Chapter 24
Eighteen Years Earlier
It seemed that it was all about Rae and Marcus these days.
Oh, Blythe told herself, she was well over whatever little crush she had on him when they were at college.
They would never have been suited, not really.
She was far too stuck in her ways and Marcus was one of those men who wanted a woman who would meet him halfway and was committed first to him and then to everything else. He had found that in spades with Rae.
There was one good thing. It had changed Rae; for the better, in Blythe’s opinion.
She had, almost overnight, become like a different person.
Within six months, she was unrecognisable, from her clothes to her hair, to her overall demeanour.
She’d settled into herself, somehow. Plans for veterinary college were not spoken about so much these days, although, there was still a convention of stray cats gathered at the back door of Still Water House each morning.
Marcus came to the island on his day off each week and stayed in the hotel where he made himself sickeningly indispensable to everyone, except Blythe.
He was, it seemed, quite perfect in everyone’s eyes.
Rae was showered with gifts and grand gestures, each surpassing the last. He was a model of adoration and attentiveness – nothing was ever too much.
Blythe felt churlish for the way it made her squirm inside.
And still, she couldn’t put it into words, it was the familiar feeling that something of the solicitude rang out of tune with the man she’d known at college.
It was a courtship played out against the backdrop of the hotel and under the gaze of their approving Pappy.
‘It’s too much isn’t it, all of the presents?’ Fiona said one day when she saw the huge display of balloons that had been sent over on the ferry for Rae earlier.
‘Is it?’ Blythe had no idea what she was saying.
Fiona was engaged to Willie Dixon these days.
He was a good egg, Willie, they’d all been in school together, although back then, Fiona wouldn’t look twice at him.
Suddenly, he was God’s gift because his plumbing business had taken off.
Willie was everywhere and more importantly, when he wasn’t haring around in his spanking new van, he was turning up at anything worth happening in a Land Cruiser that cost as much as a small cottage on the pier road.
‘Don’t you think it’s slightly creepy?’ Fiona shuddered.
‘I hadn’t really…’ Blythe said then, but of course, that was it, something about Marcus Johnson just didn’t ring true. Perhaps it never had.
‘Well, I wouldn’t go near him with a bargepole, not if he was the King of England – I swear, he’s a bad one.’
‘Maybe, but how do I tell Rae that?’
‘Tell Rae?’ She laughed at that. ‘Good luck with that, have you learned nothing over the last few years? The only way Rae will change her mind about him is if she sees it for herself.’
‘Well, let’s hope that’s sooner rather than later,’ Blythe sighed.
‘Let’s hope for all your sakes it is, because if Marcus Johnson gets his feet under the table here, that’s when you’ll see his true colours.’
The other thing was, it was plain to see, Pappy adored Marcus.
Very quickly, it felt as if he was the grandson the old man never had; on those nights when Marcus stayed in the hotel, he’d stay up late with Pappy, playing chess and talking long into the night.
One evening, Blythe overheard Pappy telling him all about Gisela and somehow, it felt as if he was projecting his own happy marriage onto Rae and Marcus, as if he saw them somehow as the young and shiny version of his past self, although they were only dating.
Blythe had been frozen to the spot. Those sentiments were so far removed from how he saw Blythe and Kip.
His apathy towards Kip had not changed. She suspected it was born of a mixture of things.
The apple never falls far from the tree.
That was what he said once; he expected that Kip would become his father.
There was that other unsaid thing too, that hung on the air between them.
Her grandfather saw Kip as the muscle, good enough to straighten a garden, but he would never be good enough to run the hotel with Blythe.
The savagery of hurt she felt as she overheard Pappy and Marcus together, cut through her.
How could he be so blinkered? How could her sister be so utterly immune to Blythe’s misery which felt as if it protracted in equal measure to Rae’s contentment?
She had Kip, of course, she adored Kip, but he was gone more often than he was on Pin Hill.
Kip could never be accused of overpoweringly grand gestures.
Usually, the first she’d know that he was back would be when she’d look out the drawing room window to see him tending her mother’s beloved roses.
He’d snipped the first rose of the season and handed it to Blythe again this year.
But Blythe needed more than a groundsman or a sentimental rose.
Her life had become stuck in an unfulfilling groove, a rotation of moving constantly in one place, while Marcus circled with intent around the future that Pappy seemed determined to withhold from her.
Hush now, her grandfather told her when she’d begged him to formalise her position as owner–manager of the hotel, sure, this place is far too big for one girl to manage on her own.
She wanted to scream at him, that she would not be alone.
She would have Kip by her side. But of course, she didn’t know that for certain.
Kip had made no mention of marriage or their future together.
On the other hand, she knew that life without him was inconceivable.
In her heart, she knew he felt the very same, even if he procrastinated around the finer details.
Blythe had to work really hard to bite down on the bitterness she felt when she heard Pappy praise Marcus. But what could she say, hadn’t she fallen for his charm at one point too? How could she blame Pappy for falling under his spell?
It was late in the year when Kip learned that a knee ligament injury meant his career as a rugby player was coming to a close.
He was surprisingly pragmatic about it, which Blythe found in equal parts bewildering and endearing.
Only Kip could be so unaffected by his own success that he was happy to slip into a life far away from the spotlight.
There was to be a final game, a testimonial of sorts, although it was part of yet another championship that Blythe only half followed. Still, half the village were travelling to Dublin for the game. They had a bus organised on the mainland for his supporters. She really should go and cheer him on.
‘Of course you have to go,’ Rae said one morning as she crunched through a bowl of cornflakes. She was standing in the kitchen in the hotel. The busy breakfast rush over now, it was just the two of them, setting the place back to rights.
‘How can I leave Pappy and…’ Blythe hated leaving the hotel, hated leaving the island, if she was completely honest.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, this place will be still standing here when you get back. It’s Kip’s last game, he’ll want you there.’
‘He hasn’t made a big thing of asking me.’ Again, she was comparing him to Marcus who by recent standards would probably put on a horse-drawn carriage for Rae in the same situation.
‘Of course he hasn’t,’ Rae burst out laughing.
‘What?’ Blythe swung round to check if Rae was making fun of her.
‘It’s Kip – he’s never going to ask anything of you, Blythe. He adores the ground you walk on, it’s only a pity you don’t seem to be able to see it.’ Rae shook her head.
‘Of course I can…’ She stopped, ‘do you really think he adores the ground I walk on?’ It slipped out and once it had, Blythe felt as if she had completely exposed herself in some way that she’d always managed to cover over.
‘And you’re the smart one?’ Rae rolled her eyes. ‘Blythe Scott, listen to me, Kip Carney would do anything for you, he’s been head over heels in love with you since that first summer he came to help mama with the gardens.’
‘Well, he’s…’
‘He’s a man of few words, true. But the way he looks at you when you’re not even aware that he’s in the room. He’s always thought you’re too good for him, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Too good for him?’ Blythe dropped down onto the stool that her grandfather sometimes sat in to break the journey from the hotel to his garden.
‘Seriously? But he’s the international sportsman, he’s the one that has every man, woman and child on the island falling over him.
What am I, beyond a skivvy with notions?
’ That was how she felt these days, as if the autonomy she’d once had in the hotel was slipping from her, as her grandfather tightened his hold on the place more with every passing day.
‘A skivvy with notions! Oh, Blythe, you’re so funny.’ Rae was bent over now, spluttering cornflakes from her mouth as her laughter turned almost into convulsions of hilarity. Blythe waited until she regained some control.
‘It’s how I feel.’ That familiar wave of misery inflamed her once again.
‘Are you actually serious?’ Rae stopped, placed her breakfast bowl on the steel worktop and walked over to Blythe.
‘Listen to me now,’ she put her hands on each of Blythe’s shoulders.
‘You are much more than this hotel, we might be the sisters of Hope Square, but you are better than this whole island put together, do you hear me? Kip Carney is dead right, no one is good enough for you as far as I’m concerned too, but if I had to pick anyone that came close, it would be Kip in a heartbeat.
That man would give up everything for you, Blythe. Can’t you see it for yourself?’
‘But it’s so different to you and Marcus, I mean, with the way he’s always buying you gifts and…’