Chapter 27 #2
Maybe that was the start, but in the run up to the wedding, Rae began to notice other things about her sister, small things.
She began to wonder if Marcus was right, did she really know her sister as well as she always thought she did?
When he first whispered in her ear that she should step up to the table and take an equal seat, Rae didn’t know what he meant.
Rae had never thought about her relationship with her family in that way before, but now, Marcus made her question if she had always settled to be second best.
‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ Marcus murmured one evening when she told him that Blythe had rostered her on in the hotel first thing in the morning because one of the other girls had come down with a cold.
‘Not at all, why would it?’
‘Oh, Rae, Rae, Rae,’ he shook his head sadly as if she’d somehow fallen short of the mark he expected of her.
‘What?’
‘Can’t you see it?’
‘See what?’ The way he was watching her made her feel as if she was being closely examined and somehow, she was being found lacking, and because she was madly in love with him, this frightened her.
She couldn’t lose him. Marcus was absolutely putting himself out each week to travel from Galway to the island, just for her.
They were madly in love, but she knew, that could change in the blink of an eye.
Hadn’t her own parents gone out for a drive one day and nothing had ever been the same since?
Nothing is guaranteed in life. Lots of girls would fancy Marcus on the mainland.
She’d never imagined herself to be jealous before, but she knew in a busy Galway hotel, Marcus would be surrounded by pretty girls his age and far more worldly than Rae.
The idea of him falling out of love with her was chilling.
She had never been with anyone like him before, he made her feel safe, special. She couldn’t lose him now.
‘Come on, I mean, she completely controls your day, she doesn’t even ask if it suits and she knows I’m only here for one day this week. As to how she throws her weight around in the hotel, honestly, it’s like she’s your boss and you’re nothing more than a paid employee.’
‘Ah, now, it’s not really like that at all,’ Rae said, but of course, she was just a paid employee. Although, now he said it, she wondered if from the outside, maybe that’s exactly what it looked like to others. Is that really what she wanted Marcus to think?
‘I thought when we met that…’ He stopped.
‘What?’ A rivulet of cold fear oozed from her pores.
‘Well, you were both the Hope Square Sisters, that first day, when I met you, you were so…’
‘I’m still the same person.’ But in her mind’s eye, maybe she knew what he meant.
They’d run into each other when she’d been tanned and oblivious to him.
The only thing she felt was grief, her mother’s passing still so raw, she was cast adrift with no sign of the shore.
She hadn’t invested in her relationship with Marcus at that point, instead, it was Johnno that was stressing her out.
Perhaps she’d seemed somehow more glamorous, more sophisticated, more commanding than she really was – certainly, she knew many of the islanders saw the Scott girls as being on par with celebrity heiresses.
Their lives appeared to be rather glamorous from the outside, greeting people as they arrived in the hotel, they could afford nice clothes, to have their hair done regularly and they lived in one of the most imposing houses on the island.
‘Anyway, maybe I was wrong about you, maybe…’ He looked a little crestfallen. In that moment, it felt as if he’d glimpsed beyond the curtain. Rae felt the glowing light of his approval slip away from her on the stage of their relationship. Suddenly, she was in obscurity, in the darkness.
‘Blythe is certainly not my boss,’ Rae said crossly then, and she made up her mind to show Marcus Johnson just how fabulous she was. The next time he came to the island, she would be transformed.
Marcus had hardly boarded the ferry that evening when Rae made an appointment with Dawn Doherty to jazz up her image, make her more sophisticated, exceed his expectations. She adored Marcus, the fact was, she’d turn herself inside out at that point just to make him love her back.
The ceremony was, of course, in the local church where generations of the Scott family had been christened, married and buried for as long as there were records to check.
Rae knew the wedding was the talk of the whole village – everyone who was anyone was hoping to be invited.
Rae had no say in the guestlist, but Blythe had promised that there would be a seat next to her for Marcus if he was free to make it on the day.
Rae would always look back on those days as golden, even if she didn’t fully realise it at the time. She was crazy for Marcus and in the most divine stroke of luck, he seemed to be utterly smitten with her.
It’s funny but somehow, while Blythe seemed determined to dive into the darkest moods, Rae’s life felt as if she’d suddenly stepped into a dimension completely altered.
The arrival of Marcus on the island had changed everything.
She loved when they did nothing more than walk the strand, sit on rocks and talk for hours about everything and nothing.
Marcus was amazing. It really felt as if he was interested in everything she had to say.
He was different to the other boys she’d dated, older, of course, that was probably it, but thoughtful and probably sexily experienced with it.
When he kissed her, it felt as if he was opening a volcano of desire within her.
She supposed he’d probably had lots of girlfriends over the years, not like the boys she’d hung out with on the island.
Now she could see them for what they were – just boys. As Marcus said when Johnno passed them out on his new motorbike – petrol heads. And he said it in a way that dripped of disdain and somehow, Rae looked at Johnno differently now.
She had no interest in Johnno or any of that crowd these days, if anything she did her very best to distance herself from them in Marcus’s eyes.
She knew, somehow, that his estimation of her would plummet if he realised she’d been sitting on the back of Johnno’s motorcycle for the last two years with nothing more to show for it than poor school grades and a fraught relationship with Blythe because of it.
No. Marcus made her feel as if she could be somehow better than she already was. She found herself picking out clothes from Blythe’s wardrobe that she felt he would approve of, demure dresses and sandals in pastel shades. Her biker chick days were relegated to the very back of the cupboard.
It was the same with the hotel. Before Marcus came, she turned up, did as she was asked, but really, she had more interest in chatting to the other women who came in to help than she had in running the place. That had always been Blythe’s domain.
These days, she found herself taking extra pride, especially when Pappy complimented her on a job well done.
He’d put her in charge of arranging the hotel flowers every summer.
She’d duly picked and plucked and filled up jars in the reception, small posies on each dining table and in the bedrooms. Since Marcus arrived, she found herself spending more time on the job.
She’d borrowed a book from the library van all about flower arranging.
With every passing week, her arrangements were becoming more elaborate, more of a testament to her talent.
In her way, she knew she was making her own unique mark on the hotel.
Constance Macken, who had taught her in primary school, said they were becoming ‘the talk of the village – an art in themselves’.
Rae had been over the moon with that. She knew Constance was lovely at the best of times, still, she found herself working even harder to make each display surpass the last.
Blythe was the only grey cloud on her horizon. These days her sister wouldn’t notice a flower arrangement if it was the size of a bus, but Rae had to remind herself – that didn’t matter, not really.
Rae worried about her. All the time. She couldn’t help it.
Rae had a growing feeling that there was something more than the cold war with Pappy upsetting her sister.
She had hoped Blythe would tell her. If the shoe was on the other foot, she would absolutely spill the beans.
She told Blythe almost everything about Marcus in those early days.
One day she’d snapped and cut Rae off, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Rae, give me a break, he’s Mr Perfect, I know, I know.
’ After that, Rae had kept things back, small things at first, but then bigger things, like Marcus’s hope to one day own his own hotel, that they would one day work together, have a shared dream.
Rae hated the idea of being stuck in a hotel for the rest of their days, but she didn’t tell Marcus that.
Instead, she allowed his dreams to wrap her up in a warm feeling of safety and belonging.
She wasn’t going to worry too much about things that were years off yet, love would find a way, she was sure of that.