Chapter 28
Present
It seemed to Siggy, there was so much going on.
Her mother was like a demon at home. She knew it was nerves, pure and simple.
Her mother had been, like, totally obsessed with the White Book entry for so long, it was driving her to distraction.
And she, in turn, was making everyone else as anxious as herself.
Somehow, her father managed to do what was needed and then stay out of the way.
Now, Siggy wondered about what that truly meant.
Was he hiding a secret more shocking than her own?
She wasn’t sure which her mother would find hardest to forgive, her father carrying on with her best friend or Siggy falling in love with someone like Danial, someone they didn’t know, someone who was not on the unspoken list of suitable friends for Siggy.
When she read the text that had been forwarded to her phone late last night, she suspected the latter. It had kept her awake for most of the night. Oh, she knew that there were plenty on the island who would not want the Vals to settle down here, but she hadn’t expected anything so vile.
And there was no missing what the undercurrent was, someone, she had no idea who exactly, but someone was suggesting that Danial was behind the break-ins that had taken place across the island over the last few weeks.
She almost threw her phone at the wall in disgust, she’d had to reread it a second time, to try to make sense of it.
It was so unfair. Whoever had sent that vile text, wherever it had originated, it was anonymous, of course, because only a coward and a trouble maker would send such a thing.
Well, if their intention was to upset Danial, Siggy decided, she would not be the person to satisfy them. Instead, she deleted it immediately.
‘Hello Siggy, I don’t think I’ve laid eyes on you since I retired.’ Jay Larkin’s familiar face settled her. How bad could things ever be in a world where Jay Larkin was still strolling around the village.
‘Hi, Jay.’ Her mother had almost cried when she heard old Jay was retiring. ‘How are you enjoying retirement?’
‘Even better than I could have dreamed of,’ he held out the daily newspaper for her to see. ‘And what about you, is your mother keeping you busy in the guest house these days?’
‘Yeah, it’s busy alright, but I’m helping Rae too, in the hotel,’ she said then.
‘Well, I hope you get to have some fun when the summer comes, no good hanging about until my age.’ Then he smiled and lowered his voice, so they couldn’t be overheard by any passers-by.
‘A little birdie told me, that love might be in the air over at the hotel…’ And he nodded over to Danial, making his way into the hotel.
‘It’s not…’ She stopped. Her first thought, how on earth did Jay know about her and Danial? Her second, God help her, she had to make sure her mother didn’t get wind of it.
‘It’s alright, it’s not common knowledge, and I won’t be volunteering it to anyone else.’ Jay smiled kindly.
‘Thanks Jay, it’s just…’
‘Well, I think it’s sweet. I spotted you both sitting in the square one of the days, and I thought, history repeating itself.
I’m one of the few around here that’s old enough to remember your great grandparents and no matter what people said or how young they were, when old Jack Scott fell in love with Gisela, wild horses wouldn’t have put him off track. ’
‘We’re kids, Jay, it’s not serious…’ She laughed, but then she thought about her mother, and she knew, she was the one person who’d give any wild horse a run for its money if she put her mind to it.
Siggy assumed there was simply no one she could talk to about her worries for her parents’ marriage. She couldn’t lay this on Rae’s door – God knows, her aunt had enough on her plate already and she certainly couldn’t say a word to her mother. That would be like igniting a nuclear bomb.
As for her father, well, perhaps she should just say something – brave it out, ask him the question although she didn’t want the answer she fully expected to get. ‘Are you having an affair with Fiona Dixon?’ Eugh. It was too gross for words.
The idea that her father would be having an affair was unthinkable, but with Fiona Dixon of any woman in the village? Quite aside from being one of her mother’s oldest friends, she was – well, she was Fiona.
Fiona was everything that her own mother was not.
Her whole wardrobe seemed to revolve around leopard print and statement jewellery, she drove a huge white car with blacked-out windows that anywhere else would be owned by a drug baron.
She wore her nails too long and her skirts too short, yes, she was the opposite of Siggy’s mother.
If she was being unkind, Siggy would call her vulgar.
And just as those thoughts entered her head, she felt mean again and once more had to fight the tears from flooding into her eyes.
Honestly, Siggy felt, she hadn’t been right since that morning in the van with her father. She’d tried to pretend that everything was normal, but she couldn’t look either of her parents in the eye.
Not that her mother even noticed it, she was so consumed with readying up Still Water House for its evaluation as a White Diary guest house.
Rae had dropped her bombshell about her plans for the hotel the previous day.
Her mother had come home ashen faced. She’d hardly spoken a word all evening and when Siggy asked if she’d like to watch the evening news while they ate (to crack open the frigid silence) her mother had just mumbled that she wasn’t very hungry anyway and excused herself to go upstairs.
Her mother was never not hungry.
*
It was the following day at the hotel that it all flooded out of Siggy.
It’s funny how it can take just one small word to loosen the stopper on your emotions.
Danial had done no more than ask if she was alright, and she had found herself smiling sadly and seconds later, trying hard to keep in tears that had been fighting at the bottom of her throat for days.
‘So, you see, I don’t know what to do for the best.’
‘I’m so sorry. My parents were…’ He sighed sadly.
‘I know, I’m lucky to have two parents, I know, I shouldn’t be laying this on you.
’ They were sitting at the back of the hotel, facing onto the car park.
Siggy had to shade her eyes from the sun, coming in from the west. It was late in the evening, one of those perfect evenings when everything was bathed in a warm orange glow.
In the distance, seagulls circled a small pleasure boat as it bobbed on the waves.
‘No. No. It is not that. My parents, well, they were very different people, my father did not want my mother to make trouble, he warned her where it would lead, but she was very…’
‘Strong-minded? Like my mother?’
‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged. ‘But my father, he was quiet, serious, and they were a good balance for each other.’
‘I’m not even sure if my parents love each other anymore, not the way I’d want to be in love if I decided to spend my life with someone.’
‘Do you think this could split them up?’ he asked softly. And she realised that he’d just said the unthinkable. She couldn’t imagine a life where they weren’t all together – it was just too awful.
‘I don’t know.’ Somehow, saying that calmed her.
The fact was, she couldn’t see how they could financially afford to live apart.
The guest house made a reasonable income, but her father hadn’t enough to move out and rent somewhere on his own.
And as for Fiona Dixon, well there was no way she’d want to slum it in some grotty rented flat.
Siggy figured that for Fiona, how things looked, would be much more important than how things were – a fall from her self-created pedestal would not be in her game plan.
‘What I mean is, if you do nothing are they likely to continue as they are, maybe as happy as they are already content to be? Or, if you do something, will it make things worse?’
‘That’s the thing, I really don’t know what to do.’
‘Look at it another way, by telling your mother or confronting your father – how much better do you think that will make things?’
‘Not one bit, probably,’ she said and she knew that was a fact.
If her father was in love with another woman – a word from Siggy was not going to change that.
She knew that now she’d met Danial. Other people’s opinions couldn’t put you off, not if you were in love.
It might make him end it, but it wouldn’t change how he felt.
‘I suppose, the other thing that’s bothering me, is the idea of Fiona pretending to be my mother’s friend and then being so… ’
‘Yes. I can see how that would make you want to do something.’ He stopped for a moment.
‘This is easy for me, it doesn’t affect me as it does you, but I think you need to weigh up either side of the scales of doing or not doing.
It doesn’t matter about this woman Fiona – all that should matter to you is that your parents are happy. ’
‘Thank you, Danial.’
‘I have done nothing.’
‘You’ve listened.’ She looked into his eyes; they were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.
‘I am glad you told me.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. It means we are…’ He stopped. ‘Well,’ he gently pushed aside some stray ribs of hair that had fallen across her eyes. ‘We are…’ Then he leaned in to kiss her and he didn’t need to say another word because she knew, this thing between them was growing deeper for him too.