‘I gave up on that when I buried Rory,’ she said flatly. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to do.’
‘Can I help you pack?’ He should butt out, he thought. He was adding to her distress just by being here. He felt so damned helpless…
‘I would appreciate help in Angus’s room,’ she said, and then looked as if she regretted saying it.
‘What needs doing in Angus’s room?’
‘It’s just…’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve never cleared it out. I mean, it all belongs to you but I thought…his personal stuff…most of it needs to be thrown away but I don’t want Marcia doing it.’ The last few words were said in a rush, fiercely, and he thought she’d burst into tears but she didn’t. She was pale and almost defiant, tilting her chin as though expecting to meet a fight.
‘Marcia’s the least sentimental of all of us,’ he said mildly and her chin came forward another inch.
‘All the more reason why she shouldn’t be the one who takes care of it.’
So on a night when she should be doing her own personal packing, when the last vestiges of the search party made vain sweeps of the beach and the hillside looking for Taffy, when Kirsty and Jake cared for the kids so Susie could spend one night alone with her memories, she and Hamish sat on Angus’s bedroom floor and sorted… stuff.
Stuff.
Deirdre’s stuff and Angus’s stuff. The old man hadn’t cleared his wife’s things, and everything was still there.
The clothes were easy. They’d go to the welfare shops. Hamish could be trusted with that so, with the exception of Angus’s kilt and sporran and beret, they were bundled into boxes to be carted away.
But the kilt and beret and sporran… ‘I don’t know what to do with these,’ Susie whispered, holding up a kilt that was far too small for Hamish.
Hamish fingered the fabric, watching the graceful fall of the pleats, thinking of the times Angus must have worn this, the number of fetes he’d opened in this town, the affection in which he’d been held.
‘Is there a local museum?’
‘No.’
‘A library maybe?’
‘Yes…’
‘Then why don’t we donate it as a display?’ he suggested. ‘I could donate the cost of a display cabinet. We could put Angus’s and Deirdre’s photos in it, photos that show them as they were, vibrant and having fun, and set this costume up beside it. Do you think the locals would like it?’
There was a moment’s hesitation. Had he said the wrong thing?
Would she cry?
She didn’t cry. ‘That’d be wonderful,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Can I leave it with you to see that it’s done?’
‘Of course.’
She nodded, a brisk, businesslike little nod that had him wishing, wishing she’d falter a little, give him room…
Room to what?
‘I’m not marrying Marcia,’ he said into the stillness, and her head jerked up from the papers she was sorting.
‘You’re what?’
He hadn’t even known he was going to say it. He hadn’t even really thought about it.
Or maybe he had.
He’d approached marriage to Marcia as he approached business propositions, he thought. The marriage would be advantageous to both of them. But these last few days had been like the switching on of a lightbulb in a dimly lit room. Suddenly he could see colour where before he’d only seen grey.
Suddenly he’d not only stopped fearing emotion, he was thinking a bit more emotion wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Like Susie crying so he could hug her better?
‘Does Marcia know you’re not marrying her?’ Susie asked. Her head lowered again, and her voice dulled. She was in a grey world of her own right now, he thought, methodically packing stuff into boxes, lifting Angus’s papers, checking them, putting unwanted ones in a pile to be burned. Shifting the detritus of a past life. Absorbed in her own misery.
‘I’ll tell her tonight.’
‘I’d appreciate it if you left it until I was gone. She’s going to blame me.’
‘Why should she blame you?’
There was a twisted smile at that. ‘I’m a corrupting influence,’ she said dryly. ‘I make you leave your Blackberry at home when we go to the beach.’
‘That’s a good thing, too,’ he said stoutly and then watched her for a bit more as she went back to sorting papers. ‘Susie, do you have to do this? I can do it after you leave.’
‘Angus would want me to. I should have done it before this. I just…I couldn’t bear to.’ She hesitated. ‘Will Marcia be upset, do you think?’
He thought about it. Would Marcia be heartbroken? No. But maybe her pride would be hurt. ‘I think maybe I should have told her before I told you,’ he said ruefully.
‘Yeah, she’d hate that. Well, forget you told me. I’ll forget I know.’
‘I need you to know,’ he said softly, and it was true.
Silence. She bent her head over her sheath of documents. A pile of notepaper, pastel blue.
More silence. Where was he going here? He didn’t know.
Five minutes ago he’d been engaged to Marcia. He still could be, he thought, confused. What he’d said didn’t have to go out of this room. It wasn’t irrevocable.
But it was irrevocable, and the more he thought about it the more irrevocable it seemed. Engaged? He wasn’t engaged to Marcia. Engaged meant entwined, linked, connected. He surely wasn’t entwined, linked, connected to Marcia.
Tonight he’d watched Kirsty and Jake over the dinner table. He’d seen their eyes meet as they’d shared their distress. And that glance… It had been nothing, but it had meant everything.
He wanted that sort of communication with the woman he married. He didn’t want to share a beach-towel with a laptop.
‘Go to bed,’ he told Susie, softly because he wasn’t sure what his head was doing-where his thoughts were taking him. He needed time to think this through.
‘These are personal. I need to sort them.’
‘I’ll pack them up and send them to you.’
‘No. You pack the clothes.’
‘Susie, you need to pack your own gear. The way you’re going you won’t get to bed tonight. It’s not as if you can sleep on the plane. Rose will be a full-time job.’
‘That’s not your business,’ she snapped.
It wasn’t. But, hell, he couldn’t bear to see this.
‘There’s nothing so personal-’
‘These are letters,’ she cut across his protest, fiercely angry. ‘These are personal letters.’
‘Then maybe we shouldn’t read them at all.’
‘No.’ Her anger faded a little at that, but the pain seemed to remain. She was kneeling on the floor by Angus’s bedside cabinet, papers spread around her. Still in her shorts and T-shirt, with her hair tangled and wisping round her face-the last thing she’d thought of today had been brushing her hair-she looked absurdly young. How could this slip of a girl be a mother? Hamish wondered. How could she be a landscape gardener by herself? Susie against the world?
‘Listen to this,’ she said softly, and he paused in his folding of sweaters and let himself watch her face again. She was holding herself rigidly under control, he thought, so rigidly that at any minute it seemed she might crack.
