Chapter 18
Present
Blythe,’ Fiona Dixon stopped her as she made her way from the travelling library that afternoon.
Honestly, she’d been so riled up, she’d have walked right past her old school friend.
‘Oh my God, are you alright?’ Fiona stood in front of her, examining her through oversized, most likely obscenely expensive, sunglasses.
‘I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?’ Blythe snapped.
But she was not fine. She was far from fine.
She’d fallen out with everyone at this point, Rae, Kip and even Siggy who hadn’t done anything wrong, but she’d snapped at earlier for no good reason.
Maybe it was the peri-menopause – she’d never been an overly emotional person before.
And as to Rae, it wasn’t even because of that boy she’d employed.
Well, okay, it had started out as that. Blythe had seen them on the square together: Siggy and Danial.
It felt as if something in the crust of the earth beneath her feet had broken.
Then, just like that, it was confirmed; everything that had been niggling her about that boy had fallen into place.
To top all of that, she had an uneasy feeling that there was something going on with Kip, something that frayed deliberately at her nerve endings.
She’d hardly closed her eyes the previous night, her mind racing with the worst-case scenarios.
Next to her, Kip slept peacefully, but it felt as if there was a chasm between them, even though they were separated by little more than inches in their king-size bed.
‘Oh, don’t take any notice of me, my mind is a complete muddle.
’ That’s the only way she could describe it.
‘Come on, I’ve known you since we were kids and you can’t fool me, you look like a woman who bought a jar of honey and opened it to find a nest of wasps.’ Fiona had always been quick, she’d never been one to open a book, but when it came to people, she was the quickest study Blythe had ever known.
‘Okay, you got me, I’m just a bit browned off.’
‘Well, that won’t do… we can’t have our premier guest house owner looking glum.’ Fiona laughed, then she looked up and down the street, before checking her watch. ‘Listen, have you time to come for a coffee…’
‘Sure.’ Further along the street, she spotted a small, belligerent woman making a beeline towards them. Saved by the bell – or by Fiona at least. She didn’t think she could take another moment of Mae English passive-aggressively blowing her cigarette smoke into her face.
‘So, what’s up?’ Fiona’s eyes were ready to pop when they finally sat at a table at the side of the little coffee shack.
She took sweetener from her bag and stirred in two small tablets.
Fiona had been on a diet since they were in school.
It paid off, probably. She was thin as a rake, compared to Blythe at any rate.
‘Nothing, it’s probably just the menopause. I’ve fallen out with Rae.’
‘Well, that’s hardly new – what is it this time?
Tell me she isn’t back to jumping out windows to meet up with no-good boys!
’ Fiona laughed and despite herself, Blythe found the image funny.
Rae’s teenage wildness and the stress it had caused Blythe, was a lifetime away now.
No one was less likely to lose her head than Rae these days.
She had become a different person when she married Marcus.
‘It was stupid, an argument over nothing if you want to know the truth of it.’ She felt even worse, because she knew it was entirely her fault.
They should be close, after all, Marcus was gone and even if Rae didn’t realise it, Blythe had always known that he’d inserted himself like a spanner in the works of their relationship as tenaciously as he’d stolen the hotel that should have been hers, if right was right.
She hated when they argued. Even now, as old as they were, Blythe was emptied out by it.
They were grown women; it was absurd to be still walking on eggshells around each other.
She shared the edited highlights with Fiona.
‘And so, you see, Mae English does have a point. It is our duty to look after our own, before we go looking after people who’ve blown in from the far corners of the world.’
‘Hardly blown in, Blythe, she’s a friend of one of the McDaids, you know the niece that had that fancy gallery in London?
Don’t you remember, old McDaid always talked about her as if she was the cat’s pyjamas,’ Fiona sipped her coffee coolly.
‘I’ve met Melissa, you couldn’t find a nicer woman, actually I was thinking of inviting her to our next book club. ’
‘The grandmother?’ Blythe was shocked. She couldn’t imagine discussing the latest Jilly Cooper with a woman like that.
Melissa Val looked far too worldly to be content with anything less than reading their way through the Booker Prize lists – when they spent more time gossiping than discussing books.
‘Really Fiona, I don’t think you can just bring someone along, I mean, you’d have to check it was okay with everyone else for a start and…
’ What she meant of course was, that they held their meetings on strict rotation in their own, all well-to-do homes.
‘I’m hosting the next meeting, so surely it’s entirely up to me who I invite?’ Fiona smiled now and Blythe hoped that she was only saying this to annoy her.
‘Anyway, that’s completely beside the point.
The book club is a whole other thing,’ she was too upset to have it out with Fiona right now.
After all, the book club had been Blythe’s idea, she had set it up, invited everyone to join.
How could Fiona just hijack it from under her as if it were her book club all along?
‘It’s not just the newcomers, or the fact that Mae English has gotten under your skin though, is it?’ Fiona cut to the quick of things, sensing that Blythe wasn’t up for a sparring match today.
‘No,’ Blythe said. ‘But she has a point. After all, there were plenty around the village who’d have loved that cottage. If it had gone up for sale on the open market, I’m sure there would have been lots of offers.’
‘The Vals are renting,’ Fiona said dully.
‘Of course they are.’ Because people like that would get all the state help to line some faceless landlord’s pockets, while the house was allowed to go to rack and ruin.
‘They are renting, because the house is still tied up in legal details, apparently, it can’t be sold until the deeds are sorted out.
Melissa told me, if they’ve settled here by then, she may put in an offer, but Pin Hill is so different to where they’ve always lived, she is reluctant to put down roots until she’s sure. ’
‘So, she could end up buying it and living here permanently?’ This was the last thing she wanted to hear.
‘Apparently, yes. Blythe, I know you think that people who…’ God, she was so careful not to call a spade a spade, ‘were not born and bred on the island, are all here to lap up state payments, but Melissa Val and her son are certainly not that.’
‘So you say.’
‘I do.’ Fiona’s voice was firm, in that way it always was when she refused to see anyone else’s point of view.
‘And so, I suppose, you approve of Rae giving a job to that woman’s grandson, just because she’s not poor.’
‘Ah, Danial, yes, I’ve met him. I suspect he’ll be very good for business, good-looking lad like that, the girls will be lining up for coffee once word gets out that he’s there.’
‘Hmm, do you think?’ Of course, she was right, hadn’t Blythe seen as much with her own eyes?
It was why Blythe felt as if a crater had cracked open beneath her feet.
While she’d been waiting for some of the old dears to finish selecting their books in the library van, Blythe had spotted Siggy and the kid sitting in the square outside the hotel.
Whatever they were talking about their heads were touching, there was no missing the intimacy in the way they were sitting next to each other on the park bench.
And then, Blythe had watched, horrified as Siggy met his eyes, and even if no one else realised it, maybe not even Siggy or Danial, Blythe could see it from yards away.
Siggy was in love with him. And Blythe felt as if her heart had crashed down through her body and split wide open on the footpath at her feet.
‘Anyway, I don’t suppose he’ll be here long,’ Fiona smiled.
‘Oh?’
‘Well, he’s a bright lad. He won’t want to hang around on Pin Hill. His parents were university lecturers in Mauritania. Danial’s hardly going to settle for clearing tables for the rest of his days.’
‘Mauritania,’ Blythe said dully. The fact was, she’d had to look it up on a map.
She’d had no idea where it was, but then, she’d landed on a Wikipedia page and she’d fallen down a rabbit hole for the best part of an hour reading about the people and the turmoil and the rich traditions of a place that felt like it might as well be on a different planet, not just a different continent to Pin Hill Island.
‘You’re miles away.’ Fiona laughed. ‘You really are gone off on one. Has anything else happened…’ She stopped.
‘Actually, no, hang on, I know what it is, of course, we’re at that age, it’s all going downhill from here, apparently.
’ She tossed her head back and laughed and Blythe looked at her dully.
‘The peri-menopause? I was chatting to Joy, you know in the bookshop over in Ballycove, and she said, yes, it gets worse before it gets better.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘I told you, at the start, I’m getting the HRT, why be a martyr?’ Fiona always lowered her voice when she talked about the menopause, as if people wouldn’t know she was no longer twenty-five.