Chapter 2
The image staring out from the bathroom mirror at her once she’d gone about her business and was washing her hands brought her up short. Her cheeks were stained pink, making her look like a child who’d got stuck into her mam’s make-up, and the freckles tracking across her nose were vivid brown dots. Then there was the bed hair, and what was that? She leaned into the mirror and registered the dry drool snaking from the corner of her mouth to her chin. Delightful! She was pretty sure Chris wouldn’t be having impure thoughts about her as he made his breakfast.
The unmistakable aroma of toast tickled her nose as she exited the bathroom, her step faltering at the top of the stairs. James brought her eldest sister, Shannon, tea and toast in bed on the weekends. Mam had told her. It was such a sweet thing to do, and suddenly, more than anything, even more than the bracelet she coveted in the Pandora store, Grace wanted a fella who’d bring her breakfast in bed. No, scratch that. Not just any fella – Chris and preferably still in his boxers.
The thought made her legs feel funny, and she clutched the bannister, tempted to go down and make herself a cup of tea. However, the likelihood of her doing something eejitty like spilling milk all over herself was too high.
‘Good morning, Grace.’
Ulla’s English was clipped and precise and poured a bucket of cold water over Grace’s impure breakfast-in-bed thoughts as she emerged from Chris’s bedroom and breezed past, clad in only a black T-shirt. It was Chris’s. There was no dribble on her chin, and her hair looked salon-tousled, not like she’d been going to battle with her pillow half the night, Grace noted with a stab of resentment.
She watched the statuesque Finn stalk toward the bathroom. There was no love lost between herself and Ulla, mainly because the Finnish model never spoke to Grace other than to say good morning or night, and whenever Grace saw her with Chris, her arm was looped possessively through his. She’d nicknamed her the Silent Finn.
He’d mentioned her in passing the morning after that fateful night at the Bird in the Cage when he’d come around to check out the room.
‘It’s OK by you if Ulla stays over now and again, right? I don’t have a problem vice versa.’
Chance would be a fine thing, Grace had thought, hoping this girlfriend of his wouldn’t be forever staying over like Sophie’s flatmate’s boyfriend, who ate all of Soph’s special Keto granola. She’d caught words like Finnish and model, and when he’d finished with, ‘Ulla’s great – you’ll love her,’ she’d known straight away she wouldn’t.
Grace retreated to her room, kicking the door shut behind her, and had no sooner clambered back into bed when she heard the hot water immersion kick in.
‘Feck.’
That was the other thing about Ulla. She treated the bathroom as her own personal sauna, and Grace knew she’d be lucky if there was any hot water left by the time she got a look-in. The last time Ulla had stayed over, the steam had been so thick when Grace finally got into the bathroom that it would have grounded aeroplanes. She’d taken great satisfaction tracing ‘Ulla is a cow’ with her index finger on the fogged-up cabinet mirror.
It wasn’t on, she decided, flinging the covers off. She would have to take action, because Ulla didn’t chip in. This time, Chris was going to hear about it.
Before she could slide her feet back into her slippers, though, her phone bleeped, and curiosity won out as she paused to check it.
Her mood lightened on seeing she had a message from her pal Clara. She’d known Clara Casey forever – as had Chris, whose family lived next door to the Caseys. Everybody knew everybody in Emerald Bay, but Clara was the only local in her and Chris’s home village to whom she’d confided their current living arrangement. She replayed that particular conversation – a video call after Christmas – in her memory.
‘I’ve got something to tell you nobody at home knows about.’
‘Oh my God, Grace, you’re not pregnant?’
‘No! Don’t even go there. Sure, I’d have to have sex for that, and I’ve forgotten how you do it; it’s been that long.’
‘You never forget. It’s like riding a bike, or so I hear. I wouldn’t know myself.’
Grace was gratified by her friend’s grin.
‘Anyway, I thought you’d be spoiled for choice in the likes of London.’
‘You thought wrong.’ Grace had given Clara the low-down on her latest dismal date then added, ‘I swear he ate a whole can of tuna before we met up and every second word out of his smell mouth seemed to begin with “H”. I’m not joking. Even his name was Henry Harris.’
Clara had laughed. ‘Don’t! You’re making my stomach hurt. And come on then, tell me this news no one else in Emerald Bay knows.’
Grace had furtively tucked her hair behind her ears then glanced around her bedroom and lowered her voice. ‘Christopher Dorrance.’
‘He likes to be called Chris these days, and what about him?
‘He’s grand. In fact’ – Grace had paused for effect – ‘he’s in the bedroom next door to me.’
‘What?’ Clara had squealed. ‘No!’
‘Yes.’
‘You two aren’t… you know?’
Grace had nipped that line of thought in the bud. ‘I told you that department is drier than the desert. Chris is my housemate – that’s all. I don’t think of him like that.’ That had been a big fat fib, but she would hardly confess to having impure thoughts about him.
‘I don’t know why you wouldn’t, because I always thought he was cute, in a nerdy way, what with those glasses of his, and if you looked behind the lens, his eyes were a lovely blue.’
‘I remember them being magnified.’ Grace had frowned, stuck on the word ‘cute’. She’d since ascertained his eyes were a lovely blue, however. ‘And you never said you thought he was cute.’
‘We were kids, Grace. We fancied everyone from Harry Styles to Justin Thomas.’
‘Uh, no, stop right there, thank you very much. I never fancied Justin Thomas. He used to pick his nose and wipe it underneath his desk.’
Clara had giggled. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’ Then her brows had knitted together. ‘Do your dads know? Sure, it would be front-page news if those two had made it up.’
‘It would, and no, they don’t. You’re not to speak to anyone about what I’ve told you, OK? Chris and I agreed his moving in was an arrangement that suited us both but that for the sake of a quiet life, nobody from Emerald Bay needed to know about it.’
Clara had promised not to breathe a word.
Actually, Chris thought she was going over the top with all the secrecy, but Grace’s insistence that it would make for an easier life for both of them meant he’d agreed not to mention it either. Clara didn’t count. It was the first time she’d ever kept something from Ava, though. No mean feat given she found keeping secrets, especially from her twin, nearly impossible.
She filed that conversation away once more and opened the message, expecting her pal’s usual cheery update on her life in Emerald Bay.
Five minutes later, Grace was still sitting on her bed, clutching her phone. It wasn’t fair. Clara and her son, Alfie, had been through so much in the last few years, and now this. There were worse things than having no hot water for a morning shower.
Things like not having a roof over your heads.