Chapter 48
Eighteen Months Earlier
The Americans may have been celebrating the Superbowl that day, but in Ireland, all anyone could talk about was the Six Nations, Ireland versus Italy match.
Rae had little or no interest in it, which was just as well.
The hotel was empty. They’d had a wedding, a lovely couple, Tony and Mark – they’d come down with a bunch of friends and family and stayed for three days with their ceremony celebrated in the conservatory at the back of the hotel.
Rae had watched as the two men exchanged vows.
They were so in love, it made her heart crack.
This, she thought, not for the first time over the years, is exactly how Blythe had planned to use this space.
Blythe. She’d worked so hard to bring the conservatory back to life.
She’d done all the hard work herself. Pappy had been dubious about it.
He really should have known better. Blythe’s instincts were never wrong.
Rae planned to spend the day clearing away the remains of the weekend. There were several loads of table linen washing, before she even got to the beds.
She had switched on the washing machine with the second load when she realised her mistake.
There, resting against the glass was Marcus’s brand new inhaler.
It must have been on one of the tables and folded in with the cloths without her noticing it.
Already, the machine was filled up with water, there was no stopping it until the cycle ended. It was too late.
Rae felt the blood rush from her head. If Marcus saw what she’d done, there’d be hell to pay.
The last time she’d washed one with their own laundry, he had hit her so hard, she’d been knocked against the staircase, and she’d fallen, bruising her back and neck so badly it had winded her for several days.
She could have broken a rib, for all she knew, but there was no point telling Marcus she needed to go to a doctor.
Hugh, the local garda sergeant, had spotted the bruising when she bent to take glasses from the washer at the bar.
He had not asked her what had happened, but when they were away from other ears, he touched her arm.
‘You don’t have to stay with him, you know?
You just say the word and half this island would be lining up to help you… ’
‘Oh, Hugh, I just fell, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, right.’ He stood back a little, because Marcus had walked into the bar.
‘What?’ Marcus said, but Rae could see, he was not his usual confident self.
‘I’m just saying, it’s good we live on a small island, we can all look out for each other.
For our own, at any rate.’ Hugh said, keeping his eyes on Marcus, and Rae thought she’d faint with the discomfort of just standing there between them.
Then he looked at Rae. ‘You know where I am, Rae.’ He said then before turning and walking out the door.
That was a year ago.
Rae tried to think. Was there a second inhaler in the hotel?
Marcus would come looking for this one before the match.
She needed to find one and replace it for him.
She ran to the flat, rifled with shaking hands through the drawers in the locker by their bed.
Nothing. Then the bathroom cabinet. Again, no luck.
Perhaps there was a puff or two left in one of the older ones she thought.
She raced down to the recycling. The game was starting in half an hour.
Not long. Certainly not long enough to make it to the mainland, even if there was a chemist shop open on a Sunday, which there definitely wasn’t.
In the shed she found the small container where Marcus stored old batteries, aerosols and yes, inhalers for recycling.
She pulled the only one that was there out.
It’ll be fine she told herself. She held it up to the window, checking the date.
Took off the cap, squeezed the end. It made a sound, but it was all but empty.
She checked her watch again. Went back to the container, even though she knew that she had the only one in her hand. It would be okay. Maybe he wouldn’t need it.
As she raced up the path to the back door of the hotel, the inhaler in her hand, she wondered, should she just tell him her mistake?
It could happen to anyone, couldn’t it? I mean, he must have left it on one of the tables to begin with, it was hardly entirely her fault.
No. She knew Marcus; he wasn’t rational about these things.
He would fly into a rage. There would be no watching the football, not without an inhaler.
He got too caught up in the action. He nearly always ended up having an asthma attack.
She tucked the inhaler in her pocket, surely, just this once it would be fine.
She spotted him in the flat, searching through the same drawers she’d searched through a few minutes earlier. Already, he was becoming irritated. He hated losing things.
‘Okay?’ she asked, although a part of her wanted to run to the furthest part of the hotel, maybe to the tree house as she would have as a girl with Blythe, to escape his anger.
‘No. Not okay. What did you do with my inhaler?’ he said angrily.
‘Me?’ Rae said and for a moment, she teetered between two worlds. One, a familiar place, full of resentment and bitterness and loneliness; another an escape. She felt the inhaler in her pocket..
‘Who else? Aren’t you always putting things in strange places?
’ He shook his head as if he had completely run out of patience.
‘I don’t know, some of these days, you’ll put yourself away and no one will question what’s happened to you,’ he said softly and she knew it was a threat.
He’d been making them for years. Usually, they centred around falling down the stairs or being electrocuted in the bath.
For years, she’d had nightmares thinking of what he might do to her.
She always took extra care to lock the bathroom door and move the laundry basket behind it, just in case.
‘Is it this?’ she said then and her voice felt as if it came from very far away as she produced the inhaler from her pocket.
‘I might have known.’ He snatched it from her hand and stalked past her, so close he almost sent her spinning off her feet.
*
It was a funny thing, walking the beach later that afternoon. Knowing he was sitting there, watching the match, probably drinking a beer, maybe reaching for his inhaler.
Rae felt as if the world had stilled. She felt calm, almost serene.
When she returned to the hotel, a good hour after the match was over, the linens drying slowly in the stables, there was no sign of him. She walked upstairs quietly, so quietly it was as if she was afraid to wake the dead.
Because the hotel was empty of guests, he had left the door unlocked.
When she pushed it open, somehow, she wasn’t shocked.
She wasn’t even sad. She noticed the half-drunk glass of beer on the table next to him.
The inhaler on the floor. She didn’t cross the room to close his eyes or check if he was breathing.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled out her phone to call the ambulance.