To Love and Be Loved(25)

‘That makes two of us.’ It hurt to see her mum flustered and concerned on a day that had held so much promise.

‘You want me to come with you?’ Her dad swivelled round on his chair.

‘No, Dad, but thank you. I love you.’ She let her eyes sweep her family, whose sadness slipped from them and pooled on the floor. They all looked a little slumped, weighed down by a mixture of disappointment and impotence. ‘And I’m sorry.’

‘You have nothing to be sorry for! Nothing!’ Her dad’s voice caught.

The money! You have worked hard and saved hard and spent money, and now this . . . and Mum works for Loretta and I’ve caused all of this! I feel sick . . . Shock and grief rendered her unable to express this.

‘And we love you,’ he continued, ‘more than you’ll ever know.’

Merrin shut the front door behind her and ran across the cobbles. It felt good to be exerting her body, as if a little of the tightly packed grief in her system was released. She looked out towards the cove and spied Jarvis holding the bottom of a tall aluminium ladder and Robin leaning out with his arms outstretched, removing the sign from the side of the Old Boat Shed. She was thankful to them both, but especially her mate Jarvis, who had been so wonderful when she needed him most. It was as she made her way towards the back of the pub that she spied Ruby walking along Fore Street, coming up towards the slipway.

‘Hey!’ she called, and waved. Her sister, she noted, had tucked the long skirt of her dress into her knickers, probably so she could run more easily. She was also, rather ominously, holding one hand inside the other. Merrin broke into a run until she caught up with her.

‘Did you find him? Where is he?’ She spoke quickly, her stomach bunched at the thought of facing him and her breath coming in nervous pants.

Ruby couldn’t look her in the eye and kicked at the ground. ‘Yeah, I found him.’

‘Did you talk to him? What did he say?’ Her chest heaved with urgency.

‘Not much. He wanted to know where you were,’ Ruby explained, and just to know that he had asked after her was enough to send a jolt of positivity through Merrin. Maybe all was not lost.

‘What did you say? Is he waiting for me?’ Merrin’s voice had gone up an octave.

‘Not exactly, and yes, he did ask where you were, but I don’t know if it was because he wanted to find you or wanted to avoid you,’ Ruby levelled.

‘So where is he now? Tell me!’ Merrin’s tone was that of someone whose desperation was not matched by the person she was talking to. Her fingers splayed and twitched; time was of the essence.

‘I think he was heading out on the coast path.’ Her sister offered this quietly.

The coast path, out towards Reunion Point, the place he proposed . . .

‘What have you done to your hand?’

‘Nothing.’ Ruby hid it behind her back.

‘Did . . . did you hurt him?’ Merrin hated her level of concern after what Digby had done, her humiliation still raw.

‘Only his nose.’ Her sister smiled and flexed her knuckles.

‘God, Ruby, why? You just can’t leave things alone, can you!’

‘Calm down! I’m joking. I didn’t hit him, but I might have smacked a wall and pretended it was him. And you should be thanking me for having your back, not worrying about that arsehole! That’s typical of you.’

The fact that Ruby had hurt herself on her account added another fine layer of guilt to dust Merrin’s bones, atop the horrible sinking feeling in her gut because her parents were out of pocket, and at the thought of her mum’s awkwardness when she next went to work. Her lovely mum, who only wanted to go into a house, scrub it and leave, cleaning ninjas . . .

‘You can’t punch your way through life!’ Merrin paced back and forth. ‘Hitting him or a wall or anything else does nothing to help me, nothing at all, it’s just another shit thing to deal with. I give up!’

Leaving her sister standing near the slipway, she raced along the road that met up with the coast path, her heart beating faster and faster as she climbed higher and higher.

‘Oh, and you’re very welcome! As I said, you’re lucky I care enough to want to sort him out! Thank you, Ruby!’ her sister yelled after her.

Merrin ignored her, without the energy for anything other than finding and speaking to Digby. There was only one way into and out of the spit of land so if he was heading back to town, she would see him. Inside, she felt a strange mixture of joy and trepidation at the thought of coming face to face with the man she should by now be married to. My husband . . . It was a thought that had sustained her since he had proposed. In fact, from their first conversation, he had filled her thoughts and crowded out any suggestions of a future without him. Because it was love, pure and simple. A deep, deep, all-consuming love. Not that she had believed in such things until it happened to her.

Merrin’s life had changed in a minute on the day she met him. She had woken on a ‘couldn’t be bothered’ day. With her hair unwashed and half tied up on top of her head, her clothes plucked from a pile on the bedroom floor and her less than fragrant trainers shoved on to her feet, she had set off up the coastal path in her mother’s shadow to help her clean the Mortimers’ house. It was only hindsight that would leave her wishing she had scrubbed, fussed and groomed until she sparkled.