Chapter 26 #2
‘Really Blythe, did you have to be so horrendously rude to the woman?’ Fiona came right out with it.
‘I don’t know what you mean?’
‘Oh, please, don’t play stupid. You’ve had a face on you like a pinched clothespin since you came in the door and saw Melissa’s macarons on the table.’ This from Ellen.
‘Excuse me?’ For Blythe, that was the worst, because Ellen Mitchell had never said boo to a goose in her life.
‘I’m going after her,’ Heather said then, getting up quickly. ‘Sorry, Fiona, but she can’t go walking back alone. Anyone else up for the walk?’ She looked around the room and of course, the three sheep on the sofa nodded obediently and got up to follow her.
After they left, the atmosphere stung with hostility.
Blythe stewed silently, hoping for she knew not what – for it to pass, perhaps?
Across from her, Mary had the look of a woman working her way nervously through her novenas until her husband, Jay, came to collect her.
Fiona made a show of clearing away the plates and glasses of the evening, although of course, her cleaner would be arriving promptly at nine in the morning to put the place to rights as she always did anyway.
‘Here, let me,’ Blythe said, gathering up some of the empty platters to take them through to the kitchen. They were heavy, extraordinarily beautiful, exceptionally unique; Blythe couldn’t help but notice now, as she stacked up four of them.
‘It’s okay, really, I’d rather you didn’t,’ Fiona said, and she went to take the platters from Blythe, ‘we must be careful with them, Melissa’s husband made them, and they are very dear to her.’
Fiona’s words were swirling around Blythe’s mind, because suddenly she felt her head swim, her balance completely at odds with how it should be.
The sand and sea-coloured bespoke rug felt like a flying carpet beneath her feet.
She was not used to drinking so much gin.
She was not used to drinking much of anything beyond half a glass of wine with Kip of an evening.
She must have drunk three very large measures in the space of two hours.
What was she thinking, now, the whole room began to sway around her.
The platters she was carrying tipped, first one way, then the other, in dreadful slow motion.
She moved, what she thought was only slightly, but it turned out her whole spatial awareness had shifted out of sync.
Now she was spinning, away from the flying carpet at her feet and towards the huge oil painting that everyone had been so taken with earlier.
And then she watched, horrified as they slid, one after the other to a resounding crash, first, scraping against the canvas and then, slowly, ever so agonisingly slowly to a resounding crash into a thousand smithereens on the maple floor.
Blythe, too, ended up falling with them.
Strangely she knew the dismayed expression on Fiona’s face had nothing to do with any injury Blythe might have caused herself.
Rather it was all about the damage to the irreplaceable platters and probably ruined canvas that was now dripping with dark chocolate and cream.
‘I didn’t mean it, I swear,’ Blythe tried to pick herself up off the floor, but now, it seemed everywhere was chocolate and cream, her limbs had turned to soufflés, and the more she scrambled to get up, the more she slid back down.
‘Oh, God, what will you say to Melissa?’ Mary whispered, while her lips stayed in the shape of a circle.
There was an expression of terrified wonder on her face, a mixture of dread and morbid excitement; like one of those people who laugh in the face of tragedy, her nervous system unable to undo the horror that had just unfolded and make sense of what was coming next.
‘Oh, God, Mary, I don’t know, let’s just get this cleared up and see what can be salvaged.’ Fiona ran her hands through her hair, but even in Blythe’s inebriated state she knew the best you’d save out of this mess was a shard or two at most.
‘Here, let me,’ Blythe had finally managed to pull herself up to a standing position. Funny, how, once all the damage was done, she’d suddenly sobered up.
‘I think you’ve done quite enough for one night.’ Fiona stood, hands on hips, her eyes burning into Blythe with as much anger as any woman could manage to hold behind them.
‘But I…’ Blythe began.
‘Really, just go, Blythe, you’ve done enough damage already.’ Fiona marched towards the hall and took down Blythe’s coat, holding open the front door so there was no question that she was unwelcome here now.
‘I’m so sorry, you know about the…’ She looked towards the painting on the wall and the mess on the floor.
‘You know what, Blythe, all the damage…’ She put her hand up to her forehead as if she couldn’t even begin to count the cost of repairs to make even half of it right, ‘none of it matters. What’s really annoyed me tonight, is how you treated Melissa.
She was a guest in my home. You had no right to do that, not here, not anywhere on Pin Hill Island.
You are not the Queen Bee, no matter how much we’ve all been guilty of allowing you to think it over the years. Tonight you’ve gone too far.’
‘I…’ Blythe was shocked. Nobody had ever spoken to her like that before, but was she sorry?
She stood there, for a moment, with her mouth opening and closing, but no words were making it out.
‘What do we know about these people, really, Fiona? You and I – we’ve known each other for years, but now, don’t you see, everything is changing, Melissa Val and her son, it’s all very well for you.
But I have Siggy to think of, a business, a…
’ A marriage, but she could hardly admit that to herself, much less Fiona.
Tonight had been too much. Melissa Val coming to her book club, indeed.
And it was more than that. She was completely out of her depth after the evening.
Everything she’d begun to believe about the Vals had been thrown up in the air tonight.
It was obvious that Melissa Val was a cut above, not below.
Somehow that only made things worse. Danial Val would take her daughter far from Pin Hill Island, Blythe was surer of that now than ever.
‘Good night, Blythe, I would say, don’t come back, but since book club is at your place next month, I will say you won’t be seeing me there – and I doubt any of the other women will want to go either, unless you make it up to Melissa.
’ With that, she closed the door and Blythe found herself standing on the driveway with a light wind blowing the tears from her eyes, but still not touching the fury in her heart.
Those bloody Vals were ruining everything.
It felt as if, with their arrival on the island, Blythe’s whole world had started to fall apart.
She slept fitfully again that night, but by the morning, she knew there was only one thing for it.
She dug around in her pockets and pulled out her phone, scrolled down through the list of contacts to Mae English.
She’d never texted Mae in her life, she only had her phone number because she’d had to contact her years earlier when Mae had won a voucher for the local supermarket in the annual chamber draw.
It was a short text.
Mae need not even know who sent it.
Blythe went to the settings option on her phone and made her number private. She wasn’t exactly Bill Gates when it came to these things, but anyone could manage the basics. Her fingers shook as she began to type. Quickly. Before she could change her mind.
Has anyone else noticed that these break-ins only began with the Val family arriving on the island? Apparently, he’s been seen hanging around some of the houses that were broken into. Just a warning message. Keep your doors and windows locked. From a friend.
It was wrong, she knew that as soon as she’d sent it. But she couldn’t bring herself to feel regret. After all, it was just a text. Just a rumour. Hopefully, it would be enough to get tongues wagging and make Siggy see sense about that boy.
After seeing them together in the town square, Blythe knew, she had to tread carefully around the topic with Rae.
After all, hadn’t Rae been the very one who’d run around the island after the most unsuitable boy she could pick?
Hadn’t they had this conversation a million times over, twenty years earlier, and where had it gotten Blythe at the end of the day?
Nowhere. Actually, worse than nowhere. Marcus Johnson had swooped in, on the tail end of those arguments.
He had used them to his advantage, putting even more leverage on his side when Pappy saw the way Rae settled down, almost overnight, as soon as Marcus appeared on the scene.
She was not going to sit back and let the same thing happen again.
She wasn’t the only one who felt uncomfortable with the newcomers, there were probably plenty more on the island feeling the same way. Mae English for one, albeit for different reasons.
The sound of her ring tone. Damn it. Rae again.
‘Yes.’ She snapped into the phone.
‘Oh, Blythe, thank God, you picked up.’ Rae breathed and there was no missing the relief in her voice. ‘I’m so sorry that we’ve fallen out and that….’
‘Have you had second thoughts?’ Blythe said then, because she knew well enough, that Rae had bent to Marcus’s will continually over the years, she might just do the same now.
‘About what?’ Rae sounded genuinely baffled.
‘Oh, Rae,’ Blythe said in that way she always had when she despaired of her younger sister. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Nothing,’ Rae said slowly. ‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Well, you have my full attention.’ Blythe was aware of the irritation in her voice, but how else was she supposed to feel?