Page 34 of Kiss Me Like You Mean It

For a moment – with the sunshine and the pancakes and the pyjamas – I can almost pretend that I belong, here in this house, here in this family.

‘Why do you call Lee “Daisy”?’ Phoebe asks her dad, interrupting my daydreams.

Nico is lifting his coffee cup to his lips and he hesitates. ‘It’s been so long I don’t even remember,’ he says, but his eyes meet mine and I know that he does remember, he just doesn’t know if I want to talk about it.

‘It was the very first time I met your dad,’ I say, picking up the bottle of maple syrup and drowning my pancakes in it, hoping it might cover the awful taste. ‘I was five and he was twelve and he’d just moved into the house next door to ours. My mum and dad were having a… disagreement,’ I continue diplomatically. My parents’ volatile relationship was not easy to live with and this particular ‘disagreement’ featured a soundtrack of screaming, crying and smashing porcelain as my mum threw an entire set of Wedgwood china at my dad’s head. I wish I could say it had been out of the ordinary, but the truth is it was pretty much a weekly occurrence.

‘I was by myself, hiding out in the back garden, waiting for them to… finish. And then this boy suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Like magic.’ I smile.

Nico takes up the story. ‘I found a gap in the fence. And there was this little girl sitting in the middle of the lawn by herself.’ He looks at me and a frown passes over his face at the memory.

‘He sat on the grass with me and showed me how to make a daisy chain,’ I cut in, taking a sip of my coffee. ‘He made me a crown.’ I don’t say that I still have it, pressed between the pages of an old book, faded and fragile. A reminder of that boy with the wide smile and the kind eyes who had spoken gently, and made me laugh until the shouting inside stopped and the world got quiet again.

‘Then he disappeared, back into his own garden and I didn’t see him again for almost a week. I thought I’d made him up, like an imaginary friend.’

Nico chuckles. ‘You never told me that.’

I nod. ‘Oh, yeah. I had a few of them back then. You fitted in great.’

‘I’ve never had an imaginary friend,’ Phoebe looks put out.

‘Probably because you have plenty of real ones,’ I say lightly. ‘I bet you and Maya have been best friends for a long time.’

‘Since I was a baby,’ Phoebe agrees.

‘There you go then. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, so I suppose I invented them.’ It’s only as I say it aloud that I realise quite how pathetic that sounds.

‘Why didn’t you have a lot of friends?’ Phoebe asks, and the question is blunt and careless, as if it’s not something that needs exploring delicately over several years with a qualified therapist.

‘I was shy,’ I shrug. ‘Quiet. I found people difficult… still do sometimes. And then I skipped a year of school so I didn’t really fit in.’

‘I forgot about that,’ Nico says, and he’s frowning again. ‘You were really little when that happened, right? How did that work? Did you go to secondary school early? University?’

I nod. ‘I started uni when I’d just turned seventeen.’ The academic bit had been easy enough but the rest of it was pretty miserable. I don’t like to think about it.

‘So you’re really smart then?’ Phoebe asks.

‘She’s brilliant.’ Nico’s voice is firm. He throws his arm around the back of my chair, and I can feel the warmth of his skin through my dress.

‘I don’t know about brilliant, but above average. Anyway, it turned out that I hadn’t made Nico up after all, because my big brother Jack brought him home with him a few days later. Your dad looked at me, and said “Hi, Daisy girl”.’

‘And eventually “Daisy girl” became just Daisy,’ Nico finishes. The frown has softened and a smile crinkles the corner of his eyes. His arm has stayed where it was, not quite touching me, but still there.

His gaze tangles with mine for a moment, and suddenly it’s all there between us, the years we’ve known each other. The years I’ve loved him.

‘So that’s the story,’ I say briskly, taking a bite of my pancakes and instantly regretting it. The maple syrup has not helped. I choke and take another desperate slug of coffee.

‘Enough!’ Nico snatches the plate away from me. ‘I can’t take it anymore. I’ll admit the pancakes aren’t great, if you two stop grimacing. Let’s go into town and get something. We can give Lee the guided tour.’

Something like relief flickers through me. Now is clearly not the right time to bring up divorce. It’ll have to wait until later.

‘I’d love that.’

Chapter Twelve

Lee

‘And that’s the library,’ Phoebe says, gesturing across the square with her arm towards a white building with green trim that looks like something out of Anne of Green Gables.