Chapter 26 #3
‘No. I mean, properly, it’s important.’ Rae pleaded and for a moment a wasp of fear buzzed across Blythe’s thoughts – illness?
Some other terrible event on the horizon?
No. She pushed anything like that from her mind.
This was Rae, the most terrible thing that could happen to her, already had – she’d lost Marcus.
‘In case you haven’t noticed Rae, I have a lot on my plate at the moment,’ Quite aside from the hangover from hell.
‘We all have, Blythe,’ Rae said and there was something about how she said it, that made Blythe stop. ‘Can you come to the hotel today?’
‘Okay,’ she said then, because suddenly she had a feeling that Rae was holding back something that might just push her own worries aside for once.
*
Blythe had a strange sense as she walked through the front door of the hotel.
Something had changed here, she caught it, only vaguely on the air, a tremor in the atmosphere.
She had a feeling that things had moved a little sidewards from her grasp, the place was somehow less familiar, less her family heritage, less her own possession.
Which was of course ridiculous, she had to remind herself, it hadn’t ever actually belonged to her at all.
Her grandfather had left the place, lock, stock and barrel to Rae, with Still Water House going to Blythe.
It looked the same, of course it looked the same.
The blousy floral dark green wallpaper faded gently every year, the paintwork, neatly touched up by Marcus over the years when the doors were closed for Christmas and New Year.
Today, the brasses gleamed, the oak counters shone and a gentle mixture of aromas from wood polish and fresh wildflowers mingled when she walked into the place.
It was welcoming in a way that big fancy hotels could never replicate.
Blythe hated herself for loving it now, as much as she ever had.
‘Blythe, I’m so glad you came.’ Rae appeared from behind the antique reception desk as if she’d known as soon as her sister entered the building. ‘Come on, I’ve made broccoli and stilton soup, will you join me?’
‘Okay,’ Blythe said, because suddenly she was famished, even though the last thing she wanted at this early stage of putting their relationship back on an even keel was to let Rae know that she was in any way the lesser party.
She followed Rae in through the small living area that her sister and Marcus had called home for fifteen years.
The soup was set out in a tureen on the table, a crusty French roll broken up on a wooden board next to it and places set for both sisters, with fresh butter and a jug of iced water at the ready.
Still, the room was depressing. There was no getting away from that.
It was a room of leftovers – the sofa too lumpy to offer to a guest, the sideboard an ugly antique that had been picked up at an auction years before either of them could remember and replaced with something far more elegant in the lobby now.
There was a small television and side tables with pretty lamps from the nearby pottery studio and this tiny round table pushed into a corner where the view stretched no further than the hotel reception beyond.
There wasn’t even a window here, well, not a proper one at any rate.
It was all so depressing compared to the beautiful kitchen Blythe had installed in Still Water House a few years earlier.
Rae moved around the little flat with such grace, such elegance.
She was the understated version of their mother.
She ladled the soup out onto their bowls.
The aroma, fresh and salty, made Blythe feel more ravenous than before.
‘So?’ Blythe waited patiently until Rae was finished and sat opposite her.
She looked at her now, her interest piqued because instead of filling in any awkward silence with small talk as she normally would have, Rae was quiet, thoughtful, as if there was something of great importance on her mind.
Blythe felt a sense of uneasiness rub against her pragmatic shell.
‘Okay. Promise me you won’t get angry? That you’ll hear me out to the very end…’ Rae said, leaving down the piece of bread that she hadn’t even bitten into yet.
‘Oh, Rae, whatever it is, out with it – how do I know what I’ll feel until I hear what you have to say,’ Blythe said, tasting her soup.
‘Fine. It’s the hotel.’ Rae looked down at the food before her, pushed it slightly away. That was the difference between them, Blythe ate through her worries, she’d always have to coax Rae to eat if she was anxious about something.
‘The hotel?’ Suddenly that pinprick of worry grew a little wider.
‘I’m in trouble. Big trouble, if you want to know the truth of it. Since Marcus died, well, you don’t have to be an economist to work out that our business has been decimated.’
‘That’s to be expected, but once you get back to yourself, you know, after…’ She’d stopped alluding to the fact that Rae was still grieving the loss of Marcus, because what was the point in calling out the elephant in the room – it didn’t, in Blythe’s experience, make it go away.
‘No. I mean, I’m in real trouble.’ Rae looked at her now and Blythe noticed once again how much her sister had aged over the last fifteen years, as if someone had come along and unplugged some vital valve in her. ‘With the bank.’
‘The bank?’ Blythe repeated, she didn’t understand.
‘Yes, Blythe, the bank. There’s a huge overdraft on this place, there has been for the last ten years.
’ She stopped, Blythe knew, the car park alone had cost thirty thousand to tarmacadam a few years earlier.
There had been a new roof when Marcus took over at first and umpteen upgrades since.
Blythe knew very well the cost associated with bringing a place up to scratch.
She had been circumspect in her upgrading of Still Water House going at it one room at a time, with Kip at her side doing the heavy lifting and only as they could afford it.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Scotts have banked with the same…’ She paused, because the bank was no longer where it had always been. In fact, for the first time in her life, Blythe had no idea who the bank manager was – she couldn’t put a name or a face to him or her if she was paid to do so.
‘I’m going to lose the hotel unless I do something very radical…’ Rae began to cry, and Blythe found herself frozen to her seat. She couldn’t reach out and comfort her, she was still far too angry about Danial Val, and this? This was too much.
‘Oh, Rae, pull yourself together, I’m sure it’s not that bad.
You read about businesses every day of the week, up to their necks in debt and they just keep on marching through, hard work, a commitment to keeping the place open, doing what you have to do, that’s all you need.
No banker in their right minds would want to call in a debt on this place,’ she read an article about it recently in the Independent; the cost of repossession and there was no guarantee with a place on the islands that anyone else would touch it.
‘Blythe, you’re not listening to me. It’s too far gone. I can’t pull it back.’
‘Dear God, Rae, I mean…’ There was so much Blythe wanted to say, but Rae reached across and gripped her hand and for a moment, it felt as if she was trying to communicate a death, rather than a turn in business.
‘It’s too late, Blythe,’ Rae said with words that were as hollow as they were heavy. Blythe felt each of them like a blow.
‘It can’t be too late…’
‘It’s not just the bank. It’s revenue and council taxes and…’ Rae shrugged, as if it was already out of her hands.
‘How long have you known this?’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘It bloody does.’ Blythe felt her blood pressure rise as if she might boil over, right here and drain into the now slightly nauseating bowl of soup.
‘There’s only one option…’ Rae stopped, as if waiting for Blythe to interrupt her again, but Blythe couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘I’m putting number three up for sale.’
‘You’re selling the hotel?’ A dull pain alerted Blythe that a blinding migraine threatened to take hold.
‘Not all of it,’ Rae murmured and she seemed to have grown small in the chair opposite.
‘You can’t do that, Rae, you can’t just chop the place in half and think that…’
‘It’s a third of the original building, Blythe, and...’ A small tear ran down Rae’s cheek. ‘Look at the place. Even if by some miracle I had it in me to work every hour for the rest of my days, this place is beyond faded.’
‘It’s charming.’ Blythe’s hand shook as she brought it to her pounding forehead.
‘Call it what you want, but the fact is, we’re competing with hotels on the mainland that have indoor swimming pools and spas. It needs a complete overhaul, for goodness’ sake, Blythe, the wallpaper in the foyer’s been hanging since before we were born.’
‘That wallpaper was Pappy’s pride and joy, it’s like an installation, you can’t possibly be thinking of doing anything to it.
’ Blythe’s voice had risen, she was trying to stay in control, but now, her whole body was shaking with a mixture of fear and rage.
She wasn’t sure if she was on the point of tears or completely losing her rag.
‘Blythe, calm down, it’s only…’
‘It’s only our family’s legacy, it’s only…’ She was trembling, she wanted to storm out the door, but she really wasn’t sure if her legs would carry her.
‘Please.’ Rae pleaded. Blythe closed her eyes for a moment, tried to breathe so she could steady herself.
It felt as if everything was falling in on her, as if all the points that had been her anchors were shifting out of her reach.
She took a deep breath. ‘It’s already done, Blythe, the auctioneers are advertising it this week.
’ The words only barely penetrated Blythe’s understanding.
She was numb. She couldn’t do this. For once in her life, Blythe knew for certain, this wasn’t something she could sort out by the sheer force of her personality or her will to make things right.
This was out of her hands, it had been for the last fifteen years.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled then, because she was, she was sorry for everything, for what they had become, for where they’d been, who they were and for the fact that now, everything was falling apart.
‘I have to go,’ she said and she tried to walk with purpose, but she knew, she barely staggered, lightheaded from the hotel to her car.