‘Tea, coffee, hot chocolate?’ Violet asked. Receiving no answer, she repeated the question with an impatient ‘what do you want?’ in front of it this time.
‘Oh, sorry … er … hot chocolate, I think, please,’ replied Daisy.
Violet threw her a shrewd glance. ‘You seem to be in cloud cuckoo land. It’s a wonder you managed to wake up enough to answer the phone when it rang. What would you like to eat? I have a yearning for cheese on toast. What about you?’
‘Mmm … lovely,’ Daisy agreed and, anxious to be helpful, moved over to the stove and lit the grill. In a short time, they were seated each side of the kitchen table, companionably munching hot cheese on toast and sipping scalding chocolate. There was a rare feeling of companionship between them. ‘This takes me back. Do you remember, Vi, this was one of Mum’s favourite snacks when we were kids?’
Violet smiled. ‘She never lost her taste for it, either. If ever she was hungry, had missed a meal or, I suppose, was in need of comfort food, she would come into the kitchen and toast herself some cheese and make a big mug of hot chocolate.’ She spoke reminiscently and for once, it seemed, without any of the resentment that usually tinged her voice when she mentioned Ella.
‘What do you mean – “comfort food”?’ Daisy had not imagined her mother anything but perfectly content out here in Australia, away from the stresses of a war-torn Britain.
‘Oh, she had times when she felt – I don’t know – guilty, probably, because she was out here safe and secure and you and your children were in England. She read everything in the papers about shortages, bombing, etcetera.’ Violet glanced across the table at her sister then quickly down again at the food on her plate. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t suppose I should have said the things I did when you first arrived. I realize now that you didn’t push her off on me; she came of her own volition and truly intended, in fact wanted to go back to England. She was – as you said – trapped here by the war. It was a real shame she died when she did and never got back.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Daisy agreed, leaning slightly towards her sister. ‘I really appreciate what you just said, Vi, but there is just one other thing. I never really knew why she died. I mean, she hadn’t been sick or anything, had she? It was such a shock when we learned that she was dead – just like that. After all, she wasn’t old. Well, not really old, was she?’
‘Sixty-seven,’ Violet supplied. ‘Not old at all.’
She paused for so long that Daisy wondered if she were going to give her any more information willingly.
‘She dropped dead, right here in this kitchen.’ Violet glanced round as if expecting to see her mother lying on the floor and Daisy found her own eyes involuntarily doing the same. ‘It was a massive heart attack. Apparently, she had a heart condition. The doctor knew all about it. She knew that there was a chance it could happen any time, but she never mentioned it and made her doctor swear he wouldn’t either. I wish we had known. I would have made her take more care of herself. I felt so guilty afterwards.’
‘I can understand that, but if you didn’t know, you couldn’t blame yourself. I wish I had known too. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.’
‘I was angry too,’ Violet admitted. ‘Angry with her, I mean. I knew I hadn’t always been as nice as I should have been, or might have been, if I had known.’
‘You mean you were angry with her for not telling you? Well, she didn’t tell me either.’
‘Well, yes, angry because of that, but more because I had resented her and the reason was really nothing to do with her; it was because of you.’
‘Of me!’ Daisy was genuinely astonished. ‘But why?’
‘Because I knew you were always her favourite. I had known it, I think, ever since you were born, and I never really understood why. After all, she had me first, and it was you coming along that seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, if you know what I mean.’
Daisy shook her head. ‘Not really. How could I? I was only a baby.’
‘It was you who seemed to be the thing that finally broke up our parents’ marriage. I loved Dad as well as Mum and missed him when he … went. I wondered what I had done; I was sure it all my fault, but later on when I thought about things, I realized the break-up coincided with your birth.’
‘Oh, Vi, I’m so sorry….’ Daisy’s voice broke and she wondered how to tell her sister that the problem was nothing of her making but because she, Daisy, had a different father. The only person to blame, she supposed, was their mother. But while she was turning this over in her mind, the door burst open and the young people erupted into the room. They all looked very happy, were very noisy and not a little flushed.
‘Hi!’ Maureen exclaimed. ‘What’s this, then? A midnight feast. Didn’t you get anything to eat in Melbourne?’
The moment for heart to heart confidences was gone. Violet pushed herself up from the table, her lips in a tight line.
‘If you young people want anything to eat, you had better help yourselves. Daisy and I are off to bed – and yes, we did have plenty to eat in Melbourne, but we were both very tired. It was a big day so we had an early night, then the phone woke us and we decided we hadn’t had enough to eat so made ourselves a snack.’
‘Who rang up?’ Maureen asked idly. She was not really worried; anyone she cared about had been with her all evening. She reached for an apple and without waiting for an answer added, ‘No, I don’t want anything to eat. Hazel might, though. We have been round at Tim’s place, eating and drinking all night. Well, we have, but Hazel has been reading.’
‘Reading?’ Violet sounded bemused. Daisy looked at her daughter and from the expression on her face knew what was meant and guessed another clanger was about to be dropped.
‘Yeah, you know. Reading tarot cards, like Grandma Ella used to do. She said that’s where she got her cards. I wish she had given me a deck, but I suppose you were always so hung up on them, she didn’t dare.’ Maureen glanced at her mother; the expression on her face warned her not to enlarge on the subject. ‘I’m off to bed. Like you said, Mum, it is late.’
Hazel raised her eyes slowly to her aunt’s face with a swift sidelong glance at her mother as she did so. ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Violet, but it was only light-hearted fun, really.’
This excuse fell to the ground like a lead balloon. Violet gave a most inelegant snort, threw Daisy a scorching look and remarked sourly, ‘If your mother doesn’t mind, then who am I to care.’ In the doorway, she half turned to throw a grudging, ‘Goodnight,’ over her shoulder.
Left alone with her daughter, Daisy sighed. ‘It would seem your aunt is not kindly disposed to the tarot cards.’
‘Maureen knows that and should have kept her mouth shut,’ Hazel snapped back. ‘She would never have mentioned it if she hadn’t been drinking more than her fair share of half a dozen bottles of red wine a grateful client had given Tim. She took his invitation to us to help him drink them very literally.’
‘“Us” being?’
‘Oh, me and Tim and a friend of his, Derek something or other.’ By this time, Hazel too had reached the door and only a little less casually than her aunt, she yawned and said, ‘Goodnight, Mum. I’m bushed.’
As Daisy mechanically cleared away the evidence of the midnight feast she and Violet had enjoyed, she reflected on the disturbing fact that Hazel was once more in trouble over those wretched cards her mother had given her. She cursed the interruption for occurring just when she and Vi were reaching some sort of an understanding and finally was cast down by the memory of Hazel’s casual ‘me and Tim’. She clattered the dishes into the sink and returned to bed with James’s phone call relegated to the back of her mind.
Thoughts of him soon made their way to the surface, however, as she lay in bed, sleepless. She blamed the cheese on toast for her wakeful state and tried not to worry about Hazel. From what she could gather, Hazel was getting a deal too friendly with Tim Sanders, but Daisy shirked the idea of explaining why she didn’t want her to get too deeply involved with him. He was such a very nice young man that she knew it would be hard to drag up any reason other than the truth to effect a cooling in Hazel’s relationship with him.
Daisy was finally dropping off to sleep, in fact, was in that state of relaxation induced on the edge of sleep, almost a meditative mood, when she experienced what psychologists call an ‘ah-ha’ moment. Of course, she knew the solution. Actually, she had already voiced it when she was talking to James. How, in God’s name could she be so stupid as to lie awake worrying over a problem she had already solved? With a sigh, she finally dropped into a deep sleep.