Hush Hush (33 page)

Angela, watching her mother
blossom, felt the familiar onset of guilt. She should’ve taken
her away long before now. Sadie, watching Angela prone in the shade,
rejoiced in her brainwave of this holiday. Now, if only everything
else went to plan!

Angela peered down the beach
again. At its southern tip, the white early afternoon steamer scraped
between the rocks towards its berth and began unloading its
twice-daily cache of crumpled visitors. A few, like Angela and Sadie,
had come to stay. The others were content to snap photos of basking
cats before fleeing to air-conditioned hotels back in the larger
resorts.

The dedicated sun-worshippers
turned at once to the stone steps leading down to the beach. Angela
peered past them, searching for the flaking green railing of their
apartment balcony. She could just make it out if she narrowed her
eyes, and even discern the damp towels and hand-washed shorts hung
out to dry.

A couple advanced down the beach.
The woman wore a white halter-neck top, showing a bronzed midriff.
Her sun-whitened hair was whipped up like candyfloss. The man wavered
in the heat beside her, dressed too sensibly in long trousers and a
dark shirt that was bound to be a sun-trap. He had reddish hair.

Angela smiled sadly and shut her
eyes. She thought about the moment she’d realised that she
probably loved Conor McGinlay right back.

It was on the drive back from
Simonetti’s in Curracloe. She was watching him covertly from
sleepy eyes, admiring him like a sculpture, the way his arm muscles
bunched changing gear, and his hair curled so delicately around the
outer shell of his ear. Suddenly, he’d turned and smiled,
catching her in the act of covert admiration. It was the smile he’d
tried to dazzle the traffic warden with, outside the offices of
Goss!
But this time, its sweetness was instinctive, not manufactured. Her
insides had contracted, her heart pounded in her ears. It was the
feeling
‒
part
chemical, part physical and wholly indefinable
‒
that she’d felt within minutes of meeting Robert. It was love.
Probably.

She opened her eyes and saw that
the couple weren’t walking together, as she’d thought.
Perspective had lent a false impression. The man was some way ahead
of the woman, unconnected with her. He was Conor. Angela shot upright
on her towel, hauled up her costume straps and reached for the long
T-shirt dress crumpled on the sand next to her. ‘You!’
she said furiously, scattering sand as she pulled it over her head.
‘You set this up, Ma!’

‘Did I?’ Limp with
relief that he’d come after all, Sadie turned a page.

‘I told you not to ring
him!’

‘But you didn’t tell
him not to ring me.’ Sadie was enjoying her upper hand. ‘Now
he’s here, you’d better deal with it, don’t you
think?’

Conor ducked under the umbrella,
scowling mightily with fear of rejection. ‘Hello all. Come here
often?’

Angela drank him in. She was
getting used to interpreting his repertoire of defensive facial
expressions, even after an absence of weeks. His presence was
deliciously undeniable against a backdrop of sea, sea breeze and
vibrant blueness. He was much browner than she was. His skin knew how
to tan. ‘What happened to your nose?’ he asked abruptly,
clearly thinking along the same lines.

Angela touched her pulsating
beakiness, mortified. ‘Tactful as ever. You can’t have
come all the way from New York to trade insults.’

‘Haven’t come from
New York at all, you presumptuous gobbeloon of a woman. I’m
back in Loxton, as I planned to be all along, and as I explained I
would be in the note with my flowers. Didn’t you get them?’

‘Back to sell your house
and collect the loot!’ huffed Angela, stuffing things into her
tap-dancing frogs bag. She was too excited to think positively. It
was best to assume he’d come in person to deliver a shattering,
final blow to her last vestige of hope. She felt Sadie’s beady
eye upon her and looked up, frowning.

‘Yeah, Sadie told me you’d
somehow found out about the house sale from a workmate who lives
nearby,’ growled Conor. ‘Look, let’s all go and
eat.’ He kicked the umbrella pole gently.

‘You two go off and eat,’
corrected Sadie in exasperation. ‘Let’s not pretend you
don’t have things to thrash out. I’ll stay here with my
fruit and bottled water. Where’s Shane?’

‘Taken a donkey ride up to
the monastery,’ grunted Conor, catlike eyes fixed on Angela.

She started. She hadn’t
taken Shane into the equation. ‘It’s Whitsun half-term,’
shrugged Conor. ‘I’ve done enough leaving him with Mrs
Turner. Well?’ His direct look challenged her. ‘Shall we
go?’

‘Yes, yes, might as well
hear what you’ve got to say this time.’ She heaved a
martyred sigh and shoved her feet into canvas flatties. ‘If you
need me, Ma, I’ll be at the Fig-Leaf, two up from Yanni’s
place.’

Sadie waved her away, fearful and
exhilarated. Oh please God, let her not blow it this time! Angela had
gone out of her way to ignore him, and he’d still followed her
here, taken the risk of looking a fool for love. The least she could
do was listen to him. Sadie had listened when he’d phoned her
from New York, and she’d believed every word.

Angela found a table in the
shade. All of her felt red and raw next to Conor’s brown
smoothness. Prickly heat was already swelling on her collarbone.
Under the table, cats twined round their ankles in the hope of
scraps. She plunged her gibbon-like proboscis into a menu.

‘Now then, Angela.’
Gently and firmly, he plucked the menu from her hand. ‘This
isn’t going to be like Simonetti’s all over again, is it,
with you being all aggressive and interrogating me?’

‘I don’t know, Conor,
because you had things to confess that night. And it seems you’ve
high-tailed it over here with a new batch of confessions.’

‘You left me no choice,
except to make the grand gesture. S’pose I could’ve
waited till nightfall and shinned up your balcony with a rose between
my teeth.’

‘Oh great. That means Mum’s
told you where we’re staying.’

Conor eyed her balefully. ‘How
long are you going to maintain this sniffy attitude? I’m
supposed to believe that not one bone in your sexy body is secretly
pleased to see me come running, cap in hand?’

‘More like all guns
blazing! I’m portrayed as the baddy in all this because I
elected to get on with my life when you swanned off to New York,
seeing fit to phone me a handful of times and then not at all.’

The waiter arrived. Angela asked
for a Greek salad, unable to face grappling with a hearty meal. Conor
messed around, asking in measured tones if the souvlaki was well done
and the olives pitted, as if the preparation of his lunch was the
only thing on his emptied, vacationing mind. This was a ploy, Angela
knew, to seize the initiative by playing on her nerves.

‘Look,’ he said as
the waiter left,
‘
it
got nigh impossible to ring you from Kate’s and hold a private
conversation, and as I ended up virtually working from her place
…
’

‘You could have sent me
texts explaining all that, instead of leaving me thinking the worst!’

‘Well – so could
you.’

She shrugged. He had a point.

‘Though
that’s not the point,’ he frowned. ‘Texts might’ve
muddied the waters. You can’t say what we needed to say to each
other in 140 characters or less.’

‘That’s
a
tweet
,’ she sighed. ‘Look, I get it. All this
modern technology at our disposal and we still couldn’t
communicate properly. What does that say about each other?’

‘That we’re
technically inept when it comes to affairs of the heart,’ he
insisted. ‘We’re old-fashioned, face to face merchants.’
He swept his hand round the taverna. ‘Which is what I’m
doing here.’

‘Bully for
you.’ She knew she was being childish. Couldn’t seem to
stop.

‘Then I
thought, sod it, and phoned you one Saturday night ‒ only to
find you weren’t in.’

‘Well, excuse me for having
the temerity to get on with my life.’

‘So I sent flowers,’
he continued doggedly. ‘I told you on the card that I’d
be back within the next few weeks. I thought that would put your mind
at rest.’

Angela could think of no logical
reason for him to assume otherwise. ‘Huh! The fact is, I didn’t
believe you’d be back for good. Especially when I found out you
were selling up. Remember Rosie?’

Her name had an instant effect.
He drew back from his earnest position of elbows on the table, eyes
locked with hers. She distinctly heard his armoured shell click into
place. A small arrow of panic pierced her superior coolness.

‘I bumped into her at a
party in Loxton. She was the one who told me you were selling up. You
never mentioned it in your phone calls or floral tribute.’

‘I didn’t tell you
because I knew you’d read between the lines of a few words
scribbled on a card, and come up with a load of negative nonsense. I
had to explain it all, face to face. I’ve sold up to give Kate
her half and discharge my final responsibility towards her as my
ex-wife. You could’ve trusted me for once, Angela.’

The tragedy in his voice upped
her panic. She’d committed some irreversible
faux pas
,
like the princess who has everything but still can’t resist
peeking in the forbidden room at the top of the tower. ‘I don’t
understand,’ she began crossly.

‘I don’t love Kate! I
told you that in Ireland. For a while there, I thought I’d have
to shelve my own needs and look after her, because she’s too
unhappy to look after herself. I knew she was manipulating me, but I
thought
‒
wrongly
‒
I could rise above it and care for her anyway. Only trouble is, I’m
not St Francis of Assisi.’

Angela snapped a bread stick
between shaking fingers. ‘Hardly.’

‘Every time I showed some
independence, I knew she’d do some kooky, attention-seeking
thing to pull me back into line. So I called her bluff. I told her
I’d flog my precious house and give her half the money from the
sale, and she could settle in Loxton or wherever she fancied. But I
didn’t love her, and I didn’t want to live with her, in
any capacity. And furthermore, Shane knows I don’t love her.
That was my trump card. She couldn’t use Shane as her hold over
me, because he knows the score. And anyway, by selling 23 Pacelli
Road, I was giving her something she’d always wanted. The proof
I care more about her than my silly house. I care what happens to her
in the long-run. I’ll do all I can for her. If nothing else,
she needs the money for future medical bills, if she stays on the
booze and in the States.’

Angela’s prickly heat
swelled. ‘But Rosie said
‒
she said you were fixated.’

‘That’s rich, coming
from another prize head-case. I really do pick them.’

Angela traced her finger round a
stain on the chequered oilcloth. Desperate to reclaim his good
opinion, to pierce that armoured shell, she babbled her account of
meeting Rosie at Pauline’s
‒
and hearing about the bedroom shrine, the lock of hair under his
pillow.

‘And you believed her?’
Conor shook with hollow laughter. ‘Didn’t you stop to
wonder how Rosie had such an intimate knowledge of my bedroom, when
she’d never spent a night in it? Shane caught her in there one
morning, going through Kate’s stuff. She must’ve spun you
her fantastic yarn as some sort of revenge. The woman’s
off-balance.’

‘I see that now,’
muttered Angela, deciding to keep quiet about her night in Rosie’s
flat. Off-balance or not, she’d been kind in her own way. Oh,
why the hell were people so complicated? Compared to her, anyway.

‘
Did
you try to get
Kate back when she walked out on you?’

‘Yes
‒
once she let me know where she was. Rosie was right about one thing.
I was still infatuated with Kate, long after the love died a natural
death. I didn’t want to give up on my marriage, after promising
in public that I’d make it work for life. The sense of failure
was driving me mad! Every time we spoke on the phone for about three
months after she left, I’d drop
“
When
are you coming back?
”
abruptly into the conversation, hoping to catch her off-guard. At
first she got angry, then she started ignoring the question, and I
gradually stopped asking it. I was getting used to life without her.
And even liking it. There are compensations to losing your wife when
your wife’s an alcoholic whose drink dependency makes you feel
so ruddy inadequate in the first place.’ He looked at Angela.
‘As far as I’m concerned, the ball’s in your court
now, Ange. I told you in Ireland that I loved you.’

Her heart soared, but she was
still too unsure of herself to get carried away. ‘That you
thought you loved me. The hedge-betting of a sensible man, not a
fool. And besides
‒
’
She hesitated, loath to mention Rosie again, but needing to get
things off her chest, ‘Rosie knew
…
things. In Curracloe, you told me you’d never articulated your
past to a third party.’

‘And I hadn’t! Did
she know Kate was a drinker?’

‘Well, no, she never said
…
’

‘All Rosie got were the
bare bones of my marriage, which she fleshed out with her
imagination. If I’d told her the whole story, she’d have
realised that Kate and I were finished for good. But I didn’t
give Rosie the whole story. We never got that far in our
relationship. And it would’ve raised her expectations,
unfairly.’

‘Oh!’

‘So come on,
Angela. The boat leaves again in an hour or so, heading back up the
coast. Say the word and I’ll stay. Or tell me it’s a
waste of time and there’s too much baggage between us, and I’ll
shove off forever.’