Out of Sight

by Rebecca Duval

  Isla physically recoiled as though she’d been winded. But in the back of her mind, a small voice crowed that she’d known all along it would come to this. She’d fooled herself that every fact she’d uncovered, every secret he’d revealed, brought them closer together, when the real truth was, it only pushed them further apart. Isla could accept Ethan’s past, but he couldn’t...or wouldn’t. He would always choose his dead love over a living one, trampling Isla’s heart to protect one that didn’t even beat.

  She backed away slowly until her knees caught the edge of a chair, and she fell into it. The legs screeched against the tiled floor, and Ethan stepped forward.

  “Isla-”

  “Don’t!” she shouted. Numbness staved off her tears, but she knew it would only be a matter of minutes until they fell. “I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say. Please, just go.”

  Isla held on to her knees and forced herself to look at Ethan. He looked like someone at war with himself- his body straining towards her, his head twisted away. If he said anything else, if he tried to console her, she would lose it.

  “Go,” she whispered.

  Ethan’s jaw set, and he marched from the room, his cane thwacking against the floor with force. Isla listened until it faded to a soft tap in the distance, and then she fell apart.

  Forty Two

  Memories flooded Isla’s mind, but she pushed them back, as she strode purposefully down the bleached corridor. She’d put this off for too long, used her memories of that night as an excuse. It had been three weeks since Ryder’s accident, since her break-up with Ethan, but the pain was just as fresh as it had been that first night when she’d fled from the relatives’ room before Connor could return and find her sobbing.

  The taxi driver had looked at her in alarm through the rear-view mirror, but had seemingly decided that she’d suffered a bereavement, best not spoken of, and dropped her off at the shuttered shop without comment. She remembered fumbling with her key in the dark, falling through the door to her flat, and after that hours had merged into days, days into weeks, and she still hadn’t been back to see Ryder…until now.

  She paused at the doors to the ward. Connor had told her where she’d find him. He’d tried to tell her other things too until Isla had threatened to hang up. She wasn’t interested in Connor’s excuses for his brother. She knew the truth, and as much as it hurt, more than anything else in her life ever had, it was for the best. That’s what she kept telling herself anyway, as she went through her days in the shop in a daze, and dozed her evenings away in front of the television. It had to be for the best. Otherwise, what was the point?

  “Isla Belmont to visit James Ryder,” Isla spoke into the intercom when prompted, and tried not to think of that first day she’d arrived at Rosehill, so full of hope, and trepidation. If she’d only known.

  Isla braced herself outside the door to Ryder’s side room. It would be bad, she knew, but she couldn’t show her emotions on her face. It wasn’t fair to Ryder, not after everything he’d been through.

  She took a deep breath and ducked into the room. To her surprise, Ryder was propped up in the bed, one arm in a sling, one leg in a cast. His face was bruised, and he had stitches above one eye, but no machines surrounded him, no tubes snaked out of him. He was awake, and his blue eyes were wide with surprise.

  “Isla? I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

  He’d heard then. “I’m sorry, I meant to visit sooner, I wanted to, but…” she trailed off.

  Ryder’s face softened. “I understand.”

  Isla sat down in the vinyl chair by the bed. “How are you feeling? You look great,” she added before he could answer.

  “Really?” Ryder raised his unstitched eyebrow.

  “Well...okay, maybe not great, but better than I was expecting.”

  “I’m going stir crazy, but otherwise coping. The nurses are nice, and they’ve got some good drugs.” He winked, and Isla couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What about you?” Ryder asked, suddenly serious. “How are you holding up?”

  Isla looked away. “Ethan told you?”

  “He told me he’d cut all contact with you, and refused to answer any of my questions. What happened?”

  Isla shrugged and bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. “I don’t know. I guess in the end it was too much.”

  “For you? Or for him?” Ryder asked.

  Isla considered the question. Until that moment she’d seen herself as a victim of something outside of her control, but given the choice, would she take Ethan back, knowing what she knew about the limitations on his love? Could she be satisfied with second best? Deep down, Isla knew she couldn’t.

  “For both of us, I guess.”

  “You know, I feel partly to blame,” Ryder said. “I get the feeling it was my accident that tipped him over the edge. How could it not have done, happening on the anniversary of his?”

  Isla shook her head. There might have been some truth in what Ryder was saying, but she didn’t want him to carry any blame for Ethan’s decision. “It wasn’t your fault, Ryder. It was an accident.”

  “I know that, you know that, we all know that, but I’m not sure Ethan believes it,” Ryder said.

  Two chirpy young physiotherapists arrived to do some rehabilitation work with him, and Isla found herself in the way.

  “Do you want me to talk to him?” Ryder asked quietly when she leaned in to give him a gentle goodbye hug.

  Isla shook her head. “No. Please don’t.”

  The last thing she wanted was Ethan being guilt-tripped into a relationship with her because he felt bad about Ryder’s injuries. Connor had said Ryder would do anything for Ethan, and Isla was willing to bet the reverse was also true.

  She moved down the corridor away from Ryder’s room in a daze. She had the sense that if she could just focus, without any distraction for one minute, everything would suddenly become crystal clear, like one of those magic eye pictures, and she would finally see everything as a whole.

  Isla glanced up, and there he was.

  Ethan.

  His brown eyes roamed across the uncertain landscape of the corridor, and he walked slowly, with his cane outstretched. Isla’s chest felt hollow, as though at the sight of Ethan, someone had scooped out her insides, and tossed them at his feet. The collar of his long, black coat was turned up, his cheeks pink from the cold. Isla knew she should move. No doubt Connor had driven his brother to the hospital, and would likely be following him down the corridor any minute.

  Ethan was navigating his way slowly towards her. Towards Ryder’s room, she corrected. He didn’t even know she was there, and she intended to keep it that way.

  Isla ducked into the nearest doorway, her heart pounding, and watched him pass through the gap in the hinges. She had never felt more pathetic in her life. Hiding from the guy who had broken her heart - who was blind, so couldn’t have seen her anyway - in a...what even was this place? She looked around the weird storeroom, with its wide sinks, and strange metal bowls, and...was that a commode? Realisation dawned, and Isla fought back a swell of nausea.

  “Oh!” A nurse in a pale blue dress entered the room and jumped at the sight of Isla crouching behind the door, retching into her hand. “What are you doing in the sluice, love?”

  Isla could only grunt in answer.

  “Feeling a bit peaky were we?” The nurse had a fob watch pinned above her left breast, and wiry hair pulled back in a tight bun, showing the grey at her temples. “Up you get.” She bent and helped Isla to her feet. Isla wobbled.

  “Let’s get you a chair, shall we?” The nurse frog marched Isla from the room, and Isla was too grateful not to have been offered a seat on the commode to even care if Ethan was still in the corridor. Sweat beaded on her brow, and if the nurse hadn’t been squeezing her arm hard enough to cut off the circulation, Isla felt sure she’d be in a heap on the floor.

  What was wrong with her? She wasn’t normally so sq
ueamish.

  “Here we go.” The nurse plonked her down into a soft chair. They were in a tiny room that looked like the kind of place a person only ever got taken to be given news of the very worst kind. Four vinyl-covered chairs, including hers, one low round table, and a box of tissues.

  “Thanks,” Isla managed weakly. “I’m sorry, I’m so embarrassed. I’m not usually like this.”

  The nurse smiled kindly down at her. “Ach, don’t worry about it. I was the same when I was pregnant.”

  Isla jerked like she’d been plugged in at the mains. “Oh no, you don’t understand, I’m not, I couldn’t possibly be…” Isla opened and closed her mouth like a fish, as cogs whirred in her head. Numbers and dates swirled together behind her eyes, and Isla squeezed them shut.

  “Oh god. I have to….go…” Isla got to her feet quickly and teetered backwards.

  The nurse caught her and lowered her back into the chair. “You sit yourself down, dear before you end up in a bed yourself.”

  “But I can’t...I can’t be…” Isla murmured half to herself.

  The nurse raised her eyebrows. “If you say so. Now can I get you anything? A glass of water? A biscuit?”

  A time-machine? Isla groaned and dropped her head to her hands, which the nurse seemed to take as a yes. She disappeared and was back minutes later with a strong sugary cup of tea, and a miniature pack of custard creams.

  Isla thanked her with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, and promised not to try standing until she’d finished them both. So, she sat there, alone, sipping lukewarm sweet tea, and nibbling at a biscuit, and tried not to think about Ethan visiting Ryder just a few rooms away, learning that he’d just missed her. Not knowing that she might be carrying his child.

  *

  Isla sat down on the edge of the bath. The narrow plastic stick shook in her hand, and she stared at it, wondering how one line could mean so much.

  She was pregnant. There could be no doubt. The bright pink line on the test jumped out at her, and the groggy mornings, fleeting nausea, and exhaustion she’d suffered for the last couple of weeks, but had accepted as symptoms of heartbreak, suddenly took on a new meaning.

  When had it happened? Isla’s mind replayed every possibility, and her chest ached. She hadn’t missed a pill, not one...but she had been late with a couple. The night she’d been trapped in the tower. The night of the ball. Events at Rosehill had thrown off her schedule. Well, now they’d done more than that. They’d altered the entire course of her life. Unless...Isla squeezed her eyes shut against the choice she knew she’d have to make.

  Ethan’s words rang in her ears, seeming to echo around the empty bathroom: ‘I could never love you the way I loved her.’

  What about a baby? Could Ethan love their child? If not, how could she possibly bring it into the world, knowing someday she’d have to explain that? The way her mum had explained to her that she was a mistake. Isla had spent her entire adult life knowing she’d been conceived in passion, and regretted afterwards. She’d had to come to terms with never knowing the identity of her dad, of knowing that to even mention him would cause her mum tears, of knowing that deep down, her mum would have preferred the alternative life, the one she’d missed out on because of Isla’s existence.

  Could she really force all that on her own child? Even if she guarded herself, tried not to let her heartbreak turn her bitter, what kind of parent could she be? There was a chance she’d soon be out of a job, with nowhere to live. What kind of life could she offer a child? But even thinking of the alternative made Isla’s already delicate stomach roll.

  There had been so much loss already. To add to it felt wrong, in an entirely different way than the thought of going through with the pregnancy, and having the baby. One felt unthinkable, the other impossible. So where did that leave her?

  Exactly where she’d sworn she’d never be: In her mother’s shoes. Heartbroken, pregnant and alone.

  Forty Three

  Isla scanned the page for what must have been the third time, but it was no use. The words blurred before her eyes and her mind refused to focus either. She’d been trying to lose herself in work, in an attempt to forget about her problems, but needless to say, it wasn’t working.

  Tim had shooed her away from the counter after she’d accidentally short-changed a customer, and almost dropped an extremely valuable vase, so she’d settled down in the back of the shop with some paperwork that she’d been dreading ever since Len had presented her with it a few days ago: The final sales list from Rosehill.

  It was an extensive document of every item that they’d either sold or were selling, on Ethan’s behalf. And she had to go through it all and check for mistakes before it was distributed to potential buyers. She’d expected it to be painful, but so far she hadn’t been able to concentrate well enough to even read it properly, let alone process the fact that this was it- the culmination of all her hours at Rosehill. The only thing she had to show for it...at least, for now. Isla’s hand went to her stomach instinctively, but she snatched it away before Len could catch the gesture and comment.

  She smoothed the stack of papers in front of her and tried again. The items had been divided by category, as they usually would, but in this case, Isla found it hard to separate each item from where it was found. In her mind, she saw the Royal Doulton tea set, not alongside the Shelley dinnerware, but in the rickety kitchen sideboard, not far from where Ethan had pinned her with his kisses...Isla blinked a few times to clear the image and continued scanning the page. But it was all the same. Each item came with a memory, each memory with a sting. Then she saw it.

  ‘Steinway Grand Piano Model B, 1886, fully restored.’

  Isla’s stomach plummeted. No. He couldn’t. But there it was, in black and white.

  “Len?” she shouted.

  He was buried behind a stack of boxes that had come in from a house clearance yesterday, but at her yell he re-emerged, holding a decorative Masonic sword. “Did you call?”

  “Yes. I think there’s been a mistake on the sales listing from Rosehill Hall.” She hoped there’d been a mistake.

  Len set down the sword and ambled over. “Hmm. Bound to happen with the sheer volume of items. Let’s see then. What is it? A price? A description?” Len pushed his glasses up his nose and held out a hand.

  Isla passed the list over to him. “No, it’s not an error as such, but something has been included that shouldn’t be for sale.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “The piano.” Isla pointed. “I didn’t list that. There’s been a mistake.”

  “No mistake, my girl. He rang me specifically to have it added.”

  “What?” Isla gasped. “Ethan rang you? When? How did he sound? What did he say?”

  Len raised one bushy eyebrow and handed the sales listing back. Isla gaped at him as he pottered over to the kettle.

  “Mr MacRae rang on Wednesday,” Len said, his back turned.

  The day she’d visited Ryder. The day she’d found out she was pregnant.

  “He said he’d changed his mind about something and asked me to add it on. When he gave me the details I thought he was joking.” Len dropped teabags into two cups and turned to her. “It’s the most valuable single item by far. I was very surprised you hadn’t mentioned it...”

  Isla burst into tears.

  Len’s eyes widened behind the thick lenses of his varifocals, but he quickly recovered, ushering Isla into a chair, and thrusting a box of tissues towards her.

  “What is it, my girl? What’s the matter?”

  Everything, Isla wanted to say, but couldn’t, because then she’d have to explain, and how could she? Besides, she should be happy, if the piano sold, her commission would keep her employed and with a roof over her head...at least until Tim took over. But what about Ethan? He could get another piano, she knew, but she also knew that he wouldn’t. It was the one thing he hadn’t instructed her to sell - or throw on a bonfire - and now he was selling it. I
t seemed she wasn’t the only one who’d given up hope.

  Len slid a teacup across the table and sat down opposite, still waiting for an answer she couldn’t give.

  “Tim said he’ll sell.” She sniffed.

  Len slammed his mug down on the table with a thunk. “What?”

  Uh-oh. Isla hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t meant to say anything, but of all the things playing on her mind, somehow that had seemed the least controversial. She was quickly beginning to realise she’d been wrong.

  “The other day...he mentioned that when the time comes for him to take over, he’ll sell up.” Isla winced.

  Len got to his feet and ran one hand through the tufts of white hair he had remaining. “He said that?”

  Isla nodded miserably. She shouldn’t have said anything. Not content with her own misery, she apparently had to add to everyone else’s. “Yes, but, perhaps he didn’t mean it, Len. I wonder if he only said it to provoke me.”

  The creases in Len’s forehead deepened. “Why would he want to do that?”

  Isla raised one eyebrow. “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed? Ever since you offered me the contract at Rosehill, things have been strained between us. I thought it was just envy on his part, and I didn’t blame him, he is your son after all-” Isla broke off, and Len looked suddenly guilty. “But I don’t know, something tells me it’s more than that.”

  “I had no idea,” Len muttered. He seemed to be talking more to himself than to her. “I thought he was happy in the shop, and it gave him more time, and energy to devote to his own art. I thought I was doing him a favour.”

  “I don’t know if Tim sees it like that,” Isla said gently. “Perhaps you should talk to him.”

  “No need.” Tim stepped into the back room, his expression unreadable.

  Oh god. Isla bit back a groan. When would she learn that a curtain wasn’t a soundproof barrier? There must have been a lull in customers, and Tim could have been listening the entire time, which would mean he knew everything.