Ottercombe Bay [Part Four] by Bella Osborne

Author:Bella Osborne [Osborne, Bella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008258146
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

After a lot of holding on, whilst various people searched for her father, a bright and familiar voice finally came on the phone. ‘Baby, how are you?’

Daisy was gripping the phone tightly. ‘Who was looking after me the night Mum died?’

‘Er … what’s wrong, Daisy? Has something happened?’

‘Dad. I just want a straight answer for once. Who was looking after me the night Mum died?’

There was a long pause on the other end of the line before he eventually spoke. ‘It was Reg.’

A long silence followed while Daisy processed the answer. She had almost forgotten about Great Uncle Reg and instantly felt bad for her lapse. He had been the one person who had always been there for her so this news shouldn’t have been a surprise.

‘Right. Thanks.’ She was about to end the call.

‘Daisy, I can tell there’s something wrong. What’s brought all this up again?’

Daisy rolled her eyes. He made it sound trivial. ‘Aunt Coral has explained that Mum died because she was off her face on marijuana and everyone else was too and that’s the reason nobody went to find her and why she died—’ Her voiced cracked and she had to take a steadying breath ‘—because you were all too stoned to look for her. How could you?’ She was shaking her head as she spoke. She felt she would never be able to understand.

After a pause he spoke. ‘I’m sorry, Daisy. I’ve spent all these years …’

‘Lying to me about it?’

‘Trying to protect you.’

‘From what? Doing dope like you and Mum used to do?’

‘From knowing your mother wasn’t perfect.’

The sentence hit her hard. She listened to her father’s breathing on the line and she knew instinctively he was crying. They cried silently together for a moment, the distance between them lost.

She heard her father take a deep breath. ‘Daisy, nobody knows if that’s why she died. It may have had nothing to do with it.’

‘Someone saw her the night she died. She was dancing and twirling on the tip of the headland. She lost her footing and she fell.’

She heard her father sob and despite how cross she was with him it broke her heart to hear it. She listened to him cry openly and felt her heart ache for him. Despite everything she knew, Sandy was the love of his life and his world had been shattered beyond repair when she died. This was reopening an old wound and laying it bare.

‘Who saw her?’ he asked at last.

‘Pasco Davey.’

Pasco oddly now seemed like the hero of the story. The man who had risked his own life to pull Sandy from the sea and try to save her while her own husband was in a drug-fuelled slumber.

‘Pasco?’ There was a hint of irony in his voice.

‘It’s a long story.’ Daisy was feeling overwhelmed with the fatigue of her emotions and didn’t have the energy to explain further.

‘Please know that I love you, Daisy. I have to go.’ Her father’s voice was choked with emotion and before she could protest the line went dead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.