My name is Daisy Oswald-Gregory. Well, technically...officially my title is Lady Margaret Dora-Cecelia Oswald-Gregory. But mostly, people just call me Daisy, after Margaret "Daisy" Daykin, from the "Five Find-Outers" books.
You're probably thinking I'm truly up my own jewel-encrusted backside. Nyeh...That isn't strictly true. When I was eleven, my parents decided they wanted to move us Stateside from our bleak, West Country Tudor to a sunny California mansion by the sea. With a pool. And about a million rooms. My Father's family were one-time pirates, stealing gold from Spanish ships and often setting them alight in a bitter, patriotic fashion. My Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather, for example, caught the eye of King Charles II and was knighted and eventually awarded a Lordship and a place at court.
My parents, (to be brutally honest, predominantly my Mother), enjoy the high life. Their choice to relocate shocked my Grandfather so much he had a stroke and promptly died. Did they care? No. My Father took the optimistic approach, measuring his death not in the great loss his family had suffered, but instead in the number of extra rooms we could now afford with the inheritance he gained, as an only child.
Ten years on, and I was still living under the sphere of influence of my parents and siblings, fresh out of ideas, having dropped out of Yale after only a semester. Speaking of my siblings, if you though Margaret Dora-Cecilia was bad...In age order, my sister and brothers, ladies and gentlemen: Araminta "Minnie" Rebekah, Maximillian Francis and Joseph "Joey" Cecil-Pierce. To this day, we resent our blue blood for such God-awful names.
Alas, we did not look like the children of the British aristocracy(!): the buxom, rosy-cheeked, over-indulged stereotype had been forgotten; we were actually fairly mainstream-beautiful. Well three out of four of us. My brothers and I were blessed with dark blond hair and pretty acne free skin. Minnie, my sister, however, had chosen a different path to the natural blossoming that was so becoming. She had recently chopped off her sweet yellow hair into a harsh bob that framed her face wrong, and squeezed her curves into a grey-tweed two-piece that wrinkled as she sat in the sun, sipping a Sazerac.
"Gwendolyn, come back here!" Minnie yelled after her daughter.
Araminta had just turned twenty-nine years of age. She had been married to Tim, an IT specialist, for eight and a half years, and just shy of five years ago, had welcomed aptly-named twins Gwendolyn and Tristan into the world.
"Run, Gwen, run!" I yelled, jokingly.
"Dukes go get her for me," she sighed, giving me a warning glare. Beside her, husband-Tim was shuffling nervously back into the shade of the umbrella as the sun crossed the sky, his nose coated to the limit in thick sunscreen.
"Dukes". As in Daisy Dukes? Another nickname to which I will be forever tied...
"Yes Minty, I'll find your kid." I replied, pulling myself out of the white plastic lawn chair, my arm out, preparing to flip her the bird.
"Daisy!" Max warned.
Stupid big brother.
I tracked my niece down the corridor to another Morrocan-style room. Did I mention? As well as a dubious taste for expensive food and even more expensive wine, my parents fancy for Morrocan-style everything had exploded throughout the house, coating walls in thick rugs meant for floors, and ceilings in big metal shades meant for DISPLAY ONLY.
As I entered the lounge I saw Gwendolyn playing with my Mom's (Moroccan...sigh) china set. I ran over and picked her up, dragging her out of the room: she was 4 and I was weak - it didn't work well. As we walked back to the living room, squirming girl in tow, I heard the front door open and the loud voices of my brother Joey and his best friend Brendan, late as usual. Brendan...Brendan Urie, front man and guitarist of Panic! At The Disco. He was famous now, but I had known him since Junior High when my brother brought him home from the 8th grade baseball practice. I was in 6th grade at the time and thought he was a complete dream boat. And didn't he know it...
"Greggs!" he yelled, slapping my Dad on the back.
My Dad grinned and said something "original" about the motif on the back of Brendan's jacket, and the untenable stringiness of my brother's skinny legs.
Joey lived with Brendan upstate, in a sprawling apartment complex, payed for by my parents. It was odd when Joey, aged twenty-three, finally took the plunge and moved out. Heck, even my married-with-kids, older sister still lived here, hubby and all.
Oh, and Greggs? – that was what Brendan had always called my dad: his title was Percy Oswald-Gregory, 7th Lord of Strewesbury, but Brendan had decided early on that he wasn't going to call him "Your liege"...and funnily enough, "Dad" was out of the question too. So, as with most of us, he made up some angry nickname that somehow always seemed nostalgic and never got old.
I dried my hands on the pink fluffy towel, humming along to "Plainsong" by The Cure as I reached for the door handle. I opened it to Brendan smirking at me in the dark of the corridor. I sharply looked around to make sure my brother wasn't around, and he pushed me roughly back into the bathroom shutting the door behind him. With a light click it was locked.