Page 77 of The Retreat
Celeste. Jade. Marcus. Daniel. Rebecca. All gathered in the lobby with coats on and luggage in hand. The last of the Monroe party.
Everyone looked up at once.
Talia stopped walking. Imogen, just behind her, faltered. For a second, no one spoke. The silence was so heavy it made Talia’s ears ring.
Celeste’s mouth flattened. Jade raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. Marcus glanced down at the floor. Rebecca smiled nervously, then looked away.
Imogen was the one who moved first, stepping up beside her. She didn’t say a word, but her presence steadied Talia.
‘Keep walking,’ Talia murmured.
Imogen gave a tiny nod, eyes flicking warily across the group as they walked down the stairs, which were now roughly ten miles long.
But before they could reach the door, the sound of tyres on gravel made everyone turn. A cab had just pulled up outside. They watched through the window as the driver got out, opened the back door, and out stepped Rhona.
The driver pushed open the double doors to allow her through, and she said, ‘Thank you, Steve. Could someone pay him, please? I don’t have my purse.’
Rebecca trotted over. Steve had a card machine ready, and she tapped it. ‘I’ll need a receipt,’ she warned him.
‘Are you OK?’ Celeste asked as the driver left.
Rhona looked paler than usual, her hospital bracelet just visible under the cuff of her jumper. ‘I’m fine. I was just dehydrated, as it turned out. Not that those quacks would let me go. I sleptterriblyin that hospital.’
Celeste let out a sigh of relief. But Rhona didn’t notice. She was too busy picking up the weird vibe in the lobby.
‘Well, what did I miss?’ she asked, blinking at the frozen tableau before her.
Nobody answered right away. Then Jade, always willing to take centre stage, stepped forward, arms crossed, and delivered the story in short, sharp bursts, getting right down to brass tacks. Talia was a fraud who’d made up a girlfriend and had gotten some random to play the part of the hot doctor.
‘And she doesn’t even know basic first aid!’ Jade exclaimed as a dramatic denouement. As the least shocking part of the story, Talia felt it fell a bit flat.
Rhona absorbed it all in silence, her gaze moving between them. When Jade finished, she looked at Talia, then at Imogen. Her mouth twisted, not in disgust but in weary resignation.
‘Right. Well. I’ve got to say... I’m not surprised.’
Celeste bristled. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Am I supposed to be?’ Rhona asked.
Jade, Rebecca, and Celeste said, ‘YES!’ all at once.
‘Come on, Celeste.’ Rhona turned to her, voice low and steady. ‘You’re just like your father. You want the company to look perfect. You wantusto look perfect. You’d burn the whole house down before you let anyone see a crack in the walls.’
Celeste flushed. ‘That’s not true.’
Rhona didn’t blink. ‘Itis. That’s why people lie. Why they hide things. You make it impossible to be anything other thanspotless.’ She gestured toward Talia. ‘I don’t blame her. We’ve all played the game. Eighty-hour weeks. No sick days. Smiling at clients while your relationship crumbles, or your sister’s in hospital, or your life’s coming apart at the seams. No wonder she cracked.’
Celeste’s eyes had gone glassy, but she said nothing. No one responded at all.
Marcus cleared his throat. ‘You’ll need help packing,’ he said to Rhona. She nodded, and they went up the stairs.
Jade muttered something about needing to be somewhere. One by one, they left. Celeste was the last one left, besides Talia and Imogen. She lingered a moment longer than the rest, opened her mouth, then seemed to think better of it. She turned and followed the others out, heels clicking like punctuation marks on the polished floor.
It was over.
Imogen and Talia stood side by side in the empty lobby, the hum of the lift behind them, the scent of cold coffee in the air.
‘Well,’ Imogen said after a long silence, her voice dry. ‘That could’ve gone worse.’
