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10
It wasn’t so much that Iris was in a strop with Georgie and Nola anymore. It had as much to do with being angry with herself, because their argument had been about nothing really. Like all their arguments in the past, it grew from one comment and it felt as if all the old wounds were opened wide again.
It took almost a week for Iris to calm down enough to make some kind of overture towards mending things with either of them. She couldn’t go on living in a war zone. She got up early on the Monday morning and made coffee and scrambled eggs for the three of them. In fairness to both of them, they sat with grace and didn’t, on this occasion, rub her nose in the fact that she was the first to give in. If anything, as she sat down with them, once the initial gesture was made she had a feeling that they were both relieved to grasp it and there was a sudden overflow of strangely uncomfortable helpfulness around the breakfast table. It almost felt as if they were trying each other out, treading carefully on a first date because this might be the ‘one’.
Once the last dish was dried and put away, Georgie took down her laptop.
‘If you have time,’ she said a little haltingly, ‘there’s something I’d like to show you.’
‘A website,’ Iris almost gasped. ‘You’ve set up a website for the cottage?’
‘Well, only the bones of it. We need to get some good photographs, but everything is here. I’ve filled in the text and it’s attached to the distillery, so we won’t have to pay additional hosting fees or any of that. But I’ve included a booking facility and set up an email account so you can be in charge of it from your own phone.’ She was flicking through the three tabs across the top of the site. A small link brought you back into the main distillery site at the bottom of each page.
‘I can’t believe it, Georgie, it’s great, but how on earth?’ Iris looked up at Georgie to see a small smile was spreading across her lips.
‘It was actually quite easy. I’ve been fiddling about with the distillery one anyway, because obviously with the launch of Dad’s gin, I’m looking at making a few changes to that. And so, when I was poking about behind the site I added a few extra pages for the gate lodge,’ Georgie said modestly.
‘It looks really professional,’ Nola said, then stopped, as if fearing that she might have said the wrong thing.
‘Itisreally professional.’ Iris smiled at Georgie. ‘Thank you, this means so much.’ She reached out and put her arms around her sister, hugging her close to let her know that their silly argument was truly at an end and she really did appreciate all the work she’d done. ‘I know you’re saying it was easy, but you must have put a lot of work into it.’ She was scanning through the text and she could see there was a great deal of thought put into selling the place to people looking for a real country getaway, quite aside from the customers they might pick up from the hotel.
‘Ah, it was nothing, the very least I could do, after…’ Georgie looked at her now. ‘I should have made more of the fabulous job you did on the cottage, Iris. I knew it that evening even as we were having that ridiculous row over nothing. I couldn’t do what you did to make something so lovely if I had a hundred years to do it and you just whipped about the place so quickly and suddenly it looked fantastic.’
‘I second that,’ Nola said at her side. ‘I’m sorry too. It turned out really beautifully – no-one else could have pulled it together like that. I could have walked by that place a million times and I’d never have spotted the potential in it.’
‘Well, that’s very kind of you both to say—’
‘There’s nothing kind about it, it’s the truth. It took vision and a lot of hard work to get it up and running,’ Nola said and she leaned in too for a hug.
‘Honestly, you two, I don’t know when I’ve last felt so…’ Iris smiled. She was going to say loved, but even now, here in the warm glow of her sisters’ embrace, she couldn’t bring herself to admit that her marriage was over, that it really was the first time in a very long time indeed when she didn’t feel completely alone. And she found herself thinking against all she knew to be reasonable that it was nice, being here with her sisters.
With a feeling of deep gratitude, she spent the rest of the morning pottering about the house. Later, she planned to head down to the hotel for a cup of coffee, but there was no rush, better to wait until the lunchtime crowd left. Instead, she decided to go up to the attic and look through some of the stuff that had been stored away up there for far too long.
As she poked her head through the trapdoor her phone rang. Damn. It was Myles. She stopped for a moment, paralysed in that netherworld of feeling thoroughly sick to her stomach with nerves, fearing the worst and the slightest hope that maybe he had changed his mind and he wanted to come home to her. She stood there for agonising seconds, teetering on the edge of almost forgetting how much he’d hurt her, a feeling of butterflies in her stomach fluttering up a storm, and she was unable to answer the phone. She’d stopped breathing, conscious of just her heart, beating so hard it felt like it might break right through her ribcage, and then somehow the ringing penetrated some part of her, so she answered.
‘Hello, Myles.’ She managed to keep her voice even. It was strange, thinking of him in this present moment. What was he doing now? Since he’d left her that evening, she’d only thought of him in the past. She didn’t dwell on the reality of Amanda Prescott and their new baby. Being back in Ballycove had played perfectly into convincing herself that maybe her marriage hadn’t quite been pulled from under her just yet. Here, it was easier to imagine that this was a temporary hitch, a bump in the road that they would iron out when she inherited her share of the Delahaye legacy and returned to London. But suddenly, knowing that he was somewhere in London at this very moment, ringing her from his new world that had nothing to do with her, brought her back to devastating reality with a resounding bump.
‘Hey,’ he said doing his best casual voice. ‘Just thought I’d see how you’re doing.’
‘Really? You want to see how I’m doing?’ Well, that was nice. Perhaps he did still care for her as much as she did for him.
‘Well, that and I’ve been thinking about where we go from here,’ he was saying and she felt her stomach turn over with anticipation.
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. I’m sure we can come to some amicable agreement about the house and between us we can organise a quick divorce? I mean, we’ve known each other so long, I was thinking just this morning, maybe there’s no need to get solicitors involved, is there?’
‘But haven’t you already been to a solicitor?’ she said, because even if she tried to block it out, that letter she’d whipped from Georgie’s hands was real. Suddenly, it felt as if she was walking three hundred steps behind.
‘The thing is, they cost an arm and a leg, and for what?’ He cleared his throat, adjusted the volume of the radio that was blaring in the background.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Solicitors. They’re going to make a fortune from us and I’ve been thinking the best thing we can do is agree between us what we want and then we can make our own application and…’ He was still talking but Iris couldn’t hear him anymore. She didn’t want to listen.
There was an expectant silence. She had no idea what he’d asked her, but it was obvious some sort of answer was required. ‘Hmm.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what they’re charging, a small bloody packet, that’s what. The way I see it, you don’t need the house anymore. Let’s face it, a nice little bedsit nearby and…’
