Daisy Darker

When Trixie says she is afraid to go to the bathroom, Lily rebukes her for being childish. Each member of the group leaves the room for different reasons. After pouring himself a whiskey, Frank retreats to the music room to play the piano. Nancy goes to make tea, and Conor goes outside for firewood.

Daisy recalls being five. One morning, Nana discovered Conor asleep in the log store outside. He was dirty and limping. Taking him inside, Nana ran Conor a bath and gave him clean clothes. Conor reluctantly confirmed that his injuries were caused by his father. Daisy overheard Nana calling and telling him that his son was at Seaglass. While acknowledging his grief over his wife’s death, Nana warned Conor’s father he would lose his son if he did not seek help for his alcohol addiction. Shortly afterward, Mr. Kennedy went to a rehabilitation center while Conor stayed at Seaglass.

Daisy hears the back door banging. She goes to the kitchen just as Conor returns from outside. Nana’s body has disappeared, and a VHS tape lies on the kitchen table. Scrabble letters on the video case spell out “WATCH ME.”

Daisy remembers that, on one of Nana’s birthdays, Conor called asking for help. They went to the Kennedys’ cottage and found Mr. Kennedy unconscious, surrounded by empty pill bottles. Nana called an ambulance, saving Mr. Kennedy’s life. She also funded a second visit to rehab. While Conor’s father was in recovery, they cleaned and renovated the Kennedys’ cottage. On emerging from treatment, Mr. Kennedy looked like a different person.

Conor tells the others about Nana’s disappearance and the appearance of a new VHS tape. Noticing the chalkboard poem, Rose indicates that the lines referring to Nana and Frank have a line drawn through them. The family argues over who had the time and opportunity to move Nana’s body. Conor points out that all the Darkers except Trixie had the motive to kill Nana as they needed the money. Rose points out that Conor was not present when Nana read her will and questions how he knows its terms. She and Lily turn on him, asking why he is there.

The piano is still playing in the music room, but the door is locked. Rose kicks the door open to reveal the piano playing itself. Frank is on the floor, still holding an empty whiskey glass. A broken conductor’s baton is tied to his other hand with a red ribbon. Frank’s eyes are open, and there is blood around his mouth.

Frank

A poem about Frank describes him as selfish. He married after an “unexpected pregnancy,” but his work took precedence over his family. The poem confirms Frank was poisoned by his whiskey.

Rose confirms Frank is dead, and they notice a piano key is missing. Nancy cries, stating she still loved her former husband even though she was often angry with him. She reveals that she deliberately fell pregnant with Rose so that Frank would marry her and settle down. Lily is unmoved, pointing out Frank was a terrible father. She suggests that her father murdered Nana and then killed himself out of remorse.

The family agrees to wait until low tide before they get help. Daisy overhears Rose telling Conor that her father’s glass smelled of poison. They all join Trixie, who is asleep in the window seat of the living room. Lily admits to giving her daughter a sedative in her tea. Nancy confirms she used to do the same to her daughters at bedtime. Lily has diabetes and, looking pale, admits she has lost her insulin kit. Meanwhile, Rose plays the new VHS tape.

The video shows nine-year-old Lily singing the theme tune from the TV show Fame. Daisy remembers that Lily was roller-skating through the interconnecting rooms at Seaglass, including Nana’s studio. As Lily was banned from the studio, she had asked Daisy to keep a lookout for their grandmother. However, Daisy was distracted by shapes in the clouds, and they did not hear Nana return. Lily continued to video herself as she spotted Nana in the studio doorway and accidentally knocked over her easel. Nana told Lily that she needed to be more discreet if she was going to flout rules, suggesting she should “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it” (111). Afterward, Lily was angry with Daisy for failing to warn her. Three days later, she said she had a surprise in the cupboard under the stairs. Claiming there was a fairy door inside, Lily told Daisy to go inside. When she did so, Lily locked her in the cupboard.

Daisy cried and knocked on the cupboard door until her hands bled. She was finally discovered by Nana. On Daisy’s fifth birthday, Nana instructed Lily and Rose to take their younger sister to the beach. Daisy held a rope for her sisters’ skipping games, including Rose’s favorite, which involved a gruesome rhyme about Lizzie Borden. Lily and Rose then buried their little sister in the sand. Daisy’s face burned in the sun, and she was eventually rescued by Conor. Lily videoed Daisy as she stomped to the sea, claiming she was swimming to America.

In the present, the Darker family watches as the video shows Daisy swimming further and further out to sea. Daisy remembers deciding to turn round and seeing her sisters and Conor beckoning her back to shore. However, a riptide dragged her underwater. Rose rescued Daisy and cracked two of her ribs while performing CPR. In the hospital, doctors discovered her heart condition. When alone with Daisy, Lily told her she wished she had drowned.

Daisy recalls how she was not allowed to go to school once her heart condition was discovered. Nancy became overly protective, and her parents soon divorced. Rose and Lily went to boarding school, and Daisy found escape in reading.

After watching the video, Lily claims to regret being unkind to Daisy, although she does not look at her youngest sister. Rose criticizes Lily’s cruelty but then breaks down and apologizes. She says that, on the way to Seaglass, she was called to a barn by the RSPCA. The six ponies inside were starved, dehydrated, and barely alive. Rose had to shoot the animals as she did not have enough anesthetic for them all. When Nancy asks the whereabouts of the gun, Rose confirms that she has it with her. She goes to check on it while Lily goes in search of her diabetic kit. Leaving the room, Daisy notices the front door is open. When she returns to the living room, a new videotape sits on the table. The Scrabble letters on the case read, “HEAR ME.”

The video shows Daisy’s seventh Christmas. Lily is roller-skating and listening to her new Walkman. Frank surprises his family, arriving dressed as Father Christmas. He has gifts for everyone: books and a View-Master for Daisy; a telescope and glow-in-the-dark stars for Rose; a tiara and Walkman for Lily; and a yo-yo and Polaroid camera for Conor. They are all delighted with their gifts except Lily, who complains about receiving a second Walkman. Nana’s present is a cuckoo clock featuring a woman who chops off her husband’s head every hour. Finally, Frank gives Nancy a heart-shaped silver locket. Daisy recalls her conviction that Nancy would keep pictures of her sisters in the necklace. She also remembers going to bed and discovering Rose’s stars on her bedroom ceiling.

The video ends, and Lily asks why Conor spent that Christmas with them. Conor explains his father was in rehab again. Lily panics when she notices Trixie is gone from the window seat. In the kitchen, they discover that the poem’s lines about Trixie have been crossed out.

A thunderstorm breaks as the group searches the house for Trixie. Looking in her sisters’ room, Daisy thinks she sees movement in the wardrobe. A power cut then fuses the lights. During a flash of lightning, Daisy sees two eyes between the slats of the closet door.

Rose enters the room with a torch. Seeing the eyes in the closet, she opens the door, and Poppins bursts out. Rose tells Lily she found her diabetic kit under Nancy’s bed. Lily opens the kit, but her insulin pen is missing. Nancy is also nowhere to be seen. Checking Nana’s studio, they find it has been ransacked. Rose suggests that someone may have wanted to find the manuscript for Nana’s new book. In the music room, they discover Frank’s body has disappeared and hear scratching in the hallway.