Chapter 9
NINE
RORY
She looks terrified, her eyes wide and shining with tears, her full lips trembling with the effort of holding herself together.
She actually shrinks away from me, as though she thinks I’m going to hurt her.
I take a deep breath, and force myself to back off.
Whatever our history, whatever residual anger I still feel, I am a large man physically intimidating a small woman.
That is not right, and I need to calm down.
She is visibly relieved when I put some distance between us, and weirdly that stings.
It might be a lifetime ago, but I still remember when she couldn’t bear to be apart from me.
We had to be touching at all times – even if it was just the very tips of our fingertips, the brush of a thigh.
Even when we weren’t touching it still felt like we were connected.
We could be on opposite sides of the room, and our eyes would meet, and boom – the world exploded.
Nothing left in it but me, and her, and the crazy way we felt about each other.
I know we were kids. I know I should just laugh about it, our self-obsessed infatuation. But the truth is, I’ve never felt the same about anybody ever since. Nothing has ever even come close.
And now? Now she is glaring at me with as much defiance as she can muster, trying to appear tough. It’s not working. The tear-stains on her cheeks and the wild look in her eyes betray her – she’s finding this just as hard as I am.
‘I’m going to go downstairs and make tea,’ I tell her, keeping my voice far more steady than I feel.
There is nothing to be gained by playing the bully, by screaming or shouting, by scaring her.
She did what she did back then, and maybe she’s still ashamed – or maybe she’s just embarrassed, caught out, being forced to face up to a misdeed that she’d probably forgotten all about.
‘Follow me down once you’ve got yourself settled. ’
She nods, and gratefully opens the door, looking set to bolt immediately.
‘Jane?’ I add softly but I hope still firmly, before she can close it. ‘We do need to talk.’
She pales, takes a gulp of air. ‘Yes. I know,’ she mutters, and retreats.
I stare at the now-closed door, and shake my head.
I fight the urge to bang on it with my fists and force her back out – what the hell is wrong with me?
Why am I feeling like this? This isn’t me, not at all.
Why has seeing Jane again after all these years turned me into such a giant prick?
The answer, I know, is that I’m also a giant baby.
A great big crying fool who has been undone by seeing his first love again.
It’s pathetic is what it is. Annoyed with myself, I stride off towards the stairs, determined to get my emotions back under control before I see her again.
I hear Beth on the phone, laughing her head off, and it almost makes me smile.
God, we weren’t much older than her when it all happened.
How can it still matter? How can it still hurt me like this?
I thought I was over it. Maybe I hadn’t forgotten, but I’d moved on.
I’ve built a life for myself. Okay, maybe I’ve never fallen in love again, or married or had kids like my parents always wanted me to.
Maybe I haven’t ticked those boxes – but I’ve done okay.
I’ve not been crippled by it. Recently, I’ve even been giving some real thought to building on my relationship with Catrina, which has felt like progress. Now I just feel wrecked.
I head into the kitchen. On autopilot, I make tea, realising I have no clue how she takes hers, or even if she drinks it.
She didn’t back then, she lived on rocket-fuel like Coke and Lucozade.
I was the one for the tea, due having an Irish mammy who was obsessed with it.
Even after we left Ireland for my dad’s job, she’d make sure there was always a box of Barry’s Gold Blend in the house, always had a brew on the go.
Does Jane drink tea now she’s older? Or coffee? And why does it matter?
I slam the kettle down angrily. It doesn’t matter.
I don’t need to know what the woman drinks.
She shouldn’t even be here. I’m still in shock, I think, from seeing her standing there in the doorway of Moira’s cottage.
The same but different – the big brown eyes staring up at me in, well, horror I guess.
Her hair, once so long and wild, in a neat shoulder-length bob.
Her face older, obviously, but still so much more pretty than she ever gave herself credit for.
The lips as plump and kissable as they always were…
No! No way am I going to let my mind go down that road.
I pour boiling water, and in my haste I splash some on my fingers.
I welcome the sharp burn. It’s a distraction I very much need, and I remind myself as I run the red skin under the cold tap that I have no business thinking about her that way.
She is a grown woman, a stranger, a mother.
She could well be married for all I know, though I didn’t spot a ring.
Moira hasn’t told me too much about her, other than the name Jane Clarke, which implies she has at least been married.
Or changed her name for some other reason.
I didn’t make the connection – why the hell would I?
I haven’t seen her for twenty-six bloody years!
We left the area not long after, and she’d gone away on an extended trip with her parents.
We never got the chance to talk, to hash things out. I never got the chance to ask her why.
Now, I have that chance – but at what price?
The sensible thing to do here would be to simply ask her to leave.
I have no idea where she would go, but it doesn’t really matter.
If by some miracle after discovering me here she still wants to stay in Bonnie Bay, she can find another roof to sleep under.
Moira’s right, there aren’t a lot of options – the cottages are small and most of them full with either permanent residents or tourists – but Moira is also playing the matchmaker in a situation she doesn’t understand.
I remember the pleading look Jane gave me on the cottage doorstep, the way she whispered the word ‘please’ – she didn’t want Beth to know about any of this.
I don’t blame her. But I can also tell that Beth is keen to stay here, that she loves it.
That maybe Beth is the reason Jane hasn’t already hightailed it out of here forever, leaving a cloud of dust in her rear-view mirror.
Still, Beth is not my responsibility, and neither is her mother. There are hotels in Macduff, and that’s only half an hour away. There are lots of options in Aberdeen. For feck’s sake, she could just bloody go home – wherever the hell that is these days. Watford, did Beth say?
After she ended things, it was back to Ireland for us, the whole family uprooted from our brave new world, and off home to the old one.
I’ve never known if it was purely to keep me away from Jane, or because they missed it.
My dad is long gone now, and my mother is in her eighties, still with all marbles intact, but a sharp tongue and no desire to focus on the past. I hated them for it at the time, for dragging me away, even though Jane had made it brutally clear things were over – but some hates simply do not stand the test of time, thank God.
I sulked and cried and rebelled, made myself a thoroughly unpleasant lout I’m sure.
I had a year in the wilderness, running wild in the city, getting myself into a fair bit of trouble.
Nothing serious enough to ruin my future, but a few close calls – it was spending a night drunk in the garda station that ironically sobered me up.
My dad had friends there, and when they picked me up – peeing in public, not my proudest moment – I ‘resisted’.
I don’t even remember it, but apparently I took a fair swing at one of the garda, and managed to inflict a blow.
I got a few back, naturally enough, and then they slung me into a cell.
My dad, when they called him, said he was sick of me acting the maggot, and told his mate to keep me for the night.
He was ever the one for the tough life lessons.
With hindsight, can’t say that I blame him – and it did the trick.
I had decent exam results, and I used them to go to Trinity College Dublin to study law.
The ‘good solid career’ he’d always wanted for me.
No wild women, no wild fantasies, no wild nonsense about art.
He was delighted – right up until the time ten years ago when I gave it all up.
Since then there’s been plenty of wild nonsense about art, and a fair few wild women – but always on a temporary basis.
None of them has ever moved into my heart, never mind my home.
And now I am here, my fingers going numb, hand still held under the flow of ice-cold water.
I snap myself out of it, make tea any old way, guessing at what she might want. If she doesn’t like it then she can make herself a fresh one. I’m not here to babysit the woman, even if the look of utter desolation in her eyes did tug at my heartstrings.
I go through into the living room, and am startled to find her already in there.
I’d expected her to take an age, to hide, maybe to climb out of the window and down the drainpipe.
We got quite adept at sneaking in and out of our homes during our long-ago courtship, back when evading our ever-vigilant mums and dads was all we had to worry about.
She’s standing by the far wall, staring at the framed photo of me and Angus on my boat. Damn. I’d meant to move that, but now it’s too late.