Chapter 6
Twenty-Two Years Ago
There was never a question in Blythe’s mind that one day she would run her grandfather’s hotel.
It was in her blood.
Rae might be carried away on the idea of becoming the next Dr Doolittle, with every stray cat and dog in the village traipsing about after her, but Blythe wanted the hotel.
She was there at every opportunity.
She called in on her way to school, after school, every weekend, over the summer holidays, there was forever something to do, Pappy always managed to keep her occupied.
‘I swear, I think your father must have added something to your tea when we weren’t looking,’ he often joked, and she could see how proud he was when she took on some job and made a success of it.
Blythe could make a bed with hospital corners quicker and better than any of the local women he employed to come in on busy mornings. By the age of ten, she could turn out an apple tart better than her mother, by twelve, she was turning them out by the half dozen in no time.
‘Oh, if only there were grandsons,’ he’d say sometimes and then he’d laugh, because he must know, there was no boy who’d be as good at running the hotel as Blythe.
Pappy was like that, thinking that the hard jobs were for men, women belonged in the home – but from the start, Blythe set out to show him that she was far better than any grandson could have been.
They’d have the Scott name, to be sure, but that was all.
‘Urgh, boys,’ Rae shivered in a grand mock fashion and then she pulled Blythe to her, winding her arm around her sister’s.
‘Imagine if there were boys instead of one of us,’ she sounded truly disgusted.
She’d always trailed around after Blythe and as they grew, hung off her every word.
‘Pappy, you’re so silly, no boy would ever be as good as Blythe.
’ She said it with blind devotion and Blythe had looked at her and loved her even more – if that was possible.
When Blythe told Pappy she intended to go to catering college and study hotel management, she thought he’d burst with pride. He told every old codger who came in that day for lunch that his granddaughter was going to be a big wig running her own hotel one day.
Of course, Blythe only wanted the Hope Square Hotel, but who knew, maybe she’d own a chain of them – she wouldn’t say no to that.
‘I can’t imagine anything worse,’ Rae said as they snuggled down on the sofa to watch The O.C. that night.
‘Yeah, but that’s because all you want is to have a house full of cats and dogs and an endless supply of time to care for them.
’ Blythe rolled her eyes, they were opposites, in every way.
Blythe had always been a Scott, whereas Rae was much more like her mother’s side of the family – quiet, submissive, happy to stay in the shadow of her older, more ambitious sister.
Maybe this was one of the reasons why the sisters were so close.
‘Not entirely true, I wouldn’t say no to working on…’
‘I know, I know, a wildlife reserve,’ Blythe laughed.
Rae had more posters of lions and elephants hanging up in her bedroom than she had popstars – which made her a bit of a square among her friends, most of whom could see no further than Britney Spears and Maroon 5.
She’d done her school project on David Attenborough, when all the other girls were obsessed with Harry Potter.
Blythe imagined her, one day, running her own rescue shelter, with all sorts of animals under her roof, hopefully not elephants, though.
‘Here, you can start practising right now.’ She threw a cuddly toy dog at her sister’s head and of course, they almost missed the beginning of their favourite show thanks to the ensuing horseplay.
*
It was Rae who made sure that Shane McPherson knew that Blythe would be expecting him to ask her to the summer fair dance.
Blythe knew well that Fiona McLaverty had already set her hat at Shane, but that was only because he was like the only decent-looking boy in their class.
Not that he had a lot of competition, after all, half the boys in her school were related to each other one way or another.
There’s no getting away from it, if you didn’t fancy red hair, big teeth and freckles, Shane was a mile ahead of any of them.
He was nice too, you could chat to him, like a normal human being, which was more than you could say for the rest of the savage boys their age.
A few of the other girls would want to go to the dance as his date too, but Blythe knew, well enough, the one she had to watch out for was Fiona.
Fiona was everything that Blythe was not. She dressed like Christina Aguilera and managed not to look like a haystack with crucifixes. And she was funny. People listened to her because she always said the first thing that popped into her head, which was cute – if not always kind.
She was exactly who Blythe imagined all the boys would fancy.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Rae said when Blythe said this aloud. ‘Sure of course, Shane would pick you over horrid, obvious Fiona any day.’ Rae was like that, she thought no one could hold a candle to Blythe, but then, Rae was just a kid, what did she know?
Perhaps she knew more than Blythe gave her credit for, because a few days later, Rae pretended to trip as she was walking back from school, so Shane had to link her home and of course, Blythe just happened to be home early that same day.
She’d nearly fainted when she saw her sister being half carried up the drive, but years later, they’d laughed about it, because somehow, it had worked.
Shane did ask her out. Although, he saw clear through Rae’s obvious trick – she couldn’t lie to save her life.
Blythe almost died of mortification. Still, she had to hand it to her sister when it came to loyalty, no one had her back like Rae.
They went on six or seven dates, it might have gotten serious, but they lacked a chemistry that even then, Blythe knew was crucial if she was really going to fall for someone.
So, when September came, she set off for the mainland without a backwards glance at Shane McPherson.
*
Rae for her part missed Blythe more than anything.
She wrote to her sister every single week.
Without fail there would be a small blue envelope waiting in the post when Blythe arrived home from college each Monday afternoon.
The letters were a mix of news from the island and small drawings of dogs or cats.
Rae still collected stray animals everywhere she went, it seemed like there was always some flea-bitten animal trotting behind her.
Blythe found herself looking forward to these letters each week.
Of course, there were phone calls home and occasionally, her mother would make the trip to Dublin, just to check that her daughter was taking care of herself properly.
Once, they went for lunch at the Shelbourne Hotel and Blythe thought she’d die with the glamour of it all.
One day, she would make the Hope Square Hotel into something bigger and better than any other hotel in the country. Already she was on course to graduate at the very top of her class.
It felt, in her final year, as if everything was coming together.
It was at the Christmas party that Marcus Johnson finally asked her to dance.
Marcus was the only other serious student in the year, of course he was older.
He had worked in hotels since he was a kid.
Rumour had it that his place on the course was sponsored by one of the big hotel groups, but no one had the nerve to ask him straight out.
He was like that, a little intimidating, serious about the work.
Some of the others called him a bore, but Blythe had been drawn to him, maybe because he was older, mature, brilliant.
They’d been neck and neck all the way through their course, each of them sharing top marks at an even pace from the beginning.
At the start, she disliked him, but then, somewhere along the way, she could see – he was hungry to get on, he was driven, maybe just as much or more than Blythe.
And he was good looking. Charming, when he wanted to be, with it. She had watched as he held doors open for the female lecturers and she’d wondered cynically if he thought it would affect his year-end grade.
But then, one afternoon, they’d started to talk.
Properly talk.
She’d told him about the Hope Square Hotel and how she’d always dreamed of taking it over.
‘And it’s all going to be yours? No brothers or sisters?’ he asked. He came from a big family.
‘I’ve one sister. Rae. No, she’s not interested in the hotel at all.
Happy to be a silent partner at most, I think as soon as she’s finished school she’s going to train to work with animals.
’ It was strange, talking about Rae here, all these people she’d spent the last four years with and she had no idea if they had siblings or anything else much about them beyond this bubble life they lived in college, the jumping off point to their glittering future selves.
‘Our very own Paris Hilton.’ He was making fun of her.
‘Hardly, but we do alright.’
‘I’ll bet, the only hotel on the island? It must be a licence to print money.’ He looked at her now and she wasn’t sure if he was serious or still joking.
‘Let me tell you, we work very hard. Even if we are the only hotel on the island, we offer a top-class experience. My family has been in the business for generations; nothing is ever allowed to slip.’ She held his eye.
‘I believe that.’ He sat back a little, as if appraising her from a new distance.
‘Oh?’
‘Well, everything you do, here in class, you work harder than everyone else, you have…’ he stopped, looked around as if he was going to say something shocking. ‘Standards.’