“Ask her yourself.” Claire was definitely trying to meddle.
“I might just do that.” She gave me a wicked grin that made me stifle a shudder.
I passed Niamh back to her and carried on swimming, my head full of a certain redhead wearing a white bikini, for my eyes only.
Marie Callaghan wasa difficult person to avoid, so I figured I’d done a pretty good job by keeping out of her way for the first four days of the holiday. I'd seen her at the mealtimes that we’d shared together as a family, and a handful of times when there’d been a few of us sat round the pool, but so far, I'd managed to avoid being on my own with her.
Everyone else had gone back to their rooms for a shower or a late afternoon snooze. I'd already spent most of the afternoon asleep on a sun lounger, and then I dived in the shower before everyone else, having realised that there was only so much hot water and that Callum still liked to use up most of it in one of his forty-five-minute showers.
I sat at one of the outside tables, with my shades on, and a paperback thriller in front of me. I liked reading, to the extent where I’d toyed around with the idea of writing a book - it was just finding the time. I'd started reading this book this morning, and other than taking a nap I hadn't been able to put it down.
I didn’t notice my mother coming towards the table until it was too late. If I’d seen her, I’d have dashed away with the excuse I suddenly needed the bathroom or I had the sudden urge to pray – not that she’d have believed that.
But I definitely wouldn’t have been still sitting there, easy pickings for her to dig into about the prospects of finally marrying me off.
“I know you’ve been avoiding me, Joseph.”
I pretended I hadn’t heard her.
“And I know you haven’t gone suddenly deaf, either.”
Where were my siblings when I needed them to interrupt?
“Sorry, Mum, what was that?” I waved my book at her. “It’s really good, this.”
She sat down opposite me, putting a martini down in front of her. “I’m sure it is. How’s Georgia?”
“And she cuts straight to the point, blade sharpened.” I folded the corner of the page where I was up to and put my book down. “She’s good. In Spain at her mum’s.”
“Why isn’t she here?”
I knew that my mother already knew exactly what had happened. There was no way she’d left me alone this long unless she’d already found out enough.
I let out a long sigh and braced myself. “She wanted to slow things down. She thought things had gone too fast.” I talked her through the conversation.
My mother said little, just nodding and sipping at her drink. She and my father were going out for a meal by themselves tonight, leaving the rest of us home, cooking up random dishes between us and making an inevitable mess that would have her shouting at us when she got back.
Some things never changed, no matter how old we were or where we were in the world.
“But you haven’t split up?”
“No. We’re talking tonight. We’re texting. I guess I’m just worried that we’ll end up being friends and, well, nothing more.”
She nodded. “And you still want more with her?”
“Yes. I want everything with her.” It was easy to say the words aloud now I’d spent so much time thinking about it.
“Have you told her?”
I shook my head. “I never found the perfect moment, and now it’d just sound desperate.”
“Joseph, there’s no such thing as the perfect moment. Your father proposed to me in a lift. One he’d pressed the emergency button, so we were stuck together and I had to listen to him.” She smiled, her eyes lighting up with the memory.
“How long had you known each other before he proposed?”
“Ten days. We argued – in and out of court – and went for dinner together, and I won’t tell you what else we did…”
“Please don’t.”
