Page 35 of Wanting Daisy Dead

Georgie

I knew it! I fucking knew it. I woke up in the night and he wasn’t there, and I naively assumed he’d gone to the bathroom.

After a while I decided he must have gone to sleep in his old room, and perhaps I’d been restless and I’d woken him.

But now a third option has formed in my brain, and this idiot – me – is returning to familiar territory I swore I’d never go to again.

I’m numb with shock and realisation, as not-so-discreet eyes meet across the table and .

.. Oh. My. God. She’s licking her lips just for him.

Given my marriage, you’d think I’d have picked up on this sooner; it obviously hasn’t just started this weekend.

The past few months of late nights, overnights, the stench of perfume in his car – it’s so bloody obvious it’s almost boring.

And suddenly I think about the way the passenger seat has recently been moved back each time I’ve climbed into his car; it was clearly moved to accommodate someone with longer legs than me.

The same long legs he describes in such intimate detail while panting in my ear during sex.

So last night, after we’d made love, he left me in bed and went to her , just as he used to with Daisy.

As the others talk over breakfast, my mind whizzes back to the past, and how I fell for him the moment I saw him.

I was with Alex then, but secretly in love with Dan, who hadn’t even noticed me, he just saw me as a friend.

He was gorgeous, quite tall and slim, with floppy fair hair and a posh accent he tried to hide but I adored.

He was funny and charming, and I knew we would be perfect together; I just had to convince him.

But he was young, and it was his first time away from home, and there seemed to be a constant line of pretty girls heading for his bedroom.

I’d be there at the apartment in agony, watching him take them to his room, my heart heavy with grief.

‘Dan and his one-night stands,’ Alex once said. ‘He introduces them like they’re his girlfriend so they’ll sleep with him, uninhibited.’

Meanwhile, I’d lie in bed with Alex, hearing the sounds of pleasure coming from Dan’s room, and cry quietly in the dark while Alex slept.

Eventually, when he’d run out of girls, Dan and I let Alex down as gently as possible and started seeing each other officially.

It was just before Christmas in the first year and the happiest time of my life.

At first he was everything I thought he’d be.

I was in love, it was new and I was terribly insecure, but by the time we started our second year I was feeling more settled and comfortable in the relationship.

We’d been together for almost a year by then, and the only shadow on my horizon was Daisy.

She’d started to hang around with Dan, and I knew at that point they were just friends, but I saw the way he lit up whenever she was around, and I wanted her out of his life.

That’s when I sent the letter to Louisa Montgomery, revealing her husband’s affair and pretending it was from Daisy.

I saw Daisy in tears only the day after the letter, and assumed the fallout had started with David and it would only be a matter of time before they were both sent packing from university.

Just a few days later, Dan said he had something to tell me, and he took me to a bar and bought me a beer and I honestly thought he was going to tell me he loved me.

‘It’s about Daisy and me ...’ he started. ‘I’ve always liked her, but she told me she feels the same. I’m really sorry, Georgie, but I think you and I should go on a break,’ he said, clumsily.

Was this some kind of joke?

‘I think I’ve always been a little bit in love with her,’ he added, liberally sprinkling salt on to the fresh wound.

I can remember the feeling, like I was standing on the edge of a very high cliff and might fall. But it didn’t matter if I did. Nothing mattered anymore. I didn’t speak at first because I couldn’t form the words.

The crazy thing about it was that Dan had just assumed I’d be okay with what he’d told me. But the casual cruelty, the clumsiness of his words, the ‘little bit in love’ with someone else floored me.

I actually thought I might die. I’d heard the word ‘heartbreak’ a million times, but I’d never really considered how real it was until that night. I honestly felt like my heart had broken in two; the pain was physical.

‘But Daisy’s in love with her lecturer,’ I told him, assuming he didn’t know about David.

‘Not anymore,’ he replied. ‘She’s dumped him for me.’

Of course, later we discovered that in fact David had dumped her because of the letter, and she’d found the nearest safe haven with Dan. But at that point I had to believe what he did – that she’d chosen Dan over David.

I’ll never forget the look in his eyes – the very thought of winning her from a professor seemed to be an extra thrill.

Just like when he’d taken me from Alex. He was so young and naive and insensitive to my feelings, he didn’t even try to hide his excitement from me about his ‘new’ relationship.

I hated her in that moment. More than I’ve ever hated anyone before or since.

I really think he expected me to be happy for him – being with ‘the most beautiful girl on campus’, as he later described her to Alex. In front of me.

When I started sobbing openly in the bar, it dawned on him that this could be embarrassing, so he offered me a consolation prize.

‘You and I can still sleep together if you like?’ he suggested half-heartedly, to stop me making a scene.

‘So you would do me the honour of sleeping with me while pursuing a relationship with Daisy?’ I asked sarcastically through my tears, feeling the hurt and fury welling up inside me.

He nodded.

Oh dear. Until then, Dan had only ever seen the Georgie I let him see.

My uncontrollable rage had been locked away for almost a year while I’d been with him.

I loved him so much I wanted to keep him, and knew that revealing my other self would scare him off.

I adored him, I lived and breathed him, and I would do anything for him as long as he stayed.

At nineteen that kind of love is dangerous, because you’ll do anything to keep it.

We walked back to the house that night, and all I could think of was the two of them together.

It was as if a match had been lit and thrown on to gallons of petrol and I’d swallowed the flames.

They crackled and roared inside me, and all the feelings I’d been suppressing – good and bad – came rushing to the surface.

In the time it took to reach our shared house, I had become slightly unhinged; I screamed and yelled and I couldn’t stop myself. I was totally out of control.

In trying to calm me down, Dan went to put his arms around me, to hold in the madness and stop me spiralling. But I fought him, shrieked at him to get off me, and all the time I was slapping his face and scratching him with my nails.

He was understandably terrified at my reaction.

The fact he’d told me he was in love with someone else in such a matter-of-fact way showed he had no idea of the power he had over me.

And when he tried to leave my bedroom to go to his, I begged for him not to leave me, falling to the floor and holding on to his legs as he tried to escape, dragging me along the floor with him.

My legs were covered in carpet burns, but I felt nothing.

I was immune to any pain other than the pain he was inflicting on me.

When even Dan realised that my mental health wasn’t in good shape, and walking out on me wasn’t a good idea, he reluctantly agreed not to break up with me. But I knew in my heart that it was only a matter of time before they got together, probably behind my back.

Dan felt they had a connection, and he wasn’t going to let her go. They were inevitable.

Then, one day, I had this horrible idea, but it was all I could think of to keep him. ‘What if we sleep with her together ?’

I didn’t want this, but I could see there was a kind of sense to the three of us.

It appealed to my controlling nature – to know where he was, to actually be there when they were together, to take part, to orchestrate it, even?

I could either let him cheat on me and lie to me, or share him openly – and keep him.

It was scary, but at the same time it felt sophisticated and grown-up – like smoking, which can also kill.

And now, twenty years later, over a basket of croissants in my old halls of residence, I realise it wasn’t just Daisy who was ‘inevitable’ for Dan.

The truth is, I’ve never been enough for him, and even allowing him to share his fantasies about other women won’t keep him home.

I’ve endured the sheer agony of hearing his lecherous desires because I believed they were fantasies, that we’d found a place where we could both exist and be happy – together.

But I was fooling myself; his fantasies are real, and last night, after talking about what he’d like to do with Lauren, he left my bed and went to hers.

I feel like I did twenty years ago when he left me sleeping to go to Daisy.

It happened before I joined them and after – he was never honest with me about Daisy.

And despite giving him an alibi, I still believe there’s something he’s hiding from me about that night.

I watch Lauren now as she stands up to make coffee.

She’s wearing a nightshirt, and my husband can’t take his eyes off her long, bare legs as she strolls past. And then .

.. as if I needed confirmation, her hand caresses his back.

It’s the lightest of touches; it could almost be accidental, and it’s probably invisible to everyone else. But I see it.

How the fuck have I missed this?

‘I’m making coffee,’ she announces from behind the kitchen bar. ‘Anyone want some?’

I don’t want some, but bitch you’re gonna get some.

I hold on to the table, my knuckles white – I’ve held on to Lauren’s secret since I discovered it in her room yesterday.

I haven’t even told Dan because I don’t want him holding me back when it’s time to let everyone know exactly what Lauren did to Daisy.

That time is now.