Chapter 33
Eighteen Years Earlier
Sometimes, Rae thought, it was as if Marcus had been in Hope Square his whole life. Thank God things had worked out as they had because with Blythe struggling some days to stand without staggering lightheadedness, they’d be lost without him.
Especially Pappy.
Marcus was doing far more than any hotel manager would do, he worked long days, up before any of them making sure that everything was set out perfectly for the day.
Most nights, after Rae went back to Still Water, he sat up with Pappy until late, playing chess and sipping brandy before linking the old man upstairs and making sure he was safely in bed.
It was funny, but Pappy would never have accepted help from Rae or Blythe. It was as if, he always wanted them to think he was there for them, rather than the other way round.
Marcus was wonderful with the guests too, everyone that met him simply adored him. Rae couldn’t make sense of this growing unease she picked up between him and her sister.
What was that?
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Marcus told her one morning as they walked along the pier, checking out the fishing boats for the best catch to put on the evening menu at the hotel.
‘I want you both to get along, Marcus, I do worry about it.’
‘Once Blythe has her baby, everything will be fine.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Rae murmured because she knew that as much as Blythe resented Marcus taking over her position in the hotel, it would only get worse once she got back to work.
Pappy was talking as if Marcus would stay on, keep the place running, simply because Blythe had a baby.
Of course, on the surface, that idea made sense, except Blythe had no intention of allowing motherhood to slow her down.
Blythe had big plans for the hotel. Rae knew, with each day she was away from it, her hunger to make it into the best hotel west of the Shannon was only eating deeper into her.
‘Rae, you’re overthinking this. Blythe’s life has taken an unexpected turn; she’ll have to learn to live with it and set her course appropriately.
’ Marcus picked up a couple of large crabs and placed them in a plastic container, nodding at the fisherman to let him know they’d be taking those for the hotel.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means, we can’t live our lives forever moulding ourselves around what your sister wants.’
‘She doesn’t just want the hotel – it’s her whole life, Marcus, she’s going to own it one day, no matter how many children she has with Kip.’
‘We’ll see.’ He pointed across the deck of one of the boats to where they had landed a huge catch of mackerel. And then he smiled at her, as if they were talking about the weather and not the thing her sister’s future happiness depended upon.
‘There is nothing to see, Marcus, it’s already agreed.’
‘Listen to me now, I’m looking out for you, for us, here,’ he spun round to look at her, placing his hands on her shoulders and squeezing just a little too tightly, so she wanted to wriggle from under his grasp.
‘Rae, have you thought what’s going to be yours out of all this?
A huge house that is worth nothing at the end of the day, because without a good income, you’ll never be able to maintain it.
’ He had moved them both away from the boats.
‘And what about us? Does that mean that we go our separate ways?’
‘Marcus, I don’t want to work in the hotel forever, I’ve told you, I want to work with animals and…’
‘And you will, of course you will. But sometimes, I look at you and I think, you don’t realise your real worth in that family. It’s as if everyone has already discounted you, Rae, except for me.’
‘I don’t think…’ she said, but then, maybe he was right. She did just go along with things too often, just because it made life easier.
‘Trust me, okay, it’ll all be fine. You’ll have a house full of cats and dogs and babies one day, just as you’ve always hoped for, but…
first we must support your grandfather in the hotel, then after that, you’ll see, everything will work out for the best.’ He took her hand, placed it against his lips and kissed it lightly.
‘Okay, but as long as we’re clear, the hotel isn’t part of my future.
’ Rae hated that she sounded so weak. God, she should have made this clear months ago.
She should have been honest with him and cut through any notions he had of her being some sort of heiress, with a share in the hotel and a desire to live the rest of her days cleaning out rooms and booking in guests.
‘So, that’s that?’ he said coldly then. ‘We go our separate ways, we call it all off now, because, what’s the point if…’ He dropped her hand, stepped back from her.
‘NO!’ It sounded like a panicked scream to Rae, but it had come from a place of pure terror. She loved Marcus, she couldn’t lose him, not over a silly row. ‘Let’s not talk about it now, okay?’ She reached out to place her hand on his arm, tried to move closer to him, but he shrugged her off.
‘Maybe I was wrong about you, Rae,’ he said, and it felt as if there was a thousand miles between them, rather than just half a foot.
‘Marcus, what are you saying, I love you, we love each other.’ Suddenly, she couldn’t catch her breath, terror raced through her veins. This couldn’t be all there was, she had to make him see, she’d do anything to make him happy.
‘If you really love someone, Rae… well, what would you know about it anyway?’ He began to walk away, and she felt as if her whole world was being dragged from the canvas of her heart.
She ran to catch up with him, she couldn’t let him go like this.
It was unthinkable, she couldn’t lose him, she couldn’t live without him.
‘Marcus, please,’ she was pleading with him now, but he kept walking.
Tears were streaming down her face, she wiped them away, snot and spittle with them.
‘Marcus, please, don’t leave me, not like this.
’ She didn’t care that people were watching her, she didn’t care that they might think she’d lost all self-respect.
‘I’ll do anything, anything you want, just please… ’
‘Anything?’ He turned and looked at her now and she couldn’t make out what it was that had changed behind his eyes, but she recoiled, couldn’t help herself, was she really willing to do anything to hold onto him?
‘Yes. Anything,’ she said as clearly as if she was in full command of whatever price he exacted.
‘Oh, Rae,’ he said, his whole expression softening back to his familiar self. ‘What a lot of nonsense, it’s just a silly argument, come here.’ And he pulled her close and she just wanted to melt into him, because she needed him, she needed him to love her.
After that day on the pier, Rae felt increasingly as if she might be out of her depth with Marcus.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of him, exactly, more that he made her feel as if she was on a fragile probation of some sort.
So, he read the Sunday broadsheets and handed her the fashion supplements.
If she asked for the main sections of the paper, he’d hand them to her and scoff that really, he’d already read them and there wasn’t much there to interest her.
Actually, she felt that it annoyed him, when she took the larger paper, rustled it, and never quite got the hang of putting it all back together just the way he liked it.
After a while, she stopped asking for the papers and contented herself with the home and garden supplements or the fashion pages, if she was very bored.
‘What’s going on in the hotel today?’ Blythe asked her one day when she got back particularly late.
Marcus had insisted on a stock take. He had set up an inventory of every sheet and pillowcase, every scrap of food in the cupboards and freezers, even estimating how much time was left on the buffing matt of the old floor polisher.
He suspected that they were being robbed blind by some of the ladies who came in and helped with the busy breakfast hour.
‘Nothing, business as usual.’ Rae was too tired to go into it. She couldn’t face talking about one more nitty gritty thing to do with the hotel.
‘It’s obviously not nothing,’ Blythe said sarcastically.
Pappy and Marcus had agreed that it would be better if Blythe was allowed to rest, no point her getting stressed out with anything to do with the hotel.
‘Maybe I’ll call down tomorrow for a look,’ she said then and Rae felt sorry for her, because she was stuck here, not allowed to put a foot on the floor for the foreseeable because she was in danger of losing the baby.
Kip spent most of his days here, flapping about, making unwanted cups of tea and having his head snapped off if he said one wrong word.
‘I’m tired, Blythe, I just want to go to bed.’
‘I know what you’re up to, don’t think I don’t…’ Blythe said then and Rae could hear her voice, just that notch higher, the way it got these days when her blood pressure was raised.
‘Honestly, Blythe, I’m not up to anything.’ Rae held out both her hands, as if to show, there was no hidden agenda here.
‘Oh, please. You and Marcus, cosying up to Pappy, every night, you come back here, too late to tell me what’s going on and Marcus in Pappy’s ear.’
‘That’s not the way it is at all.’ Rae flew immediately to Marcus’s defence.
‘Oh, really, so he doesn’t want to take over the hotel permanently?’
‘Blythe, please, he’s just helping out…’ She said it so quickly, she almost believed it to be true.
‘Hah! Marcus Johnson really fell on his feet when he tipped his cap in your direction,’ Blythe said snidely.
‘It’s late, let’s not argue.’ Rae was too exhausted for this, and it wouldn’t do the baby any good either.
‘Ah, yes, you must have been like putty in his hands,’ Blythe said softly now.
‘I know you don’t mean that, Blythe, so I’m just not going to argue with you,’ Rae said, because if she didn’t take the high ground, she was too afraid of where this might lead.
‘Oh, I mean it alright. Here’s the thing Rae, what you don’t see, but you will…
’ Blythe was flushed now, her face almost exploding with rage.
Rae was scared that she’d have some sort of attack with all the stress this was putting on her.
‘He’s always been after a hotel of his own.
He knew exactly what he was getting into when he came here.
He probably sounded Pappy out before he ever even asked you on a date, because that’s the way he is, calculating.
You…’ She raised her finger and pointed at Rae with a shaking hand.
‘And you fell for it, every single word from his mouth and now look at you, working yourself to the bone, throwing away your own dreams and doing your best to become what he expects you to be…’
‘That’s not true.’ Rae heard the uncertainty in her own voice and she knew, from the way Blythe’s expression changed, that her sister had heard it too.
‘It’s not too late, you know, you could call it a day now, go and start a new life, pretend you’d never met him, and everything could work out as it was always meant to.’
‘Don’t you realise, Blythe? Things are working out as they were always meant to,’ that’s what Marcus told her, every single day, ‘they’re just not working out the way you wanted them to.’
Rae ran to the door and flung herself through it, raced upstairs and threw herself onto her bed, then she cried until eventually, exhaustion finally took over and she slept – dead to the world.
*
Everything, it turned out, was in her grandfather’s name.
There had never been a will made to transfer the hotel to his son.
‘Ah, there was never time, sure back then, getting to a solicitor on the mainland was a job in itself.’ He was telling Marcus one night when Rae was getting ready to head back to Still Water House.
‘Wouldn’t it make more sense if Rae stayed here, once Blythe and Kip get married?’ Marcus said then as if the idea had only just entered his head.
‘I suppose, but what about…’ Of course, her grandfather was thinking of what the neighbours would say, one Scott girl pregnant before she got married, the other living under the same roof as her boyfriend.
‘Well, I mean, nothing would happen, I can give you my word on that,’ Marcus said then and looked Pappy straight in the eye.
‘I know that. She’s a good girl and you’re…’ He raised his hand as if it went without saying that he would trust Marcus with his life, with all their lives, probably.
‘But when the baby comes, Blythe will need me and anyway, if either of us was going to move into the hotel, I know for a fact, Blythe would much prefer it was her,’ Rae put in between them.
‘Ah, Blythe doesn’t know what she wants until that baby arrives,’ Pappy said then. ‘You’re right Marcus, better if Rae moves in here,’ he looked at Rae then, ‘sure, you’ll be the odd one out there, in the middle of a newly married couple and a young family, you don’t want that, do you?’
‘But Pappy, really…’ she said, but he’d already made his mind up. Blythe would not be coming to live in the hotel, rather, Marcus would be staying on to run the place and they both seemed to think that Rae would also.
The conversation unsettled her. But it was just a conversation, nothing would come of it, she tried to convince herself. After all, Marcus knew that she had plans of her own, he’d promised her that it would all work out for the best and she had to believe him.