Daisy welcomed her first child at 18, she never could have predicted what he did at 26

When Daisy found out that she was pregnant at just 18, her first reaction wasn’t exactly what she would have predicted.

“I didn’t freak out,” she says.

“I felt relatively calm about it all, like it would just work out. The timing was not what I’d envisaged for myself – or, I think, what my family would have wanted.

“But no one was upset or disappointed or sad. It quite quickly became something positive and happy.”

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Daisy’s parents suggested her boyfriend of two years move in with them, which he did, supporting her through the pregnancy and the birth, while he juggled an apprenticeship.

Daisy then took a year off, to look after the baby instead of going to university like she’d planned.

“Mum and Dad – and Tom, my boyfriend – all helped so much, and I had two sisters who chipped in,” she says.

Three years later, Daisy finished university with honours, got a job and she and Tom, plus their son, Jared, moved into a house of their own.

“It was… testing at times,” says Daisy.

She had just turned 22, had a pre-schooler who was almost four, and was talking about marriage with her long term boyfriend.

Her friends were either off partying in town every other night, or were scattered across the world, like her best friend Kate who’d moved to London.

Kate and Daisy managed to stay very close, despite the time difference, and despite the very different lives they were leading.

Kate spent years working in hospitality before moving into HR, a career she thrived in.

She’d come back to New Zealand every year for at least two weeks and Daisy would spend as much of it with her as possible.

She came back for three weeks the Christmas that Daisy and Tom got married, at 30, with Jared playing best man, Daisy’s sister as the maid of honour, and Kate as one of the bridesmaids.

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In the end, Kate spent 15 years in the UK – Daisy had given up on thinking she’d return.

But in the end, quite ironically, Kate ended up falling in love with a Kiwi, Mike. Uncannily enough, he was someone Daisy’s husband Tom knew well – they’d lived next door to each other as kids.

The pair came back to New Zealand to be close to their families, get married and have children.

Still, despite their different situations, Kate and Daisy were so close. Daisy now had a 19-year-old son, while Kate was just starting trying for children.

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She ended up welcoming a little boy at 39 and a little girl at 41. Meanwhile, Daisy’s son had moved to the UK to do his OE and she and tom were empty-nesters at 40.

“It was a funny thing,” says Daisy. “Because I had a fair few friends from different parts of my life.

“I had a close friend who was a teen mum as well, and some ‘mum friends’ who were mostly between five to 10 years older than me, who I had a lot in common with. And my uni friends, and work friends.

“But despite our lives being quite different, there was something really special about my friendship with Kate.”

Kate having children seemed to strengthen their relationship though.

“When I told her how much I was stressing about Jared on his OE, even though he was a full adult now, there was just this added layer of understanding,” says Daisy.

She and Tom missed him like crazy, and in the end, they took two months off work to visit him in London and have something of a mini-OE themselves.

And thankfully, after three years away, Jared returned home, landing a great job and a great flat with a young couple.

Life seemed pretty darned good. But it was all about to get incredibly messy.

It was Daisy’s sister who first heard the news.

When she and Daisy were at their mother’s house, celebrating her birthday, she said she’d heard the terrible news about Kate – was she okay?

Daisy had no idea what she was talking about until her sister said she’d heard Kate and her husband Mike had split up – their kids went to the same day care and one of the other mums had told her about it.

Daisy was positive someone must have got their wires crossed, because if Kate and Mike had separated, she was sure she would have been one of the first to know.

She knew they’d been having trouble about a year earlier. Kate had said she – and Mike – had found the sudden shift of their fast pace life in London, to living in an Auckland suburb, with two young kids and jobs to juggle, quite difficult.

So, as she drove home, she called Kate and asked if everything was okay.

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“Kate sounded different,” she says. “She was almost defensive. I think she asked if we’d heard from Tom, which we hadn’t.”

Then she admitted that yes, she and Mike were having some time apart to figure things out.

“I remember she said something like, that they’d got together too quickly and moved too fast and maybe weren’t right for each other and that was becoming more apparent,” says Daisy.

“I asked if I could come over, and she said she’d moved out and the kids were going between the two of them.

“That came as a surprise that she’d move out of the place, but she said she was fine and she’d come over sometime soon.”

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Daisy reaction was one of worry. She was concerned for her friend. It worried her that Kate seemed to have shut herself off from everyone, when she was obviously going through something massive.

“I called her three more times that week, and she was always very quick on the phone – she had to go, or someone else was on the other line,” says Daisy.

“I was getting worried. I messaged a couple of mutual friends to check if they’d heard from her or if she was talking to any of them, but she wasn’t.”

Daisy figured she’d give it one more week, before she’d work out where Kate was staying and just turn up there. She didn’t like thinking about her suffering alone.

And then, as she and Tom were in the middle of eating a late UberEats meal, watching a movie, Mike suddenly turned up at the house.

He was talking fast about getting a divorce.

“He was extremely agitated and said he needed to understand what the f— was going on,” says Daisy.

Both she and Tom had thought that he’d taken something – he wasn’t making a lot of sense. She was wondering who she should call.

And then, slowly, she and Tom started to understand what Mike was saying.

He was saying he knew Kate had been having an affair – and that’s why they broke up. He confronted her, she’d admitted it. But he hadn’t known until that night who it was.

He said he now knew it was Daisy and Tom’s son, Jared.

“At this point, Tom, Kate and I were all 44,” says Daisy.

“Jared was 26. He was a grown man, but he was my baby. I think I just kept saying, ‘what are you talking about?! Jared’s only a kid. There’s no way’.”

But Mike was adamant. Eventually Tom told Mike that he should leave and go home while they worked out what the heck was going on.

“I called Kate, but she didn’t pick up,” says Daisy. “I called Jared, but his phone was turned off.”

Tom and Daisy stayed up most of the night trying to make sense of it all.

They’d swing from thinking it couldn’t possibly be true, to then thinking of a few things that it might explain, and then swinging right back to thinking it was impossible – there was just no way.

Except, the next morning, Jared turned up at the house. He had his head down, he was nervous.

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“I knew as soon as I saw him come through the door, that it was true,” says Daisy. “He looked terrified.

“He looked at me and said, ‘so you know?’ and I’m not proud of what I did next,” says Daisy.

“I put my hands to my head and screamed, ‘nooooo! What the f— are you thinking?!”

Daisy says she can’t remember much of what they talked about, but Jared stormed out before Tom got out of the shower and came back downstairs.

“I felt terrified,” says Daisy. “And repulsed. How could Kate find my son attractive like that? How could she do that?

“Granted, she hadn’t spent a lot of time with him, but I’d talked about him so much over the years. She knew everything. He was my child!

“And I felt terrified for him if he was in love with her or something. She was an older woman who was going through a divorce.

“She was worried she’d rushed into things with Mike, but had rushed things a lot more with my son. And she had kids!

“And – this is probably just OTT – but she was too old to have kids, and, selfishly I’d been hoping to get to be a grandmother one day. And not to my best friend’s kids!”

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Daisy says the next six months were intense. She and Kate tried having a conversation but it ended in a shouting match.

Her conversations with Jared were strained. She knew her husband didn’t find it quite as difficult – although he too, was very unhappy about the situation.

And then, one night, Jared sent her a message saying it was over with Kate. He said he’d broken it off, it wasn’t working.

“I didn’t really ask for any specifics,” says Daisy.

“In hindsight, maybe I should have, but at the time – and still now, really – I didn’t want to know any details or really anything about it.”

A couple of weeks later, Daisy got a letter from Kate.

It was several pages long about how she had broken up with Jared and the whole thing was a massive mistake and she was so sorry for how many people she had hurt.

“I’m not sure who it really was who broke it off,” says Daisy. “But it didn’t change the fact of what happened. I felt so betrayed by Kate.”

It’s been four years since it all happened. Jared is now married to someone else – Daisy hopes she might get grandchildren in the next five years.

Every year since, at the same time of year Kate sends her a letter, apologising for what happened. And Daisy says she reads it every year but hasn’t replied.

“I still feel betrayed and repulsed by what she did.”

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