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8
Iris wished to God that she didn’t have to watch every single word she uttered. If it wasn’t bad enough to have Georgie being prickly about taking on the marketing for the distillery, now she had Nola taking offence at her sincere attempts to be nice about her new job. Looking back, she realised how what she said about pin money could have sounded condescending – but really, Nola should have known Iris didn’t mean it like that. Where on earth was the lovely girl that Iris remembered from childhood? But who was she to talk? She herself had changed beyond all recognition, too.
She decided on a walk along the beach to clear her head. Maybe she’d stop off at the hotel for coffee on the way back. That thought cheered her, so she threw on her father’s old jacket and set off with a spring in her step. When she met the postman at the end of the road, she took the letter he’d been about to deliver and stuck it in her pocket without taking much notice.
It was only later, as she sat on some rocks just beneath the cliffs that overhung the halfway point in her walk, that she remembered and pulled out the letter. It was addressed to her, from London. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but then again, she couldn’t think of anyone who would be writing her a chatty letter to catch up on the news since she’d been away. It had obviously been forwarded from the new tenants in the house in London; she spotted the leasing company stamp on its back.
She tore it open, an ominous feeling making her heart pound.
Her eyes raced down through the jumble of words faster than she could read them. It was from Myles’s solicitor. Myles had a solicitor? Before she could process the mere fact of this shocking development, two words jumped out at her: Divorce Proceedings.
Myles wanted a divorce. She tried to read the letter again, but her eyes were full of tears, her hands shaking too much to hold the paper steady. She couldn’t see the words and she knew somewhere in the back of her dazed mind that even if she could, they wouldn’t make any sense to her right now.
No. No. No. No. She felt the words come from the bottom of her throat, more a groan than anything else, over and over, no, no, no, no.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Maybe if she pretended that she’d never seen it, he might change his mind. That was it: he wasn’t thinking straight. Iris scrubbed back the tears from her eyes. Her hands were sandy, which only made things worse. Far out, on the choppy waves, she could just about make out the shadowy shape of a fishing boat, overhead the circling gulls yelped a lonely sound that travelled on the tide towards her. Oh God, this couldn’t be happening. She tried to focus hard on the birds, diving and soaring, catching any fleshy dinner before the fishermen threw it back into the sea again.
She would not let this happen. She folded the letter up, twice, four times, eight times and over again until it was a tiny square – how could such a small piece of paper tear her world down now? She shoved it deep into the pocket of her father’s old jacket and then got up and began the journey back with a heavier heart that made a lie of the life she had been trying so hard to convince herself was real.
As she walked back along the beach, she knew the sensible thing would be to go and engage a solicitor of her own. Tell someone what was happening, do something.
No, she had made up her mind – she was going to win him back. She would win him back with her share of the Delahaye legacy and when she finally confronted him, she would pretend she’d never seen this letter. They could pretend none of this had ever happened.
By the time Iris made it back to the village, it was easier to believe that winning Myles back was as sure and certain as she had convinced herself before. The most important thing, Iris knew, was to keep a low profile. As long as he believed she was renting some tired little bedsit in London, there was a good chance he’d just assume she was getting her affairs in order – which of course she was, thanks to the fact that in six months, she was likely to be a wealthy woman with a lot more to offer Myles than ever before.
By the time Iris arrived back on the footpath and had shaken the sand from inside her shoes, she’d managed to block out even the slightest notion of that letter. She forced her mind back to the present, which involved coffee in the hotel.
Her marriage, imploding before her eyes, had taught her to count her blessings in a whole new way. For a start, she was living in a charming old house, which she’d never truly appreciated before. It still felt as if her mother and father lingered somewhere behind the fabric of the place and that gave her more comfort than she could have ever imagined. There was the beach to walk along and the endless green fields to lose her worries in as she tramped across them early most mornings. She had even found herself revelling in the rain. What was that about? In London, she had hated the rain. It meant umbrellas and taking the bus and more often than not snagging her tights. It meant coming home shivering after a day behind that draughty receptionist’s desk where no matter how long she stayed, she knew she’d never know anyone more than identifying them by their chart numbers, the state of their molars or next appointment dates. Here, in Ballycove, it felt as if she had a community around her.
Ted Rowland dropped into the chair opposite her with a steaming mug of coffee in his hand, interrupting her reverie. He was back to his favourite topic, or at least that’s what she called it: the crazy notion of his that she could open up a B&B in Soldier Hill House.
‘Seriously, there’s a good living to be made here,’ he said earnestly, probably wishing that anyone would take on the local bed and breakfast just to help with the overflow from yet another city wedding party hoping to score some tranquillity in Ballycove.
She groaned internally. This was the last thing she needed, today of all days. But she knew Ted of old, and knew that the only way of getting rid of him was to let him get whatever bee was in his bonnet out of his system. ‘Yes, Ted, but you’re forgetting, I can’t just open up a bed and breakfast on a whim. People expect en-suite bathrooms and televisions in their rooms and homemade brown bread and all sorts…’ She stopped.
‘Okay, okay, you know best. I’ll stop harping on at you. I get the message, no B&Bs.’ He was laughing at her, but she was just relieved when he got up to sort out some emergency in the kitchen. Of course, it was all just pie in the sky. She couldn’t possibly take on something so ambitious. She was just a housewife, a receptionist. She stopped for a moment, corrected that thought in her head:a soon-to-be-divorced housewife and an out-of-work receptionist. She shivered.
There was a delicious lamb stew for dinner. It was a pity that the company wasn’t up to the same standard. Not that Iris was even sure she’d be capable of keeping up the pretence that everything was fine and dandy. There was a limit to her reserves and as she sat there, although the food was good, she found herself approaching that limit. In the end, feeling as if she might gag if she continued, she gave up, laid her cutlery on the table and switched on the kettle. The day and, more specifically, that letter, was taking its toll regardless of her best intentions to ignore it.
It seemed that Nola still hadn’t forgotten their spat since earlier, and her conversation ran to one-syllable answers that reminded Iris of when she was a teenager. Georgie seemed to be completely consumed with the distillery, so she just wolfed down her food and disappeared out the back door and across the fields as if her life depended on getting back there again. As soon as the dinner things were cleared away, an operation loaded with heavy silences broken only by the sound of stacking dishes and cutlery hitting the drawer with speed, Nola locked herself behind the dining room door, mumbling something about lesson plans for her new job.
At eight o’clock, far from feeling relieved that her sisters were out of her hair, Iris felt as if she’d been cast adrift. The silence of the house, normally soothing, felt oppressive. The last thing she needed now was time on her own to mull over things she was trying to forget. What could be better than a nice walk, just as the crows were settling into their nests and the bats were leaving their roosts from the attics in the old outbuildings that separated the kitchen garden from the farmyard?
She was right. Getting out in the cold night air was exactly what she needed. At least with the breeze at her back and the rustle of nocturnal animals readying themselves for the night ahead, she could think. Or maybe, not think and that was like a balm across her fraying nerves. She realised it must be years since she’d actually walked down the avenue. It was half a mile from the front door to the main gates, but she walked slowly, savouring the cool night air. When she arrived at the gatehouse, she stood for a moment and felt a smile stretch out her lips as her eyes fell upon the old gate lodge cottage that stood in the shadowy trees dappled with moonlight.
In the half-light, it looked like something conjured from a John Hinde photograph. But of course, darkness covered over any little age lines that might mar its beauty in the less forgiving daylight hours. Iris remembered adoring it when she was a child. She’d wanted to live here like the tenants who’d kept it beautifully with roses at the door and the smell of fresh baked bread drifting through the open windows.
And suddenly, it came to her. A madcap idea, something maybe shecoulddo. Then that familiar voice rose up inside her – weirdly, it sounded a little like Myles – laughing at her, telling her that of course she couldn’t take on something like this, it was much too ambitious for her. She’d never be fit for it. The words ricocheted in her mind for a moment. They were so familiar, she had never interrogated them before. But this time, instead of blindly accepting them, she took a step backwards. Myles was right, wasn’t he? What had she ever done in life to qualify her to take on a project like this?
The sound of an owl, hooting high up in the furry-topped pines beyond her shoulder, tipped her back to the present moment with a sharp intake of surprised breath. She laughed, suddenly nervous in the cooling darkness, but the voice in her head had been switched off for a moment and she took a deep breath. What was the harm in taking a closer look?
Of course, it was crazy to think anyone would want to stay in an old stone cottage in the middle of nowhere. And anyway, what did she know about the hospitality industry and self-catering cottages or running a bed and breakfast?
A second owl hooting in the trees behind the cottage made her jump once more, as if correcting her, and she pushed the gate open. In for a penny, she thought, her hand lingering on the peeling paint for a moment. Someone – her father, probably – had left the front door keys beneath the welcome mat. Iris shook her head at the naivety of it. Of course, here it was unlikely anyone would want to break in, so maybe he wasn’t so naïve after all.
The house was a pleasant surprise and if it was too much to say that it lifted her spirits, Iris certainly felt her worries easing off as she explored the little house that she only vaguely remembered from years ago. Neither the electricity nor the water had been disconnected and the place felt if not exactly warm, at least as if it was holding out the cold of the falling evening temperatures. It could be cosy, if the fire was lit and the lights were low. Whoever had stayed here last was obviously house-proud and they’d left the place as clean as a new pin. There was no doubt that the furniture was shabby and the sofa was in need of replacing and it could definitely do with new mattresses and a supply of crisp white linens for the beds, but overall it was miles better than she’d have imagined.
For a long while, she sat in the room they’d always called the parlour, imagining the possibilities of running this as a little business and she felt a wave of something warm bubble up in her. It was a feeling so unfamiliar she found it hard to pin a name on it to begin with. But she sat there, enjoying it, welling up with it. It was the merest inkling of happiness and it was the nicest feeling she could remember having in a very, very long time.
