‘About time. Once things are in place, he’ll relax a bit more. Being here has helped, and you …’
April went to protest but Martha shot her a knowing look. ‘You have helped him, just as much as he’s helped you.’ She added a stiff nod to her words, and April found herself dipping her head in agreement. Either that, or she was scared of getting a lecture. She felt a bit fragile at it was. ‘He’s had a lot of stress. Like you. Tina is a little chaotic, but she won’t be around forever. Not this version of her anyway. People change. Things will work out in the end.’
‘Sometimes they don’t,’ April said coldly, thinking of Cillian’s hard stare, his ex, their child. It was far too messy to get involved in. She thought of Duncan, swinging his dick around his office, the big man about town with his new family to look forward to. The barren wife with the puppy fat he once loved cast out like an old soggy teabag. Be happy, April. Those three words were, as Cillian might say, a fecking insult. She brushed an angry tear away. ‘The man I loved second most in this world broke my heart into so many different pieces, I don’t know how he ever fooled me in the first place. The man he is now is nothing like the groom who signed our marriage certificate. I hate him, I think.’ She paused, taking a deep breath and thinking about it honestly. ‘Maybe that was it. Maybe this place is my new goal in life. That should be enough.’
She looked at the box, thinking of what could be inside, what Martha wanted to share. ‘And yes, I really think I hate him. How can anything after that, after Tina, work out? It won’t, and not everyone gets a happy ever after, Martha.’
‘No, they don’t, but it’s worth a shot.’ She shifted in her seat, lifting the lid and pulling out a letter from the neat stack of cream envelopes. She opened the letter up, read a few lines and passed it over.
‘Start with this one, but read them in order, okay?’ Her hands were shaking, and it wasn’t the April weather. It was rather beautiful now, warm air fragrant with the smells of the fresh bark and the wild flowers around them. Even the grass smelled amazing, making April feel just a little less wretched. She went to open the letter, but Martha stopped her.
‘Not now, please. Wait till you have a minute, read them on your own.’ Martha smiled at her, the straggled mess that she was, and she realised that they’d bonded, in an odd way. Hell, if they had been the same age they would probably have been friends back then. April would have liked that, and she realised it applied now too. She saw so much of herself in Martha, and she wondered if Martha thought the same, in an odd way. When she had started drawing her that day on the porch, it had seemed to wake Martha up a little. Maybe rage was good for the creative juices. April found herself hoping that by doing this, by trusting someone else with her secrets, Martha could finally free herself. Paint once more. She knew she’d been trying. The splotches of paint were like breadcrumbs.
‘Not everyone gets a happy ever after, you’re right there, but it doesn’t mean a life ill spent.’ Martha looked across the expanse of the park, back towards town. ‘When I was a girl, my family were friends with another family, and they had a son. My Charlie.’ She smiled then, and April wondered once more why just thinking of a person could change another person from the inside out in an instant. ‘We holidayed here, not having much money for travelling in those days. We weren’t bothered. Cornwall was where people travelled for miles to see, still is, and we had it on our doorstep for free. We liked to spend time with the other family, and Charlie and I grew close. In truth, he didn’t set my heart alight, but I loved him just the same.’
April couldn’t help but think of how different Cillian felt to Duncan. It wasn’t just the first stirrings of lust that differed between the two men; she knew that.
‘One night, I met a young man here, and it changed my life.’ A single tear escaped down Martha’s cheek, and she welled up further. ‘I didn’t do what you did April – I didn’t follow my heart. Not until it was too late, and I’ve lived a half-lived life ever since. No children to occupy me, I painted instead. He loved art, and books, and music, just like me. We would spend hours talking about things. I loved my Charlie dearly, but he wasn’t the one. We can love more than one person in our lives, fiercely. Remember that when you open the box. After Charlie passed, I needed to be somewhere familiar. Somewhere that wasn’t just him and I, because that time was gone. This place was where we met, all those years ago. It just felt right, and then you came …’
‘And it all hit the fan?’ April quipped, her usual attempt at awkward humour this time hitting the bull’s eye.
Martha laughed, but then her face fell. The noise of a delivery truck came from the entrance, a low rumble as it drove closer. ‘Er … not quite, but …’
She reached for the letter still in April’s hand and placed it at the very front of the box.
‘Is your door unlocked?’ she asked, her eyes darting from the truck to the chalets to April like pinballs. ‘I’ll just put these safe.’
‘Oh, okay.’ April watched Martha stuff the box under her arm like a thick-thighed winger would a rugby ball, and take off, her paint-splattered clothing making her look like a kind of rainbow. A sweaty one.
‘What got into her, I wonder,’
