Shit. I wish I hadn’t opened my mouth. I should have just left it all to her and Sadie’s imagination, because when she gets to the hallway she stops again.
This time, she freezes. And it’s probably my imagination but the air suddenly feels cold.
I follow her gaze to a radiator where Rose’s bright yellow raincoat and stripy scarf from earlier hangs over to dry.
‘But then, whose—’
‘Sorry?’
I stumble and mumble some incoherent sentence which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but Marion is mumbling too. What is it about this narrow hallway that makes it the scene of such awkwardness?
‘I knew it …’ she says, as if a rather large penny has just dropped in her very investigative mind. ‘It’s Rose, isn’t it? I’ve learned that my gut instinct is never wrong. I knew it. How dare he! How dareshe!’
She keeps staring and mumbling under her breath, though I can’t make out what it is she is saying, which means both of us now are mouthing the most awful gibberish. I want the ground to open and swallow me. I want to tell her none of this is my business. I want to tell her that I believe her communication with her husband is dangerously dysfunctional and to leave Rose and me to get on with our break while they sort their problems out.
But I don’t want to rock the boat more than it’s already rocking. I sense that in Rusty and Marion’s world, there’s a storm brewing. I want nothing to do with it.
‘It’s not the sharing of the cottage that bothers me, Charlie,’ she says, breathing in through her nose and out again. Her face twists, her breathing becoming more rapid as it all sinks in. ‘But I would never, ever have agreed for Rose to stay – it’s not her, but I would never have allowed any of her family to – oh, I’ve said enough already. I hope this terrible hindrance hasn’t ruined your visit, Charlie. What a mess. It’s all just a terrible mess. She shouldn’tbehere.’
‘It hasn’t ruined my stay at all, believe me,’ I say, though I’m not sure she is even listening. ‘What do you mean, you would never have agreed forRoseto stay here? Why not?’
She puts her hood up again, fixes her scarf over her face and mumbles something inaudible.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow at the Christmas Fayre,’ I call out to her as she marches like a woman on a mission down the pathway in the rain. ‘Bye, Marion.’
She lifts a hand and waves without looking back, then I watch her climb into her car and roar off as the rain pelts down onto the babbling brook in the near distance.
Poor Rusty.
I wouldn’t like to be him this evening, not in a million years. But more importantly, what’s Marion’s big gripe with Rose? And most important of all, where the hellisRose?
I’ll send her a text again to see if she replies. It’s not my place to worry, but after how upset she looked earlier, I can’t help but feel concerned.
Chapter Seventeen
Rose
The Lighthouse Tavern was already busy when I got here about two hours ago just before another outburst of rain.
Now, as a small group of musicians squeeze into a corner marked as ‘reserved’, I’m hoping that hearing the lilting sounds of the fiddle, guitar and banjo with a few Irish ballads thrown in for good measure, not to mention the bottle of wine in front of me, will take my cares away, if only for a while.
I don’t know why those flashbacks came to me earlier.
I’ve spent a fortune on therapy to make sure they don’t, but grief can be as unpredictable as the waves on the ocean.
One foot in front of the other, isn’t that what Carlos always says? One step at a time all the way.
I called Carlos from my bedroom earlier as soon as I knew the coast was clear and Charlie was out of earshot before I escaped to the pub.
It was so good to hear a familiar, reassuring voice and although I didn’t plan to tell him about the double booking,when I unexpectedly found myself filling him in, he loved how I’ve decided to stay and at least feel a little bit closer to home by being here in Donegal.
‘Is he hot?’
‘Carlos, trust you,’ I laughed in response. ‘Can you be serious for once?’
‘I just need to visualise him so I can feel totally in the loop with this vital and very out of the blue information. Is he hot? Describe …’
‘Tall, dark, nice physique. Is barefoot most of the time,’ I replied. ‘Oh, and he cooks really tasty food and has tattoos. Cool tattoos. And has a girlfriend called Helena who calls him a lot.’
