Chapter 36
Present
Still Water House had never looked better. Blythe had worked like a mad thing to make sure there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust to be seen, anywhere. Today was the day.
She checked with Finbar Lavin again. Finbar was the only man who could predict the tides with almost perfect accuracy.
Even though there was meant to be a rhythm to them, island people knew, it took only an unexpected swell or a mist driving in from a storm far out to sea, to change everything without any warning.
‘Everything looks good,’ Finbar said, and he sounded as if he was standing at the edge of the world, drinking his cup of morning tea. There was no better viewing point, probably, on the island than the old Macken place. ‘Is it today you have your big reviewer guest coming?’ he asked then.
‘No, no, I really don’t know what you mean, Finbar. Every guest at Still Water is as important as the next,’ she said, because the last thing she wanted was Morwenna Whythe, whom Blythe was convinced was Maura Whither, to twig that she suspected her of coming to review the guest house.
The booking had been very specific: a room with easy access, so Blythe had her on the ground floor with two rooms to choose from. She’d even turned down a two-week booking, just to accommodate her. And she was absolutely set on making sure that everything went smoothly.
Still Water House deserved to be included in the White Book, more so than many of those other draughty old places on the mainland, and she fully intended to make it shine to its very best. She had a good two hours to wait until the ferry arrived.
She was primed and ready. Siggy had made fruit scones, and they were baking in the oven, the aroma permeating the entrance hall from the kitchen.
The main reception room was fit to receive royalty, with cushions plumped, flowers freshened, and the radiators turned on low, despite the pristine nets billowing ever so slightly at the open windows.
She’d placed three cds in the old player on low repeat, Grieg, Mendelssohn and her personal favourite – the soundtrack from Out of Africa.
At the huge open hearth, she’d lit a thick white candle in the storm lamp. Everything was perfect.
She was about to double check the front door again, to walk through it, see it as if from a newcomer’s eyes when she spotted a familiar car on the avenue.
Rae.
What now? she thought, because Rae would not come out here to tell her good news. This was, she decided before Rae even turned off her engine, an irritation she was in no humour for today.
There was an offer on the hotel. Rae told her as she waited for the coffee to brew and suddenly, Blythe felt lightheaded, as if even standing there, her hand on the coffee pot, was too much.
Somehow, she kept her balance, swung from the kitchen island to the table – one flagrant, out of control movement, thankfully, the pot landed safely and in the same motion, by some miracle, Blythe dropped into the chair opposite her sister.
‘Are you alright?’ Rae asked, because Blythe knew the blood had drained from her head, it was rushing to her feet, pulsing at an alarming rate through her body, so it felt as if her whole nervous system had taken off somewhere without her.
‘I’m perfectly fine.’ She managed, but she could feel her mouth twitching, her whole face felt as if it was suddenly, like everything else, just beyond her reach. Opposite her, unaware of her sister’s discomfort, Rae was babbling on with details that floated in the air around Blythe’s head.
Later she would hunger for these details, now, they felt like overload, as if another word could crash her newly fragile spirit.
It was a generous offer, well above asking price or anything you could reasonably expect to get in today’s market.
The reality of it was there – like something she could reach out and touch and yet, Blythe felt as if she’d been tasered.
The idea that she had no control over the sale of part of the hotel.
‘Do you know who wants to buy it?’ she asked.
‘No and it doesn’t really matter at this point, because there may be further offers and even if there aren’t, I have a few more days to decide if I’m going to accept it or not.’
‘You wouldn’t sell it to a stranger.’ As she said it, she knew it didn’t make any difference who bought it.
The reality was, it wouldn’t be any easier to take it, if it was someone they knew, or someone they didn’t know.
Blythe didn’t want anyone else owning a part of the Hope Square Hotel.
It was her family legacy. Things should never have come to this.
‘I know you’re upset,’ Rae said gently.
‘And how can you not be?’
‘It’s emotional,’ Rae conceded. ‘But it’s for the best, the hotel can’t go on as it is, this is just a decision to ensure its survival.’
‘And will it survive?’ Blythe asked. ‘After you’ve sent a chunk of it to the guillotine, are you quite sure that it will survive then?’
‘Honestly?’ Rae looked at her now and the heaviest silence Blythe ever experienced dangled on the air between them. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Hmph.’ There was so much she wanted to say, but what was the point. She didn’t have a casting vote. She didn’t have any vote – Pappy had taken care of that years ago. ‘Well, I hope it makes you happy,’ she settled on.
‘How can you say something like that? None of this is making me happy. You know, more than anyone, this was never what I wanted.’ Rae hung her head now.
‘Yes, well, you got it anyway, so here we are after all that.’
‘I wish…’
‘What?’ Blythe’s voice was shrill. ‘What is it you wish, Rae? That our grandfather had left his will the way it was meant to be, is that what you wish?’ Because wishing got you nowhere, Blythe knew that from bitter experience.
‘I wish I could afford to hand the place over to you. That there wasn’t any debt and there was some way I could…’ She sighed.
‘That’s such a cruel thing to say.’ Blythe got up.
She didn’t have time for talking nonsense and she didn’t want to talk about this any longer.
She couldn’t, because if Rae stayed here for another minute, Blythe really wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t say something that there was no coming back from, that or burst into tears and rage at the unfairness of it all.
*
Blythe was sitting in her opulent drawing room when the doorbell sounded in the hall.
She’d come in here to try and make sense of Rae’s news.
To settle her nerves, if she was honest. Now, she had to pull herself together and become the perfect hostess if she wanted to wow Maura Whither or Morwenna Whythe as she had called herself in the booking.
Blythe took a deep breath; she could do this.
She had to do this; she would not let the hotel come between her and the White Book.
She took one deep breath, looked back at the room she had spent so long making just right, threw her shoulders back and walked with as much confidence as she could muster to the front door.
‘Hello, you’re very welcome, Morwenna?’ She greeted the squat, angry-looking woman standing on her doorstep.
‘Hmph. It’s Miss Whythe. You never said on the booking site that this place was so far away from the village…
’ the woman said, and she glanced back at her bags which had been deposited by old Donnacha O’Neill on the gravel behind her.
Donnacha was renowned for his bad temper, which only grew worse if it looked like his passenger was not going to tip.
Blythe could hear his ancient Citroen roar down the avenue, he was long gone at this point.
‘I’m sorry, I must check that they haven’t changed around the details again,’ Blythe said, feeling a sudden desire to run down the avenue after the old codger.
‘Is my room ready?’ the woman snapped.
‘Of course, you asked for an accessible room, and we have two, so if you’d like to choose the one that suits you best,’ Blythe said sweetly, thinking of the lucrative booking she’d turned down for this woman.
She’d better be who she thought she was, although, looking at her now, she looked nothing like the woman in Blythe’s mind’s eye.
‘I just want a room that’s easy to get to, show me into the best one and let’s have done with it.
If I wanted an exercise in decision making, I’d have gone to one of those horrid coffee shops where they can’t even make a cup of tea without giving you a hundred choices.
’ She was just testing her, or perhaps she was tired, Blythe decided, she would be nicer when she had a chance to rest.
Blythe showed her into the first room, mainly because she wanted to get away from her.
Nobody in their right mind would fault it, it was a fabulous room with access to the garden beyond.
There wasn’t a four-poster bed, but the bathroom was generous and very accessible with discreet handrails and enough space to turn even the largest wheelchair.
The bedroom was large enough to accommodate a small chaise longue and decent-sized dressing area behind a Chinese screen she had picked up for half nothing when other people thought they were going out of fashion.
‘Here we are,’ she said, and she picked up the room key and held it aloft as she went through the room and opened the French doors so Morwenna could appreciate the garden outside.
‘If there’s anything you need, just knock on the kitchen door.
My daughter baked fresh scones that are cooling,’ she had completely forgotten about the first batch in the upset of earlier.
They were burned beyond words. ‘But, if you’re peckish now, I have homemade brown bread, local cheese and fresh coffee if you’d like some.
’ She smiled at the woman, who remained determinedly sour faced.