Page 39 of Two Wrongs
‘And this?’ She holds up a bag from the bakery. The one holding the remains of a chocolate donut.Just a smidge of chocolate icing, really.‘I bet it was fried in animal fat,’ she taunts.
I don’t deign to answer; my back still to her as I begin to wash my hands. It wasn’t—fried in animal fat, that is—because I’d asked. The strange thing is I think I’d have still rammed the thing down my throat if it had been in animal fatandinside a beef pie. That was a donut I’d craved so badly this morning, along with the cappuccino with extra sugar.My mother would call it eating my feelings.
‘It’s like I don’t even know you.’ Nat’s eyes do an obvious up then down sweep of my body. ‘And if I saw you on the street, I don’t think I’d recognise you these days. Where’s your fucking spark?’
I laugh. Hard.
No, I mean, my laugh is hard.
‘I’m serious. Since you came back, you’ve not been the same. Quiet and grumpy—you don’t even do your hair!’ My hand goes to my messy bun self-consciously because she’s right. ‘You’re a shite advert for this place. Put some bloody lippy on—reintroduce your hair to theGHDs.’ She pauses, her lips pursing as she looks at me with a sudden intensity. ‘Is this about Fin?’
I breathe quite suddenly, relieved at the direction of her assumptions. Nat may be brash and loud, but sometimes, she’s emotionally astute.Yeah, sometimes.
‘Fin is fine,’ I mumble, grabbing a dishcloth to dry my wet hands. ‘Or at least she will be, so long as she doesn’t find out about that... that bum hole turning up all the time.’
In this instance, thebum holein question is Rory Tremaine; the man who’d given my bestie the run around while I was in LA. The pair had been hooking up—casual, she’d said, and still maintains it was—until it became something entirely else. Something heartbreaking, it turns out.Which is exactly why I’d warned her against becoming involved in her emotional state. Finding out your dead husband had been cheating ... and then all the other stuff.As it was, Fin discovered recently that Rory’s about to become a father; whether by an old girlfriend or a current one is less clear.
I clasp the dishcloth tightly between my fingers.Poor Fin. While plenty shocking, these aren’t even the most deplorable of her recent discoveries. No,thataccolade would belong to Fin finding out that her less than darling husband had plans beyond a suicide. Plans that were so wretched, I can’t even speak of them without wanting to rage.
Dead? Right now I could kill him myself.
‘He seems serious about being in Auchkeld every weekend until he finds her.’
‘What?’ Nat’s words bring me back to the moment.
‘That bloke, Rory, and what he threatened last weekend. He’s gonna keep turning up, isn’t he?’
‘He can please himself—come until he’s as sick of this awfuldriechtweather as we are because I’m not telling him a thing.’ Since my return, the weather has been like a Morrissey tune.Bloody miserable.‘He doesn’t deserve to know where Fin is after what he put her through, whether he realised he made some woman pregnant or not.’ I shake my head angrily. ‘She’s been through enough.’
‘It might not be all his fault, Ivy. Maybe he didn’t know.’
I raise my head from my second attempt at mixing tint. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re not taking his side, are you?’
‘I’ve been glared at by much scarier people than you,’ Nat answers, her words bland. ‘I’m not on his side. I’m on hers, but she also didn’t tell him about being a widow.’
‘Yeah, well, turned out she wasn’t, was she?’ It’s as confusing as all buggery.
‘That’s not the point. They were both keeping secrets, and that’s not healthy for any relationship. Ivy, that man has it hard for her. Can you no’ tell? I mean why else would he be bothering us when he could be out doin’ someone else?’
‘I don’t give a stuff who he does, so long as he’s nowhere near Fin. And I’ll damn sure keep her away from Scotland until he takes the hint.’ I’ve even booked train tickets to travel to London next weekend to visit. It’s where she’s working now.
‘It’s not your place to make decisions for her. At some point, she’s gonna work out you’re trying to keep her out of Auchkeld.’
‘Yeah, well, by that time, she’ll be over him. She’s in no hurry to return to a place she has no ties.’
‘You’re her ties, Ivy.We’reher ties.’
‘Good job I’m booked on the train to see her soon then, isn’t it? I suggest you do the same.’
‘So that’s it? That’s your big plan? What about stopping him from being here and calling week after week? With the big house near to opening, he’ll be around plenty.’
‘I might have to ask Mac to have a word with him.’ My responding tone is grim.
‘You mean you’ll ask him to do the big brother thing.’ When I don’t answer, she adds, ‘You’re gonna get Mac to threaten him?’
‘If that’s what it takes.’
We stare at each other, neither one willing to budge an inch, when the door to the kitchen opens. We both turn our heads.
