Chapter Two
Leaving the train station, she trudged in the direction of her late gran's home; the home she had once lived in.
It had only been half an hour since Daisy had arrived in Milbury, and she already wanted to be back in the city; the town was still as beautiful as she remembered, with its wonderful greenery and the glorious smell of the bakery's freshly baked pies, but she couldn't enjoy any of it knowing that she was the only living member of her family left in the town. She wished her parents were here with her, but she knew they couldn't be. She'd insisted on them going away after grandma died as they weren't coping very well, in which they left, albeit reluctantly. She didn't want to bother them into coming back with the effort it took to get them to leave.
After walking for another 10 minutes she crossed an old, wooden bridge and looked forward as her grandmother's beautiful home came into view. The house was old, Daisy knew that, but she had no idea when the house was actually built. Grandma used to tell her stories of how her one of her ancestors had built the house for himself and his family to live in but had never mentioned when the house was made.
The house itself was breathtaking, but Daisy couldn't bring herself to look at it closely for more than a few minutes. Memories unravelled in her mind like old tapes and studying the house only made it worse, she almost couldn't stand it.
Walking closer, she could see the garden more clearly and she noticed how unkempt the grass was and how the vines that had once regally circled the bannister now looked wild and unruly. No one must have bothered to come over after her grandmother had passed.
But that wasn't really anyone's fault when she and her parents had left nobody had really visited her grandmother at all. Perhaps it was to do with her grandmother living alone, or just because she was old, but nobody wanted to come near her aside from the times that Daisy herself would travel to visit overnight.
Daisy knew the talk of the people of Milbury, she'd been through it since she was in primary school. For some reason, people just assumed that their family was different from anyone else's- but of course, they weren't. Daisy and her family had moved in with her gran after losing her home to a wildfire, it only really ruined one room of their house but her mum had decided that it was an omen and sought out Gran as soon as possible.
Her earliest memory of being treated differently was all the way back in primary school- that made her about ten- and she remembered being questioned about her 'witchy' gran during play time.
'I heard your granny casts spells on kids that don't eat their veggies!' One kid, Greg Davies, had said to her; clearly missing the actually malevolent intent witches are supposed to have.
Rolling her eyes, as if to dispel her turning thoughts, she knew that Greg's mum had probably only told him that so she could get the little shit to eat his veg. She knew her gran wasn't anything of the sort, so ignoring the nosy kids had been easy.
Daisy rummaged around her pocket and gripped her train ticket, rubbing it in her hands and climbing the stairs of the porch.
Walking up to the door, she had to resist turning and riding back home but made it to the doorbell eventually. She eyed the button warily.
After a few minutes of just staring, she closed her eyes and let her fingers push the worn doorbell that had been pushed so many times before and heard the familiar chiming inside, then waited for someone to answer the door.
With a quick jolt, the heavy door was pulled open and a tall, stick thin, rake looking man was smiling down at her.
"You must be Daisy! How lovely it is to meet you! Come in, come in, we must discuss important matters!" He didn't stop smiling at all during his greeting and his scraping, strangely high pitched voice unnerved Daisy to no end. Calm down, Daisy thought to herself, He's probably just trying to lighten a dark experience.
"Well alrighty then, my names Joshua, but you can call me Mr Rawlbank!" The man chirped as she sat down in her grandmother's extremely comfortable sofa. "Let's talk about who gets all your grandma's stuff!" Then he placed a large folder onto the coffee table between them.
Oh Lord help me, She thought, dropping her overstuffed bag at her feet and looking down at a thick folder.
Would she have to go through all of that?
Daisy got an answer to her silent question, and found herself still, an hour later, going through the folder and deciding on what to do with everything her gran owned; and while the things she had to decide the fate of were small, there were a lot of them.
'Who would you like to give this teapot to?'
She honestly had no idea who would even want that broken teapot, but she decided it must be of some importance since it was in the file.
"My mum can have that." She decided and moved onto the next small thing.
After a long while, there was nothing left on the list and Daisy was quite confused that she hadn't been given the choice of the more important things, not that she wanted the choice, of course, but she'd thought she would have the difficult decision of the house and such.
"I can tell what you're thinking, Daisy." Rawl purred, eyeing her up through his goggle-like glasses. Daisy, as awkward as ever, stared confused, waiting for him to elaborate. "You," said Rawl, drawing on the already thick tension of having to do this job, "want to know what the will says!" As excitedly as it seemed he could get, he whipped out a brown file from his leather bag and once again dropped it between them on the table, as he had done before.
Opening the file, he flicked to the first page and began narrating what it said, not giving Daisy the option to read it herself.
"On the event of my death, I would like my eldest granddaughter; Daisy Campbell, to inherit my most important belongings. These include my home, my books, my animal, all my furniture, and everything on my 12 acres of land (aside from the property listed on the page before)."
Looking up from the file, he smiled anxiously at her, yet she didn't smile back like he was hoping.
"I'm afraid that is all I can share with you regarding legal matters," he sounded oddly guilty.
"What do we do now then?" Daisy snapped, voicing her surprised, upset and guilty thoughts, hoping she that didn't sound as rude as she thought.
"Well, after speaking to my boss, I will bring you the deeds to the house. This will be within the working week, and for that time I was told to ask you to stay in your grandmother's home. Unfortunately, if you do not stay, the house will be handed to the town council to decide what will be done with it."
He watched nervously, as though he knew she wasn't going to like this. He was correct.
"Can you not just have someone bring the deeds sooner? I'm not really a fan of the idea of me staying here for so long." Daisy complained vehemently, trying her best to come across as reasonable, but the man still shook his head.
"You were already planning on staying tonight, and if it is still an inconvenience in the morning you may speak to my boss. Now, I must take my leave, as it is almost 8 pm and my work hours are coming to a close." After exchanging nods, Mr Rawlbank left through the door, but not after handing her the keys and explaining what she already knew about the house.
"Well," Daisy whispered to herself in the lamp-lit living room of the spacious, cosy cottage. "It'll have to work." After turning on a few more lamps throughout the house, she felt safer and the house seemed a lot more lively.
Daisy rubbed her hands together as she truly noticed how cold the cottage had been with nobody here to heat it, and immediately attempted to light the fire. After she had lit the fire, she planned start to look around the house more, and see what had changed while she was away.
By the time Daisy had actually lit the fire, it was well past 9 pm and she could feel the cold nibbling on her toes through her, now decidedly crappy, ripped trainers. Smacking her hands together to dust off the coal residue, she hauled herself from the kneeling position and straightened her stiffened legs. She'd made it about four paces before her toes cramped, and pins and needles attacked her whole foot. Swearing to herself, she froze in her place and slowly rolled each foot out; cringing as she did.
Once that was over, Daisy stood perfectly still and glanced around the cosy living room. One could instantly tell that the house was well loved, considering all the baby pictures hanging on the walls, holding precious memories from her childhood, and her mother's before her. The frames were old and dusty, but not so that they looked dirty; they simply look like her gran had forgotten to clean them again. Sighing, she rubbed away the sadness she could feel forming on her face and instead tried focusing on what she had to do.
She'd already lit the fire, so that was at least one thing checked off the list. What else? Ah, right, she'd have to attempt to feed herself with what was in the cupboards; she didn't dare to check the fridge, that was a mouldy mess for tomorrow. Wandering through the small living room and into the kitchen doorway, she felt as though she was a kid again. Daisy fused to sneak downstairs for a nice cup of tea almost every night when she was a kid until she couldn't sleep without doing so anymore.
She gave a conflicted look towards the fridge. It was definitely too much to expect there to be in-date milk in the fridge, right? Pulling a face, she yanked the old off-white fridge open and covered her mouth in fearsome anticipation. It was all for nothing though, there were no flies or maggots. Nor was there any type of rotten food at all. And, weirdly enough, there was a carton of milk standing in the fridge untouched. It definitely wasn't fresh milk, it was the type that you'd buy if you were expecting awful weather, but that wasn't the point. The point was, there was milk.
Had Mr Rake bought it so he could offer me a cuppa earlier? No, that would have been strange, especially since he didn't offer her one. Nobody buys milk to make tea, then forgets to offer the said cup of tea.
Raising her eyebrows she took the cap off and saw that it was still sealed with a plastic cover. Perfect. She then turned it upside down to check the date. After studying the packaging for a good few seconds, she decided to hell with it and made herself a cup of tea. She didn't have to check beforehand if her gran had some tea in, Nana would have died before running out of teabags. No pun intended, of course, on her gran's behalf.
As though to prove a point from the afterlife, Daisy opened the cupboard that she knew held the sugar and found 3 boxes of PG tips that had been stashed away by her Nan as though the company that makes the teabags would go out of date at any given moment.
Chuckling at her gran's silliness, Daisy picked up a teaspoon from in front of the kettle and added two sugars into the teacup. Waiting for the kettle to boil felt like a whole lifetime, and when the kettle had finally finished, Daisy picked it up and slowly poured the scalding water into the teacup, savouring the satisfying sound of the water pouring. Giving the teabag a moment to strengthen the hot water with the tea, Daisy looked around for her mobile phone.
Had she gotten it out while she'd been here? She thought so, but she honestly couldn't find it anywhere. Not that that meant anything anyway, Daisy could often swear blind that she left her phone on the kitchen table and then find it in some obscure place that she could barely remember placing it.
Forgetting momentarily about her phone, she looked back towards her darkened tea and quickly, and clumsily, removed the teabag from the piping hot water. Obviously, she burnt her thumbs in the process, which she also always does. After running her fingers under cold water in the bare sink, she dried them with a tea towel.
Milk next, she thought as she poured a little milk into her teacup, allowing the tea to go a golden brown colour after stirring. Done.
Cradling the cup of goodness close to her chest, she carried the tea with both hands towards the sofa. She decided that she'd cosy up in front of the fire before she went to bed, it'd be easier than turning on the heating in her room on the third floor. Placing the tea on a coaster, she grabbed her fat bag and tugged the curtains closed. She may be alone, but she didn't like the feeling of getting dressed in view of an open window, especially when it was dark out.
Pulling out a pair of thick, long sleeve red tartan pyjamas, she slipped them over her head after slipping off her jumper. Then, to match, she replaced her jeans with the long, thick trousers. Digging around her bag, even more, she yanked out a ball of fluff known as slipper socks and pulled them onto her feet. She didn't have enough room to grab her slippers, so these were the next best things.
Smiling to herself and shuffling her wool-covered feet, she collapsed on the fabric sofa next to where she had placed her tea and yanked the grey velvet cover from the back of the sofa. After wrapping herself up in the warm confines of the grey, crushed velvet blanket, she pressed the on button on the brick of a remote and flicked through the limited channels that her gran had bought. After a while, she finally settled on cuddling up on the sofa to watch The Worst Witch, tea in hand and troubles forgotten. At least momentarily.
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Right, so, I know that this was a long ass chapter about nothing BUT trust me it will get better! Honey have I got a plan for YOU? That was rhetorical, OF COURSE, I DO!
I generally wanted to get the gist of Remster's personality for you guys, I'm kinda digging the British, seemingly posh, slob vibes from her right now tbh.
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