Page 8 of Wanting Daisy Dead

Maddie

I don’t think any of us had ever been as excited and happy as we were when we walked through those arches that September.

The first person I saw in the apartment at halls was Dan.

He was with his dad, a posh old guy who never met my eye but gazed at my breasts.

He called Dan ‘son’ but it felt like a reprimand; there was no affection in his voice.

I’d turned up on my own, and everyone else seemed to have a parent, or two parents, to help them move in.

Mothers fussing over duvet sizes and dads carrying boxes and checking electrics.

I often wondered what dads did – I didn’t have one, and it turned out neither did Daisy; we were the only two whose parents were absent. We moved ourselves in.

Daisy and I bonded so quickly. ‘We’re both orphans,’ she joked, putting her arm around me. ‘Come on, Baby Spice, let’s get some breakfast while they play happy families.’

We went to McDonald’s in Exeter town centre, and on the walk there we got to know each other a little.

She was easy to open up to, and we shared our stories: both fatherless, and brought up by our mums. By the time we’d eaten our sausage-and-egg McMuffins and walked back to the apartment, I felt we had a real connection.

But as soon as we got back to halls, she started drinking a bottle of vodka with Georgie, and ignored me, so I went to bed.

What I didn’t realise then was that Daisy wasn’t someone I could rely on. She picked people up and dropped them when someone new came along. We went on to spend freshers’ week together, but soon after that she met Lauren, and though we remained friends, I felt like Daisy’s second choice.

I often think about the randomness of who we lived with back then.

We were an arbitrary list of students whose names had been thrown together and allocated –in our case to apartment number 101.

The university housing office had set us all on a path, as they have done and will continue to do for all students.

In those first few weeks I imagined we’d be in each other’s lives forever.

I guess we are, but not in the way I thought we would be.

I’ve arrived at St Luke’s Campus a little later than I’d hoped due to the bad weather. I had to drive really slowly through the fog and ice and I’m relieved to finally park up. God, I’m dreading this, and I’m so tempted just to turn the car around and go back home, but I can’t do that.

I gaze out into the dark, and see a faint light coming from the main building, where our apartment was.

I take a deep breath, open the car door and, throwing my rucksack over my shoulder, make a run for it towards the archway entrance.

It’s too dark and too quiet. I know it’s mid-December and the students have left for Christmas, but surely there must be some still hanging on – and besides, where are the other weekend party guests?

Am I at the right place? Is this the right weekend?

God, how typical of me to get things so wrong!

I finally get to the halls of residence, and peer through the stained glass before pulling open the heavy double doors.

The old student café bar is just ahead, and as I walk towards it I’m amazed at the change.

It used to be a bare room with twenty or thirty plastic tables, and a makeshift bar in the corner selling cheap cider, beer and watery instant coffee.

But it’s been transformed, and now a long table stands in the middle of the room, decorated with flowers and flickering candles.

I walk slowly towards it, gazing around at the transformation.

Gold balloons fill the archway windows, matching streamers and banners glimmering on the walls.

I feel like I’m standing in a glamorous ballroom waiting for the music to start, and I turn around and around in the huge space.

I still love to dance, and as I turn I lose myself in the moment, my eyes closed.

Then I open them and look up to the ceiling: it’s scattered with stars, and ‘Happy Birthday Daisy!’ is written in glittering letters emblazoned across the navy-blue painted ‘sky’.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, tears fill my eyes, and I stop turning.

‘Maddie?’ I hear a woman’s voice in the echoey silence. It’s coming from the hallway, so I head for the door to see who’s there.

‘Lauren?’

We walk towards each other, and embrace awkwardly.

‘Where is everyone?’ she’s saying, shaking the rain off her umbrella, opening her Burberry trench coat.

‘No idea. You look well,’ I add, desperate for something to say.

‘You’re looking fabulous yourself,’ she exclaims. ‘Wow, that silk scarf is divine.’ She reaches out and lets it slip through her fingers. ‘It’s vintage Hermès silk – my grandmother had one just like it.’

‘Oh . . . I didn’t know.’

‘It must be worth a fortune. It’s Adolphe Mouron Cassandre.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Lauren can be a bit pretentious. Sometimes she’d just speak in French to annoy everyone.

‘He was a famous artist,’ she’s blathering on now. ‘Lots of graphic design and posters ... Came into his own in the fifties?’

I’d love to say ‘Oh, Adolphe – yeah, I love his work’, but I’ve never heard of him, as I’m sure she knows.

‘Where did you find this? It’s exquisite,’ she’s asking, with her face almost pushing into the pale-turquoise silk.

‘I’ve had it for years, no idea where I got it from,’ I say vaguely. It was Daisy’s, but I’m not telling her that. ‘The last time I saw you was on the telly. You were talking about your book,’ I say, to move on from the scarf.

‘That was a few years ago now.’ She smiles sadly.

‘You did so well, didn’t you? A bestseller, and a film ... I couldn’t believe it when I saw you walking up and down a red carpet with Brad and Angelina. I was like, “I know her !”’

I’m aware I’m probably gushing, but I need a friend and ally this weekend. Georgie will cling to Dan, and Alex is his own man; he’s also a bit flaky and, despite encouraging me to come, might not even turn up himself.

‘So there’s only us here?’ she says, without acknowledging my fawning remarks. Daisy said I used to irritate Lauren. Does she still find me annoying?

‘Yeah, only us so far.’

She’s looking around, then walks slowly into the old café bar, her high heels clacking on the stone floor.

‘Wow! It looks so different. They’ve certainly made the effort,’ she murmurs, as if to herself.

I follow her in, and notice for the first time that the table has place settings. But there are only four, and Lauren has clearly noticed this too.

‘It doesn’t make sense. Daisy had loads of friends at uni, she was really popular.

I would have expected this place to be full of people wanting to celebrate— pay their respects,’ she corrects herself.

‘I thought that was the idea of the podcast. What’s this all about? ’ She gestures towards the table.

I check the names on the place settings. ‘It’s just me, you, Dan and Georgie. There isn’t one for Alex.’ I knew it. I knew he wouldn’t come.

‘That’s so odd. Why only us?’

I take a breath. ‘I don’t know. Apparently The Killer Question is a podcast that tries to help wrongly convicted prisoners.’

Lauren is nodding absently as she takes in the room.

‘If they feel there’s been a miscarriage of justice and the wrong person has gone to prison, they basically try to right that wrong,’ I continue. ‘They help find evidence for an appeal, but at the same time they also try and find the killer.’

Her head shoots round. ‘What? So they’re still trying to say he didn’t do it?’ She’s shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Is that what this weekend is about? You don’t think they’re going to try and pin it on one of us, do you?’

‘How can they? We’re all innocent. That was proven when they put him in prison.’

She nods slowly. ‘David Montgomery was guilty.’

‘Exactly. I agree, it’s a bit much. He’s suffered enough. They need to accept the verdict and let him rest in peace.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there’s a lot of money in podcasting. It’s always about the money, Maddie. I mean, look around you: this room alone must have cost a fortune to dress.’ She points to the plates on the table. ‘Look, Villeroy it’s full of people like me escaping from all sorts of horrible stuff.

I was there for ten years, and I can’t say I was happy, but at least I felt hidden.

‘I don’t like this one bit, Lauren,’ I say, looking at her for reassurance.

Lauren was always the calm grown-up one who told us it would all be fine, and cleaned up the vomit after someone had drunk too much.

But she seems as unsure as I am, which isn’t the Lauren I knew.

Perhaps the intervening years have changed her?

‘I don’t like this either,’ she says. ‘I feel like we’re back in 2005, and not in a good way.’

‘There was nothing good about 2005.’

‘No – the only good thing that happened was when they jailed that monster. Until he was convicted, I felt like we were all under suspicion.’

‘We were.’

‘I hope this stupid podcast doesn’t start it all up again – the accusations, the trolling, the sheer abuse from strangers in the street.’

‘It was horrible,’ I reply. ‘Only someone who’s been through it knows how terrifying it is to have a stranger scream at you that you’re a killer.’

‘Yeah, I was terrified to leave the house. But after all this time ... I mean, the man’s dead. And he was guilty as hell . Montgomery was her lecturer, and she was threatening to tell his wife and the university. There’s the motive right there – an open-and-shut case.’

‘They can’t open it up again anyway ... It’s too late, isn’t it?’ I ask, falling back into my role of needy child to Lauren’s calming parent.

‘Who knows?’

‘David Montgomery was really creepy, wasn’t he?’ I say with a shudder.

‘Do you think so? I wouldn’t call him creepy; I always found him quite charming, and very attractive. He was my lecturer too – he taught Daisy and me creative writing. He was a brilliant teacher.’

‘I guess I find it hard to be objective about someone who murdered my friend.’

‘Yeah, me too, of course.’ Lauren seems to back down, remembering the crime he was accused of.

‘I just mean that at the time I found him quite attractive– but when I think of how he ...’ She stops for a dramatic pause.

‘How he bashed her head in with a hammer.’ She shivers.

‘The affable lecturer everyone loved was certainly hiding something very, very dark.’

‘Ugh, you can tell you’re a writer. The way you talk scares me.’

‘This place is scaring me,’ she says, looking up at the high ceiling, the ancient brick walls. ‘It was creepy at the best of times.’

‘Yeah, not exactly cosy, is it? But if these ancient old walls could talk, eh?’

‘Yeah – the car park is where the old gallows used to be.’ Lauren starts to smile.

‘Daisy said they hanged witches there, and buried them there too.’ She hugs herself protectively.

‘God, that’s just reminded me – if ever I was out late with Daisy, and we walked back this way, she’d say the ghosts of the people who were hanged were following us. She scared me half to death.’

I gaze out into the darkness through the big glass doors. She used to scare the hell out of me too.