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Though she hasn’t got the heart for remorse.
I’m the one choking on thin air now, and she has the decency to look away, to hesitate. She combs unsteady fingers through her hair, sweeps the rain-dampened strands off her flushed cheeks and she secures it back with some brightly coloured cloth.
Where on earth has she come from? Where has she been all this time? And, more importantly, why is she here?
She grips her backpack tightly now, her knuckles flashing white, and I realise the room has fallen silent and all eyes are on me. Waiting on me.
Her throat bobs, her lashes flutter. ‘Well, shall we sit?’
Sit? With her? To hear my grandmother’s will? This has to be a joke. Some weird, twisted joke.
‘Yes, let’s sit.’
Charles is all over the idea, ushering her to a seat, helping her deposit her bag on the floor, and I’m... I’m stood there like some bloody lemon. My eyes tracking her, devouring her. Does the woman not own a coat? It’s raining cats and dogs out there and her bare arms shine with it, her clothes cling to her skin...
And just like that I’m back at the loch over two decades ago, and the fire is as immediate as it is unwelcome.
‘Can I get you a drink, Miss Evans?’
Charles persists in trying to make her welcome...trying to make up for my obvious hostility, I’m sure.
‘A coffee? Tea? Water...?’
I can almost sense Gran looking down on me in disapproval, her tut-tut-tut echoing through my soul.
If Gran wants her here, my mind tries to reason, you need to play nice.
‘Water would be lovely,’ she murmurs softly, and I want to shut myself off from the way her voice sings through my blood. ‘Thank you.’
‘Sparkling? Still?’
‘Either’s fine,’ she says, her eyes returning to me, hesitant, wary...
She’s completely out of her depth.
It should make me feel better.
It doesn’t.
It does make me move, though.
Dragging a hand over my face, I return to my seat and force normal service to resume—the projection of an outward calm strong enough to mask the inner storm.
Oh, Gran, what have you done?
