lowered her hand. ‘Can’t seem to get excited about it, somehow.’ She swung round on the stool. ‘It’s my biological clock,’ she added. ‘I can feel it ticking away madly.’
‘It actually ticks?’
Daisy pulled a face. ‘You know what I mean. I just wish,’ she said intensely, ‘you could meet Joe and give me your opinion. Then I’d know whether to go ahead or not.’
Lydia experienced an inner tremor of guilt, but she said easily, ‘There’s an old saying—when in doubt, do nowt. To be honest, Daisy, I think you should put up with your biological clock a bit longer and wait for the right man to come along.’
‘So you’ve said. But you’re not twenty-nine—I’ll be thirty in two months!’
‘Maybe you’re confusing the dreaded thirty—remember when we used to think anyone over thirty was ancient?—with the biological clock?’
Daisy smiled briefly. ‘I just keep thinking my life is slipping away from me, and that there may not be a Mr Right out there for me.’
‘So Joe,’ Lydia said carefully, ‘is not necessarily Mr Right?’
‘Joe’s lovely, most of the time. He can also be moody and sarcastic, and there are times when I don’t think he knows I exist.’
Lydia smoothed a pair of khaki shorts across her lap as she wondered how to ask her sister whether she’d actually slept with Joe Jordan. This was one point Daisy had been reticent about, but then she was always reticent, if not to say capable of closing up like a clam, with her family on this touchy subject, because they, above all, knew how frequently she fell in and out of love. But would Joe Jordan squire around a beautiful woman he was not sleeping with? A woman who had indicated her willingness on their first date? She doubted it deeply, Lydia decided.
She asked cautiously instead, ‘Would you say you’re having an affair with him, Daisy?’
‘Not exactly. I mean, when I decided I wanted him for the father of my child, I made most of the running, you could say. Then I thought—Hey, this guy is also something else; he can give you goosebumps just by looking at you, let alone the rest of it, so…’ She paused with an uplifted expression on her face that Lydia felt answered her question better than words might. ‘So,’ Daisy went on, ‘then I thought, Perhaps I should hang on to him but, put simply, Lyd, he’s not that easy to hang on to.’
Daisy’s eyes were a true violet. She wasn’t tall, she had a perfect oval face, a lovely figure, she was exquisitely groomed, even for a dinner at home, and she looked every inch a sophisticated twenty-nine-year-old. Nor did her just uttered sentiments belie this—unless you knew her well enough to know that of the two of them she was the much more naive.
‘Does he have other women?’ Lydia asked, packing her shorts and reaching for a blouse.
‘I don’t think so. But the fact of the matter is he hasn’t had much of me lately. He’s losing interest, I would say.’
Thank heavens, Lydia thought. She said bracingly, ‘Then he’s not worth it, Daisy. Besides, you could end up with a moody kid!’
‘All the same, there’s something about him—’
‘Listen, Daisy.’ Lydia was suddenly serious. ‘I went along with this when I thought you were theorizing as opposed to actually doing it, because you’re a lot like Dad. Once he gets an idea into his mind nothing can change it until he gets it out of his system.’
‘Thank you,’ Daisy said gravely.
‘But now it’s time for straight talking,’ Lydia went on pointedly. ‘If you love Joe Jordan and he loves you and wants to marry you, you have my blessing. Otherwise it’s a dangerous game you’re playing—don’t do this to yourself. You’re worth much more than a life of seducing men so you can have a baby.’
Daisy turned the brush over in her hands. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, Lyd,’ she said slowly. ‘You fell in love once and it worked out perfectly—well, until Brad died, of course. But it never works perfectly for me.’ She brushed away a tear.
‘Could you be…could you be a shade too generous, Daisy?’ Lydia suggested, picking her words with care. ‘Why don’t you play hard to get for a change?’
Daisy lifted her head as if struck by inspiration. ‘Oh. Maybe Joe would respond to that!’
‘Forget Joe Jordan—’ Lydia broke off and bit her lip.
‘Why?’
‘Uh—you told me yourself that he’s very clever and that he can be moody and sarcastic. That’s always hard to live with unless you’re clever in the same way. What you need is someone musical, someone who could share the area where you’re really sensitive and creative.’
Daisy stared reflectively into the distance. ‘There is a new oboe player who’s just joined the orchestra. He’s rather sweet, and I can tell he’s interested, but, no, it wouldn’t work.’
‘It’s probably far too early to tell whether it would work,’ Lydia commented practically, ‘but how can you be so sure it wouldn’t?’
‘He’s younger.’
‘Younger… How much?’
‘He’s about your age, I guess.’
Lydia was struck silent for a long moment, struck by the irony of her sister plotting to have some man’s child to bring up on her own yet unable to contemplate a normal relationship with a man because he was a little younger…
She said, at length, ‘Three years—that’s nothing, really.’
‘Oh, yes, it is. When I’m thirty he’ll still be in his twenties. More importantly, when I’m fifty, he’ll still be in his forties. I’m sure it should be the other way around because men tend to age better than women, don’t you think?’
But Lydia was suddenly gripped by the feeling that a younger man could be just what Daisy needed. Might it not bring out a so far latent streak of maturity in her? As well as getting her over Joe Jordan, of course. Then she sighed and decided she’d done enough interfering in her sister’s life for one day.
‘Why don’t you just wait and see what happens?’ she murmured, and reached for the silver-framed photo of Brad on the dressing table. She stared down at it, blinked a couple of times, then laid it gently face down on top of her clothes in the suitcase.
Daisy was on her feet in a flash, and she knelt in front of Lydia and took her hands. ‘Do you still miss him so much, darling? I had hoped it was getting easier.’
‘It is, mostly,’ Lydia said tremulously. ‘Just sometimes it’s actually harder. I don’t know why. Unless it’s because I’m afraid I’ll forget.’
‘You know,’ her sister said, ‘you worry an awful lot about me, but I can tell you that Brad loved you so much he would not want you to be unhappy for ever. And it’s been five years now. Time to stop living a half-life. Time to have no guilt about finding someone else.’
Lydia smiled painfully. ‘The problem is, I couldn’t care less
