Page 31 of The Island Villa

Cassie took the road out of the airport, drove until the sea appeared in front of her and then took a left along the sea front. She knew the route so well she didn’t have to think about it. The Old Fortress crouched on a hill, while all around was the sea, shades of turquoise and green under a cloudless blue sky.

Oh, how she wished she were diving into it right now, instead of being trapped in a hot car with someone who didn’t want to be here.

She rooted around in her brain for a safe topic of conversation. Not the wedding, because that would inevitably be controversial. She needed to keep things neutral.

“A car drove into the wall here yesterday.” She gestured to the rubble that was still piled at the side of the road. “Mum and I were stuck here for an hour.”

Adeline turned to look at her. “She met you at the airport?”

Too late, Cassie suddenly realized how that must look and feel. Their mother had stood in the baking heat, waiting for Cassie to arrive the day before, but she hadn’t offered to make the trip to the airport to pick up Adeline. She’d left that to her sister.

And now she knew the true meaning of the word discomfort.

“She had to be in town anyway. She was seeing her lawyer.” It was the truth, but both of them knew it wasn’t the whole truth and Adeline didn’t respond.

Cassie shifted in her seat. Guilt sat like a stone in her stomach. If she didn’t have this almost unstoppable need to fill every silence, she wouldn’t have said anything. She wished now that her mother hadn’t come in person to meet her. Or that she’d insisted on meeting Adeline too. Maybe Cassie should have suggested it, but her mother had been hunched over her laptop, typing away frantically, and everyone who knew Catherine Swift knew better than to disturb her when her fingers were moving and her eyes were on the screen.

She knew that her mother and Adeline weren’t close. It was something she’d just accepted as a fact. It was just one of those things. It happened. It was understandable. She’d assumed that Adeline didn’t care, but now she wondered about that. What if she did care? What if she was hurt? It bothered her that she had no idea how her sister was feeling.

Cassie glanced at her briefly, but Adeline had turned her head away and was staring out the window, leaving Cassie with a view of the back of her head.

What did that mean? Was she admiring the view, or hiding her emotions?

Adeline wasn’t an emotional person.

Or was she?

Cassie decided a law should be passed to compel people to at least give a clue about their emotions. If you didn’t know how someone was feeling, how could you say the right thing? And she desperately wanted to say the right thing. In her mind, she imagined a scenario where Adeline said to her, Thank you, talking to you has helped so much. And then they hugged.

She almost laughed at herself.

Hugged. Like that was going to happen. Cassie couldn’t remember a time when her sister had hugged her.

She stared at the road and tried to imagine how she’d feel if she were Adeline.

She hadn’t been back to Corfu since her mother’s last wedding, five years earlier, so clearly she didn’t love it here. She didn’t see the place as home, the way Cassie did.

And why would she? This was the place where her parents’ marriage had disintegrated. She’d gone to live with her father when she was ten.

Cassie wanted to say something. She wanted to acknowledge that this was difficult, so that Adeline didn’t feel alone. She wanted to say I’m sorry if this is hard.

Guilt washed over her. A small part of her felt that she’d ruined her sister’s life, and it didn’t matter how often she reasoned that she couldn’t be held responsible for being born, she still felt bad.

She glanced at her sister again.

Adeline was still staring out of the window.

Cassie took a deep breath. “Are you okay?” She jumped right in before she could change her mind, like a swimmer plunging into cold water. Of course, everything wasn’t okay. But she didn’t know her sister well enough to know how to handle it. They were family, and yet they weren’t family. They were like pieces of the same jigsaw that just didn’t fit.

Adeline didn’t respond and Cassie took another swift glance at her and saw her throat move.

Was she crying? Crap, crap.

Cassie felt her chest ache, and with a soft curse, swung the wheel hard and pulled into an empty space alongside the road. Horns blared in protest and she waved a hand by way of apology. Maybe she had more of her mother in her than she’d thought.

Nothing was okay and pretending that it was and trying to be normal was exhausting. It was time for honesty.

“Adeline...”

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