Frisky Business (60 page)

‘Almost ready,’ he
said. He took a spoonful of sauce, blew on it and held it out to Romy to taste.

‘Pinch more salt?’ she suggested.

‘That’s what I thought.’

Romy poured wine for them all, and they stood around the kitchen drinking and chatting while they waited for Danny and Kit.

‘Sorry we’re late,’ Danny said when they arrived shortly afterwards in roaring high spirits, their cheeks flushed and their eyes bright from the cold. ‘I couldn’t drag Kit away from the garden centre.’

Ethan shook his head. ‘Next thing you know you’ll be listening to Phil Collins and staying in on Friday night to watch
The Late Late Show,’
he said, grinning at his brother.

‘Where’s our nephew?’ Kit asked, ignoring him as they unwound scarves and removed their jackets. ‘Have we missed him?’

‘Afraid so,’ Romy said. ‘He’s asleep.’

‘Oh, shame. Anyway, I’ve got loads to tell you,’ he said. ‘And I have an announcement to make. But I’ll wait until we’re sitting down.’

‘Is it that you’re not getting engaged?’ Romy said.

‘Very funny.’

‘Well, you can go on through and sit down,’ Ethan said, bending to take a roast leg of lamb out of the oven. ‘Dinner’s just about ready.’

When they were all sitting around the table, Romy looked expectantly at Kit. ‘So? What’s the big announcement?’

‘I heard back from that interview,’ Kit said. ‘I got the job.’

‘Oh, congratulations!’ Romy beamed, raising her glass to his.

‘Thanks.’ He clinked glasses with her. ‘I’m not taking it,’ he said as everyone else started to raise their glasses to him.

‘Oh.’ Marian
and Ethan put their glasses back down.

‘Wow, not getting a new job – that’s almost as exciting as not getting engaged,’ Romy said.

‘Why aren’t you taking it?’ Ethan asked.

‘Because I’ve changed my mind about the house. That’s what I want to discuss with you,’ he said to Romy.

‘Oh. You don’t want to carry on with it?’

‘No, I do. But I want to do the hotel. So I need you to make different plans.’

‘Okay – that’s no problem. But you don’t need to be there, Kit. I can manage the project on my own – that’s what you’re paying me for, after all. You should take the job.’

‘But I don’t want to. I don’t mean I want to convert the house into a hotel and sell it. I want to run it as a hotel myself.’

‘Oh! Are you sure?’

‘Positive. The thing was, I knew I could do that job in my sleep, and the money was great. But every time I thought about starting it, I just felt miserable. Getting offered that job was the best thing that could have happened to me – it made me realise how much I didn’t want it.’

‘We’re going to move into the gate lodge for the moment,’ Danny said. ‘So we’ll be on-site and you won’t have to be down there.’

‘I’ll still need you to project manage,’ Kit said, ‘but you’ll be able to do it from here mostly once we’re there to oversee things, won’t you?’

‘And I can run my business from there just as easily as from Dublin,’ Danny said.

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Ethan said to her.

She smiled at him. ‘Very good.’ She had made a commitment to Kit and she fully intended to see it through, but she hadn’t been looking forward to having to spend days apart from Ethan while she stayed on the site in Wicklow.

‘Have you
told Mom and Dad?’ Ethan asked.

‘Yeah, and they’re all for it. Mom’s really glad that the house will stay in the family.’

‘Well, that’s great news,’ Marian said, raising her glass again.

As Romy clinked glasses with Kit, she thought how glad she was that he had come back into her life and how much both their lives had changed for the better because of it. If Kit hadn’t crashed out of that tree on Hallowe’en, they wouldn’t all be here now. She would never have met Ethan. The thought made her shudder. Kit and Danny wouldn’t have each other, and Kit would most likely still be living a lie, keeping his family at arm’s length and sleepwalking through a life that he didn’t even realise made him unhappy. Thank God they had found each other again.

Everyone was so much happier now that everything was out in the open – no more secrets. Well … except one. And suddenly she knew she didn’t want to have any secrets from these people anymore.

‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ she said, catching her mother’s eye. From the way her smile faded, she could tell her mother knew it was something serious.

‘Is this about Luke’s father?’ she asked.

Romy felt Ethan stiffen beside her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to find out who he is.’ If she was honest, she didn’t really want to find out. Ethan loved Luke, and she couldn’t imagine a better father for her child. She hated the thought of someone turning up to take Ethan’s place in their little impromptu family, and she knew he dreaded it too.

‘It’s about Dad,’ she said, and she felt Ethan relax again. ‘I was there the day he died.’

‘Yes, I know. You found him.’

‘No. I was there when he died. He was alive when I arrived at the house that day.’

Suddenly
everyone at the table was very still. Her mouth was dry, but she forced herself to continue.

‘I knew he was on his own in the house, so I called in to check on him. You had a meeting with your editor, remember?’ she said to her mother.

She had gone upstairs and found him in his bedroom, lying on the bed. She could tell from one glance that he was in agony, his face tense and contorted, his body rigid as if trying to hold the pain away from him by sheer force of will. She had sat on the bed beside him, stroking his hair, trying to help him relax. She had asked if there was anything he wanted. And he had told her.

‘He was in so much pain. He was in
agony.
He – he asked me to help him.’

She heard her mother’s gasp, Danny’s whispered, ‘Jesus!’, but she kept her eyes lowered. It was the only way she could get through this.

‘He asked you to help him how?’ Kit asked.

‘He was dying,’ she said, her voice shaky, ‘and he asked me to help him.’ She looked into his eyes, willing him to understand, to not make her say the words.

Then his eyes widened. ‘He wanted you to … help him die?’

‘He told me where the pills were, downstairs in the dresser. He asked me to make him a mug of coffee and crush them all into it.’

‘Oh my God, Romy!’ Marian’s hand flew to her throat. ‘What did you do?’

Romy took a deep breath, steadying herself as a fat tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Nothing,’ she said finally. ‘I did nothing.’

For minutes, she had simply sat, numb with horror, pins and needles of fear prickling her skin as her father had begged and pleaded with her. He had clutched her arm tightly, his hand
claw-like, biting into her skin. He had told her it would be okay – no one would ever know. ‘Yesterday, I could have gone and got the pills myself, but today I don’t have the strength.’ He had cursed himself for not doing it when he had the chance. But no one would know he hadn’t stored the pills up himself when he was able. She could help him and it would be all right. While he had begged and wheedled, Romy had just kept shaking her head silently, tears spilling down her cheeks.

‘I couldn’t do it,’ she said, her eyes welling up with tears. ‘He was screaming with the pain, and he looked at me like—’ she gulped ‘—like he
hated
me. But I couldn’t do what he wanted.’

While she spoke, her eyes drifted around the table and the look on Ethan’s face caused her to falter. He looked stunned – almost like he was in shock. He certainly wasn’t taking her revelation calmly. She turned away from him in confusion. She knew she wouldn’t be able to continue if she looked at him.

When she refused, her father had become angry. He had cursed her, told her to fuck off if she wasn’t going to help him, the little energy he had left lighting the spark of fury in his eyes and fuelling the venomous words he had spat at her. ‘We’ve talked about this,’ he’d said. ‘I thought I could rely on you. Why are you being so stupid and irrational now when you’ve always agreed with me about this?’ Romy thought back to the discussions they used to have over Sunday lunch. They
had
talked about this. Had she agreed with him? She couldn’t remember. But it didn’t matter because then it was just an
idea.
The reality was altogether different and every sinew and synapse of her being rejected it.

Eventually, she couldn’t bear it any longer and she had prised his hand off her, running to the door. In the doorway, she
had turned and looked back at him, and the bitterness and contempt in his face had chilled her to the core. She had left the room, closed the door behind her and run down the stairs as if something was chasing her. She didn’t know how long she had sat in the kitchen, hugging herself as she had cried, her whole body shaking.

Finally, the tears had subsided and she got up and put on the kettle. She had pulled out one of the drawers and the bottle of pills was there where he had said it would be. She had picked it up, reading the label, the warnings against exceeding the stated dose. Then she had tossed it back in the drawer, wiped her eyes and made two mugs of coffee while she gathered her courage to face him again. She couldn’t do what he wanted, but she could at least be with him. She shouldn’t leave him alone at a time like this, no matter what he had said to her. She had made her way back upstairs, dreading the hope she might see in his eyes when he saw the mug, perhaps thinking she had changed her mind and was going to help him after all.

‘When I went back up, he—’ she gulped ‘—he was dead.’

She chanced another glance at Ethan, but she couldn’t see his eyes. He was frowning down at the floor. She wished she knew what he was thinking. She felt panic build up inside her, sure that somehow she was losing him, but not knowing why. She blinked tears from her eyes, and discovered she was shaking. Maybe Ethan felt it too, because he reached out and rubbed her back lightly. She wished he would take her in his arms, but he seemed almost absent.

‘Oh, Romy!’ Her mother’s eyes sparkled with tears. ‘I’m so sorry. He should never have asked you to do that. But you didn’t do anything wrong. You have nothing to blame yourself for.’

‘He died all alone,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I just shut the door
and left him there because I was too much of a coward, and he died alone when he shouldn’t have.’

‘You don’t regret it, do you – not doing what he wanted?’

‘No,’ she whispered. She knew she couldn’t have lived with that.

‘Well, he wouldn’t have wanted you to do anything you’d regret. And he knew he could count on you to be strong. I think that’s why he asked you – because he trusted you completely.’

‘But he was wrong, wasn’t he? I let him down.’

‘No, he wasn’t wrong. I don’t mean that he could trust you to do what he wanted. I mean he could trust you not to.’

‘You didn’t see his face – the way he looked at me.’

‘He was in so much pain, Romy – he wasn’t in his right mind. We’ll never know for sure what he was thinking, but I do know that he loved you. And he knew you could stand up to him. He never asked me, and I was the obvious person. Danny?’ She looked at her son questioningly.

‘No,’ Danny shook his head.

‘Do you think if he’d lived longer, he’d have forgiven me?’ Romy asked, wiping away the tears that were now streaming from her eyes.

‘I don’t think he’d feel there was anything to forgive. He would only want you to be true to yourself, and you were. The real question is do you forgive him?’

Romy was caught off guard by her mother’s question. She hadn’t consciously realised it herself until now, but she knew immediately that her mother was right. It wasn’t so much that she was afraid her father died hating her for refusing to help him.
She
had hated
him
for asking her. She resented him for burdening her with all that guilt, for pushing her into running away. But he had been deranged with pain – he hadn’t been himself. If he had had time, he would have forgiven her. Well, she had time …

She
nodded, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. ‘I do. I forgive him.’

Ethan seemed agitated and preoccupied for the rest of the evening, and Romy could tell he was anxious for their guests to go. As soon as everyone had left he shot up and disappeared into the bedroom without a word. When she had cleared the table, Romy followed him. She felt completely drained by the evening’s events, but she had to talk to him. She needed to know why he reacted so strangely to her story.