Alone in her bedroom, Daisy sat down heavily on the bed and drew the letter out of her pocket. Her fingers trembled slightly as she tore the envelope open. She was not sure it was because receiving a message from the dead was slightly unnerving, or because she was afraid of what the letter might contain. She was totally unprepared for the contents:
My dearest daughter,
I have always tried so hard not to make it obvious that you always held a special place in my heart. I have wanted so many times to enlighten you about your parentage, but the time never seemed right. I have concluded that the only right time is now – when I am gone. What you do, or do not do with this information is your affair; I know I can rely on you not to cause pain to anyone else. I am not telling you because I expect you to DO anything, but because I feel you have a right to know. Your sister Violet is in reality your half-sister. Your father was my very dear friend Edwin Sanders who you knew as a child as ‘Uncle Edwin’.
I made a terrible mistake when I married William Weston. It took me a long time to accept the fact that his charm was skin deep and that his main interest in me was to persuade my father to settle an income on him that would make him comfortable for the rest of his life. He underestimated my father’s astuteness, so we ended up in Australia, far from rich. I was a foolish and ignorant girl blinded by romantic notions and the prospect of adventure. It was totally self-centered of me to break my engagement to Walter who was, then and always, a good man. Fate, God, what you will, was extraordinarily kind to me in giving me a second chance with him.
You are bound to ask why Edwin and I did not marry. Quite simply because he already had a wife. I did not know this when I fell in love with him, but I did when I conceived you. He was a good man; kind, gentle and clever, so please do not judge him harshly. He had ‘problems’ in his marriage, as his wife was a semi-invalid. I had problems in mine. When circumstances threw us together, the outcome was predictable, if not inevitable.
Forgive me. I should probably have told you long ago. The truth is, I did not want you to think badly of me.
Wherever I am, I shall always love you.
Daisy’s first reaction was anger, then disbelief. How could her mother, always so upright, so straight, so insistent on honesty, have lived a lie of this magnitude all these years? Maybe it wasn’t true and she had been deranged when she wrote this. But no, her mother had kept her wits very much about her until the day she died; Violet had told her that. Then surprisingly, a flicker of pleasure touched her. She remembered Edwin Sanders as everything her mother had said he was. Physically, her biological parents were similar; tall, slim and fair, just as both she and Hazel were. Maybe this explained her mother’s particular attachment to Hazel. She wondered if she should show this letter to her. After all, Edwin was her grandfather. It did not occur to her to share the information with Giles; he was so very much a Dobbs in looks and personality. He would either be furious or dismiss the information out of hand – or both.
After a great deal of thought, Daisy decided that it would serve no helpful purpose to tell anyone. When Hazel asked about the letter, as of course she would, she would tell a white lie and say that her mother was saying goodbye in the event of being unable to say it face-to-face. Unable to throw away this last communication from her mother, Daisy returned it to the secret drawer, confident that no one would look there again.
Over the next few days, Daisy found herself looking at her daughter, searching for resemblances to Edwin. Later in her bedroom, she peered in the mirror, looking for the same thing in herself. Maybe her memory of him was growing dim, but all she could see was a woman who reminded herself of her own mother.
She did not sleep well that first night and in the early hours of the morning got up to read her mother’s letter once more. Eventually, on the thought ‘least said, soonest mended’, she returned the letter to its hiding place once more and decided to ignore it. She could see no pressing need to reveal its contents to anyone, or to dwell on it herself.
Daisy’s interview with the forbidding Miss Andersen did not go well. The first thing she noticed when she answered the brisk, ‘Enter!’ and stepped into the principal’s office were the offending cards on the desk. As she sat down, Miss Andersen tapped them with a forefinger and, curling her lip slightly as if there were a very bad smell under her nose, asked, ‘Were you aware, Mrs Dobbs, that your daughter had these in her possession?’ Daisy shook her head. ‘Now you are aware, do you know where she obtained them?’
‘I think my mother gave them to her,’ Daisy stammered, twisting her hands in her lap. Immediately, she wished the words unsaid when she saw the look of horror on the other woman’s face. ‘I – I don’t really know …’ she stammered, ‘but that is what Hazel told me when I asked her.’
‘Your mother!’ The principal could not have sounded more scandalized if Daisy had said her daughter had stolen them. ‘I can hardly believe that, Mrs Dobbs. You are aware, I suppose, what these are?’
‘Yes, they are tarot cards.’
‘Tarot cards!’ Miss Andersen spat the words out. ‘Once known as “the Devil’s picture book”. They are used for fortune-telling, a thoroughly evil pastime, and that, Mrs Dobbs, is what your daughter was doing with them.’
Daisy mumbled a barely audible assent; truly she did not know what to say. But feeling that both her daughter and her mother needed defending, she took a deep breath, locked her fingers together and tried to ignore her thumping heart as she answered as calmly as she could. ‘I do not think Hazel meant any harm. It was just a little fun with her friends. If you will give me the cards, I will see that she does not bring them to school again.’
‘Indeed she will not, Mrs Dobbs. Quite frankly, I am appalled by your laissez-faire attitude to this, but no doubt if the cards originally belonged to the child’s grandmother – your mother, I presume – it is a degenerate pastime embedded in the family. I understand this “sort of thing” tends to be handed down from mother to daughter.’
Daisy’s tolerance was wearing thin. She rose abruptly to her feet and held out a somewhat shaky hand. ‘The cards, please, Miss Andersen. I have given you my word that my daughter will not bring them to school again.’
‘Indeed she will not, Mrs Dobbs.’ The principal repeated, tight-lipped. She rose to her feet, pointed to the deck of cards and said in an icy voice, ‘Take them by all means, and take your daughter home as well.’
Daisy stared blankly for a minute. ‘Do you mean … are you telling me that you are expelling my daughter?’ she gasped in disbelief, ‘for playing cards?’
‘Not ordinary cards, Mrs Dobbs, tarot cards, and telling fortunes for material gain is hardly playing.’ She pressed a buzzer on her desk and a communicating door to the next room opened so swiftly that Daisy felt sure the mousy little woman who almost fell into the room must have had her ear to it. Daisy knew her as the principal’s secretary and general dogsbody.
‘Kindly fetch Hazel Dobbs from form five and tell her to pack her belongings as quickly as possible then go down to the front hall where her mother will be waiting for her.’
Miss Smith threw an anguished glance at Daisy and fled.
‘I will say good day to you, Mrs Dobbs. Please wait for your daughter in the front lobby. In the circumstances, I will excuse a term’s notice, but the fees paid for this term will not be refunded. Take these with you, please.’
Daisy had forgotten the prime cause of this interview, but now she reached out and picked up the deck of cards to which Miss Andersen was pointing; apparently she was incapable of contaminating herself by touching them. Without another word, she turned and left the room.
‘Well, Mum,’ Daisy murmured under her breath as she sat on a hard, uncomfortable chair in the cheerless lobby, ‘you amaze me. I have learned more about you in the last couple of days than in my whole lifetime. It seems I never really knew you.’
Daisy got up without speaking when Hazel appeared, humping a couple of bulging bags. Outside, when they had stowed them in the back of the car, she said in a tight voice. ‘You have everything, I hope, because we are certainly not coming back here.’
‘I hope so. Have you got my cards, Mum?’
‘I have,’ Daisy assured her as they settled into their seats. ‘I am not sure which Miss Andersen was most anxious to be rid of – you or the cards.’
Hazel shot her a sidelong glance but did not say anything. Daisy appeared preoccupied with the road ahead and they rode in silence for a while.
‘The problem now, Hazel, is what do we do with you?’
Hazel bridled at the implication that she was a problem to be dealt with. She bit back the inflammatory retorts that buzzed in her brain and remained silent. Given time, she was sure her mother would redirect her fury to the real villain in this scenario – Miss Andersen.
They travelled in silence and her mother was turning the car in at the drive gate when she asked, ‘What do you think we should do?’
‘We-e-ll … I don’t want to go back to school. Oh, I know I can’t go back to that school, but I don’t want to go to any school.’
‘But you are not quite sixteen,’ Daisy pointed out as she drew the car to a halt. ‘Come on, let’s discuss it over some lunch. I feel the need of sustenance after confronting that … woman.’
Hazel smiled inwardly, sure that her mother had been about to refer to the headmistress in much stronger terms. She felt her normal optimism bubbling up. Mum was OK, really. The grin spread to her lips as she hauled her bags out of the car.
‘Now, suppose you tell me what you think you should do next?’ Daisy asked later over cheese and tomato sandwiches and coffee.
Hazel chewed thoughtfully. ‘Do you want to know what I think I should do, or what I really want to do?’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘Of course there is, Mum. If I tell you what I think I should do then I will just be saying what you want me to say, but if I tell you what I really want to do then you will probably blow your top.’
‘I will?’ Daisy had never seen herself as the sort of person who ever ‘blew her top’. On the contrary, she was a very restrained person, or so she thought, who hardly ever got carried away in any direction. For the briefest of moments, the memory of James asking her to go to New Zealand with him surfaced from wherever it was she thought she had buried it. Perhaps always being so careful to do the right thing was not the virtue she believed. She sighed. ‘Tell me what you want to do with your life and I will do my very best to listen carefully and evaluate what you say.’
Hazel chewed her lip, frowned and seemed to be wrestling with her thoughts. ‘If you really want to know, I just want to write books,’ she finally blurted out.
‘Write books!’ Daisy exclaimed. ‘But, shouldn’t you stay at school for that?’
‘You promised to listen,’ her daughter reproached.
‘I am sorry. It’s just that … well …’ Daisy shrugged, realizing that she was about to repeat herself. She had a feeling that someone with aspirations to be an author should stay at school and work for university entrance, a college degree. She bit her tongue to keep these thoughts to herself.
‘Mum, I have been writing since I could wield a pencil,’ Hazel pointed out. ‘Remember all those stories and poems and things I wrote for you when I was little?’ Daisy nodded. ‘Well, I never stopped writing, I just stopped showing you most of the stuff.’
‘Why? Why did you do that?’
‘Oh, I guess I got critical of myself. Didn’t want to bore you. But I never stopped writing. I have always kept a diary, and until she died, I wrote to grandma regularly. My diary wasn’t just the “went to the dentist today” sort either; it was a journal. I wrote about my thoughts and feelings as well as the things that happened. I hate school, always have, and I don’t think I would like college much better – just more of the same, I suspect. The only university I want to go to is the university of life.’ She had heard that phrase somewhere and stored it away to use when applicable. It resonated with her inner feelings.
Daisy sighed. ‘Yes, but … you could go to the technical college,’ she suggested hopefully. ‘No…?’ she added when Hazel merely shook her head at the suggestion.
‘Mum, have you heard what I am trying to say? I don’t want anything to do with any sort of school system anymore. I just want to learn about life, and then I will have something to write about.’
‘And have you any suggestions for the course you will take in “the university of life”?’
‘Well, I did have an idea, but I don’t know whether you will agree to it. In fact, you probably won’t, even if Auntie Violet—’
‘What on earth has Violet got to do with this?’
‘I want … well, I thought it would be interesting – educational … a really great experience if I could go out to Australia and stay with her.’
‘I agree, it would. But I think you are too young to go so far at the moment.’
Daisy wondered how long Hazel had been incubating this idea. They stared at one another, neither one willing to back down. Finally, Daisy got up and began clearing the table. ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ she said aloud, wondering what acceptable diversion she could drag up. Wishing with all her heart she had her mother, or even Richard, still around to discuss it with.
At that moment, Giles erupted into the room. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Hazel.
‘What are you doing here?’ he wanted to know. ‘You both look very solemn. Have you finished lunch?’ he interjected as he looked at the table. ‘Not been expelled, have you?’ he threw over his shoulder as he collected food for himself.
‘Sorry about lunch,’ Daisy murmured guiltily. ‘I thought you were out for the day.’
Her apologetic mutterings were almost drowned by Hazel’s defiant reply.
‘Yes, I have been expelled. Are you satisfied, Mister Perfect?’
Giles gaped at her. Even though he knew her to be much more of a rebel than he was himself, he had not really expected this. ‘Gee, what did you do?’
‘Nothing. I didn’t really do anything. I just got caught with grandma’s tarot cards.’
‘I suppose you were trying to tell fortunes, or something daft like that.’
‘Yes, that is exactly what happened.’ Daisy shrugged to express her disbelief and helplessness. ‘I don’t know what to do with her.’
‘Send her to another school, of course.’ He reached out for the cheese. ‘I can’t believe that stupid Andersen woman could really take them seriously,’ he chortled. ‘Maybe someone once predicted a handsome husband for her and he never turned up.’
Daisy smiled, thinking this might well be true, but Hazel scowled ferociously. ‘I am not, not going to another school,’ she stamped her foot petulantly and glared at her brother, ‘so don’t suggest it.’
‘OK, OK, don’t. Stay home and learn to be a good wife to some unlucky man.’
Daisy could see a sibling clash looming darkly on the horizon. ‘She wants to go and stay with Aunt Violet in Australia.’
Giles rubbed his hands together and beamed facetiously. ‘Great, then we will have some peace.’
Hazel leapt at him in fury, threatening to pull his hair out.
Daisy’s patience was wearing very thin; it had been an extremely trying morning. ‘Just shut up, Giles, if you can’t say something pleasant and constructive. I think she is too young to go to the other side of the world on her own.’
‘Go with her, then.’
‘And leave you?’
Giles pondered this. While in some ways it might be fine if they both went, he knew that it would be pretty difficult for him to manage without his mother for the next year or so.
‘Why don’t you enrol on a secretarial course and do that for a year? It would be a great help to you later on if you really want to write books, and if you did that, you would probably be able to get a job in Australia if …’ he held up his hands, ‘OK, OK, when you go.’
Daisy was surprised, and a little hurt, that Hazel had apparently confided her literary aspirations to Giles and not to her, but what he suggested made good sense and a glance at Hazel told her that she was prepared to consider this.