One Night on the Island(11)

Even I’m confused now. I turn to look at Cleo. ‘Are you on your honeymoon?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ she snaps, irritated. ‘You know perfectly well I’m not on my bloody honeymoon. It’s probably my boss’s idea of a joke.’

Concentration furrows Brianne’s brow. I’m not surprised she’s having a hard time keeping up. So am I.

Cleo’s exaggerated sigh shudders up from her boots, a clear ‘can everyone please just stop speaking and listen to me’. I don’t think so. I need to get a word in here.

‘My cousin Barney owns Otter Lodge,’ I say.

Brianne’s face breaks into an easy, relieved smile. ‘Oh, so you’re Barney Doyle’s cousin? We were in school together. In fact, he was my secret crush when I was about six years old.’

She’s grinning, pink-cheeked, and so am I because here it is, bona-fide proof of my claim. The only person not loving this trip down memory lane is Cleo.

‘That’s so sweet.’ I laugh for a few seconds too long. ‘Anyway, Barney has offered me the lodge until New Year’s, so Cleo’s looking for someplace else on the island to stay.’

‘Hang on a minute.’ Cleo yanks her beanie off and thumps it down hard on the counter. ‘I’m not the one who needs a new place to stay.’

‘You might not realize this,’ I say, ‘but you express a lot of your anger through hats. Jamming them on, pulling them off, slamming them down.’

‘Oh, just piss right off,’ she says, unable to mask her annoyance.

‘My family owns Otter Lodge,’ I say, pressing my advantage. ‘You heard Brianne. She has a crush on my cousin.’

‘Had a crush,’ Brianne jumps in. ‘I haven’t seen Barney in at least fifteen years.’

‘He doesn’t live on the island then?’ Cleo says, homing in.

‘Not for a good few years now.’ Brianne’s eyes flick towards me, as if I might want to take over the story. ‘His mother moved them across to Donegal after her father died, if I recall correctly?’

I nod, non-committal, not wanting to let it be known that I’m hazy on the finer details.

‘So how do you know who’s letting the lodge?’ Cleo asks, cutting to the point, uninterested in my family history.

‘Alice usually emails me, Barney’s sister. She came back for a while when they first inherited Otter Lodge. These days she just sends me the name of who’s arriving so I can make sure the lodge is ready, hand out keys, that kind of stuff. I don’t really handle –’ she pauses delicately – ‘disputes.’

‘But my name is in your book,’ Cleo says.

Brianne nods, troubled. ‘It is.’

‘And my cousin owns the lodge,’ I say.

‘He does.’ Brianne shrugs her shoulders, unwilling to make the call. ‘It’s a fine mess, for sure.’

‘Okay. So one of us –’ I throw a look at Cleo – ‘needs somewhere else to stay tonight.’

‘You do,’ Cleo shoots, then turns to Brianne. ‘Can you point us in the direction of other lodgings, please?’

Brianne scrunches her face into a grimace that tells me she doesn’t want to say the thing she’s about to.

‘I’m afraid there isn’t anywhere else on the island.’

‘It doesn’t need to be fancy,’ Cleo presses on. ‘Anything will do.’

Speak for yourself, I think, but don’t say.

‘We’re just not set up for tourists here,’ Brianne says, regretful. ‘Never have been. Your family caused a fair bit of controversy opening Otter Lodge up to strangers, truth be told,’ she says, glancing at me. ‘Not everyone approved, even though it’s mostly been used by artists and professionals.’

‘There must be somewhere,’ I say because it’s sinking in that this situation might not actually be resolved. Up to now I’ve felt relatively confident that when it comes down to it, my family connection trumps her piece of paper, but in the absence of anywhere else to stay, things could get territorial. ‘An empty place? Someone with a guest room, even?’

Brianne thinks, but shakes her head slowly. ‘Honestly, nothing, we just don’t get unexpected visitors out here. We aren’t the kind of folk who keep a spare room ready just in case,’ she says. ‘You’ll get luckier on one of the bigger islands, or there’s places over on the mainland, obviously.’

‘I don’t want to stay on one of the bigger islands,’ Cleo says, bright-eyed and stubborn. ‘I’ve paid to stay at Otter Lodge, and that’s what I’m going to do.’

‘Is your husband coming to join you soon?’ Brianne asks.

Cleo turns her head slowly. Under different circumstances, I’d mention how the move reminds me of one of the baby raptors from Jurassic Park.

‘I think we’ve established that I’m not on my honeymoon,’ she says, through gritted teeth.

‘Oh, right. Are you on your honeymoon?’ Brianne asks me this time. ‘Maybe that’s where the confusion has come in?’

Okay. Not so funny. ‘Neither of us are on our honeymoon.’

Time to finish this. If there’s genuinely nowhere else on the island, one of us needs to leave Salvation and I don’t plan on it being me.