Chapter 40
One minute Otto was there, and the next he was gone. He’d been swept off by a woman who'd appeared at his elbow with the words Otto, there you are, I've got the Padstow lot wanting a word about next year’s allocation. And that, as they say, was that.
Otto had tutted, excused himself, told Tilly not to move and that he would be two minutes.
Tilly had nodded, smiled and said of course, but to be honest, she’d been more than disappointed.
She wanted him to stay where he was and have the fireworks go off all night long.
From the spot he’d told her not to move from, she’d watched the two minutes stretch into five, and the five into ten.
As the fireworks ceased to go off, the evening began to ebb into somewhere she’d been before.
A place of waiting. Here we are again, then.
Standing on the edge of a party, glass clutched to her chest, watching a roomful of people who all knew each other while she waited was not a problem for Tilly as such.
She'd had plenty of practice at it, after all. She’d seen the front, back and roundabout of a venue or six in her time.
Playing the role of the girlfriend of the entertainer parked at the side while the actual evening happened to other people was no stranger to her.
Now here she was halfway across the planet on a foggy little island, standing in a similar spot, with a similar glass, feeling a similar way.
Nah, not having it. Starting to get irritated and telling herself that she would finish the fizz and slip away home before anyone clocked her leaving, a voice boomed out at Tilly’s elbow. 'G’day! How are ya?'
Turning to her right, Tilly smiled as Leo, the Australian, with a pint in each enormous hand and a grin, raised his eyebrows.
As broad as a barn door, a face weathered to the colour of conkers, and it had to be said, muscles on rippling muscles.
Not too shabby, ladies, not too shabby. ‘Oh, hey Leo. How are you?’
‘Goodo! How’s the arm healing?’
‘Yes, fine, very well, thank you. It was nothing in the end.’
‘She’ll be right. How’s your evening been?’
‘Yes, great so far, thanks. I was just thinking about heading off, actually.’
‘Oh, right, I thought you were, errm, invited by Otto.’
Tilly frowned. ‘Yep, I was. Meaning?’
‘Oh, nothing. It’s, well, just, anyway, where’s he got to?’ Leo craned his neck over the heads of the crowd. 'Typical. Drag a bloke to his own oyster night and then make him do actual work.'
Tilly kept her voice as light as the fizz. 'Oh, he got pulled off by someone, something about Padstow.'
Leo gave her a look. Watch what people don't say, Tils. That's where the real information is. ‘He’ll be back.’
Just as Tilly was about to make moves to leave, two more people arrived at the table in a flurry of greetings and a fresh round of drinks. Lucie joined Tilly, Leo and Shelly from the tram. Tilly smiled. ‘Hi.’
Lucie, in a ditsy print coral wrap dress with her hair down, smiled. Next to her, a tall man in a linen shirt had a beer in his right hand. 'This is George. George, this is Tilly, the one I told you about, from the Boat Shed.'
'The one who got stuck in the Carrington beds? Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.' George held out his hand to Tilly.
Tilly shook his hand. ‘All good things, I hope?’
George winked. 'Ahh, not so sure about that. I think you were the main topic of conversation at the club for the better part of a week.'
Tilly rolled her eyes. 'Wonderful. To be fair, it was a bit stupid to get myself stuck in the mud. A rookie mistake, I think…'
Lucie slid onto the bench beside Tilly and pressed a fresh, cold flute into Tilly’s hand before she could protest that she'd been about to leave.
'If Darlings are talking about you in the club, take it as a compliment.
It means they've adopted you. They only gossip about the ones they've decided to keep. I’m not joking. '
Just like that, Tilly had gone from standing alone on the verge of leaving to being hemmed in by warm bodies and drinks, with George squeezing in opposite and Leo planting himself at the end.
Her little plan to slip quietly away dissolved entirely as she chatted away and the small talk went from this to that and everything in between.
The storm, the oysters, the buyers, the price of everything.
As George got up to get another drink, Leo steered the conversation around to Otto. With a little tilt of his head towards the far end of the marquee, where Otto was still surrounded by people. 'Otto invited you, then.'
Tilly nodded, not revealing anything about her inner thoughts. 'He did. Well, he invited the whole island, didn't he?'
'Pah! Otto Carrington has not personally asked a single living soul other than his inner circle to this in the years I've known him. He turns up, does his bit, talks shop, and he usually goes home to Stanley pretty early on.'
Tilly's stomach swooped. ‘Oh, right.’
Leo shrugged his enormous shoulders. 'Sorry, I’ve definitely had one too many, but yeah, I've never seen him do this.'
Tilly wasn’t sure what to say. Was she supposed to be honoured or something?
To be quite honest, she’d also had one too many of the elderflower concoction.
The marquee felt a little bit floaty around her, what with the fairy lights, the lanterns, the white bunting by the armful and the crates of oysters banked up on their ice. 'Right.’
Leo continued to ramble on. ‘You know about his wife. Shelly said she'd mentioned it to you.'
Tilly nodded. Clearly, things went around like wildfire. 'She did tell me about it, yep.'
'Niamh. Irish, from out west, County Clare.
Funny as anything. Sharp. Took the absolute mickey out of him morning, noon and night, and he adored her for it.
They'd gone over to see her family. A car came round the bend too fast and never stopped.
Never found out who. That's the part that well...
There was never anyone to be angry at, in the end.
Just a road and a bend and that was it.'
‘I, err.’
'Otto threw himself at the business and wouldn't talk about it. Got the dog, eventually — that was my doing, actually. I more or less marched him to the rescue place and refused to leave without one. Stanley helped a lot.'
Tilly thought about how grumpy and rude Otto had been at the first meeting.
Was what had happened to him meant to excuse it?
You can’t just go around in life being rude to people for no reason.
It was called life or not as the case may be for a reason.
Tilly hadn’t had it easy, either. Coercive control did that for a girl.
'I gave him such a hard time when he was rude. I thought he was just being horrible.'
'He probably was being horrible! Don't go feeling too sorry for him.
He's a moody so-and-so at the best of times, grief or no grief. You should see where he comes from, though. I bet he hasn’t told you that bit.
The Carringtons go back to the Ark. Yeah, but he lives on a foggy little island and lives in a cottage with a dog.
' He shook his head fondly. 'Yeah, sorry, I should have kept my mouth shut. I was on an early shift this morning, and I’ve not had much to eat. I mean, an oyster doesn’t actually fill you up. '
'No, no, it’s fine. Thanks for letting me know, I think.'
Leo raised his pint and swore. 'I've said too much.
I always say too much, it's the pints, but I'll tell you this for nothing, Tilly from the Boat Shed, whatever you said to him on that decking, in your sou'wester, allergic to dogs and all the rest of it, it's the most awake I've seen him in years.
So you keep giving him a run for his money. The whole of Darling will thank you.'
Little sparklers went off under Tilly’s ribs as right at that moment Otto caught her eye and with his mouth made a small private acknowledgement.
There you are, won't be long, I see you.
He lifted his glass a fraction of an inch in her direction before the chap reclaimed his attention, and Tilly sat there with her elderflower fizz and felt the Catherine wheel catch its light and begin, slowly and gloriously, to spin over and over again.