Discovering Daisy. Бетти Нилс

      CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS a blustery October afternoon and the dark skies had turned the sea to a dull grey, its sullen waves eddying to and fro on the deserted beach. Not quite deserted, for a girl was walking there, stopping now and again to stare seawards, stooping to pick up a stone and hurl it out to sea and then walk on again. She looked small and lonely with so much emptiness around her, and certainly she was both, but only because there was no one there to see.

      She marched along at a furious pace, making no attempt to wipe away the tears; they didn’t matter; they relieved her feelings. A good weep, she told herself, and everything would be over and done with. She would present a smiling face to the world and no one would be the wiser.

      She turned back presently, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, tucked odds and ends of hair back under her headscarf, and assumed what she hoped was her normal cheerful expression. Climbing the steps back onto the sea front of the little town, she waved to the porter of the Grand Hotel across the road and started up the narrow, steep main street. The season was pretty well over and the town was settling down into its winter sloth; one could walk peacefully along its streets now, and chat unhurriedly with the shopkeepers, and the only cars were those of outlying farmers and the owners of the country properties dotted around the countryside.

      There were narrow lanes leading off the street at intervals, and down one of these the girl turned, past a row of small shops converted from the old cottages which lined it; chic little boutiques, a jeweller’s, a tiny tea room and, halfway down, a rather larger shop with a sign painted over its old-fashioned window: ‘Thomas Gillard, Antiques’. The girl opened the door of the shop and the old-fashioned bell jangled.

      ‘It’s me,’she called ungrammatically, and pulled off her headscarf so that her nut-brown hair tumbled around her shoulders. She was an ordinary girl, of middle height, charmingly and unfashionably plump, her unassuming features redeemed from plainness by a pair of large hazel eyes, thickly fringed. She was dressed in a quilted jacket and tweed skirt, very suitable for the time of year but lacking any pretentions to fashion. There was no trace of her recent tears as she made her way carefully between the oak clap tables, Victorian Davenports, footstools and a variety of chairs: some very old, others Victorian button-backed balloon chairs.

      Ranged round the walls were side cabinets, chiffoniers, and a beautiful bow-fronted glass cabinet, and wherever there was space there were china figurines, glass decanters and scent bottles, pottery figures and small silver objects. She was familiar with them all. At the back of the shop there was a half-open door leading to a small room her father used as his office, and then another door opening onto the staircase which led to the rooms above the shop.

      She dropped a kiss on the bald patch on her father’s head as she passed him at his desk, and went up the stairs to find her mother sitting by the gas fire in the sitting room, repairing the embroidery on a cushion cover. She looked up briefly and smiled.

      ‘It’s almost teatime, Daisy. Will you put the kettle on while I finish this? Did you enjoy your walk?’

      ‘Very much. It’s getting quite chilly, though, but so nice to have the town empty of visitors.’

      ‘Is Desmond taking you out this evening, love?’

      ‘We didn’t arrange anything. He had to meet someone or other and wasn’t sure how long he would be gone…’

      ‘Far?’

      ‘Plymouth…’

      ‘Oh, well, he’ll probably get back fairly early.’ Daisy agreed. ‘I’ll get the tea.’

      She was fairly sure Desmond wouldn’t come; they had gone out on the previous evening and had a meal at one of the town’s restaurants. He had met some friends there. Being in love, she saw very little wrong with him, but some of his friends were a different matter; she had refused to go with them to a nightclub in Totnes and Desmond had been icily angry. He had called her a spoilsport, prudish. ‘Time you grew up,’he had told her, with a nasty little laugh, and had taken her home in silence.

      At the door he had watched her get out of the car and shot away, back to his friends, without saying another word. And Daisy, in love for the first time, had lain awake all night.

      She had lost her heart to him when he had come into the shop, looking for glass goblets, and Daisy, being Daisy, twenty-four years old, plain, heartwhole and full of romantic ideas, had fallen instant prey to his superficial charm, bold good looks and flattering manners— all of which compensated for his lack of height. He was only a few inches taller than Daisy. He dressed well, but his hair was too long—sometimes, when Daisy allowed her sensible self to take over from romantic dreams, she did dislike that, but she was too much in love to say so.

      He was a conceited man, and it was this conceit which had prompted him to invite Daisy out for dinner one evening, and that had led to more frequent meetings. He was a stranger to the little town, he had told her, sent by a London firm on a survey of some sort;