Page 52 of The Scottish Island Inn

Simon stared at her for a few moments.

‘It’s like you don’t even care,’ he said, changing tack. Sorrel knew her ex well enough to know how he responded in arguments. If he felt as though he wasn’t winning with logic – which he rarely did – Simon would either go on the offensive and get angry, hurling insults at her, or try to appeal to her emotions. Towards the end of their relationship, it was one of the few times that Sorrel had experienced any affection from Simon: when he was trying to manipulate her.

She knew that was what he was trying to do now, and she wasn’t about to fall for it.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked. In a way, Sorrel was curious to see where Simon was going to go with this. He was so clearly in the wrong. What magic wand did he think he could wave to get her back?

‘You don’t care about me. You never did.’ Simon stirred his coffee with a wooden stirrer and looked wan. ‘You never stopped being in love with your boyfriend from here. Your childhood sweetheart. Tom whatever.’

‘Tam,’ she corrected him. ‘Not Tom.’

‘Whatever. I knew you were still in love with him. You just never really let me in. Not here.’ He tapped his fingers over his heart, an exaggerated mournful look on his face. Sorrel thought she might be sick.

‘That’s really not true. I did love you, Simon. Until you eroded my trust in you, time and time again.’ She paused, then continued.

‘I ran that company, Simon. I ran the house too. I did everything, and all you did was take people out for some expensive lunches and then complain about the work I’d done. There’s nothing quite as guaranteed to destroy your confidence as someone following you around, pointing out all the ways whatever you do is wrong. You know what? Maybe if I’d had as much time in my day as you, I could have done everything a hundred per cent accurately. But I didn’t, because I was doing everything myself.’

She ended the long sentence by taking a long breath.

‘That was unnecessary,’ Simon replied, primly. He could be prissy in an argument, like he was one of Sorrel’s great-aunts and she’d just offended him deeply. But that was just another technique. She knew that now.

‘No. It was completely necessary, actually,’ Sorrel said. ‘My feelings for Tam Blackwood had nothing to do with you. Tam is in my past. You and I were a couple for nine years, and you stole from me and betrayed me, as well as slowly ruining my self-confidence. Why, in the name of all that is good and pure, would you think that I would ever, ever want to get back together with you? That I would ever trust you with my heart again?’ She stared at him, uncomprehending.

Simon looked deflated. ‘Because I love you, Sorry.’

Don’t call me Sorry.

‘No, you don’t.’ Sorrel banged her fist on the table in frustration. ‘If you did, then what about Teresa? Why would you cheat on me if you loved me? Why would you give your new fancy woman all that money?’

‘Teresa is not my girlfriend,’ he said, quietly, refusing to meet her eyes.

‘Really. Then who is she?’ Sorrel crossed her arms over her chest. This ought to be good.

‘Teresa is my sister.’ Simon looked up, and now his eyes were full of tears. ‘And she needed the money. There was no other way.’

TWENTY-NINE

‘What?’ Sorrel stared at her ex-boyfriend in confusion. ‘You don’t have a sister.’

‘I do. I just never told you about her,’ he mumbled into his coffee. All trace of the cocky, controlling Simon she had just been talking to was gone; in his place was… she wasn’t sure who it was. She hadn’t seen this version of him before.

Simon’s posture had changed; he usually sat upright and proud, and now he slumped in his seat. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. His voice was low and unsure.

‘How could you not tell me you had a sister?’ Sorrel demanded, but she knew that she hadn’t been totally honest with him. She’d never told Simon much about her family, and certainly not why she’d left Skye so abruptly.

Maybe she also hadn’t been totally honest about her feelings for Tam Blackwood.

That was the real truth of it. All those times she’d looked around at the beautiful new house she’d just renovated and thought about how it would make a lovely family home for her and Tam.

I can’t think about that now, she remonstrated with herself. If I do, I’ll collapse.

‘It’s difficult to talk about.’

‘Tell me,’ Sorrel said, quietly.

‘Agh.’ Simon took a sip of his coffee. He paused for a moment. ‘Teresa’s my little sister. She’s ten years younger than me. We had different fathers.’

‘Okay.’ Sorrel calculated that Teresa was around twenty-five years old. ‘And you never thought to mention this?’