Daisy's Long Road Home. Merryn Allingham
know who I truly am.’
‘You’re Daisy and that’s all I need to know. It matters not a jot to me who your mother and father were.’
‘But it matters to me.’
And so they’d argued, back and forth, until eventually she’d worn him down and he’d agreed to take her, as long as Mike had no objections. Mike hadn’t. On the contrary, his friend appeared delighted to have her alongside. She would have to pay her own passage, Grayson had warned. She suspected that he hoped the proviso would put a stop to her dream. But she’d managed to pay for her ticket, though it had taken every penny of her savings. And she was glad she had.
She’d known for months that her life was going nowhere and Jocelyn’s letter, Grayson’s visit, had stirred her to action. She was ready to leave an unsatisfying job in an unsatisfying town, ready to throw her world to the winds. The practical choice was a return to London. Instead, a sixth sense had taken over and brought her this far from home. She’d found herself propelled like a compass point searching out its magnetic home, to where she knew she had to be. The strength of that compulsion was extraordinary. For years, she’d tried to stifle it, but finally it had broken free. It had been the moment that Grayson had picked up his coat ready to leave her small, drab cottage, that she’d been certain. Certain that how she lived the rest of her life depended on her returning to India, depended on her scrubbing her memory clean of the past and finding a future that was waiting to be found. And so she’d retraced the miles she’d believed she would never travel again, and now she was back, here in India, here in Jasirapur.
She glanced across at Grayson and noticed that the cool room and a glass of lemonade had given him a new energy. She wished she could say the same but her eyes were heavy with tiredness, and within minutes she had slipped away, back to her own room.
She lay down on the cool white counterpane and breathed in the newly familiar smells, tasted the warm, thick air and felt the heat suffusing her bones. With delight, she listened to the calls of the birds beyond the shutters. Later, she would go on to the veranda and see how many of the birds she’d grown to love inhabited this new garden: cheerful little bulbuls with red and yellow rumps she hoped, hoopoe birds with their art deco plumage, and perhaps even paradise flycatchers with tails like long, white streamers, nesting in the trees that she’d noticed marked the boundaries of the property. After the monsoon, she knew, the garden would truly live again. There would be butterflies almost as big as the birds, dressed in their peppermint green and primrose yellow. Meantime there were months of the most incredible heat to live through. She would doze a while until the heat of the day had faded and then go on an inspection tour. Instead, she slept for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon.
When finally she ventured into the sitting room, it was to find Ahmed setting the table for dinner.
‘Gentlemen will be back very soon, memsahib.’ He smiled at her. ‘They begin work already.’
She felt a fraud. Grayson and Mike must have gone into Jasirapur to organise their office while she had done nothing but sleep. And, sure enough, minutes later, she heard the sound of the jeep’s wheels crunching along the gravelled drive. She went out to meet them.
‘Sleeping Beauty, I presume,’ Grayson mocked. ‘I looked in to say goodbye but you were well away.’
Mike followed several paces behind his friend and she noticed he smiled no greeting. Instead, he looked tired, defeated almost. She guessed the journey was beginning to take its toll.
‘How were things at ICS?’ she asked, as Ahmed finished serving the inescapable curried chicken.
‘Everyone was very helpful,’ Grayson replied, ‘without actually being very helpful.’
She looked enquiringly at him. ‘They’re a nice bunch, the new officers,’ he said, ‘but they’ve no idea about Javinder’s whereabouts and only the haziest notion of his work. So staying in the office is not going to get us too far.’
‘I’m the one who’ll be staying,’ Mike said heavily.
Grayson looked across the table at his colleague. Mike’s tone had evidently surprised him. ‘Mike will be staying in the office,’ he echoed, ‘as logistical backup. And I’m certainly going to need some. They’ve given us Javinder’s old room and we’ve made a start getting the place set up. Mike has three filing cabinets and a ton of files to sort through. Hopefully our man might have left some indication of where he was going. The first job, though, is to get the telephone company to install an extra line. One that doesn’t go through the main switchboard. We need to be able to talk privately, once I’m on the road.’
Daisy felt a small sinking in her heart. ‘When will that be?’
‘In a day or so, I imagine. Tomorrow I’ll begin making enquiries—someone may know something.’
‘But where will you start?’ It seemed to her that a search for a lone man somewhere in the huge expanse of Rajasthan would be more difficult than for the proverbial needle.
Grayson was undaunted. ‘Where I always start. The town. The bazaar.’
She brightened. At least he should be safe for a few days. And the idea of a visit to the bazaar and its delights was an attractive one.
‘Can I drive in with you?’ It would give her the chance to ask questions of her own under the guise of some innocent shopping.
‘You can, but I have to warn you, I’ll be leaving very early. You’ll have to forgo the Sleeping Beauty routine.’
She smiled at his teasing. ‘And what if my prince hasn’t hacked his way through the forest by then?’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have no choice but to abandon him and make do with me,’ he retorted.
She saw Mike frown and realised with a shock that they had come close to flirting. It would be too easy, she knew, to fall back in love with Grayson and she must guard against it. There was no such thing as a perfect man, any more than a perfect woman, but he came close. Nearly perfect men, though, had their own plan for life and she had hers, and the two were never going to fit. She must be careful. She had no wish to complicate this trip and neither did she want to upset Mike. This evening he seemed to be in a strange mood, his expression morose, his liveliness depressed. Not too many quips about Mrs H., she thought. It might be the effect of the country on him. She had loved India from the start, but she understood that it was not the same for everyone. And she knew, too, that Mike had worries back home. She would need to be extra vigilant in her dealings with Grayson. If Mike were forced to play an awkward third in their relationship, it was unlikely to make him any happier.
Grayson, too, had been surprised to find himself falling back into the easy relationship he’d once enjoyed with Daisy. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, though he had no illusions. The long months of absence had taken their toll on both of them. Once upon a time, she had given him her heart and given it completely, but that moment hadn’t lasted. When he remembered those heady few months after the Sweetman debacle, months when they’d lived only for each other, he felt a pain that stung. And it was still there. He should have realised the truth then, of course. Daisy had saved his life and, in doing so, come close to death herself. Because of the Sweetman affair, they’d been living in an oddly heightened state and that very fact had encouraged them to step into a whirl of emotion they couldn’t control. They had thought they couldn’t live without one another. Except that the war had dragged on for another three years and they’d been forced to. Between Daisy’s nursing shifts and his punishing hours at SIS, they’d met infrequently and, when they did, they were both exhausted from the pressure of work. He’d hoped that when peace came, things would be different. They would pick up the pieces and finally make a home together. He’d told his mother he intended to marry and she’d been content. She had met Daisy on several occasions and liked her. The girl’s background hadn’t been the stumbling block he’d feared, for his mother had proved far more open-minded than he’d expected. And she’d admired Daisy for the way she had made something of her life out of so very little. But even if that had not been