Free Hidden Cottage by Erica James Page B

happened, as these things frequently do, without any of them seeing the signs or realizing that poor Daisy was in serious trouble.
    Eliza had been away at university and had arrived home at the end of term for Christmas, along with Jensen who hadn’t been home in ages, and they had both taken one look at Daisy and been openly shocked. It was Jensen who had asked their sister straight out how long she’d been anorexic. Not surprisingly, she had vehemently denied it, but once the awful word had been uttered aloud, it was suddenly blindingly obvious that Daisy was ill. No more could her loss of appetite, the baggy layered clothes, the sallow skin, the hours spent alone in her bedroom, be dismissed as a teenage phase or simply the pressure of exams, which was what Mum and Dad had assumed was the case.
    Initially Daisy refused to see a doctor, promising that she would now start eating properly, that there was nothing to worry about, but Mum wouldn’t take no for an answer. She must have been frantic with guilt that she hadn’t spotted what Eliza and Jensen had seen, but as they soon discovered, seeing a person on a daily basis often blinded you to the gradual change in them; it took a fresh pair of eyes to see the situation for what it was.
    Eventually Daisy gave in to Mum’s pleading and saw a doctor. Months of counselling followed, as did an excruciatingly slow gain in weight. At the same time, it all came out, that by starving herself Daisy had been taking control of her life as a way to free herself from the pressure of Dad’s overpowering love and his unrealistic expectations of her.
    In the process of getting herself together, Daisy dropped out of school for a year and by the time she retook that year and went on to university she was out of sync with her old friends. It was a massive understatement to say that it had been a difficult time for Daisy and, four years on, they were still sensitive around her when it came to food. Seeing her eat an ice-cream and clearly enjoy it, as she was now while they sat in the warm sunshine on the green, would have been unthinkable back then.
    It was equally unthinkable that Dad would give her his blessing with regard to her wish to go to Australia. Or that he would accept that this was obviously another attempt by Daisy to loosen the intense hold of his love for her.

Chapter Eleven
    Monday morning and Mia was alone.
    Jeff had left for the airport not long after Putin had started up with his screeching out on the green and with no customers booked in, Mia had the day to herself. But feeling tired and edgy, she wasn’t sure it was a good thing not to be busy. Left to her own devices there was a danger she would brood on what had proved to be an exhausting weekend – a weekend of vigilant damage limitation and of constantly pacifying Jeff.
    Right now her husband would be 35,000 feet up in the air, while she was down here crackling with guilt and self-reproach. Why hadn’t she known Daisy was so unhappy with her job? Why hadn’t she known that her daughter was planning to move to the other side of the world? Oh, it was all too reminiscent of when Daisy had made herself so ill.
    The shame of Daisy’s anorexia still weighed heavily on Mia, that she had failed so absolutely as a mother, when all the time it had been the one thing she had tried so hard to get right. Another weight of regret and sadness for her was knowing that her relationship with her youngest daughter had always been overshadowed by Jeff’s love for Daisy.
    While it would be fair to say that Jeff had had no interest in fatherhood when his son came into this world, things changed dramatically when Jensen was seriously ill in hospital. From then on Jeff accepted his role as father and threw himself into it wholeheartedly. Mia could still remember the look on his face when he set eyes on Jensen for the first time; there was a softening in his expression, a tenderness combined with a look of real alarm, but then lying