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‘For goodness’ sake, why couldn’t he just have made things easy for everyone?’ Nola was almost in tears.
‘Maybe itisa gift of sorts, but it’s not a very practical one,’ Georgie said cynically. She should be back in London tomorrow, getting going with… The truth was, she wasn’t sure what she should be doing anymore. It wasn’t as if she actually had a job to go back to. But she had an apartment and that was home to her now, wasn’t it? God knows she’d spent enough money buying it and then having it designed so it reflected the lifestyle she’d aspired to, even if she never quite felt at ease there. ‘What on earth would we do here for six whole months?’ she asked. That meant long, dark evenings, rainy days and not a lot to do unless you fancied being blown away while you walked along the beach. ‘I’m not sure I can do it…’ she whispered, her voice almost cracking. She hated this, the vulnerability she was showing. She cleared her throat; there was no way anyone was going to see her become weak.
‘Of course you can’t bloody do it; you have a career. You live in London, for heaven’s sake. You can’t just throw up your whole life for six months. None of us can. It’s not like we’re all students on a gap year,’ Nola raged.
‘I think I possibly could…’ Iris said and it sounded to Georgie as if she was talking from a place very far removed from the reality of this shocking moment. ‘I mean, on a practical level, I think I could.’
Georgie and Nola turned to stare at her. ‘But what about Myles? And your job? And…’ Nola threw her hands up in the air ‘…your mortgage?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about any of that. I don’t see why I couldn’t sort all that out easily enough.’ She put her finger to her lips and turned back towards the table again, holding each of them with her gaze for a moment, as if she was thinking of something that was not exactly unpleasant. ‘Myles will be working away for a few months and, to be honest, I’ve needed a change from being a receptionist for quite a while now. It’s hardly been a vocation for me.’ She almost smiled at this. ‘I don’t see why I couldn’t rent the house out, which would cover the mortgage and give me a bit of spending money. Father has laid on everything here for us – it’s in the will. There’s an account at the local grocer’s and all the bills are going to be paid anyway. It might be an opportunity to stop and reset the clock for a short while.’
It seemed to Georgie that Iris was doing her best to convince herself, but as the words drifted towards her, Georgie realised that really, the same logic applied to her own life. What was in London waiting for her? Who? Nothing and nobody – that was the cold reality of her life. Normally it never bothered her, but things were different now. The fact that her career had taken a nosedive had suddenly brought all those other things into stark relief so in this moment, all she could think was: why on earth wouldn’t she take the offer of a six-month break with no more stresses than sorting out her sisters’ jealous squabbles? At the end of it, she could go back to London and easily set up her own firm. She’d have the start-up cash to go it alone, without partners or investors, just the way she liked things best.
As if she was reading her mind, Iris turned directly towards her and examined her with narrowed eyes. ‘What about you, Georgie? Could you walk away for six months and be comfortable that everything you’ve invested in over the years is solid enough to be waiting when you return?’ She was throwing down the gauntlet, an irresistible challenge, but of course, what Iris didn’t realise was that Georgie’s house of feathers had already blown away on the wind.
She squared her shoulders and returned Iris’s gaze coolly. ‘Of course I can. I can spend a few weeks clearing the desk, handing over my biggest accounts to one of the senior partners and then take some of the time off that’s been building up for me over the last few years.’ She smiled easily. Neither Iris nor Nola need ever know her life had become a bonfire of half-truths and outright lies.
‘Good, well then, that’s two of us settled,’ Iris said, looking pointedly at Nola.
‘That’s not fair,’ Nola shot back at them.
‘What’s not fair?’ Georgie knew she was taunting her.
‘You’re both so much more… your lives are more… Look,’ she said, bunching her hair on top of her head, and pulling it tight as if it might clear the brain fog that Georgie felt was the only legacy that any of them had been granted after the meeting with Stephen. ‘It’s different for me. My career is so much more precarious.’
Georgie snorted. ‘You could always go back to the coffee shop?’
‘I only help Shalib out occasionally, but we’ve become friends and he depends on me. I told you, I’ve been working for the last couple of years between various productions on…’ Nola snapped.
‘Yes, yes. Of course you have…’ Iris said sarcastically.
‘Oh my God. You two are unbelievable. How bloody smug you both are, with your solid marriage and your big career.’ Nola’s voice grew thick and her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I can’t just throw everything I’ve been working for up in the air on a whim—’
‘This could change your life, Nola. We’re not talking about a couple of hundred pounds. It could mean you have the money for a flat in a very nice part of London – that’s security for life,’ Iris said.
‘And it’s our father’s last request of us. We will probably never be friends, but the least we can do is walk away knowing that in the end we did as he asked. We can at least try.’ Even as she said it, though, Georgie knew it was hopeless. She had long believed that their bonds had been so badly severed, they’d never be able to reconnect; she’d just never had the courage to tell her father.
‘So we shack up here for six months and then flog the lot before returning to real life again?’ Nola’s voice was shrill. ‘But that’s fine and dandy because we’ve done what he’s asked? He means for us to do more than live together, Georgie. You know that he means us to reach some sort of reconciliation, make some sort of relationship.’
‘Well, I’m up for trying it, if you’re both in,’ Iris said, managing to sound as if she meant it while fiddling with the thin string of pearls at her throat that had been left to her in their mother’s will.
‘I can’t take any more of this nonsense,’ Nola shouted at no-one in particular and everyone in general. ‘I’m going for a walk.’ She pushed her chair back with such force that it went flying from beneath her and crashed against the ornate sideboard running along the wall behind her. ‘On my bloody own,’ she said as an afterthought, as if either of her sisters would want to join her. Then she stalked through the door and banged it so hard behind her, Georgie almost expected the plaster around it to crack and fall to the floor. She looked at Iris and suddenly, they both burst out laughing, as if the tension of the whole morning had been pulled from the room with their younger, wilful, still slightly out-of-hand sister.
*
Nola yanked the front door closed behind her with an almighty crash. The noise reverberated in her ears, but she knew that had as much to do with the fact that her nerves were shattered. She had to get out of here, out of this house and away from Iris and Georgie. She wanted to race down to the station, jump on the first train and never come back, but that was impossible. Her sisters were impossible. Nola didn’t need to spend six months with them to know that much.
She took a long, deep breath, her back still leaning against the front door of the house. She shivered under the clawing fingers of a passing chill breeze. She needed to breathe; she needed to get past this panic that was rising up in her at the thought of having to turn her life over to Ballycove for six months. Another deep breath, filling up her lungs with air sweetly scented with witch hazel that reminded her of her mother and happy times that were so faded she sometimes wondered if they were ever real or just a hazy dream.
Another deep breath and Nola stepped away from the door, tossed her hair back from her face and set off down the avenue. Moving one foot before the other, she could forget that her legs felt like jelly, her heart was racing and her head was spinning. All she needed was fresh air and there was never any shortage of that in Ballycove. She had over-reacted, and the beginnings of embarrassment started to awaken in her.
It was just nerves, she knew. After all, it wasn’t as if there was anything to go back to in London. Shecoulddo this. Shehad todo this. The words kept turning about in her brain like a ticker tape. Six months. It was all right for Georgie – she could probably afford to walk away from her huge monthly salary for a year or two if she felt like it. She probably had millions in the bank for all they knew and there was no doubt in Nola’s mind, but her company would be turning somersaults to take her back whenever she felt like returning to her high-powered career.
In some ways, it was the same for Iris. Nola might not think very much of Myles Cutler, but at the end of the day, they’d stuck it out. And it looked like their relationship had only gone from strength to strength. After all, there was a time when Iris wouldn’t have left London for five minutes without him, probably because she knew she couldn’t trust him not to chase the first woman he saw as soon as her back was turned. Now, here she was, seemingly content and secure in the knowledge that if she threw away her job in the morning, he had her back.
It was a heck of a lot more than Nola had managed to garner after the years spent in London chasing a dream that seemed determined to give her the slip. The truth of that stabbed at her heart with a ferociousness that almost took her breath away. She was so bloody miserable and the last thing she needed was to spend six months comparing herself to Iris or Georgie.
She tried to tell herself, she should be bloody thankful to have somewhere to live for the next six months. Maybe that was the problem, though, because she knew that coming back here meant she was cutting ties with London and there was nothing there to call her back. She was anchorless, unlike her sisters who had homes and jobs and loved ones in the city. That was besides the fact that it wasBallycove, the place she couldn’t wait to leave all those years ago and worse, she’d be stuck here with the last two people in the world she’d want to be living with.
