And yet was it her? Was it her fault?
And if it wasn’t her fault, was her life so bad?
She didn’t know anymore. Maybe having your husband get angry with you and not talk to you for a week – maybe that was normal?
Perhaps Ralphie did that with Eden and Eden just never said it. Had it been like that with Dad and Mum? She tried to remember. She didn’t think it had been like that when she was growing up. No, nobody ever gave anyone the silent treatment. Although, Rory could be very grizzly and sometimes would sulk in her bedroom, but normally it was for no more than an hour.
Then she’d come downstairs, stomp around a bit and everyone would make up.
Dad never got angry with anyone. He did sometimes shout at the TV during horse races.
No, it hadn’t been like that at home. Yet, marriages were different, weren’t they? Nobody knew what went on when the doors shut.
Savannah thought of what it would be like to ask Eden. How would she phrase it? What words could she use?Eden, does Ralphie ever make you feel very, very scared? Do you worry about upsetting him? Do you dance around him in case he screams that you’re a stupid bitch and everything’s your fault? That you’re over emotional/stupid/annoying? Do you read his every mood hoping to cheer him up?And then:Has he ever hurt you?
Her finger throbbed. He’d only physically hurt her three times. That first time was the honeymoon. It had been an accident; she was sure of it.
She had trained herself to think that way because to imagine anything else was staring into utter horror.
He did sometimes shove her out of the way in the kitchen or open drawers on her hips. He liked doing that. But it was never obvious, never an action anyone would see and think was anything other than clumsiness.
He’d once shoved her in the bathroom against the sink during sex; had been so rough. He knew he was hurting her, knew her head was banging against the wall: she’d had a lump on the back of her head and her ribs had hurt. That had been the time they’d gone to A&E.
She’d lied that she’d fallen because how could she tell anyone what had happened?
This week with the postman – that had been no accident, Calum had meant to hurt her. He was jealous. The thought overwhelmed her.
She had been talking to the postman about his new baby and Calum was instantly jealous, some men were, weren’t they? And that was his way of proving it. He hadn’t said sorry. He hadn’t asked her how her hand was. It was all forgotten, unmentioned, like it had slipped under the floorboards, a dirty secret that everyone would walk over.
Eden had been collared by a woman who was having trouble with planning permission. She was not part of the hen party but had followed Eden into the loo and was now haranguing her about why politics was such a crooked business, why the planning people were all corrupt and that all she’d wanted was a conservatory.
Eden washed her hands, gazed at herself in the darkened mirror in Gianni’s small ladies’ room and wished that the woman was drunk. Drunken constituents were far easier to handle: a smile here, a mention that she and the constituent should talk urgently on the phone and then a quick getaway with the person happily forgetting all about it because they were in a haze of wine.
This woman – a harridan wearing a diamond cross necklace that would probably buy her another house with an already-installed conservatory – sadly was not drunk.
Eden decided there was only one way out: she grabbed her phone and looked at it intently, as if she’d just had a text come in.
‘Gosh, so lovely to meet you. Do phone me at the office, but I have to go.’
And she slipped out of the loo, belted off to their table and hid herself in a corner.
Wine, she decided, was the answer.
In another corner, she could see Rory holding a vast brandy balloon filled with what had to be a double.
No, Eden reflected. Alcohol was not the answer.
The problem with the book, Rory decided, as she looked around for a waiter to get her more brandy, was that nobody would ever believe that she hadn’t meant to hurt them all from the very beginning. Rory knew the story would shatter the family. Except that she hadn’t planned it that way. Sure, she’d been writing the book – a book – for years. But then she wrote for a living. That’s what working in advertising as a copywriter meant. You wrote adverts. And lots of advertising copywriters went on to write novels, so it was nothing very new or unusual for her to fiddle around on her laptop. Chantal had been so encouraging.
‘You express yourself so beautifully,’ Chantal had said. ‘This is a very good thing for you to do, to get rid of some of the sadness.’
‘I’m not sad,’ Rory had said, which was a lie, because sometimes she was sad. She was a human being: humans were complex and had so many different emotions. The book had been this blissful cathartic way of writing about a character quite like her, who’d grown up in a chaotic and loving family, and who’d then discovered a secret which had shocked her.
So the book had been her therapy. It was fiction, yet the fictional family lived in a big old house that they sometimes used as a B & B. One wouldn’t need to look very far to see the similarities between the Belloc family in the book and the Robicheaux family. It had been marvellous therapy at first, writing down how she’d felt as a young lesbian. What life had been like, how she’d found herself with her group of friends, all a little different, all the little edges of the school groups. And then she began to do research into the family, just for the sake of it.
Which was how she’d found the photo of Lori, which led her to Chloe. Dear Chloe who was pretending to be cool but who really wanted to be accepted by this other family. If that wasn’t proof that things had been mixed up, then Rory didn’t know what was.
Lori had worked in the Sorrento for seven years when Rory had been little. From Cork, Lori had been a strong, tall woman with rippling long dark hair, amazing cheekbones, finely crafted eyebrows and a strong nose. She had been fiery and fun, stern when she needed to be. Had taken care of the four sisters, driven them places, served at table, in the restaurant dealt with tricky guests. She’d been like a fabulous big sister. And Mum loved her, loved her like a little sister probably. And then Lori had gone, left. It had been so sudden, one minute she was there, the next, vanished. As the youngest, Rory had felt it the most.
