Chapter 8 #2
‘I know all this,’ Blythe said, but suddenly she felt winded.
She dropped into the chair. She did know her daughter was seventeen years old.
She knew, that in a year’s time, school would be over and probably, Siggy would want to go to college.
They hadn’t even talked about that, Blythe couldn’t face it.
But it was there, all the time, looming at the back of her mind.
After all, that’s what kids did, wasn’t it?
She felt lightheaded even thinking of it.
‘I seem to have lost my appetite,’ he said so softly that she felt a chill run through her, a ghost shiver, as if something inevitable, grim and merciless had just brushed past her.
It made her stop breathing for one long moment.
He sounded… different. Blythe felt that familiar pang of worry turning over in her stomach.
When she looked up, he was gone. She heard the back door slam, the engine of his van turning over.
The clock ticked slowly on the wall. And then, that unrelenting silence that unnerved her when she didn’t fill it in with chores or gossip but allowed the clawing fingers of the past to reach forward and hook into her present contentment.
She would not permit it. Siggy most certainly was not going scurrying up a mountain just because Kip thought it would be character building for her, or some other nonsense of that variety.
She made up her mind, she would not give in on this, she would hold firm, as she had always done, as she intended always to do, it was for Siggy’s own good – even if Kip didn’t see that yet.
Given time, he’d agree with her, he always did, she was sure of it.
She took a large gulp of red wine. The shock of the alcohol to her system was just what she needed.
Something to throw this jittery feeling off her nervous system, something to calm her down.
She walked out to the hall, picked up the register.
She’d always found it soothing to run her fingers down along the bookings.
Double check that everything was as it should be.
She took it and her glass of wine into the drawing room.
Dropped into one of the deep sofas that she’d had refurbished a few years earlier.
She pushed her reading glasses further up her nose and began to study the entries on the page in front of her.
At least they weren’t going to find themselves double booked – it had happened once before, and it was a complete nightmare.
Hah, it wasn’t something that was likely to happen at the hotel any time soon, she thought meanly.
Of course, Marcus had been the dynamo keeping that place going for years, her sister Rae, well, she hadn’t a clue really.
Rae slyly slid into running the hotel when Blythe always believed all she’d ever wanted was to spend her life surrounded by animals.
It still made her blood boil to think of the pair of them plotting behind her back with Pappy all those years earlier.
Rae’s denials had only widened the wedge between them, even now Blythe found herself wishing she’d at least been honest enough to admit to their treachery.
Well, Blythe reminded herself for the umpteenth time over the years, the hotel’s business was not her concern anymore. Marcus had made that perfectly clear on many occasions.
It had driven her on though, however much she might have declared them not to be in competition with each other.
She couldn’t deny, making a success of the Still Water Guest House had been fuelled by a desire to outshine them – to show Marcus she could beat him at his own game.
He might have taken her hotel from her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t come out on top.
With that her phone pinged. She lunged for it, fully expecting a voice message from Kip.
An apology, perhaps. But no, not Kip. It was weird, but that argument had completely thrown her.
They never argued – she and Kip. Never. And she had been cruel.
She knew where his tender spots were, that was the trouble, when you were married for eighteen years, you know exactly how to wound the other person.
Then, she remembered the phone in her hand.
Perhaps it was a slew of congratulations because surely by now, word would have gotten out.
Her committee had been successful in lobbying the council for a zebra crossing outside the local primary school.
It had taken a bit of work to swing it, not that Blythe minded hard work.
She was quite proud of herself, really. The committee had been in place for years, under the control of the school council, and in the vice-like grip of the old parish priest. Nobody listened to priests anymore.
Once she’d taken it over, they’d done trojan work.
Within the space of the last two years, there were refinished playing grounds for the kids, a defibrillator installed in the old telephone box and upgraded street lighting all along the footpath.
Now, this, the safe crossing, was the final piece she’d set out to do.
Instead of the gratification of congratulations, it was one of the WhatsApp groups, but not the school committee.
Instead, it was their book club group. Someone had shared a photograph of a dark-skinned woman, standing on the pier, wearing long robes and a turban in the style of one of those impossibly glamorous women in the 1970s.
She could be a silver screen goddess, who had stepped into middle age and retained that dazzling magnetism of youth and vitality that Blythe felt she herself had allowed to slip away so she only noticed it after it was already too late.
Wow. Blythe felt a wave of admiration at the sheer elegance of her.
Then, a new notification broke her concentration.
What on earth? Her eyes blinked, pushing her reading glasses high over the bridge of her nose, she peered at the phone screen to read the caption.
‘Our Newest Resident!!!!’ All those exclamation marks, it had to be Lorna Duffy.
At almost seventy, she was as excitable on text as she was in real life.
There was no need for it, in Blythe’s opinion.
Honestly, Lorna would probably insist on emojis to punctuate her tombstone.
Then there was a flurry of comments. Blythe watched as each of her friends waded in, commenting on the woman’s appearance and a slew of questions about what she was doing on Pin Hill.
Apparently, she had moved into the McDaid cottage, right in the middle of the village.
Well, it was bad enough to have the island overrun with eco warriors, bohemians and hippies, but at least they had the good grace to take over cottages that were long abandoned, usually with the worst of the island land around them.
But this woman, an outsider, would be living in the village, it was too much.
Blythe felt that souring sensation of fear rise in her stomach.
Outsiders. Nothing good could come of them living here.
All she wanted to know was – how long this woman intended to stay and if there was any way she could be persuaded to leave?
It was not Kip’s key in the door an hour later, instead, it was Siggy, making her way back from the village.
‘Hi darling, perfect timing, you must be ravenous?’ She looked at her watch, just two minutes to six.
‘Where were you until this hour?’ It was small talk.
Siggy had a small band of friends, carefully chosen by Blythe many years earlier.
In Blythe’s opinion, you had to be selective.
Each year, the local secondary school filled up with kids from the mainland who were sent to board in houses around the island – you didn’t know what you were dealing with there.
As far as Blythe could see, no good came of mixing yourself up with them.
‘Something smells good, casserole?’ Siggy bent down and kissed the top of Blythe’s head. ‘I was at the hotel, with Rae…’ She sighed as she flopped into the chair opposite.
‘Lovely,’ Blythe said, although she’d be lying if she didn’t admit to herself that sometimes, she felt a prick of envy at the way their relationship had so quickly grown.
Still, you had to be charitable. No matter the divide between them, Blythe knew, life for Rae must be hollow now that Marcus had passed away. ‘How are things in the hotel?’
‘Ah, you know… Quiet.’
‘I’m sure. Well, she’ll be pulling herself together, probably at this point.
It is a year and a half, after all…’ Blythe was sick and tired of everyone making a special case of Rae.
Anyone would think she was a bloody saint, the first widow in the history of the island, which she was neither.
Oh, of course, everyone believed that Rae and Marcus were the perfect couple.
The John and Jackie of Pin Hill, if you could believe that after everything that happened between them all.
‘I don’t know, I’m not sure you can put a timer on getting over the loss of the love of your life – look at the way you always spoke about my great grandparents. Pappy never really got over losing his wife, did he?’
‘It’s really not the same thing at all…’ Blythe said, annoyed that anyone would compare Marcus to Pappy.
‘Of course it’s the same thing. Marcus and Rae were devoted to each other,’ Siggy said with the earnestness of one whose age and na?veté have not yet robbed her of the notion of one true love being the same thing as blind devotion.
‘Yes, of course,’ Blythe said, because she had to keep up the pretence, otherwise, who knew what would come out if the walls began to fall.
‘But I mean, there were no children. Children bond a couple together in a way that well… it’s not the same thing at all,’ she said and she looked down to the crossword puzzle that had put her to sleep earlier, and tried to pretend that she had some interest in finishing it.
She suddenly felt uneasy – hadn’t she just rowed with Kip over their one shared child – maybe not so uniting after all.
‘For the love of God, Mum, don’t go saying that to anyone else, will you…’
‘Why on earth not, if it’s the truth.’
‘As you see it. But it could be hurtful to anyone who can’t actually…’ She stopped, cocked her ear, looked towards the window. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she said and then, something in her expression changed. She made a show of checking her watch. ‘I thought he’d be here before me...’
‘He was, but he had to go again.’ Blythe folded up her paper, plumped up the cushions on the sofa.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, he had to go back into the nursing home,’ there was no way she was telling Siggy that he’d walked out because they’d had an argument about her.
‘That’s…’ she dropped into the seat then, as if she had somehow tuned into Blythe’s upset. ‘Is there something up?’
‘Of course not, unless you count an extra coat of weather stain for the garden furniture an emergency.’ Blythe laughed now, but it sounded hollow.
‘Right, let’s get our dinner, shall we?’ she said, holding out her hand to make a thing of pulling Siggy from the chair.
‘You’re on washing up tonight,’ she said to change the conversation.
‘Ah Mum…’ Siggy said, because usually she shared the job with Kip, but then suddenly she brightened, as if she’d just thought of something else. ‘So, just the two of us?’ she said, linking her arm through Blythe’s.
It was only later, as Blythe lay in bed, that she wondered if Siggy was relieved that Kip was not there. But of course, that was ridiculous, Siggy adored her father, didn’t she?