Daisy missed Luca so much that sometimes the ache in her heart was intolerable. She thought of him every morning on waking and every evening on going to bed. She missed his shaggy head on the pillow next to hers and the sound of him breathing deeply as he slept. She missed his chaos, the way he never tidied up after himself, the way he left books and magazines and papers all over the furniture so there was barely any space to sit down. She even missed the smell of his cigarettes, which he had never even tried to give up in spite of her endless nagging. She thought of him over the Christmas period and wondered whether he was missing her too. Whether he was even thinking of her. Regretting perhaps that he had asked her, ‘Isn’t my love enough for you?’ Regretting perhaps that he had not understood that his love couldn’t possibly be enough for a woman who yearned for a child. Motherhood was not an outlandish demand and yet he had accused her of being selfish. The truth was they were both selfish and neither was willing to back down. Luca had never wanted to get married, either. He had made that perfectly clear when they had first met. His own parents had divorced and his childhood had been very unhappy. He did not want that for himself and he did not want to bring a child into the world. He didn’t want to be committed in that way. Marriage and children, he had told her, would pin him down and make him less, not more. Daisy was angry with herself for not having faced sooner what she had known deep down inside for a long time. Why had she wasted years hoping that they would, in the end, settle down and have a family like everyone else? Why had her romantic heart overruled her head, which knew very well how things really were?
And her romantic heart yearned for him still with every injured fibre of it. Instead of focusing on the arguments, of which there were many for Luca was a headstrong, passionate character who believed that he was always in the right and, by virtue of his sex, should have the final say, she recalled the laughter. The running jokes, the affectionate teasing, the fun. She chose to overlook his possessiveness – the way he grew angry if she innocently flirted with other men – even though he flirted with every woman who caught his eye. She recalled only the love.
The idea of loving again was terrifying. She wasn’t sure she’d ever feel for another man the way she felt for Luca. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to love like that again. She’d spent all her energy on him and he’d left her feeling bruised and bleeding and spent. Her body was numb too. She couldn’t imagine making love to somebody else. Being held by another man’s arms, kissed by another man’s lips; she just couldn’t envisage ‘another man’ at all. Had she made a mistake in leaving Luca? Would she end up an old spinster with no one to love her? Might she never have children and wish she’d found enough fulfilment in loving Luca alone? She didn’t know the answers, but she knew she had to try to move on.
The day after Christmas Taran texted to tell her that no one had choked on the coins in the Christmas pudding – because there hadn’t been any. There had, however, been a little plastic Santa Claus and five plastic elves, in each pudding, which he had thought hilarious. Daisy gasped with embarrassment, but she couldn’t help laughing too. She decided not to tell her mother, because she’d be horrified. Lady Sherwood might not have found it as amusing as her son. Plastic Santa Clauses and elves were incredibly tacky. There followed a little banter, witty texts going back and forth, and then Taran invited her for a drink in the pub. She declined, however, claiming that she was busy with her family. The texts stopped after that. Daisy sensed he was offended, but she didn’t feel bad; it was better to be honest and not mislead him.
After New Year she threw herself into her work. She tied her unruly hair into a high ponytail, rolled up the sleeves of one of her father’s old shirts and put on the playlist she had made especially. She decided to try the pastels her father had given her for Christmas. She hadn’t used that medium in a long time, but no sooner had she begun to draw than she discovered how smooth and easy they were to apply. It wasn’t long before she realized, to her intense satisfaction, that she had succeeded in capturing Bernie’s spirit. It shone through the eyes. There was life in them that couldn’t be found in photographs. Something beyond what the camera could capture. He stared out at her, as if he were really looking at her, and seeing her, and when she moved, his tender gaze followed her. She had pinned the photographs to the top of the easel, but he lived more vividly in her memory, not just in the way he looked but in his nature. She had got to know the very essence of him, and it was this which she had transferred onto the grey paper most beautifully. She stood back and admired her work. She had done it, she had really done it. She had brought Bernie to life in pastels. After the eyes, the rest was easy and swift.
Mary was thrilled. ‘My goodness, you can draw, can’t you?’ she exclaimed when Daisy invited her round to see it. She was astonished that Daisy was so talented, and delighted that she had got a beautiful portrait of her beloved dog, for free.
Dennis and Marigold were impressed as well. ‘I always knew you were an artist,’ said Dennis, eyes gleaming with pride.
‘I’m so pleased you’re giving it a go,’ said Marigold. ‘The important thing is to spend your life doing something you love, that’s what Grandad would say.’
Nan pursed her lips. ‘It’s all very well doing something you love,’ she said. ‘But you can’t live off air, Daisy. Few are lucky enough to do something they love and bring home the bacon. Grandad would have been happy anywhere, that’s just the way he was. He made the best of everything. A wonderful attitude to have. Take a leaf out of his book and you’ll discover that doing a proper job isn’t the end of the world.’
Daisy took the picture to the framer’s in town because she didn’t want the wrong frame to cheapen it. She chose an expensive one, but it was worth it. The portrait looked stunning. Other people would see it and perhaps commission her to draw their animals. She wondered how much she should charge. Being an amateur, she knew she couldn’t ask for more than a few hundred pounds at the most.
Mary was so happy with the picture that she allowed Daisy to hang it in the village hall so that everyone could admire it. Daisy knew one person who would not be admiring it! However, she hadn’t anticipated it being seen by Lady Sherwood. As chairwoman of the Parish Council, Lady Sherwood chaired a monthly meeting there, and it was during the January meeting, while everyone helped themselves to tea and coffee, that she spotted it hanging on the wall above the piano.
‘What a lovely painting,’ she said, getting up with her teacup and saucer to take a closer look.
‘It’s Mary Hanson’s dog, Bernie,’ Julia Cobbold told her, keen to be helpful. ‘And it’s oil pastels, I believe, not paint.’
‘It’s very good. Who did it?’
‘Daisy Fane.’
‘Marigold’s daughter?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. She’s been living in Italy, but now she’s back. A love affair that turned sour, I believe. I imagine she must be very sad. She’s a wonderful artist, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, what a surprise. She really is awfully good.’ Lady Sherwood thought a while, her eyebrows knitted, a look of concentration on her face. ‘I wonder whether she’d draw my dogs,’ she said at last.
‘I’m sure she would,’ Julia replied, thinking that, if Daisy Fane was good enough for Lady Sherwood, she might commission her to draw her terrier.
Marigold was in the sitting room at the long table which was set up especially for her jigsaw puzzles. It was too big for the cramped room now that Daisy had put her easel in front of the other window, and Nan was sure to complain that there was nowhere to go for some peace, except her bedroom, but there simply wasn’t another corner of the house large enough to accommodate a jigsaw puzzle of one hundred pieces.
It was a Sunday morning and unusually quiet. Marigold had been for her morning walk and Dennis had taken Nan to church. Suze was spending the weekend with Batty at his parents’ house and Daisy had been invited up to the Sherwoods’ farm to meet their dogs, whom Lady Sherwood wanted Daisy to draw. It was a crisp winter day. The sky was as pale as watercolour and the sun low, shining through the latticework of branches silhouetted prettily against it. Marigold was momentarily distracted by the birds who settled into her garden to feed. Blackbirds and thrushes mostly, and the cheerful little robin who wasn’t at all intimidated by the bigger birds. She smiled as she watched them, knowing that she could spend all day here at the window, absorbed in their coming and going, and not notice the passing of time.
After a while she turned her attention to the jigsaw. She was good at puzzles and the thought of the challenge ahead gave her a frisson of pleasure. She began by drawing out the straight-sided pieces. This took some time. She had to put on her glasses to really study the colours and pictures and try to match them. She concentrated hard, aware that she was exercising her brain. Certain that, with every piece she connected to another, she was somehow reinforcing the connections there, staving off its corrosion, defying time. She felt triumphant as little by little the outside edge of the picture took shape. The top was sky, the bottom snow. It was surely a winter scene. Dennis knew how much snow enthralled her, and she was delighted now by the thought of her husband taking such trouble with her present.
It wasn’t long before she felt thirsty. She went into the kitchen and boiled the kettle. It was cold outside, which made a cup of tea all the more rewarding. The first sip was always the best. She closed her eyes a moment and savoured it. Then she sat at the table, put on her specs and began to read the newspapers.
Dennis and Nan brought in a gust of chilly wind as they opened the front door and stepped into the hall. It raced down the corridor and into the kitchen where Marigold was reading the papers, making her shiver. ‘It’s bitter out there,’ said Nan, bustling into the kitchen. ‘I’m not going out again today. I don’t want to catch a cold, not at my age. It soon turns to pneumonia, you know. My dear friend Teddy Hope died of pneumonia simply because he insisted on popping to the corner shop in cold weather to buy cigarettes.’
‘It might have had something to do with the cigarettes, Nan,’ said Dennis.
Marigold looked up from the papers. ‘How’s that puzzle going?’ Dennis asked.
She frowned. The puzzle! She’d totally forgotten she’d been doing it. She pictured herself coming in from the sitting room to make tea and then sitting down at the table to read the newspapers. ‘I’ve started,’ she said, masking her concern with a smile. ‘It’s a winter scene,’ she added, just to reassure herself that she remembered. ‘I got distracted by the papers.’ Easy to do. Everyone got distracted, didn’t they? It didn’t mean anything.
Daisy followed Lady Sherwood into the house. Lady Sherwood was wearing a pair of muted green moleskin trousers and a Fair Isle sweater with the white collar of her shirt sticking up stiffly at her neck. She looked very together, exuding an air of serenity, as if she was never hassled or rushed but glided through life at an even pace. The dogs scampered around Daisy’s legs, tails wagging with the excitement of having a visitor, and Lady Sherwood spoke to them in a calm and patient voice, which they ignored. ‘Now let’s not make a fuss. Daisy’s not the first visitor who’s come to the house, is she? So let’s be polite and not let ourselves down, shall we?’
‘They’re beautiful dogs,’ said Daisy.
‘They are, aren’t they,’ Lady Sherwood agreed. ‘Though Mordy is a terror, running off to the village at every opportunity. He’s the Labrador. Very randy, I’m afraid.’
Daisy laughed. She didn’t think elegant women like Lady Sherwood made remarks like that.
The drawing room was big and square with tall windows and sumptuous heavy curtains that framed them from the ceiling to the floor. There were paintings on faded silk walls and the fabric on the sofas and chairs was faded too, from the sunshine that flooded into the room, no doubt, and age. It looked like a room that hadn’t been decorated all at once, but layered over the years with knick-knacks, photographs in frames, coffee table books and Persian rugs. There was a baby grand piano in the corner, its top cluttered with family photographs, and a tasselled lamp that glowed warmly. Lady Sherwood was clearly a woman of good taste, but also frugality, it seemed, for there was nothing precious or contrived about the room and everything looked a little shabby. A fire glowed hospitably in the grate. Lady Sherwood offered Daisy a chair.
‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ she said, sitting on the sofa opposite. The dogs settled down around her, the Labrador making himself comfortable on the stool in the middle of the room as if it had been put there especially for him. ‘I was very impressed with the drawing you did of Mary’s dog. You captured him beautifully,’ she said. ‘I’d love you to draw mine. All three of them. Can you do that, do you think?’
Daisy noticed that Lady Sherwood had the same green eyes as her son. They were a rare shade of bluey-green and very expressive. ‘I’d love to draw them in pastels,’ she said. ‘As I did with Bernie.’
‘Ah, pastels, was it? Very effective.’
‘Thank you. I like to work with pastels. I start with charcoal and then move on to coloured chalks.’
‘Well, whatever it is you do, you do it extremely well. How do we proceed?’
‘I take photographs of the dogs and spend time with them, so I can get to know them. I need to get a good sense of their personalities. They’re all so individual and I want their characters to shine out of the paper.’
Lady Sherwood smiled then, a wide and girlish smile. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. They really are very individual. Mordy is mischievous, although he’s now eleven years old, Archie is a little shy, and Bendico, who’s Archie’s brother, is very strong and determined and a bit overenthusiastic. I’d love you to get to know them. I know they’d love that too.’ She patted one of the spaniels at her feet. ‘Won’t you, Archie? You’ll love to get to know Daisy. They’ll do anything for attention,’ she added with a grin.
Daisy noticed how Lady Sherwood became softer and less formidable as she talked about her dogs, so she decided to ask her more questions. Lady Sherwood got up and took a big album down from a glass-fronted bookcase. ‘You must see them as puppies,’ she enthused. ‘They were incredibly sweet. Come and sit beside me, then we can look at them together.’
Daisy did as she was told and Lady Sherwood laid the album across their knees and proceeded to make her way through it, page by page. There were lots of photographs of dogs, and of a younger Taran too. ‘You know my son, don’t you?’ said Lady Sherwood.
‘Not really. We were at school together when we were little, but I only met him properly this Christmas.’
‘He lives in Toronto now. You see, I’m from there so it’s logical that he should feel a connection with the place. I still have family there and he’s close to his cousins. I think he finds England very dull.’ She gave a little shake of the head. ‘He hasn’t really given it a chance. That’s the trouble. Still, as long as he’s happy, I suppose. There! Isn’t that a delicious photograph of Mordy?’ She lingered on it for a long time. ‘What a sweet puppy he was!’ she said quietly and Daisy wondered whether the dogs had filled Taran’s place somehow.
They were just finishing the second album when Sir Owen walked in. His face was ruddy as if he spent most of his time outdoors, or drinking port, and his stomach was a little round beneath his orange sweater. ‘Ah, Daisy,’ he said, smiling genially.
Lady Sherwood lifted the book off her knee so that Daisy could stand up and shake his hand. ‘Is Celia boring you with photographs of the dogs?’
Lady Sherwood smiled indulgently.
‘Not boring me, Sir Owen,’ said Daisy. ‘They’re lovely photographs. And they’re lovely dogs. I’m looking forward to drawing them.’
He swept his eyes around the room. ‘We’ll have to find somewhere suitable to hang it.’
‘Won’t it be splendid to have a portrait of the dogs,’ said Lady Sherwood.
Sir Owen made a face. ‘She never wanted to have Taran painted, or me, but the dogs. Well, that’s another matter.’
‘Taran would never have sat still and besides, he never did anything we wanted him to. And you don’t have the time or the patience, Owen.’
‘I haven’t painted people for a long time,’ said Daisy.
‘Just as well,’ said Sir Owen. ‘I’m not certain I’d want a portrait of my son following me around the room with his eyes full of rebuke! Can I get you something to drink?’
‘No, thank you. I think I’d better be getting home. Mum will be cooking lunch and I’d like to help her.’
Lady Sherwood looked at her and her face softened. ‘You are good,’ she said in a voice full of wonder.
‘I’m not sure I do enough, actually. I’ve just come home from six years in Italy and all I’ve done is take over the sitting room with my easel.’
‘You need a studio,’ said Sir Owen.
‘One day, when I’ve saved enough money, perhaps I’ll rent somewhere.’
‘Speaking of money,’ said Lady Sherwood. ‘I haven’t asked you how much you charge.’
Daisy had dreaded this question. She hated talking about money. It was awkward and she really wasn’t able to quantify her value. ‘Well, for three dogs, I’d ask for five hundred.’
‘Grand?’ said Lady Sherwood, going a little red.
‘No, pounds,’ Daisy corrected her.
Lady Sherwood looked surprised. Daisy wasn’t sure if she’d asked for too much. She held her breath. Lady Sherwood looked at her husband. Sir Owen hesitated a second. Then he smiled and gave a nod.
‘Done. And if you need a studio we’d be very happy to lend you the barn.’
‘Yes, very happy,’ Lady Sherwood agreed. ‘I’ll show it to you when you come and play with the dogs.’
‘May I come tomorrow?’
‘Of course. I’ll be here and if I’m not, my housekeeper will look after you. She’s called Sylvia.’
‘You have a beautiful home,’ said Daisy, patting the dogs who got up as they made to leave the room.
‘Thank you,’ said Lady Sherwood, pleased. ‘It’s a bit of a mismatch, but it seems to work.’
‘Do you play the piano?’ Daisy asked as she walked past it.
‘I used to. I don’t now. It’s been too long. Taran did when he was young. He was quite good, but I don’t think he’s played in years, either.’
‘Waste of a good piano,’ grumbled Sir Owen. ‘It takes up a lot of room there, doing nothing.’
‘I think it looks pretty,’ said Daisy.
‘You don’t play, do you?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Sadly not.’
‘Then it will continue to be a useless but pretty ornament.’
The dogs followed Daisy into the driveway. Sir Owen and Lady Sherwood stood on the doorstep and waved her off, calling back the dogs as they revved up to follow her. Daisy glanced at them in the rear-view mirror and thought how nice they were and how welcome they had made her feel.
She hadn’t expected that. She hoped she hadn’t asked for too much money.
‘Five hundred pounds?’ Sir Owen exclaimed to his wife.
‘I know, ridiculous,’ she agreed.
‘She’ll charge five times that much when she realizes how good she is.’
‘I suppose she will. Isn’t it lucky then that we’ve discovered her before she becomes famous.’
Sir Owen laughed. ‘Very lucky.’ He walked back into the house and closed the door behind them. ‘It was the least we could do to offer her the barn.’
‘No point that being pretty but useless as well,’ said Lady Sherwood.
‘Quite, and Taran didn’t want it.’
‘Sadly not, after all the trouble I took to decorate it. It’ll be nice to have someone making use of it. Beautiful big room, lots of light, perfect for an artist, and she can get to know the dogs as she draws.’ She wandered into the kitchen to prepare lunch. ‘Nice girl. She really liked the dogs. And they liked her. I’m very excited about this, darling.’
Sir Owen poured himself a large glass of red wine and sat down at the kitchen table. Lady Sherwood took some smoked salmon and new potatoes out of the fridge. ‘I have a good feeling about her,’ she added. ‘I don’t know why, but she’s a breath of fresh air and that’s just what this house needs.’ Sir Owen wasn’t listening. He was reading the Sunday papers. Lady Sherwood envisaged Daisy in the barn, drawing, and herself popping in to check on her and chat, because Daisy was quite chatty. The thought warmed her. She’d been lonely in this big old house on her own while Owen was out on the farm, or more typically playing racquet sports with his friends. A lovely presence in the barn was just what she needed.