by Karen Swan
His eyes narrowed slightly, but they were glittering. The hunt was on. ‘I’ll give you four point one.’
‘Four four,’ she countered. ‘You upset both my parents.’
‘Four two and I will apologize to your mother.’
She smiled. ‘Four point three five because she’s never going to forgive you.’
He smiled back. ‘Four point two five and I will make your mother love me.’
‘Four point three because that’s never gonna happen.’
‘Four point three and she will and so will—’ And so will what? He didn’t finish.
She realized he was still holding her hand, their bodies connected. He must have noticed it too because he squeezed hers lightly. ‘It seems we have a deal and we’re shaking on it,’ he said, his eyes probing hers again.
‘So it does,’ she murmured, squeezing him back before reluctantly pulling her hand away, because no matter what the chemistry between them said, he was right – they couldn’t do business and be anything more. Lust clouded things. It made the simple, oblique.
He shoved his hands in his pockets as he looked down at her, and she wished she wasn’t standing before him in jeans and muck boots, an ancient fleece and with hay in her hair. Saturday night’s glamour-puss had well and truly left the building. ‘So can I come in and see my new castle?’
She shook her head. ‘Nope.’
‘No?’
‘You’ll have to come back.’
The smile fell off. ‘Again? But this is already my second visit.’
‘Yes, but you’ve upset my mother and that is not to be underestimated. I’ll need to talk to her. This is a difficult time for us and, trust me, she will pick up my father’s fights where he left off.’
‘I see.’ He shifted his weight and stuffed his hands into his chino pockets. ‘So when were you thinking for this meeting?’
She thought for a second. ‘Tomorrow. At eleven fifteen.’
‘That’s specific. Why eleven fifteen?’
‘Because Mam’s teaching her floristry class in the village hall for two hours then. And it’ll give me enough time to get the horses done first.’
‘You’ve got horses?’ His eyes travelled up and down her in the way that had made her knees buckle at the party. ‘You didn’t look the horsey type on Saturday night in those leather trousers.’
‘They’re Pip’s.’
‘The trousers?’
‘The horses,’ she grinned.
‘Ah.’ He watched her. ‘So I guess I’ll see you at eleven fifteen tomorrow then.’
She nodded, feeling herself wilt under his gaze, like a daisy under a heat lamp. ‘Bye then.’ She turned and started walking away, hoping to God her backside looked as decent in the jeans as in the leather trousers.
‘That’s a ruthless negotiating technique you’ve got, by the way,’ he called after her.
She turned and smiled. ‘Did you think I’d be a soft touch just because I went soft at your touch?’
His lips parted in surprise at the provocative question. She walked up the castle steps.
‘You went soft at my touch?’
Chapter Fourteen
‘Hello again.’
‘Hi,’ Ottie smiled shyly as she passed by Reception. The staff were actually beginning to know her here now. They must think she was some sort of ambulance-chaser.
It was visiting time and the hospital was busy, well-wishers bustling through the corridors with flowers and chocolates, some balloons. There was a surprisingly optimistic buzz about the place; she always thought of hospitals as places to be feared, as the fulcrum of death and despair, but, of course, babies were born here, people saved, put back together, given other chances . . . That was finding the bright side, though. There were many pensive faces like hers too, people coming empty-handed, not sure of what they were going to find.
She walked along to the ward where he’d been taken earlier, stopping at the nurses’ station outside.
‘Hi.’
‘You’re back,’ the nurse smiled in surprise.
‘Yeah . . . Just thought I’d come and see how he’s getting on. Did the operation all go okay?’
‘That all went smoothly. He was in ITU for a couple of hours just as standard before coming back here. He’s beginning to come round from the anaesthetic now. He’s pretty woozy.’
‘Yeah. Well, that’s good to hear . . . that it went smoothly, I mean. I was worried about him.’ But she knew she wasn’t here for him; this man didn’t know her, he didn’t care about her hospital visits. No, this was for her – balm for a guilty conscience. She may never get an official pardon, or forgiveness, but she needed to know he was going to be okay at least.
The nurse looked bemused. ‘Seeing as you’re here, why don’t you look in on him? He’s in the last bed on the left.’
She felt a surge of panic. ‘Oh, but – you said he’s still coming round.’
‘Yep. But having a visitor will be a nice thing for him to wake up to. I understand he’s American?’
‘Yes.’
‘It can’t be nice waking up in a foreign hospital with no one you know around you.’
‘No, I guess not,’ Ottie murmured, her guilt spiking this time. Slowly, she made her way over. Several of the beds had their curtains pulled around them, the low hum of urgent conversations drifting about like airborne feathers. His didn’t though, and Ottie was stopped by the sight of him, sleeping half-upright – his left arm strapped across his body in a sling, his right leg suspended on a pulley. She barely recognized him as the sharp-suited, sharp-eyed, world-weary businessman who’d so enraged her on Friday night. He didn’t look anything like an elite athlete either, lying there in a green-printed hospital gown. He was pale and haggard-looking, practically no fat on him, his stubble having come in thicker and darker over the weekend.
She approached the bed tentatively, standing by it and not daring to touch him. She couldn’t hold his hand or stroke his cheek. He was a stranger. And yet, she owed him more than he would ever know. She might not be able to say the words out loud – it wasn’t just Bertie’s business that would come under threat if it became known he’d forgotten to put up the signs on account of their clandestine tryst – he might never get to know about the full, awful string of coincidences and accidents that had come together to leave him clinging to a cliff and now strapped up in this bed, but she knew. This was all her fault.
Her eyes flickered over the monitors. The numbers meant little to her, but even she knew 56 was low for a resting heartbeat, that 92/58 was low for blood pressure. Was it a sign of how sick he was? Or fit?
She brought her gaze back to him and gave a little jolt of surprise to find his eyes open – and on her.
‘M-Mr Gilmore.’
There was a long pause, his gaze blank, his focus seemingly unfixed. She knew he had no idea who she was. ‘B-b-ben . . .’
She gave a nervous smile. ‘Ben, yes. How are you feeling?’
‘. . . Excellent.’ The word was so slurred it was practically sitting on its side.
She shifted under his gaze. Drugged-up, it had none of the directness or sardonic undercurrents she remembered as she’d kept him on her doorstep in the rain; instead he looked . . . boyish. Vulnerable, even. A small, half-cocked lopsided smile dragged up drunkenly on one side of his lips. ‘So b-b-beauful.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’ she asked, but he didn’t reply, his eyes fluttering shut and then opening again, his gaze landing on her every time like butterflies. She didn’t know what to say. ‘. . . So the nurse said your operation went well.’
‘Ex . . . cellent.’ He didn’t move, just continued staring. The usual social etiquette didn’t apply to post-op patients.
She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘Mr Gilmore—’
‘Bbben.’
‘Ben, yes. Is there anyone I can call for you? Your wife? Girlfriend? . . . Any family? Friends? . . . Colleagues?’ There just had to be some way she could be helpful
and make this up to him.
There was another long pause, before he shook his head fractionally. ‘Nnno.’
No to all of them? ‘Really? No one at all?’
‘Nnno.’
She supposed they were all in the States, his colleagues – whatever it was he did – possibly in London? He’d arrived in a suit and that was where he’d flown in from.
His eyes had closed again; she could hear the exhaustion in his breathing, as though just to inhale and exhale was an effort. ‘Well, I should leave you to rest,’ she said quietly. His face had slackened again, his body sinking into unconsciousness once more. ‘I just wanted to check you were okay.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And to say I’m sorry. It was an accident. Please believe me.’
She felt a touch on her hand and saw his index finger twitch, as though reaching for her. Jeesht, was he awake? She felt a jolt of panic, but the next moment his hand dropped inert on the mattress again, oblivion claiming him swiftly and deeply, and before she could cause any more damage, she turned and hurried away, the secret still her own.
Pip stared into the flames. Her heart actually felt bruised. She had done her best to outrun the fact all day – riding over to Ottie’s, helping with the post-race clear-up, mucking out the stables – but the second she stopped, it was up in her face again: she had given away her beloved Shalimar. Just given her away like that. She had gambled her for an idea of a future that could never be hers. She’d dared to think that she could reach her dreams if only she was prepared to leap. But life didn’t work like that. It couldn’t be reduced to an Instagram epithet or a T-shirt slogan. People fell short every day – good people, hard-working people. Desire wasn’t enough, nor even determination, she was proof of that. But she’d risked it anyway – all or nothing, that was her. ‘Binary’, her father always used to say. ‘You’re on or off, black and white, Pip. You don’t deal with the shades of grey, where most of us live.’
It was certainly where Taigh O’Mahoney lived. She’d seen his look of disbelief – verging on disgust – earlier, as she’d forced herself to honour the bet. To her, she’d simply lost, but to him, she was a victim; he felt playing the ‘nearly died’ angle was her Get Out of Jail Free card for a tricky situation, but where was the honour? How could she look in the mirror knowing she was the worm that had squirmed her way off the hook?
Slinki, her chief mouse-catcher, padded into the room, stopping to assess her misery for a few moments, before effortlessly leaping onto the windowsill and curling up tightly for a nap. Pip threw her head back against the sofa and let a few bitter tears fall, but she didn’t feel any the better for it. It was unfair. She could have stood it if she’d lost because she’d deserved to but he wasn’t the better swimmer or the faster runner or the fitter one out of the two of them. If she hadn’t been drinking shots, she’d have known she couldn’t win that bet purely because he was seventeen stone to her nine; logic dictated he could last longer in those temperatures than her. If she hadn’t been drunk, she’d have had her wits about her and chosen something far more balanced – a race to the trees and back, a planking competition, a squat challenge . . .
She sighed, trying to imagine her beloved girl in her new home, and then banishing the thought just as quickly. She knew she’d be well looked after, that wasn’t the concern – if anything, it’d be a step up from the digs here. Cuneen’s stables were – if not quite in the Mullane super-league – certainly several notches higher than her flaky black-painted, wobbly-cobbled eighteenth-century stable block. Hers didn’t have the super-deluxe manège facilities and top-of-the-range solariums, but she loved that the hoof marks left by horses two hundred years ago were still imprinted in the boxes, that they could nod to each other over the walls, that they could see and speak to one another, all gathered in one room, with her living above them, her footsteps above their heads at night, the closest she could reasonably get.
The other five horses had been restless without Shalimar all day, sensing the loss. Though Kirsty had come up to put them all out in the field for a few hours – having heard the news about her weekend; it was all around the village now – they kept nipping and kicking at each other, as though waiting for her to come in and get them back into line. Shalimar had been the boss, but who would lead them now?
Slinki suddenly jumped down from the window ledge, just as a sound outside on the drive came to her ear. She stiffened, immediately rubbing out the tears. Finally, she’d heard someone before they miraculously appeared in the middle of her flat! Was it Taigh coming to make a nuisance of himself again?
‘It’s only me,’ she heard Willow say a few moments later, puffing as she came up the narrow staircase, emerging carrying a plate covered with tin foil. ‘Careful, this is very hot.’ She set the plate down and started blowing on her fingers. ‘Very hot.’
She looked up at Pip with a smile – the smile fading in a flash. ‘Ohmigod, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she replied in alarm. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your cheeks are all flushed.’
Jeesht. Was there no hiding? Pip shrugged. ‘I’ve just come inside.’ It wasn’t quite true. She’d been in for at least forty minutes now.
‘You were told to rest and stay indoors,’ Willow said sternly.
‘Oh yes, Dr O’Mahoney’s instructions,’ Pip said sarcastically. ‘Ha, forgive me if I don’t give a damn about what he’s got to say.’
‘Look, you don’t have to like the guy but he knows what he’s talking about, Pip.’
‘Yeah, right, one first aid course and suddenly he’s Meredith Grey.’
‘It’s rather more than that,’ Willow said, fetching a tray from the cupboard and setting the covered plate on it. Pip watched as she filled her a glass of water and found some cutlery stuffed into the jam jar by the kettle. ‘Now, eat that. Mrs Mac’s finest lamb. She said she did the cutlets for you just the way you like them.’
‘Special treatment? Perhaps I should try near-death experiences more often.’
‘Pip!’ Willow looked so shocked, Pip felt a stab of shame at her words as she peeled off the foil cover, steam escaping everywhere. It was a crass thing to have said; perhaps their father’s dark humour had a time and a place after all – and an audience; her little sister clearly wasn’t ready to joke about it yet.
Willow lingered restlessly as she began to eat, one hand drumming absently on the counter.
‘Wassup?’ Pip asked, her mouth full.
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re all fidgety.’
‘No I’m not,’ Willow said, putting down a point-to-point brochure and sighing.
Pip frowned as her sister came over and sank onto the sofa beside her, grabbing the remote and flicking over the channels. The TV was set to mute.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Pip quipped.
‘Mrs Mac says she wants the plate back,’ Willow said, ignoring her sarcasm.
‘Yeah, right. That’s her way of spying on me from afar. She’s checking to make sure I’m eating properly.’
‘Course she is,’ Willow muttered. ‘I swear to God she’s got spies in Dublin too.’
Pip laughed, which turned into a cough and she reached for the water. ‘How’s Mam been today, anyway? I kept expecting her to turn up with a suitcase and say she was never letting me out of her sights again.’
‘Erm . . . she was okay I guess. I think she realizes you’re happier in your own space.’
Pip glanced across at her sister. ‘What was the “erm” for?’
‘I didn’t “erm”.’
‘Yes you did. You always “erm” when there’s a problem. And you’re restless as hell. What’s happened now?’ She saw Willow’s shoulders slump and knew she was right. There was never any getting past what she called her ‘bullshit detector’.
‘. . . Okay, fine, she did get upset again today – but not because of you. Remember that prospective buyer she mentioned?’
‘Mmhmm,’ Pip mumbled, shovellin
g in another forkful of food. She felt ravenously hungry, she realized.
‘Well, he turned up.’
Pip’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. ‘The one Dad sent packing last time?’
‘Yeah.’
Pip’s fork stopped mid-air. ‘Oh my God, the bloody nerve! D’you think he heard Dad had died and he thought he’d just—’
‘No,’ Willow said quickly, looking sheepish. She cleared her throat. ‘Actually, I had rung him. Last week.’
‘What?’ Pip almost shouted. ‘Willow!’
‘I know, I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized—’
‘What a knob he is?’
Willow shot her a look. ‘I’d been going to say I hadn’t realized quite how ugly things had got between him and Dad.’
‘But I told you! Mam said Dad ruined his best nine-iron whacking it on the lawn after they got the call saying he’d dropped the offer by a million.’
‘A million?’
‘Oh yeah; he wanted a cool one mill off or he was gonna walk.’ Pip stabbed her fork in the air viciously. ‘Two-faced bastard. Mam said Dad was so gutted that was what got him thinking about gifting the place to An Taisce instead. I don’t think he could bear the thought of Lorne ever being lived in by complete tossers like that.’
‘You’re such a potty-mouth,’ Willow muttered. She’d never liked Pip’s colourful language. ‘Look, I get the point, I do, but on the other hand, it was just . . . a business tactic. It wasn’t personal.’
‘It was personal to Dad, Will! And this wasn’t just a bit of a discount he was after. He wanted a million – a million! – off.’
Willow sighed. He was getting more than a million off, buying from her. ‘Yeah.’
‘Whose side are you on anyway?’ Pip scowled. ‘Dad thought he was the absolute worst. Scum of the earth. End of.’ She speared a carrot into her mouth. ‘What?’
Willow didn’t speak for a moment. She looked like she was holding her breath. ‘What if I told you he was the one who dragged you onto the boat?’
Pip felt herself pale. She could actually feel the blood draining from her hitherto flushed cheeks. ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’ But Willow’s face did no such thing. ‘The guy Dad went to his grave hating is the guy who saved my life?’