‘Damn it, Tania. Just tell me. Tell me it’s a load of rubbish, that Lysander made it up.’ He pocketed the phone, staring at her with a hunted look in his eyes. ‘Please say it’s not true.’
‘Why does it matter so much? You’re acting as if having a sex life should be punishable by being burned at the stake. Which, after what we’ve done today, is a rather hypocritical standpoint, don’t you think? Anyway, it’s the twenty-first century, Gull, in case you hadn’t noticed. People can sleep with whoever they like. Or didn’t you get that memo?’
He shook his head. ‘Not when it destroys families,’ he said, quietly.
Tania grabbed her own phone, scrolling newsfeeds to see if Rory and his wife had split. She felt hot, then cold, at the thought she might have wrecked the world of an as yet unborn child. Was that what he meant? She came across the same story Gull had already shown her but couldn’t find anything more recent featuring Rory. The news from the last few days seemed dominated by Storm Clara, and the death of one of the original members of a seventies rock band.
Destroyed whose family? She looked at him for an explanation, then googled Rory’s name to be sure. ‘I haven’t destroyed anybody’s family,’ she said. ‘It was just a stupid fling. God knows Rory’s had enough of them. It didn’t mean anything. It was a way of annoying my father, if you really must know.’ She eyed him for his reaction.
‘That’s what Ellie’s husband said, too. That it was just a stupid fling. That it didn’t mean anything.’ Gull folded onto the edge of the bed, putting his head into his hands.
Ellie? Who was Ellie? And then realisation began to dawn on Tania, like the first tendrils of fear as they slid around her muscles when she lost control on sheet ice. Ellie was Gull’s sister. Married. Pregnant. Cheated on.
Tania stared at her phone, as if Gull’s sister’s story might scroll into the screen and replace the last press photo of the paper-thin skeletal frame of Tony Finkle, recently deceased lead singer of The Panthers.
‘I’m the first person to admit I’m no angel,’ she said, setting her phone down on the bedside table. She took a seat on the tousled duvet, unable to ignore the way the pillows were still dented from where Gull had lain, only minutes before. ‘But I don’t go out of my way to hurt people, Gull.’ She revised that statement in her head– she had gone out of her way to hurt her father. Or, at least, to try to.
Gull sighed. ‘David and I tried to persuade Ellie to come with us on this trip, thought some time away might help her to think clearly. But she said she couldn’t cope, it was all too much.’ He drew in a ragged breath. ‘She found out Harry was cheating on her quite by chance. None of us had any idea. What’s worse is the woman is someone Ellie knows. She introduced them, for God’s sake. She said she felt so stupid that she didn’t realise.’ He shook his head. ‘He must have known Ellie was pregnant before he started the affair. They both must have. And they did it anyway. Bastards.’ He spat the final word out with vitriol, his fists closing tightly enough to turn his knuckles white.
Tania closed her eyes. Wondered what it would be like for Rory Flannagan’s wife if she believed her husband was cheating. Wondered if Rory and his wife had been planning to start a family before Tania began seeing him. Wondered, properly, what it would be like for Rory’s wife to make that discovery. She tried to tell herself that it was different, somehow. That fidelity wore a different coloured coat in the kind of circles people like Rory Flannagan moved in, and his wife also knew that. She must have known what she signed up for when she married an A-list actor. Just as Tania’s stepmother, Brigitte, had known all along that Anthony still visited Tania’s mother, every now and again. And that the visits weren’t to enjoy a cup of tea and a chat about the weather.
Tania knew she was clutching at straws, though. She could try to rationalise it any way she liked; the fact remained. She had slept with a married man. She had been in no doubt of his marital status, and she’d done it anyway. However hard she tried to dress it down, however much she’d tried to absolve herself, she couldn’t wriggle away from the facts.
She tilted her chin. ‘Yes, Gull, I’m the mystery woman. If I’m ever named, by the time my family’s lawyers are finished, it will be as if I never even met Rory Flannagan,’ she said. ‘But I did sleep with him. I did it to punish my father for what he did to my mother. I’m not expecting you to understand that, and I’m not going to explain, there’s no point if you’ve made your mind up to go. But you need to know that I’m not going to pretend to have an excuse. It happened. And when I found out that Barbara Flannagan’s pregnant? I told Rory I wasn’t going to see him again. I haven’t seen him again.’
‘Damn it, Tania. It’s true, then?’
She nodded. There didn’t seem to be much else she could do.
He swore quietly, over and over again, then drew in a deep breath. ‘Just when I find someone who blows my mind.’ He glanced at her. ‘You blow my mind, Tania. I honestly feel like the whole of my life has been a rehearsal for this week, for meeting you. And now I don’t know what the hell to do. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me you don’t care about things like marriage vows, commitment? Family. I would never have allowed things to go this far if I’d known.’
‘But I do care. What do you mean?’
‘The afternoon I damaged my knee, when I came here and told you about Ellie’s husband– you agreed with me. You said you didn’t know how anyone could do something like that. But you’ve done exactly the same to that man’s wife.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘This is a nightmare. How can I give Ellie my hundred per cent support and be seeing someone who has done exactly the same thing as her so-called friend?’ His head sank into his hands again.
‘I don’t know, Gull.’
Silence descended on the room. Tania pulled the sleeves of her jumper down until they engulfed her hands, then wrapped her arms around herself. She shivered again. It felt as if every heat source had been switched off, and the whole world was cooling down. That it might never warm up again. She could even hear the ticking of a cooling radiator, except that the radiators stayed on all night in the lodge. She listened more carefully, deciding it must be the wind outside, pulsing snow against the glass.
‘I’m going to go back to my chalet,’ he said, breaking the quiet. ‘I need to think. My head is scrambled.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ she said. She wrapped her arms against her body a little harder, aware her natural reaction to this kind of situation was reasserting itself. Her internal battalion of soldiers was hastily pulling on their uniform jackets and buttoning them up as they ran to form the line, to encircle and close her emotions down. To hold that line at all costs and shut him out, to minimise the pain. ‘But nobody’s perfect, Gull. I’m not perfect. And I don’t know who you did think I was, but whoever that woman was, she was a million miles away from being perfect, too.’
‘Will you let me call you tomorrow? Can we talk then?’
‘Once you’ve had a chance to discuss me with your friends, your brother? Once you’ve passed judgement on me? No thanks.’ The words hitched in her throat, but this had started as nothing more than a prospective holiday fling. And she could shut it back down into being nothing more than that if she needed to.
‘No one’s passing judgement on you.’
‘You already did.’ She sighed. ‘Everybody does. If you want to leave, that’s fine. I’m not going to stop you. But don’t call me tomorrow. Or ever.’
He frowned. ‘Why not?’
‘Why not?’ Tania elbowed her battalion of internal soldiers out of the way. ‘In the space of five days, you’ve gone from being a prat who made a clumsy drunken pass at me to someone I was genuinely beginning to think I could fall in love with. I’m sorry about your sister, but I won’t be held to ransom by a situation I had nothing to do with.’
‘Fall in love with?’ Gull stared at her. He looked wrong-footed.
She shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ she said. A couple of the soldiers in her battalion lit up cigarettes and glanced at one another, unsure what they should do next. One of them kicked a roll of razor wire they’d carried out, as if it had just become redundant.
