Stuck On You – Daniel 12

[For back story go here: Story so far at 12 June 2020 ]

Mr Sparklethat looked up at Daniel with hopeful eyes, the eyes that shone out of his head which was still, sadly, unattached to his body. It was late evening. Daisy was safely asleep and therefore unable to distract him with her ‘help’ and/or emotional meltdowns as the domestic glue Daniel had in the house failed to take again. 

It was time for the big guns. Having scoured the internet for a replacement Mr Sparklehat (no chance: special limited edition from three years ago and the more modern version just didn’t do it for Daisy – and Daniel absolutely agreed with her) he then scoured the internet again for whatever legal substance he could find which fell just short of industrial bondage glue. This had been delivered in the morning and now Daniel liberated Mr Sparklehat from his high cupboard hideout in the kitchen to finally reunite head with body. If successful Daisy would be happy again. And they might just be able to start selling the Crown App successfully as well.

Looking carefully inside Mr Sparklehat’s neck Daniel carefully smeared the glue around the inside of the tube and carefully inserted the neck stick. Get it wrong and Sparklehat would have a crick in his neck making him look permanently curious, which was entirely the wrong vibe for anyone trying to reclaim their kingdom with the aid of unicorns and magic and for promoting Crown Apps, come to that. Daniel had just got it straight when his mobile went off.

With tongue sticking out in concentration and unable to drag both hands away from the task he switched to speakerphone.

“Yes?” he asked, testily.

“Sorry, bad time, shall I call back?" asked Chrissy, his ex-wife.

“Never a bad time,” said Daniel, generously, “Just a more challenging one than usual.”

“What are you up to?”

“I’d rather not say. What can I do for you? Are you in this country or elsewhere?”

“Oh, I’m back home,” said Chrissy. “Very much back home. Yes. They’re telling me I’ll be back home for quite some time.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. So I can come and get Daisy whenever’s good. Tomorrow if you like.”

A week or so earlier and Daniel would have cried tears of joy. He’d have started planning and replanning his days, sorting out the new shops he’d go to in order to buy beautiful new fresh food to eat and alarmingly expensive drink to move around his mouth and appreciate, rather than just to numb his burnt-out brain. He'd plan to bring over Nadia and together they’d be able to chill and chat and more with all the wonderful things he’d bought. But that would have been then. This was now and instead Daniel just cried.

Later Nadia expressed equal surprise at this reaction, pointing out equally, all the things Daniel could now do. It made no difference, said Daniel, his front room pacing watched carefully by the rapidly improving Mr Sparklehat.

"Everything's beginning to get back to normal," said Nadia, "We should celebrate it and get back to where we were. You remember where we were, right?"

"What do you know about my normal?" said Daniel in frustration. "What was so good about normal anyway? We should get back to better…”

"It will be better,” reassured Nadia.

"What do you think is better, hey? What's so good about better?"

"Are you listening to yourself?" asked Nadia.

"I don't want her to go!" said Daniel finally. "I just don't. It's not fair."

With calls made and the glue finally 'gone off' as the industrials instructions described, Daniel wandered into Daisy's bedroom and watched her sleeping peacefully for a while. 

He placed Mr Sparklehat, Mr strong, straight, sparkly, Sparklehat on her bedside table. There was half a chance she'd hug him so hard his head would come straight off again, but that was a chance he was willing to take. There were stories for Mr Sparklehat everywhere, stories of hope, of success, of rationalising an otherwise chaotic working day into a common sense approach, powered by a smart phone app. A headless Mr Sparklehat would just be another exciting tale to tell.

And maybe it was time for Daisy and her sparkly entourage to find their next story as well. To remember what they'd done and move on. It wasn't really up to Daniel to say what was 'better' just to help enact what was 'right' according to whatever definition most of the people involved decided was it. It was all stupidly subjective, conversations and actions to be rounded off with a justification and as long as that made sense everything else would as well.

So Daniel wandered back into his sitting room. He closed the door softly, twisting the handle to prevent any noise from disturbing his daughter. And the handle came off in his hand. Perhaps he should have told Daisy not to swing on that quite so enthusiastically. He laid the handle on the table, picked up his phone and texted Chrissy.

- You can't have her back yet. Sorry.