Chapter 40 #2
‘I can’t believe it.’ Constance dropped down to sit on a huge rock as if someone had taken the air from her. ‘Are you sure it’s over, is there no hope…?’
‘There is no chance,’ Dotty said firmly.
The problem, she knew, was not that her marriage was over so much as the fact that Constance felt she was throwing it away.
Constance, who had gone through life trying always to be good and kind and giving to make up for what they did, had finally made amends with the death of her own husband, the wiping out of the future she had banked on.
Constance would have given anything to have Oisin back again, she had adored him.
Theirs would have been the sort of marriage that could have made it to the golden wedding anniversary, if fate had not stepped in the way.
God, what would Dotty have given if her demons could be so easily put aside with the snatching from her of just one thing instead of this all-encompassing misery?
‘But maybe if you talk to him… go back, sit down and have whatever it is out with him…’ Constance stopped and looked out to sea, biting her lip in that way she’d always done as a child when she was trying to figure something out.
‘Look, what about if I take Heather? Just for a while until you get things sorted…’
‘It’s not something we can sort out in a while…’
‘I’ll take her for as long as you want, forever, if you’d let me, you know that.’ For a long moment, in spite of the fact that the waves were crashing beneath them, it felt as if the whole universe had fallen into a deep silence.
‘I know you don’t think I deserve her,’ Dotty said quietly.
The searing anger that constantly brewed deep within her finally splintered.
Her heart raced with it and words tumbled through her brain – awful words, things she should never say, never think, threatened to escape now.
She took a deep breath, needed to keep the darkness buttoned in, it always felt as if her very survival depended on it.
‘I know you think you’d be a much better mother and I know you’re probably right, but she’s mine, do you understand, Constance, Heather is my daughter and I’m not going to just hand her over to you. ’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. It was just an offer of help, that’s all, plain and simple, one friend to another.’
‘Are we still friends?’ Dotty hated that her voice sounded so bitter, even to herself.
Did she always sound like this? She couldn’t bear it.
‘Look, Constance, it’s not my fault your husband died.
It’s not my fault that you haven’t got any kids.
It’s not even my fault that you were there that day when my father came into Mr Morrison’s garden. I never asked you to follow me or to…’
‘Oh, Dotty. Stop it, it’s all so long ago. Don’t you think it should make us closer, not make us feel as if…’
‘Well, it doesn’t bind us in some eternal friendship like we’ve always tried to pretend. It’s guilt and murder and we’ll never wipe that from our conscience.’
‘We should have come clean, long ago, we should have told the truth. We’d both have been far better off for it.’
‘NO,’ Dotty screamed. ‘No bloody way, we made a promise, you promised me, no-one ever knows what happened that day, that’s what we agreed…
’ Dotty thought she’d be sick, right there on the rocks.
‘What good would telling people do? It doesn’t change any of it.
’ She felt more nauseous now than she had when the ferry had been rollicking over waves that were thirty-foot high and bashing against their cabin.
‘I’m just saying, we were kids, that’s all, we were just kids.
We shouldn’t still be carrying the guilt of it, Dotty.
’ Constance reached out to touch Dotty’s arm, her hand cold, but Dotty shook it off.
‘Perhaps if we came clean, gave your father the chance of a proper burial, what’s the worst they’ll do to us? ’
‘Listen to yourself, will you? What do you know about what they’ll do to us or what my father deserved?’
‘I still think of him in that well. Dotty, you didn’t go down there, you didn’t see.’
‘Oh, God, here we go.’ Dotty felt as if her blood pressure was about to explode in her chest, drive its way out through the top of her head.
‘You have no idea what it was like, what it’s like now.
My father got exactly what he deserved, we might not have planned it, but I’ve never been sorry.
Look at me, Heather, do you really think I wanted to end up living like this?
’ Her breath caught in her chest, she hardly knew what she’d said, not able to stop herself from saying more.
‘I never wanted to get married, I never wanted to live like this… I wanted…’ She wasn’t even sure what she wanted any more.
Did she want what Constance had? To live at Ocean’s End and teach in the local school with every kid on the island adoring the ground she walked on?
Did she want to come back here and live a life that she’d yearned so badly to leave behind?
‘Tell me then, go on. If your life is that bad, why don’t you tell me? Maybe I can help, I want to help…’
‘You can’t help,’ Dotty snapped, getting up.
‘No. You’re probably right,’ Constance called after her. ‘No-one can help you, Dotty, you need to help yourself, you need to stop drinking and grow up and be grateful for what you bloody have already.’
‘Oh yeah of course, you were always going to throw that in my face, weren’t you? It’s a cheap shot, but I’m not an alcoholic, if that’s what you’re trying to imply. I don’t need a drink…’ She was shaking, so angry. She might believe she didn’t need a drink, but she wanted one so badly.
‘Someone has to say it. It’s always been there, for years. And no-one has said it and we both know, you’re only hiding from the past, but you’re killing the future and maybe I could stand back and watch you do it to yourself, but I can’t bear to see you do it to Heather.’
‘How bloody dare you?’ Dotty was livid. She ran at Constance, lashed out with a violent swipe that only just missed her face.
It shocked them both for a second, so there they were, the world as they’d always known it suddenly rupturing beneath their feet.
Dotty took an unsteady step backwards; she could hardly see what was before her eyes.
She wanted to make Constance stop saying these things.
For one terrible moment of madness, she wanted to kill her.
She wanted to throw her over the side of the cliff, hear her scream, watch her horrified expression as she went down into the waves below.
She imagined herself doing it too; no remorse.
She wanted to shut her up forever. Somehow, she managed to keep herself in check; but only just.
‘I hate you, Constance. I absolutely hate you and this place and everything about us,’ Dotty screamed and she felt tears rush down her cheeks.
‘Maybe I hate you too,’ Constance said softly and when she said it she looked almost as horrified as if she had been thrown over the cliff.
‘Maybe I hate what happened all those years ago and the fact that I’ve had to carry it with me ever since.
Every time I look at you, I think of it, I can’t help myself.
Having you here, now, makes me think the only thing I can do to be free is to tell the truth. ’
Something in her eyes changed and Dotty knew she was deadly serious. She could march down to the local garda station this minute and tell them everything.
‘Maybe you’re right, maybe you were never worth the bother.
If I never see you again, it’ll be too bloody soon,’ Constance said, then she stomped off, leaving Dotty standing there with nowhere to put her anger.
She couldn’t risk Constance going to the police.
Who knew what would come of that? Prison maybe and a whole lot of questions to be answered and memories dredged up.
There was nothing else for it, but a firm decision that she would never, could never , come back here again.