Page 7 of Wanting Daisy Dead

Georgie

‘Don’t drive so fast, the roads are treacherous,’ I say, gripping the car seat as Dan puts his foot down like a bloody idiot.

‘Give it a rest, Georgie – stop telling me what to do.’

‘I’m not. I’d just like to survive this journey,’ I snap. London to Exeter is two hundred miles, and he’s been speeding for most of them. ‘It’s dangerous in this weather.’

‘Thank you for making the journey fun and reminding me of this fact every three minutes,’ he replies sarcastically.

‘You’re welcome,’ I mutter, and despite his erratic driving I close my eyes and drift off. I haven’t slept much since this nightmare started. It’s been a month since the envelope landed on the mat and resurrected the past, and I’ve been a mess.

I wake up after a short nap and, on opening my eyes, the tension and dread of the impending weekend floods back.

‘Jesus, this doesn’t exactly look like a party,’ Dan’s murmuring as we pull into a dark, empty car park.

‘Where is everyone?’ I ask.

‘God knows, but this clearly isn’t the happening place it used to be.’

‘Are you sure this is the right car park? There are no other cars here.’

‘Of course, I’m not stupid. This is St Luke’s Campus, where we spent three heady years drinking, having sex, and doing a little academic work now and then,’ he jokes. He looks happy to be here. I’m not.

‘Don’t you feel weird, coming back?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, a bit – but I had some good times.’ Then he seems to remember why we’re here – Daisy’s would-have-been birthday. ‘Apart from the bad bits, of course,’ he adds. ‘Look, I can see the halls of residence over there, through the mist.’

Without speaking, he opens the car door, letting a blast of freezing air in.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Er, getting out of the car. Unless of course you’d like to have the reunion in the car?’

‘Your constant sarcasm wears me down, Dan,’ I sigh wearily.

‘Are you coming or what?’

‘I don’t want to do this. Please can we just go back home?’

‘ No! I’ve just driven for more than four hours. I’m not turning around and driving back now.’

‘ I’ll drive,’ I offer, terrified of what might happen this weekend, but also scared of the consequences if I don’t turn up.

I haven’t dared ask Dan if his invite contains the same threat as mine, because then I’d have to tell him why I wanted Daisy dead.

There’s stuff that happened with Daisy that I can never tell anyone, not even him.

He’s standing outside the car now, his door open, and he leans in, frowning at me. ‘What’s wrong with you, Georgie?’

‘What’s wrong with you , Dan? Couldn’t wait to get here, could you?’

He sighs and, opening the rear door of the car, reaches for his bag on the back seat.

‘So who is it you want to see this weekend?’ I call.

He stands there for a moment, probably working out his lie.

‘All my old friends, like a normal person,’ he monotones, moving to the front of the car and slamming his door. Shutting me out.

‘None of the girls?’ I yell. I hear myself, and I hate myself. He pretends he can’t hear me and moves away from the car.

I reluctantly clamber out and grab my weekend bag off the back seat while Dan sets off ahead.

‘Wait for me,’ I call after him, but he’s disappearing into the darkness. I know I’m being paranoid, and I know he isn’t interested in our old housemates, but I just have to test him. He says I’m unreasonable, but with his history I can never be completely sure.

‘Wait, I can’t see anything. Dan? ’

He walks on purposefully like he’s not even with me.

It’s as if he wants to turn up for the weekend as a single man.

And by being jealous and immature I’ve given him a reason to wander on ahead, a reason to be with someone else.

I wish I could let him go, and didn’t care so much.

But for some reason I love him as much now as I did then.

He doesn’t look back to see if I’m okay, just keeps walking, like he can’t bear to be near me.

God, it hurts. And the more he hurts me, the nastier I have to be to make him think I don’t care.

Because when you love someone too much, you weaken yourself, and you give them all the power. I’m never doing that.

I watch him walk through the arches of the North Cloisters and up the steps of the old Gothic building.

It’s eerie out here in the dark, the mist swirling around.

As a student here I always saw the place as old, but not creepy like this.

I felt proud to be at a traditional university with history.

My mother had been a student here too; it was in my blood.

I vividly remember walking through the grassy quadrangle, waving to friends, playing frisbee or sitting in the sunshine.

Those of us who attended St Luke’s Campus at Exeter were known as ‘Lukies’, and because Mum had had such a happy time here, it felt familiar, like home.

But Mum was a brilliant scholar; she’s a retired doctor now, and though I’m proud of her I’ve always felt in her shadow.

I’m not academically clever like Mum – or my brother, who followed our parents into medicine – and I guess I’ve never felt quite good enough.

I tried to plough my own furrow by doing a business degree and talked vaguely about being an entrepreneur.

‘I’ll be a fucking millionaire by the time I’m thirty,’ I used to say.

But, like everything else, that dream died at the altar of Dan, and besides, I just wasn’t smart enough.

And after Daisy died I just kept my mouth shut, and tried to stay sane while wading through an ocean of guilt and grief.

My degree suffered, and when I left university I spent the vital career-building years working in coffee shops, taking part-time jobs and staying close to Dan.

What happened with Daisy made me insecure and paranoid, and threw me into an unhealthy co-dependency with Dan, who I couldn’t really trust. Death made me insular.

For me, the world became a scary place; I realise now that what I experienced the night Daisy died put me into shock for years.

I sometimes wonder if I imagined it, down there on the beach, but it’s so vivid, so present, it’s always been just under the surface no matter how hard I try to push it down.

And now I’m back here, I feel like I’m walking into a trap.

But as scared as I am, I want to finally face this, because after all these years, the truth has to come out.

I wait a moment before going after Dan, who’s now disappeared through the archway. Half of me wants to follow him through the cloisters into the beautiful hall, to redemption – but the other half just wants to escape.

Despite the cold, I need a moment to take it in, to understand why I feel this way, and I put down my heavy bag.

God, I was so young; this was the first chapter of my adult life, and I’m choked with silent tears as the past unfurls before me.

I’m eighteen years old again, my chest tight with terror and excitement, being guided by older students to halls, where I’ll meet the people I’ll be living with.

The accommodation was old, but it had been modernised; the stone walls that had stood for hundreds of years had been plastered and painted over.

Each student apartment in the halls of residence had five or six bedrooms, and a shared open-plan kitchen which opened out on to a living area with seating and a coffee table.

Some of us had our own en-suite bathrooms, some didn’t.

I’ll never forget how the first person I saw in there was Daisy, stretched out across an old sofa in the corner of the kitchen.

A shaft of light sliced through the blinds, striping her with late-September sunshine, and as she looked up, her lips moved, in a lazy smile of almost recognition.

She was wearing a short silk robe, and her long legs seemed to stretch out forever.

She was Kate Moss skinny, her hair was long and messy blonde, and she had a cigarette hanging from her mouth. She looked to me like an album cover.

The heroin-chic, fag-end waif look of the early nineties was passé even then, but she wore it well. And as an eighteen-year-old ingénue I thought she was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

For the first time in my life I was embarrassed by my parents, and gave a slight eye-roll at Mum and Dad for just being there. Daisy and I hadn’t spoken a word, but I needed this achingly cool girl to approve, and in her presence, parents were an embarrassment.

When I’d finally ushered them off the premises, Daisy gave me a cigarette and opened a litre of vodka, which we drank straight from the bottle.

I knew she was wild and might lead me into danger, but back then I had no experience of people like Daisy, so when she put the bottle to my lips and urged me to ‘drink’, I did as I was told.

‘Come on.’ Dan’s outside the main building, and I can see through the stained glass that there’s a light on inside, but the double doors are closed and there’s no one else around.

‘Why are you taking so long?’ he’s grumbling.

‘And don’t tell me you’re missing the kids.

Usually you can’t wait for a night off. You’re running down the drive as soon your parents arrive to babysit. ’

‘Fuck off,’ I mutter, shivering.

‘Calm, Georgie,’ he warns, reaching for the doors and pulling them open.

As usual, my self-obsessed husband refuses to engage with my anxiety, my reluctance to be here.

He assumes it’s about him, and that I’m being petty and jealous at the prospect of him talking to old girlfriends and one-night stands.

He hasn’t seen my fear in the terrible build-up to this weekend.

He’s been more concerned about what he should wear, what aftershave he should splash on.

I know him too well; he’ll be all over Maddie the minute we get inside.

I remember him hugging Maddie when the police came to tell us Daisy’s body had been found. She was upset but I was upset too, and I was his girlfriend. Later I asked him why he’d made such a fuss of her.

‘Maddie’s sweet,’ he said. ‘She brings that out in me. Some women are just like that – you feel like you want to protect them.’

If Maddie’s still a people-pleaser, she’ll go along with the flirting and the hugs this weekend as she did then, while I pretend it’s all fine. Until it isn’t.