But then they’d effectively been doing that to one another for years, slowly but surely squeezing the life out of each other.
The worst of it was, as she’d steered the boat out of the dyke in the moonlight, she had turned to look back up at the house and seen him in the window. She thinks I’ll take a boat out and follow her, he’d thought, that I’ll be there to save her from carrying out her threat.
He hadn’t done that. He’d turned away from the window and had gone to bed not caring in the slightest if she tried to drown herself, almost wishing that she would.
The back of his neck twitched and he looked up, half expecting to see Orla standing over him. But it wasn’t Orla; it was Sylvia. ‘Are you all right, Alastair?’ she asked.
He dashed away the wetness that he realised now covered his face, and heaved himself to his feet. ‘Sorry,’ he said, embarrassed to be found in such a way.
‘There’s no need to apologise,’ Sylvia said. ‘If a grieving husband can’t cry over his wife’s grave, I don’t know when he can.’
He let her think whatever seemed plausible to her. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked.
‘Neil and I come every few weeks to keep the grave neat and tidy. We started doing it when you went away. I hope you don’t mind.’
That explained how few weeds there were, he thought, pushing a hand through his hair. ‘Of course not,’ he forced himself to say, ‘I’m grateful.’
A short while later he retraced his steps to where he’d leftWater Lilyand headed for whatever it was that awaited him at Linston End. It was time to sort things out once and for all.
Chapter Fifty-Six
‘Do you think we’ll all have to leave now?’
Jenna slid her gaze from the Mill across the smooth surface of the water and looked at Rachel in the chair beside her. They were sitting in the pavilion at the end of the garden. ‘Do you want to leave?’
‘There doesn’t seem much point in staying, does there?’ Rachel said. ‘Although you might want to stay because of your fiddle-playing lover-boy.’ She tilted her head to where Jenna had just been staring.
‘Stop fishing.’
‘I’m an invalid, it’s my right to fish.’
Jenna smiled. ‘You’re going to milk your near-death experience for all it’s worth, aren’t you?’
‘Damned straight. Tell me again about you and Blake cosying up over at the Mill. Have you kissed him?’
‘I wouldn’t tell you if I had.’
‘You have! You’ve kissed him! And while I was fighting for my life.’
‘While you were sleeping, don’t you mean?’
Rachel pounced. ‘Aha, so you admit it, you have kissed him!’
‘I thought you said you were feeling all worldly-wise and grown up as a consequence of nearly dying? Seems to me you’re your usual daft self.’
Rachel offered her a pitiful smile. ‘And you’re your usual prickly self, batting away my questions. For your interest, I’m only enquiring about who you may or may not have snogged because I want to know where you stand with my brother. I don’t want you upsetting him. That’s my very grown-up self speaking.’
‘I stand in exactly the same position as I always have with Callum. He’s made it very clear that we’re just friends. As I believe I informed you before.’
Rachel snorted. Nobody could invest more disdain or disbelief into such a simple gesture. ‘Whatever Callum told you it would have been said to gauge your reaction, to see whether you agreed with him. Did you agree, one hundred per cent? Or did you feel a teeny flicker of disappointment?’
Jenna thought about this. The truth was, afterwards she had. But wouldn’t that be true of anyone being friend-zoned, the door being firmly shut? Was that the fickleness of the human heart, never to be entirely satisfied?
‘I’ll take your silence as a yes,’ remarked Rachel, ‘that you were disappointed.’
‘It’s not as straightforward as that. Haven’t you ever been in a situation where your head and heart are giving out confusing messages?’
‘All the time; that’s why I keep on picking the wrong boyfriend. So who has your heart and who has your head, that’s the million dollar question?’ Rachel wagged her finger. ‘The truth and nothing but the truth. Imagine I have a gun pointing at your head and you have two seconds to reply, or it’s curtains for you.’
