Page 47 of Wanting Daisy Dead

It’s strange to find myself here, but there’s a weird symmetry to being jailed for murder.

My father was a murderer too, he killed a man in a drunken fight.

Dad was an alcoholic – and I guess addictive behaviour isn’t the only thing I inherited from him.

It was 6 a.m. when the banging on the door started and the police came running in to take him away.

I never saw Dad again. I was six years old.

Mum said I must never tell anyone my father was in prison – I had to say he’d died.

This was a lot for a child to take on, the shame of knowing my father was a bad man, fused with the guilt and sadness I felt in telling the lie that he was dead.

My father gave me nothing – just a burning shame and the feeling I wasn’t good enough, and never would be.

I thought being with Daisy would change that, erase the shame and the self-loathing, but now I realise that loving Daisy was the best and worst thing of my life.

I think about her all the time. She’s still beside me, and I talk to her in my head.

I’m rarely alone in here, so I can’t speak openly to her like I used to when Minty and I lived with her in our little house, just the three of us.

We were like a little family – she was always there, a beautiful ghost, brushing past me on the stairs, wandering our home, climbing into my bed at night, a constant, comforting presence.

My therapist, Cara, says that when Daisy laughed at me, my mind couldn’t take one more rejection, one more indifference .

.. or another person walking away. I wasn’t just lashing out at Daisy that night, I was erasing all the times I’d been made to feel like nothing.

Daisy represented all the people who’d never bothered to find out who I really was, who left me when I needed them most. Including my father.

Cara tries to tell me in her therapist-speak that Daisy is dead. ‘You need to come to terms with loss, Maddie, and take accountability for that,’ she says. ‘Only then can you face what you did, and move forward in a healthy way.’

‘Yes, I realise I need to take responsibility,’ I say.

But I don’t. I know exactly what I did, but I choose not to think about it, to imagine an alternative ending with a happy-ever-after.

I have to believe Daisy’s still here with me, and that night never happened.

I didn’t make her scream in terror, eyes wide, blood spattering everywhere as I hit her with the hammer over and over.

And I didn’t tie her beautiful scarf round her neck and pull it tighter and tighter until she finally stopped twitching.

No, instead of going into the damp, dark beach hut, where she met her bloody death, we walked hand in hand back home along the beach.

And then I tell myself we cooked dinner, and lived happily ever after, because I can’t do goodbyes.

Cara sees me every week, usually Tuesdays. Everything here in prison has an intensity – emotions are heightened, cruelty is sharper, hurt is keener, and kindness breaks you. Consequently, my Tuesdays talking to Cara are like Christmas and my birthday rolled into one.

She listens, she cares, and her eyes meet mine as her clean, manicured fingers play with the crucifix at her throat.

Cara wears her silk shirts open at the neck, and even though she’s at the other side of the desk, my senses are sharp in here.

I can smell her perfume. The delicate sweetness of lily of the valley and tuberose cuts through the smell of stale piss and smoke.

Cara’s fragrance takes me into a sun-filled garden – something I’ll never experience again.

But this is my punishment and I deserve it, and confessing that weekend was like cutting out a cancer I’d lived with for twenty years.

After that night, I just existed. I left uni, lived with Mum, then ran away to Dubai.

But I was drawn back here, and I created my own prison, rarely leaving the house, just staying home with my cat and my memories.

Finding solace in my addiction, I’d eat and purge and know Daisy was there, comforting me, loving me in a way she never could when she was alive.

Cara tells me I shouldn’t be scared. ‘You’ve never been able to trust yourself since that night, but you must learn to do that now, to know that you have choices. And you can learn to trust yourself again.’

I listen to her and always pretend I agree, but deep down I’m worried that, if I ever fall in love, the same thing might happen. But I can’t tell her that, because if I do she won’t like me anymore.

My sessions with Cara always go on a little longer than they should, and she makes me feel special, because she trusts me. And when the prison officer asks if she needs someone in with us, Cara says, ‘No, this is Maddie’s private time, I’m perfectly safe with her.’

She gives me hope that, despite being locked in a prison for the next twenty-five years, I’m not a lost cause.

Cara wants me to ‘open my heart and mind’ to the possibility of love and friendship.

I love our weekly sessions, and count the days until I’m escorted to the room where she waits for me with a cup of coffee and my favourite lemon cake.

She gets my coffee from the machine, but she makes the cake at home, just for me.

The first time she brought it, she asked for a plate and the officer brought a paper one.

‘Could Maddie have a proper plate for her cake, please?’ she asked. ‘She’s not a child.’

He said it was against the rules, but Cara told him firmly to bring me a proper plate and she’d take full responsibility.

Ever since that day, my cake has been waiting on a nice, shiny white plate.

I feel like a human being, not an animal as we are so often made to feel in here.

Cara is the only person who’s shown me any kindness or respect since I came to prison.

It’s only a slice of cake, but to me it’s everything.

I know Cara makes that cake with love, and she ices it so beautifully, adds the little sugared lemon slices on top of the rich, citrusy, pale-lemon buttercream.

It’s the most delicious cake I ever tasted, and talking to Cara as I eat the exquisite cake is quite beautiful.

Last week I heard myself ask if I could touch her blouse, fully expecting her to recoil, or reprimand me in some way.

But instead she stood up and walked towards me, pulling the slithery silk that was tucked in her skirt, and holding it out to me.

For a year I’ve only felt the thick coarseness of prison garb, or the scratchiness of an officer’s uniform against my skin.

But she stood there, offering me the luscious silk, and as I slowly reached out and touched it, I gasped a little as it slid through my fingers like sand.

I looked into her eyes as I caressed the cool blue fabric, and she looked back at me, sparking an electric current through my whole body.

It was then that I realised my feelings are reciprocated. Cara loves me too.

This week I’ve spent counting down the minutes to our next session.

Time goes so slowly in here, I’ve been in agony, but at last, today I am escorted to the therapy room.

The lemon cake sits on a plate on the table as always, next to the coffee, and Cara smiles, and welcomes me into the room.

But something feels different. As I sit down, my eyes seek hers for reassurance, but for once they don’t meet mine.

There’s a tightness in the air as Cara fidgets with her pen.

I feel awkward and uncomfortable as panic rises in my chest.

‘I need to talk to you, Maddie,’ she starts, and my heart cracks. It always starts like this, the ending.

‘Next week will be our last session. I’ve spoken to my boss about our progress and she feels it’s time for you to work with someone else. He’s very good, a colleague of mine who specialises in cases like yours ...’

Cases? Is that all I am to her, a case?

‘Why?’ I ask, my eyes stinging with unshed tears.

‘We feel that it will benefit you to work with someone different,’ she says, like she rehearsed this. Like we don’t have a special relationship, like she doesn’t make me lemon cake and give me loving looks throughout our sessions.

We go through the motions, she asks me questions and I answer them, but I am devastated.

The light has gone out, plunging me back into darkness.

All I can think is how will I live without her?

I’ll be left alone in my cell with tiny windows and no stars and no Cara.

I’m lost and helpless. I’m losing everything, again.

That’s what love is, isn’t it? Feeling lost and helpless, with moments of heightened euphoria and lemon cake, until the inevitable end.

‘Do you think, if I ask to keep you as my therapist, they’ll let you stay?’ I ask, desperately.

‘No, that won’t be possible.’ She’s dismissing me, like they always do.

I don’t hear what she says next, I just watch her pick up her notes and tell me again what a great person I am, even though I’m obviously not ‘great’ enough for her to fight to stay.

And as she stands to go, I feel a familiar thrumming in my head.

I see Daisy lying on the floor, her blood jam-red, oozing from the wounds in her head, her beautiful face ruined for anyone else except me.

It’s been good to love again, to escape these dank prison walls, fly briefly through barred windows and imagine another life with Cara.

But now Cara’s leaving me, I don’t feel safe anymore.

I have nothing to live for, and Daisy is everywhere.

My nerve ends tingle, and the familiar aching has returned, and tonight I won’t sleep.

I’m terrified of what I know I must do. I hate to feel like this, but when you live in a cell with one window it’s a relief to feel something .

.. Even fear of myself, and what I might do.

In the same way I couldn’t let Daisy go, I can’t let Cara go.

She has one more visit, and next week, like clockwork, she will arrive on time in a silk shirt, with my final slice of cake, and she’ll think it’s goodbye.

But since being here I’ve learned to be resourceful, and plates that hold cake can also be broken and become sharp objects.

So, next Tuesday, on our final session, when she’s dismissed the officer, and once we’re alone, I’ll find a way to keep her.

Cara won’t leave me. I’ll make sure she stays with me forever, just like Daisy .

.. and we’ll live happily ever after, because I can’t do goodbyes.