The Daisy Garden

Part 6 - The Proposal

"Mum's home!!!" Barny had seen the familiar car pulling up in the drive stopping at the excact point where his Mum always parks, he rushed down the stairs, pushing his Dad out of the way and swinging open the front door, he could barely wait till she'd gotten out of the car, he flung open the car door and wrapped his arms around her "Mum!" She broke away and they both sat on the seats of the car, smiling. "Aw I've missed you all so much!! How is everybody, the family ... Friends, how's Daisy?" Barny looked down "ah, she, passed away last weekend actually." Barny said quietly, his eyes welling up. "Aw baby I'm soo sorry!" Barny looked at her 

"actually I thought that you coming home would take my mind off of things, but that was silly of me really." His Mum leaned over to hug him 

"Well, now you're out here you really must help me with my luggage, then I'll sit in the kitchen and we'll have a nice long chat and oh! I must see my other baby!"

Barny and his Mum had engaged in another conversation about Daisy after talking about almost everything else that had happened that year "oh well I must go and see Steve and Ellen, they'll be distraught, Daisy was their only child, and I know even then they had trouble at birth, goodness that must be heartbreaking. Do you know when the funeral is?" Barny thought for a moment 

"This Saturday coming I think." Barny's Mum looked up to the ceiling thinking "Mum?" Suddenly it seemed that his Mum had come back down to earth "what?! Oh right, I was just thinking that after the funeral we could have a big tea party in the garden in memory of Daisy, what do you think?" Barny smiled  

"I think it's an excellent idea!" 

"Right then, I'll go over and see Ellen and Steve, and make my proposal." She got up and grabbed her handbag and jumped back into the car "I'll be back in a few, I promise..." Barny had heard those to words many times before, he had said them just last week to his little sister, but the mouth these two poisoning words come lightly out of was that of his own Dad's 'I'll take you to the football fields on Saturday, I promise...'  

'Yeah you can go to his party on Sunday, I'll give you a lift, I promise...' 

'Yep I'll bring you back something when I go to London, I promise...' 

'Okay... I'll never turn my back on you again son, I promise...' These words sent shivers down Barny's spine, but he knew his Mum would never promise something and not follow through, it's just not like her, so he happily waved her off, Daisy was going to move to Great Idleton, but he assumed they'd held that back now, so they would be living in a house made of cardboard. Barny turned around to go upstairs and BAM, Dad was in front of him "Woah! Dad you scared me!" Barny carried on upstairs and up to his bedroom, the little glass crystals on his floor and long since been cleared up... By Barny of course, his Dad never did housework, but Barny couldn't bare to see the house in a grubby state so unlike most boys his age would have done, he did all the cleaning. And in fact cooking when Mum wasn't home, his Dad could barely make a sandwich, never mind a meal every night for a year. For his Dad's birthday, Barny had bought him a 'Learn how to cook' book, but Dad had rejected it and tossed it in the bin along with his Christmas present, but his Easter egg hadn't been thrown away, it had been devoured and the image of it made Barny feel sick every time he thought about it.  

He walked opened his bedroom door to his bedroom and went and slouched onto his beanbag and he thought, he thought about his family. His Mum and Dad had never told him quite how they met, and he  

could never imagine how the two completely different personalities had come together, it was quite unimaginable and puzzling. They were from different sides of the country, they were from different 'classes' if it is correct to say so, they went to different schools and colleges, they had completely different jobs and no 

mutual friends. It was very strange. He also thought about going back to school in a couple of weeks, would everyone know about Daisy, or would he have to break it to them? Break it to them was actually the wrong expression. They wouldn't care, nobody cared much about Daisy at school since she moved there, they said 

she was weird, didn't know the ropes of the school, but she thought that if you'd been to one school you'd been to all of them pretty much. She was always doing odd things with her hair, her favourite style was to do a ponytail then stick pencils through it so it stuck up. The boys behind her would say "Hey Dummy... er, I've dropped my pencil, can I use one of yours?" To this Daisy would just take a pencil out of her pencil case 

and hand it to them, so by the end of the school year they generally had a pencil case full of second hand pencils from Daisy.

Barny then waited, for his Mum to come back, it was as if he'd waited months and months for her to come home and as soon as she did he let her go again! He felt stupid, but he wouldn't tell anyone because when he said to his Mum he was stupid she would say "Nobody calls themselves stupid by my watch!" And his Dad would say "Haha! Finally you're right about something!" And frankly, Bobbie just wouldn't understand what he was talking about. Barny wondered what it would be like at school on his own, he would always have the feeling that the seat next to him was empty.