Chapter 3
Present
Rae peered at her reflection in the half-light of her bedroom mirror.
She sighed. She’d have to do. She patted down her hair, probably she could do with a visit to the hairdresser, but really, for years she’d just made do, clipping it when it annoyed her, so it never really looked as if it grew at all.
Other women her age coloured their hair.
She knew several of her school chums who’d easily pass for a decade younger than their true age.
Rae’s hair had turned pewter grey when she was still in her twenties.
She’d gotten out of the habit of having it properly done.
Marcus had convinced her, of course. They couldn’t be seen to favour one business on the island over the other.
It was literally, Duffy’s or Doherty’s – Nell Duffy had a small salon above the local credit union.
At the other end of the village, Dawn Doherty operated a very brisk trade in the front room of her Victorian redbrick.
At first, it didn’t seem such a big thing.
After all, back then, all she had to do was run some shampoo through it in the shower and she was ‘done’.
Later of course, Rae recognised what she had given up; without even realising it.
It was not just about safeguarding bookings for the hotel by remaining neutral in the ongoing cold war between the two hairdressers.
It wasn’t even about saving money, which was always top of Marcus’s mind.
Now she could look back and really reflect, she realised, it was not just her hair that had suffered.
That one decision had so many other consequences.
Most of all, she missed the gossip and the camaraderie of those monthly visits to Dawn’s.
Would she have told one of those women what her life was really like?
Maybe and maybe not, but Marcus made sure that opportunity never arose.
More than that, she knew now, as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, not taking care of herself properly had made her smaller.
She’d actually shrunk into a smaller version of herself.
For a long time, she couldn’t bear to look at her reflection in the mirror.
She had once been a striking, vital girl – but living a small life all these years had taken from her, not so much her looks (true what they say, wasted on the young).
It also chipped away her confidence, or maybe her very essence.
Marcus was gone almost eighteen months at this stage.
And still, it felt as if he was here, watching her and judging her if she boiled one drop more water than she needed for her cup of tea.
She had changed nothing of her life since he’d died.
Had she dreamed of something better without him?
How on earth could she start to propel her life forward at what felt like this late stage?
The truth was, she couldn’t possibly make an appointment with Dawn Doherty now, fearing it would, as Marcus had fully convinced her, cause ripples of gossip around the island.
She might as well face it, she was turning into an old woman, long before her time. Maybe that was the price of fifteen years of being at the very bottom of your own list of priorities.
That afternoon, instead of a few hours much needed pampering, she kept their annual appointment, with the accountant. Still, she had to make some small effort, there was no good turning up there looking like she’d just lost all interest in life, when in fact that had occurred many years earlier.
Phil O’Connor had been doing the hotel books for years.
Marcus liked her because she was cheap. Her rates were much lower than you’d get on the mainland, that’s for sure, even if he disliked the idea of anyone knowing the ins and outs of their business.
Probably, at some point, Rae knew, she could have taken on the job herself, but Phil didn’t have very many clients.
They’d been at school together, so she stayed, it felt like a small act of defiance.
‘We’re ticking over?’ It wasn’t so much a question as it was an optimistic presumption. She said it as she placed a cup of coffee down on Phil’s desk. She’d bought them two lattes from the coffee shack that had opened a few years earlier down at the sea front.
‘You don’t need me to tell you that your income is down a lot this year,’ Phil said, her voice as neutral as if they were talking about the price of sand in Arabia.
‘I know, it must be hard, but…’ of course, she meant, since Marcus had died.
Rae had noticed it since her husband passed away, this habit people had of avoiding mentioning it, while still alluding to it.
As if it was the beginning and end of all her problems, the excuse for all things beyond her control and yet, no one was brave enough to put a name on it.
She wanted to tell them they had it all backwards; but there was no room in pleasant conversation for that.
‘I’ve stopped doing weddings,’ Rae said softly.
‘But aren’t they rather…’
‘They were our biggest income stream.’ Rae looked towards the window. Phil had an amazing view of the sea from here. Honestly, Rae thought, she could sit here all day long and watch the foamy waves break out in the bay.
‘And you’ve just…’ Phil looked as if she wanted to ask a thousand questions, obviously flummoxed, she had no idea where to begin. Hope Square was the only proper hotel on the island, but they’d never made a profit on just offering hotel accommodation.
Marcus was the one who came up with the idea of boutique island weddings.
It really took off after the marriage equality referendum.
Suddenly, there was a surge in weddings and couples who’d been dreaming of getting married forever wanting to tie the knot immediately.
DINKY’s – double income, no kids yet – couples were happy to pay over the odds for somewhere charming, somewhere different, away from their daily lives.
Marcus had tapped into the market, pricing well above the going rate for a product that he sold as unique.
An island wedding, in a boutique hotel, the Georgian grandeur of the Hope Square Hotel, where guests could flood out onto the town square where for a little extra, they could pitch a marquee and feel as if the village mall was thrown in to the package.
At this point, there must be thousands of wedding photographs sitting on office desks taken beneath the great old horse chestnuts on the square.
To be sure, it was a lucrative business, but Rae just didn’t have the stomach for it.
In Rae’s opinion, binding yourself to someone for all eternity was far too long to be stuck in limbo if your marriage was not happy.
‘Weddings?’ Rae said and she knew that Phil, like everyone else, would assume she was too heartbroken to carry on with events that reminded her of her own loss.
She had settled into an uncomfortable chair opposite Phil, and she looked around the office now.
It was spruced up, just a bit; there were new shelves, a fresh coat of paint and the addition of a print of a huge salmon leaping from water that looked so vibrant it made Rae shiver. ‘That’s…’ she pointed to the print.
‘Jarlaith’s,’ Phil said and she turned to gaze on it as if it was painted by Michelangelo himself. ‘A birthday present, sure where else would I hang it?’
‘It’s very striking.’ Of course, Rae had heard that Phil’s son had been shortlisted for a photography award a few years earlier.
‘You must be very proud.’ She felt that familiar taste of envy, although, the idea of children of her own had long ago been abandoned.
And since Marcus died, she had Siggy, who really, she loved as much as she could any child of her own.
‘Ah, you know,’ Phil said then, because she’d never been a woman to wear her heart on her sleeve, even if it was obvious she was as proud as punch.
She shuffled the papers on the desk before her.
‘The thing is, Rae, from what you’ve given me, I don’t think you have enough to pay both your tax and the mortgage on the place. ’
‘Of course I have enough to pay my…’
‘The bank payment hasn’t gone through in six months…’ Phil held up a sheaf of statements as if she needed to prove it to her.
‘No, no. Of course they’ve been paid, there must be some mistake, it transfers automatically from the hotel account…
we’ve never missed a payment.’ She leaned closer, took the pages in her hand, the only thought in her mind that perhaps she’d sent over the wrong statements.
She looked down through them, there were payments here and there and everywhere, but when she looked back to the previous month, there was no payment to the bank.
These were the correct statements; she looked up at the top of the page to check. ‘I don’t understand how…’
‘You simply haven’t had the funds to cover them when they were due,’ Phil said but she had lowered her voice as if to keep the news from the salmon leaping from the water.
‘They haven’t been in touch to ask for a meeting or… not even a letter in the post. I can’t believe it.’
‘They might not have spotted it yet, but they will and by the time they do, between penalties and everything else, you could be looking at up on twenty thousand euro just to set things straight and then, there’s the rates…’
‘Oh, God, I forgot about that…’ The previous year, she’d managed to cut a deal with the council.
They’d halved her rates because for almost six months they’d torn up the path in front of the hotel and ripped apart her car park while they sorted out the village water system.
This year, they’d be looking for the full amount and there was no cutting a deal with them a second time round.
‘There’s also the tax bill.’
‘Well, that one I have to pay.’
‘The good news, if I can call it that, is that it’s a lot less than other years, because…’
‘Because business is down?’
‘I’m afraid so. By my reckoning, it’s down by a lot. I mean, I don’t know how you’re still open, never mind buying me lattes.’ Phil smiled at her now and they both laughed. They’d known each other for years and maybe, if you couldn’t laugh when things were bad well, then, what was life anyway?
‘So, what next?’ Rae asked, because surely, there was something they could do.
‘Easy enough to solve if you have a couple of suitcases of money stashed under some of those hotel beds,’ Phil said.
‘Or else, you need to go to the bank, see if they’ll negotiate, lengthening out the loan, bringing down the monthly repayments, they might, you know, you’ve banked with them for years…
’ She stopped because they both knew, that meant nothing these days.
The bank that Rae had always been a customer of had closed the local branch and now, the nearest branch was on the mainland.
She didn’t know anyone there and they certainly didn’t know her or have any great fondness for her business.
‘Sorry, it’s been a tough run for you, I can’t imagine how you’re even still opening your doors, much less managing to keep the place looking as good as it does in spite of everything else around you. ’
‘Ah, you’d do the same.’ It was terrible, but Rae heard herself say these things, even though the very mention of Marcus’s death filled her with complex emotions of which grief was only one.
A year and a half later, and she was still floored with the intensity of her feelings.
They say it gets easier; she couldn’t imagine that happening any time soon.
So far as Rae could see, it just got easier to hide it from others if not from herself.
‘Let’s sort out the tax bill first,’ Rae said because they had to start somewhere, and it seemed as good as anywhere to begin.
Later as she sat in her little flat at the back of the hotel reception, Rae thought about this place that had been her home and work for two decades now.
God, there was so much family history in it.
Four generations of Scotts had lived here.
Her grandfather had invested its future in her, well in Marcus mostly, convinced that he would have the business acumen to carry it on for generations to come.
Pappy had believed she would leave it to her children, and to her children’s children, so the Hope Square Hotel would carry on long after she was gone.
Her sister, Blythe, thought the same. And sometimes, it felt as if it was far more important to Blythe at this point than it had been to her grandfather way back then.
Funny.
Rae had worked her whole life here, or near enough it, but maybe it was because of Marcus’s sudden death, somehow it just wasn’t the centre of the world to her anymore.
If it ever was? Her plans had been scuppered before she’d ever had a chance to make them.
What did she know when she was seventeen years old?
When she was a kid, she wanted to be Joy Adamson with a lion called Elsa and to spend her life helping animals.
Later, she lapped up every episode of All Creatures Great and Small and longed to train to be a vet.
What had happened to that? Life. Her parents’ death when she was too young to handle it had sent her off the rails when she’d most needed to feel the ground firm beneath her feet.
Marcus had come along, and he had wrapped her up in a security blanket that had made her feel safe.
Somehow, without her realising, his ambition became her life’s work.
Marcus had charmed her grandfather, whispered in his ear those things Pappy most needed to hear; Blythe probably still couldn’t see that he’d been the one to come between them as sisters.
Dreams of being a vet had faded, and this place had taken over.
Rae had stepped up to the plate, she’d done her duty, but now, as she sat here looking around the tiny sitting room, it felt as if it was all empty promises.
Her life was hollow, and she was losing heart.
It had never meant to her what it had to Marcus and to Blythe.
Now, it felt as if it was slipping away from her even as she sat here.