picture smiles at me – the penetrating blue eyes, the halo of blonde hair ... I feel someone walking across my grave.

I’ve never said this aloud, but it was a relief when the police arrived to tell us she’d been found.

After a week of searching, speculation, in-fighting and finger-pointing, Daisy’s body had finally been discovered.

She was in a brightly painted hut on Exmouth Beach, not far from the university.

At first there was no obvious suspect, and with all the publicity, and the media parked outside our door day and night, everyone convinced themselves it was one of us, her housemates.

There were six of us, including Daisy, and we’d lived together since halls at the start of university.

We all got along, and when it came to finding a place to live for second year, we’d decided to move into a house near St Luke’s Campus.

We’d assumed the fun would continue, and the friendships we’d formed by living together in the first year would become stronger.

But it wasn’t to be. The second year was very different: the closeness we’d thought we all had turned out to be toxic, and bad things happened between us.

By the time Daisy died, we were all so vulnerable and broken, we didn’t trust ourselves, let alone each other.

As I sit in the car, the past holds me down – makes me feel trapped, isolated. I take out the invitation, holding it only with my thumb and forefinger. It feels dirty; I don’t want to touch it fully with my hands.

Opening it, I read the words again, and wait for the rush of horror to overwhelm me, as it did earlier when I first read it at home.

Dear Georgie,

You are cordially invited for a weekend to celebrate the 40th birthday of Daisy Harrington.

The birthday girl will sadly not be attending, but her friends will all be there.

Please join us on Friday December 12th at St Luke’s Campus, Exeter, for a weekend of memories.

Check in by 5 p.m.

We know why you wanted Daisy dead – and if you aren’t at her party, everyone else will know too.

Love From

The Killer Question Podcast

My stomach lurches, and I wonder again just what they know, and who they are. I don’t listen to podcasts; I’m too busy cooking, cleaning, child rearing, building a business, and keeping my husband from other women’s beds. I don’t have time.

God, I can’t face any of them. All those other students who pretended to know and love her will be swarming around. Ambulance-chasing bastards with their fake grief and fake memories – they never knew her like we did, they have no idea what she was really like.

I have no intention of going to this circus , this ridiculous birthday weekend for someone who’s been dead twenty years. I mean, WTF?

But the other side of me, the one that holds the secrets, is less brave, and she’s worried that it might all close in on her again.

Who the hell is behind this? And how do they know ?