‘There you are!’ Mark said as soon as he bustled in through the bar room door, coat dripping and his glasses steaming up and rain spotted. ‘I need to talk to you.’
His eagerness to get it off his chest, his willingness to hurt her was shocking. ‘No,Ineed to talk toyou,’ she countered.
The inn dog had followed Mark inside and was shaking himself vigorously right in the middle of the bar. Now he’d got that over with, Echo sauntered over to the fire and, after making a few circles, dropped himself in a curled ball on the hearth rug. He didn’t sleep though. Anybody watching him would see he had one eye open and fixed on the Firths.
‘Come and sit over here.’ Mark hastened Ruth into a corner seat in the bar by the door and Ruth followed him. There were a few crafters in, but the rain had kept the locals at home. ‘I’ve been out all day today and yesterday, and it gives a man time to think…’
‘No,’ Ruth protested. ‘I’m the one that’s been thinking. I get to talk. I get to ask the questions on my terms.’
The thought of him coming out with it now, the sordid truth, was too much for her. She called over to Mrs Mair at the bar for a double G and T, and Mark shouted, ‘Make that two’, which made Ruth even more exasperated.
‘I know what you’ve been up to,’ she hissed, sitting down, holding one of the bar room cushions across her lap for comfort. Mark took the seat facing her.
‘You do?’ Mark’s face fell instantly. ‘Oh.’
‘Yes,oh!’ She took a moment to gulp for breath. She hadn’t thought it would be this easy. It was all coming to a head so suddenly. Thirty-seven years, a whole life together poised on the edge of the plughole, about to be washed down the drain.
Mrs Mair arrived with a tray and set their drinks down without a word. She left a little dish of shortbread too, as if that was going to help in a crisis.
Mark reached for one of the crumbly squares instantly and Ruth had to stop herself from slapping his hand away. How could he eat at a time like this?
‘I might as well just come out and say it, Mark. I know what’s going on, and I’m so…bloody disappointed!’
‘You are?’
‘You’ve made a fool out of me and you’ve made a mockery of our life together, and the boys’ lives too.’ She held in a sob out of pure spite brought on by the sight of Mark with his mouth full of shortbread and with crumbs all down his front. He was wide-eyed and frozen.
‘What?’ he mumbled, trying to chew and swallow as quickly as possible, losing his colour like a bottle of strawberry milkshake being drained through a straw.
‘Who is it, then?’ she demanded.
‘Huh?’
‘The person you’ve been sneaking off to talk with? Who is she?’
‘She? I’ve been with Gene.’
‘Jean? From the golf club? I bloody knew it!’
‘No, love. Gene, the cook.’
Ruth blinked. ‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.’
Mark laughed gently and reached for her hand. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you for the last five minutes.’ He reached a hand into the pocket of his navy-blue Millets jacket which Ruth Firth had picked out on sale, XL to make sure it was roomy enough for a jumper underneath, and he pulled out a gold band, placing it on the table.
‘I’ve been out searching whenever I could get away, trying to find your wedding ring. I swear I’ve turned every rock and lifted every bit of seaweed on that coral beach these last few days.’
Ruth was hurting now. A great burning surge of feeling, all directed at that little scrap of gold that she’d worn for so long that her finger was now white and smooth where it had worn her.
Mark was smiling softly. ‘That daft dog helped me too. You wouldn’t believe what a good little digger he is. Worked all day in the rain, he did, until I was set to give up for the evening and – would you credit it? – he turned up some sand right by my feet and there it was, and in the last light of the day! I don’t mind admitting, Ruth, I cried at the sight of it.’
‘But… you…’ Ruth felt herself dissolving.
‘What, love?’ Mark leaned closer.
‘You’renotseeing someone else?’
Mark let the silence speak for him, his lips parted, seemingly aghast she was asking him.
