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‘I do understand. Divorces are never easy. No matter how acrimoniously things have broken down, there’s still a period of loss and in a way, mourning.’
‘I thought I did my mourning during my marriage,’ Iris said sadly; she’d certainly cried enough over the years.
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but you have a few more tears left ahead of you, even after it’s all over,’ Muriel said wisely. Then she shuffled some papers around her desk. ‘So that’s settled. If you need to come across for one session with a mediator, it’s possible for you to make it?’
‘Only if I have to. I’ll check out flight times and let you know what would suit.’ God, even as she said it, the thought of sitting in the same room as Myles made Iris feel nauseous.
*
Georgie had spotted Iris snoozing in the afternoon sun. Of course, she was probably worn out. Being pregnant at any age was meant to absolutely floor you with tiredness, but at Iris’s age – well, it was bound to be so much worse. That phone call had to be from Myles. Something in her bones told her that only Myles could evoke the sort of reaction on her sister’s face that reminded her of the maelstrom of distress and, yes, utter anguish she would surely feel if Paul Mellon rang her up while she was snoozing contentedly. It struck her as odd how she could so easily equate the boss she disliked so intensely to the man her sister had adored for so long.
‘You all right, sis?’ she asked when Iris returned to her stall. It was a pretty pathetic stall and a little part of Georgie felt sorry for Iris. Georgie had enjoyed manning the distillery stall, chatting to some of her colleagues who had turned up to volunteer alongside her. They were giving out free samples of gin and hoping for donations to the local tidy towns fund. The only downside was that her stall was directly under a loudspeaker system that blasted out occasionally, making her almost jump out of her skin when she least expected it. As the day wore on, she could feel the start of a raging headache and she wasn’t sure whether to blame the thundery electricity on the air, the loudspeakers peeling off in her ears or just a general aggravation as she watched Nola convert every stranger who tripped past her stall into what looked like a long-lost friend.
She should be happy for her. It looked as if every child in the village was signing up for her drama summer school. It seemed no matter how she tried to move on from feeling jealous, sometimes it was hard not to remember how lonely London had been for her, while Nola swept up friends as if they were moths to her bright flame. By mid-afternoon, all Georgie wanted was to shake the day off with a long tramp across the fields and an even longer soak in the bath when she got home.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, those bloody speakers,’ Nola snapped across at her, as if Georgie was connected to the divine and there was a single thing she could do about them. ‘You’re next to them, can’t you turn them off? Every time I’m in the middle of signing someone up to the drama school they get bloody louder.’ Behind her Aiden Barry rolled his eyes and made a silly face, as if to make up for her.
‘It’s hardly my fault,’ Georgie snarled back. ‘They’re driving me as mad as anyone. It’s at full volume overmyhead after all.’
‘Isn’t there a plug there?’ Iris had arrived back her table stacked high with unsold crocheted doilies. ‘My nerves are rattled with it.’ She looked completely shot, as if her patience was at empty and she was running on a reserve that could explode at any moment.
‘Oh, yeah, because it’s all about yournerves.’ Nola rolled her eyes and Georgie tried to send her a warning glance. They had agreed they wouldn’t mention the pregnancy until Iris did. In fairness, Iris hadn’t uttered so much as a word, not a gripe about morning sickness and as to showing – well, she’d put on a bit of weight, certainly. But, apart from a little rounded paunch, she was hardly in danger of giving herself away at this stage and she must be at least six months gone. Sometimes, Georgie thought she’d burst if they couldn’t talk about the baby soon – how on earth could Iris keep something so exciting to herself for so long? Suddenly, it seemed to Georgie that Nola was in danger of letting her temper spill it out in a way that would more likely end up in a fight rather than what should have been a celebration.
‘What’s that supposed to mean exactly?’ Iris swung round, obviously just spoiling for an argument in which to vent her frustration at whatever Myles had said to her in that earlier call.
‘It means’ – Nola took a step out from behind her stall; her face was red now with pent-up rage – ‘that your nerves have little or nothing to do with the speakers overhead and everything to do with—’ Just in time, she caught the warning glance from Georgie and there was an awkward silence.
‘Myles ringing you five minutes ago,’ Georgie supplied quickly.
‘How dare you say that?’ No matter how worn out she looked, it seemed that she always had the energy to defend the man she’d sacrificed her family for.
‘Why not? It’s the truth, isn’t it?’ Georgie couldn’t help it. ‘All he’s ever done is made you completely bloody miserable. He’s spent your entire marriage treating you like a doormat and when you trot back to England again with the proceeds of our family’s legacy, he’ll only want to spend it on himself and you’ll be a big enough fool to let him.’ Georgie was shouting now, drawing a crowd, but it felt as if some reckless part of her had been let loose and she didn’t care who heard her. Suddenly it didn’t matter, because all she could think of was the work their father had done to build up the distillery, the farm and Soldier Hill House, and it was just wrong that it would all be sold off and the proceeds lavished on the likes of Myles bloody Cutler.
‘And you’re one to talk.’ Nola was in like a flash. ‘Dedicating your whole life to becoming a hotshot marketing executive. It was all you could see, even when some of us hardly had enough money to eat at the end of the week. You couldn’t even throw a part-time job my way. What are you going to do with your share? Probably put it in the bank and never look back, because you’re cold, Georgie, frozen to the bone. That’s what you’ve let your ambition do to you. Iris might have been blind as a bat when it came to Myles, but you just put on tunnel vision goggles all those years ago and the only one you’ve thought about is yourself.’
It was like being doused with icy water and for a long moment Georgie was too stunned to do much more than stand there and take it. And now it seemed as if all of Ballycove had turned out to see them argue here in the middle of the village on the busiest day of the year.
‘A doormat?’ Iris’s lips were trembling, her expression raging between anger and hurt. ‘And I suppose I was blind as a bat, was I, when I saw you both together?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Iris, play another record.’ Nola swung about at Iris. ‘I told you at the time, that was all Myles’ doing. I was just trying to get away from him when you walked in on us, but of course, you wouldn’t listen then and you’ll probably never see him for what he was…’
Georgie was seething, ‘Can we not fight over Myles bloody Cutler again?’
‘Yeah, well, he was the beginning of the end of us, wasn’t he?’ Nola screamed at Georgie. She was frantic with rage now. ‘When she threw me out of the house, you were some great sister then, weren’t you? Family indeed.’ Nola shook her head, but there were tears in her eyes.
That’s rich coming from the woman who walked out of Ballycove and never looked back. Once fame arrived, we were forgotten about faster than yesterday’s breakfast, but you were back here fast enough when it came to the reading of Dad’s will. Georgie was right up next to Nola now, the three of them standing in the middle of the green, squaring up to each other, like some crazy three-way sparring match. ‘You forgot about everyone here because you were much too busy with your social life.’
‘I had my career too and I…’ Nola began, but there was something behind her eyes and Georgie should have seen it for what it was – not anger, but something far worse: complete and utter devastation and regret.
‘Oh, yes, acting,’ Iris shouted. She was ashen-faced and if Georgie hadn’t been so caught up in this argument, she might have paused and thought about the baby for longer than a second. ‘Acting with someone else’s husband no doubt…’ But even as Iris was spitting the words out, all Georgie could think of was all those times she’d been in London. Lonely. Bloody lonely, thinking that at least they both had relationships, friends, lives that had moved on from these petty jealousies. And now, worse than all that jealousy she realised that maybe none of them had moved on, not really, and that was just too sad to contemplate when she was this angry.
‘For the last time, it wasn’t my fault, Iris. I didn’t lead him on; it was all him. Myles never let up from the moment I moved to London…’ She sounded as if she might cry, but instead she tossed her hair back defiantly.
‘I know what I saw.’ Iris and Nola were at each other’s throats, and Georgie knew they weren’t here – instead, they were back there in that little terraced house in London all those years ago when Iris had come home early and caught her husband and her sister in a clinch that left her in no doubt as to where it might have led had she not arrived when she did.
‘No, Iris. No, you don’t know what it was like, what he was like. I’d never betray you, never.’ And then, as if fifteen years rolled by in an instant and all the buried feelings of that terrible time cloaked them from the rumbling clouds overhead, they both started to cry. Loud, gulping tears, the hurt of decades cascading down both of their faces. ‘It was all him. He wouldn’t leave me alone, even when I threatened to tell you, he still wouldn’t give up…’ Nola was hiccupping now, hardly able to get the words out. ‘He made me feel…’ She stopped, tried to catch her breath. ‘As if it was my fault; but I never, Iris, I never would…’ She was bawling now, like a child.
‘I…’ Iris began and perhaps she’d always known that Nola hadn’t done anything wrong all those years ago, but it had taken until now for her to finally admit the villain here was Myles.
