Chapter 17
Present
There’s something different here, I can’t quite put my finger on it,’ Blythe said, as she looked around the flat. ‘Did you get new curtains or…’
‘No,’ Rae said softly, enjoying watching her sister’s discombobulation.
The fact was that she’d changed things round slightly.
Oh, it wasn’t so much, just swapping out tired chairs for ones that had been hidden away in unused rooms for years.
She’d changed the rug too. The old one was fit for nothing more than the bin.
She’d taken a rust-coloured circular one from one of the best rooms in the hotel.
It was the strangest thing. After that vase broke in the night, Rae had felt compelled to shift the kitchen table, just six inches to the left.
The room was so small that it blocked up the doorway slightly, but it had a liberating effect on her.
It was heady; as if it released something locked up inside her for far too long.
Just six inches and it felt as if she’d crossed a threshold, eased herself from the grip that had held her for so long.
It calmed her, as if with each inch a little more of Marcus’s power was fading.
So, then, she moved the cushions around on the chair.
Gingerly at first, gripped by the irrational fear that he might burst through the door and make her put them back.
He’d had that curious, terrible capacity, where he knew exactly how to make her shrivel up within.
It was not that he called her names as such, but he had a way of looking at her, his presence alone when he was displeased, those long, drawn-out days of silence – it was oppressive. It made her feel smaller each time.
‘The place feels different, as if it’s…’ Blythe stopped, looked at Rae, maybe she felt what Rae was too ashamed to put into words. The place felt better with each day that passed.
‘It’s…’ Rae looked around, trying to put it down to something more than it was, ‘it’s probably just that I’ve had a bit of a spring clean.
’ This was her chance. Rae thought, now was the time to mention Siggy’s suggestion about the hotel.
It had tossed around in her mind for days, but the arrival of a second, strongly worded letter from a man purporting to be her bank manager was the final straw.
She had woken this morning, with the intention of calling up the local estate agent and getting his advice.
‘Hmm.’ Blythe ran her finger along the bookcase, checking for dust and Rae shrank back. How could she possibly tell her sister about the mess she was in now?
Rae wished she could just pour her heart out to Blythe.
They had been as close as it was possible to be, once.
Rae remembered as clearly as if it was yesterday, how Blythe looked out for her when they were younger.
Probably, Rae was responsible for more of Blythe’s frown lines with her teenage shenanigans than Siggy ever managed to etch across her mother’s face.
There was no trace of that closeness left between them today. Rae hadn’t felt it in years and it saddened her, because when she’d needed Blythe the most, the gulf between them was so wide, Rae felt they’d never bridge it again.
‘How on earth can you afford to pay staff when the place is like a morgue?’ Blythe looked around now, as if to confirm her first impression was on the money.
‘Well, I’m not actually…’ Rae began to explain.
‘And these robberies? Did you ever? I can’t remember the last time there was a break-in on the island, can you?’ she said then and rolled her eyes, because they both knew, the last break-in had been down to an old boyfriend of Rae’s which gave both Blythe and Marcus plenty to crow about.
‘Hmm, it’s terrible, yes…’ Rae said softly, because it was only yesterday, she’d overheard some of the old dears talking about it in the supermarket. Apparently, there had been two more, this time in Muffeen Beag, targeting elderly people, living alone.
‘Oh, yes, it’s just a blessing that it wasn’t worse.
Mrs Deere was staying at her daughter’s house, because she’s just had her hip done and old Jim Kelleher is as deaf as a post. Apparently, they ransacked his cottage while he slept soundly through the whole thing.
They even managed to send his cutlery drawer crashing to the floor and it didn’t wake him.
’ Blythe was looking towards Rae’s bedroom door as she said it.
‘You’re not nervous here, are you? On your own?
I mean, it’s a huge building and…’ She stopped.
‘Sorry, I mean…’ And for a moment, there it was, Rae could see it, she was worried about her living here on her own, despite everything that had passed between them, she still cared for Rae.
‘No. No. To be honest, I hadn’t even thought of it.
’ Rae smiled as winningly as she could manage, but she’d never had much of a poker face.
Of course, Blythe would put her discomfort down to losing Marcus and the idea of being alone here without him.
‘Anyway, I have Danial here, so… you know, it doesn’t feel as if I’m completely on my own. ’
‘You know there’s been talk around the village…’
‘No.’ Rae put her hand out to stop Blythe, ‘please don’t tell me, the Christmas choir think I’ve taken a young lover.’
‘Don’t be disgusting, Rae, he’s young enough to be your son,’ Blythe exhaled loudly.
They didn’t talk about the fact that Rae and Marcus had not produced a family.
Marcus wasn’t one for having his business bandied about the place.
It became yet another taboo subject between the sisters, although Rae had many times wished she had someone to confide in.
‘Well, thank goodness for that much,’ Rae said, and she picked up her coffee cup, put it to her lips, sipped the dregs.
‘They’re saying that the break-ins only began after that family moved to the island.’
‘That family?’
‘Oh, Rae,’ Blythe rolled her eyes as if she despaired of all that was rational. ‘Don’t be obtuse, it doesn’t suit you.’
‘ “That family”, as you call them, are a grandmother and her grandson. They’ve travelled thousands of miles to live ordinary peaceful lives; they have every right to call this place home and live their days out like the rest of us.’
‘Pah! That’s never what these people want… surely, you’re not na?ve enough to believe that.’
‘Blythe,’ she had to stop her sister there, these people, she wasn’t going down this road again, her sister had been the same for years, distrusting outsiders. ‘Have you met Melissa Val?’
‘No, but I know her sort.’
‘Ah, Blythe, really, I thought we were better than this…’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Our own grandmother was treated with suspicion just because she was a German emigrant. Pappy told us this often, the way the older people looked at you sometimes, because you resembled her, thinking you were above yourself. The sly comments, always hinting at the same thing; the idea that Gisela’s money was somehow tainted by the Schutzstaffel. ’
‘That’s a completely different thing. Our grandmother’s arrival didn’t coincide with a spate of break-ins,’ Blythe said, and in her hand, the cup and saucer that she was holding rattled, so she placed them on the table.
‘No, only the downfall of the Axis powers.’
‘Oh, Rae, stop being so annoying. You’re the one living here in this huge place, smack in the centre of town, you’re a sitting duck if that guy decides to break in one evening, you’ve probably even given him the key.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Blythe, he’s a lovely kid, he’s not trouble.’
‘And you’d know, I suppose.’ Blythe’s colour had drained.
‘Really, Blythe?’ Again, she was throwing up a reminder that for a short while, Rae went off the rails. ‘That’s all so long ago.’
‘You can’t have him here.’
‘You’re the very one who has headed up every island welcome committee and given a céad míle fáilte to any Tom, Dick or Harry who washed up here over the years.’
‘That was different, that was tourism – they were adding to the value of the island for everyone…’
‘Oh, yes, and what about that lovely group of five that booked into the stables a couple of years ago…’ Rae couldn’t not mention it.
It had tickled her for years afterwards, that Blythe had booked in a bunch of very respectable-looking guests to Still Water House.
They weren’t in the property five minutes when they were dancing naked around an open fire in the back yard, baptising each other in the still water pool and chanting to some freaky deity they were convinced talked to them through the white thorn bushes that bordered much of the property.
‘Of course, you would bring that up…’ Blythe sighed dramatically at the terrible memories being dredged up.
‘Anyway, if you make your way down to their cottage, knock on the front door and introduce yourself, you’ll see what I mean. She’s a lovely woman, cultured and dynamic, she is a great addition to the island.’
‘Do you hear yourself, Rae? She’s a grandmother and she’s here for one reason and one reason only; to lay all her troubles on our health service’s door and her son is having rich pickings across the island when old people are asleep in their beds.’
‘You’ve gone too far, Blythe, Danial is just outside, I can’t have you speaking like that about him. You’re wrong. I know you’re wrong and if you can’t say something nice, then I’d rather if you said nothing at all.’
‘Hmph. So, that’s how it is, is it? Even a five-minute blow-in means more to you than your own sister.’
‘It’s just good manners,’ Rae said under her breath.
‘Yes, well, it might be considered good manners too, if you let a local try out for a job before you go handing it out to the first ne’er-do-good that darkens your door.’
‘No one else came looking for a job,’ Rae was beginning to lose patience now.
She found herself grinding her teeth in that way she’d done for years in her sleep.
The dentist said it was stress. If it was, at least it was the sort that bubbled away beneath her skin, the sort that mostly, she’d become so accustomed to, she hardly noticed it anymore.
‘Mae English told me that when her son came looking for a job here, not six weeks ago, you sent him packing with his tail between his legs.’
‘I wouldn’t say I sent him packing, but there wasn’t any job for him.’ Rae looked at Siggy now, who had come through the door, perhaps to offer coffee refills; they both knew what was coming.
‘Mum, even if Rae had a job vacancy, do you really think one of the English boys would be right for it?’ Siggy said.
‘You know as well as anyone, they’ve caused more trouble around here than the Pope has spent in prayer groups.
Seriously, Paulie would swipe the eye out of your head and come back five minutes later for the eyelashes. ’
‘I see.’ Blythe rounded on Siggy. ‘So, she has you in on it too?’
‘No, Mum, not at all, but I could hear you from outside. We’re lucky if the whole island hasn’t heard you.’
‘Oh, right, so when was I going to hear about him?’ She jerked her thumb towards Danial – who was in the bar keeping the show on the road.
‘That’s different, he’s not…’ Rae began to speak, but already, Blythe was making her way out of the sitting room, stalking towards the front door, leaving in her wake a shocked Siggy and an almost-tearful Rae.
*