Chapter 21
Nineteen Years Ago
Everyone knew, Rae never enjoyed the hotel.
She liked the camaraderie of working with the village girls; the guests adored her; she was such a sweet thing.
But she had no interest in running the hotel.
Blythe could see it, Rae didn’t have that same passion for the hotel or the island that had been fused to her own bones for as long as she could remember.
Sometimes, when she wasn’t pulling her hair out with worry about her, she pitied her sister – how awful not to know where you truly belonged – Blythe couldn’t think of anything worse in life.
There was some comfort to knowing who you were, where you belonged and that a predictable path lay before you. Poor Rae.
Not that she hadn’t broken Blythe’s heart since their father died.
She fully expected her to go completely off the rails now their mother had passed away.
She was acting out, of course, it was nothing more or less than that.
But it wasn’t fair, how could she not see that, Blythe was doing her best to keep the show on the road and Rae didn’t seem to give a damn about any of it.
Blythe had lost count of the mornings she’d come down to the kitchen to make breakfast for their mother, only to notice the back door left on the latch, which meant of course, that Rae had slipped out while they all slept to meet up with her gang of friends, who spent their time racing motorbikes along the dangerous bends that wound up the north side of the island and drinking cheap beer until the light crept up from the mainland.
These days, there were times when Blythe looked at her and it felt as if she hardly knew her.
Not that she wasn’t the same lovely Rae she’d always been, but rather, she’d blossomed into something far more striking than any other young woman in the village in Blythe’s opinion.
Underneath the eye liner and the perfect pout, she was still dear Rae.
Still innocent beneath it all and happy to give a hand anywhere help was needed, but with that, there was no missing the fact that when they went to mass on a Sunday morning, every eye turned to catch a look at her.
It was strange. Blythe felt a mixture of deep pride and deeper protectiveness.
She hated the idea that her sister was being taken in by some smooth waster, but also, she wanted her to have the very best life she could possibly have.
Even though when she looked around the village, probably the best of the fellas left was Kip.
Any decent fella had hightailed it off to college and there was no sign of them returning in the current jobs market.
Dublin was booming these days, they were calling it the Celtic Tiger, but it hadn’t reached Pin Hill in any real way.
As to Kip Carney, well, he was on the other side of the world at the moment, his career winding down – who knew where he’d end up at the end of it all.
Blythe hoped with all her heart it would be here.
And now, amid the awfulness and grief of losing her mother, Marcus Johnson had unexpectedly arrived on the island.
He was nothing like Kip. Kip was good looking and straightforward, she knew where she stood with him, which was more than she could ever say about Marcus.
But? They had hardly anything in common, not like she and Marcus.
She knew, in her heart, Marcus would give his right eye for a place like the Hope Square Hotel – he’d settle down here on Pin Hill Island and think he was made up to run the place with her.
Marcus had booked into the hotel on the night of her mother’s funeral.
He told Pappy that he had holiday time owed, and if they needed a hand in the hotel, he’d be more than happy to help out.
Blythe should have been over the moon, but something about him, about him being here and the way he and Pappy spoke niggled her.
She couldn’t say what it was exactly, but an irrational fear twisted in her gut when she thought about him in the hotel.
She tried to convince herself that it was because he reminded her of that horrendous moment when she was in the flat with the intruders – yes, that had to be it, hadn’t it?
Just a crazy association, her mind playing tricks on her, but it meant nothing.
Two days after the funeral, she bumped into him as he was coming back from his morning run. Blythe and Rae were both walking towards the hotel from visiting their mother’s grave.
‘Good morning,’ she said stopping when she saw him approach. She hadn’t mentioned Marcus to Rae, because why would she? They had only just buried their mother – Blythe’s falling in love or lust or whatever it was, a few years earlier wasn’t up for discussion.
‘Hey,’ he said, coming to a stop at the hotel entrance.
‘Actually, I was going to find you today.’ He shaded his eyes from the morning sun.
She could smell the faint aroma of fresh sweat mixed with soap from him, his skin glistened and she couldn’t not notice his strong arms as his hands rested on his hips while he caught his breath.
‘Really.’ This is it, she thought, he’s finally going to ask me out and she felt a buzz of tension shoot through her. Her ego needed this, even if at the back of her mind, there was Kip. Her darling Kip – who should be here now, rather than off chasing footballs like some outsized kid.
‘Yes, you see.’ And then his eyes slid off to the side and for a moment, Blythe had the strangest feeling that something terrible was happening behind her back and her head shot round, half-expecting a car to come speeding into them or a low-flying crow to land on her shoulder.
‘Ahem,’ he said and she followed his eyes, because his voice had become a distracted mumble. Rae. He was looking at Rae.
‘Hiya,’ she said, gathering up the old planters they’d taken from the family plot earlier when they’d replaced it with fresh flowers.
She was wearing shorts, short shorts – the sort she only ever really wore around the house, and no one noticed much about them.
Here, Blythe saw Rae with fresh eyes. She was striking, a beauty – the legs, the eyes, the skin, the hair – she was built like a thoroughbred, and Marcus Johnson was obviously dazzled.
Her dark hair, loose, fell over one eye and of course, she was so tall – almost as tall as Marcus and he was well over six foot.
Between them, Blythe felt tiny. Inconsequential.
‘Hello.’ He held out his hand, then pulled it back, probably realising that he glistened with sweat.
For once the shoe was on the other foot.
He looked as nervous and out of kilter as Blythe always felt when they ran into each other – except he felt this way about Rae, not about Blythe.
‘I haven’t met you before,’ he said and suddenly it felt as if Blythe was no longer standing there on the footpath between them.
And even if they didn’t notice her, even if they had eyes only for each other, Blythe felt as if everyone could see the ball of disappointment rising in her throat and hear the soft sound of all their relationships suddenly tilting in an unexpected direction.
She’d never forget that day.
That was the start of it all going wrong.
Alright, so she reminded herself often in the days and weeks that followed. She was grieving her mother. Her father too, probably, because when he’d died, everything had been so wound up around keeping her mother alive that she wasn’t sure she’d ever had a chance to fully grieve his loss.
‘Marcus has invited me out to dinner.’ Rae almost sung out the news when she arrived back the following day.
She stopped. Perhaps she picked up on the devastation in Blythe’s expression.
Maybe she put it down to the fact that their house was in mourning; it felt almost obscene that anyone could be so happy to Blythe. ‘Sorry, I know, I should be…’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Well, I am sad, of course that Mummy has passed away, but Pappy said it was probably an ease to her and now, she’s with Daddy and really, you know they were completely devoted to each other so…’
‘He said that to make you feel better,’ Blythe said flatly, cruelly probably.
‘I do know that.’ Rae said a little sulkily.
‘But she’d want us to keep going. She told me so, herself, before she…
’ Rae’s lower lip wobbled, and Blythe felt a mean stroke of satisfaction.
At least she was sad about their mother’s passing.
The fact was, every time Blythe thought about that day outside the hotel when Marcus’s whole expression changed on meeting Rae, it felt like a knife turning in her guts.
She wanted to scream until the windows rattled in their frames at the idea that Marcus would come all this way, after all this time, only to end up fancying her sister.
And that was it, call it what you want, but from the moment they’d locked eyes, Blythe knew it was all over.
It hurt like hell, digging down into her and churning up feelings she’d always believed she was much too good for, chief among them, a burning jealousy that felt as if it might consume her.
Jealousy? She’d never been jealous of anyone in her life, and of Rae?
She was suddenly out of her depth. The pain was crippling when she allowed the idea of Marcus falling in love with Rae to sit for any length of time in her mind.
‘Anyway, he’s collecting me here, at eight.
We’re going over to Ballycove with Jay Larkin and Finbar Lavin. ’
‘On that old boat of Finbar’s? Are you serious? That thing is holier than the pope’s prayerbook.’ Blythe felt her blood pressure funnel up through her body, right up to her head. She was too young to suffer from high blood pressure, but bloody hell, this was too much.
‘Ah, Blythe, you know well that no one is safer on the water than Finbar.’ She laughed. ‘I thought you’d be pleased, at least I’m not on the back of a motorbike.’
‘Pleased?’ She was ready to explode. ‘How can you even think of…’ She stopped, because she couldn’t tell Rae that she’d loved Marcus Johnson once, she’d seen him first after all.
‘What, Blythe?’ Now, Rae was upset too. Her voice raised, her face flushed with an anger that was so uncharacteristic it stopped Blythe in her tracks.
‘It seems to me that no matter who I choose to hang out with, it’ll never be good enough for you.
You’ve done nothing but judge every one of my friends for years and now… ’
‘I…’ Blythe wanted to fight back, to say no, this was different.
This was all about the fact that she had loved Marcus first, had secretly held onto the notion that he would come for her amid the trauma and grief of their father’s death.
But in her heart, Blythe knew she didn’t love Marcus now – she wasn’t jealous, not in that way that she wanted him for herself, that wasn’t it.
And yet, she had this sense of foreboding, the idea of him filled her with a gloomy dread.
Because he’d been there that day. Maybe?
But she had a feeling it wasn’t in the rescuing of her that Blythe had this uneasy turn in her gut when she thought about Marcus.
It was the idea that he’d just walked away, when if he really had anything about him, he’d have made sure that the flat was safe before she went back into it that night.
He didn’t even check the following day. That was what she hadn’t put together at the time.
Marcus Johnson was no knight in shining armour.
He might just be the very opposite, but Blythe had no way of putting all of this into words for a sister who wouldn’t want to listen even if she tried.
‘I… I… I…’ Rae mimicked her now. ‘It’s always about you, Blythe, or the hotel, or this house or the family name or…
’ She stopped. ‘For once, let me have this. Let me have one good thing, amid all the sadness and loss and loneliness, let me have this one good thing.’ She was on the threshold between pleading and screaming and Blythe knew it was no good.
This was happening whether she liked it or not.
She’d learned the hard way, that neither lectures nor locked doors could hold Rae back if she wanted something.
That evening, Blythe left the house before Marcus called to collect Rae.
She walked to the end of the garden, sat in the shade of the old apple trees, watched as he strolled up the drive, stood for a while, as if surveying the house.
Her breath caught for a moment between the sheer familiarity of him and the reality of why he was standing at Still Water House.
She closed her eyes, prayed to her mother to help her to somehow find a way to keep her head, to save her from the pit of despair it felt like she was hanging over.
When she opened her eyes, somehow, something ever so subtle had changed within her.
Marcus was walking around the side of the house.
Had Rae not heard the doorbell? But no, she came running out through the open French doors.
Later, she realised what it was that had twisted around in her thoughts.
He’d looked like an estate agent, as if he’d come to take stock of the house.
He’d walked with an air of calculation, as though he was sizing up the place for potential that Blythe could not quite fathom.
She sat there and watched as he and Rae sashayed down the avenue, as if they hadn’t a care in the world. And maybe they hadn’t. But even then, a little voice in Blythe’s mind wondered if she was watching the swagger of a man who had just landed squarely on his own two feet.