Page 54 of The Gin Sisters' Promise

‘Myles was always a scumbag. We tried to warn you before you married him. You never wanted to hear it, Iris. You believed him over your own sisters – how could you choose someone like Myles over your own flesh and blood?’ Tears and snot were running down Nola’s face. They combined to make her look like the little girl she’d been when their mother died and Georgie felt the guard around her heart crumble with a force of love she’d thought was long gone. It was only then she began to register some of the familiar faces in the large crowd gathered around them.

‘Come on.’ Georgie moved between them. She for one saw no need to air all their family secrets in public.

‘And as for you, when I needed you the most, when I had nowhere to live, no-one to fall back on, where were you with your fancy career? You couldn’t even make space for me in a lowly receptionist post,’ Nola railed at Georgie. ‘I was living in a squat and you were…’

‘Come on, Nola, not here.’ Georgie reached out to touch her sister’s arm.

‘Why not here, why not now?’ Nola screamed. ‘What is it? Can’t you admit to everyone what a cold ambitious bitch you’ve been?’ Nola pulled her arm away, was about to launch into another verbal attack when Georgie moved up close to her, kept her voice low.

‘Excuse me, but if you’d bothered to return my call, if you hadn’t been so busy partying with your mates every night of the week, I could have got you a really good job. I left a message with one of your mates and you…’ Georgie could feel what little self-control she had left deserting her now and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. ‘You never even bothered to turn up to the interview – it was in the bag, all you had to do was show up… And that was my reputation you were throwing away with your own chance, or did you even care about that?’ Georgie remembered now, so clearly, she had begged for that interview for Nola. She’d talked her up so bloody much.

‘What a load of total crock you talk, Georgie.’ Nola stood for a moment, looking at Georgie, studying her in a way that maybe convinced her of the truth of all those years earlier. ‘There was never any message from you.’ Now it was Nola’s turn to stand there like a fish taking in air while the world moved slowly past her. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, but there was no speech. There was nothing she could say, not really.

And then, instead of doing what their father would have wanted, Georgie found herself doing the exact opposite, and the worst of it was that she was completely aware of herself as if looking on from outside and entirely mortified at what she was seeing.

‘Admit it, you’d never wanted a real job, all you wanted was your glitzy career…’ She stopped to catch her breath. ‘Tea for me!’ Georgie mimicked cruelly in a sing-song voice. Georgie felt her head begin to swim, as if a tide of unspent resentment was carrying her far out into deep waters, unfathomable and defying any navigation back to land. ‘Hah!’ Her voice was so high-pitched, she startled herself. ‘You can’t even act like a grown-up and keep your cool for an afternoon on a stall at the village fete.’

And that was when the unthinkable happened; Georgie could see it coming but she was stuck to the spot, livid and maybe in shock that they could all let themselves down so badly. Nola reached down into some part of herself that maybe none of them ever thought she could reach and with every drop of disappointment and anger in her, she levelled a resounding slap across Georgie’s face.

Iris was on them in a flash, trying to separate them, but she lost her balance and Georgie watched her career towards them, a slow-motion figure, her expression tied up in a mixture of alarm and embarrassment.

But everything had slowed down, so the noise of Nola’s hand striking Georgie’s cheek seemed to echo across not just the now-silent fete, but back over the village, out beyond the church spire and right into that tiny corner of the graveyard where their parents were meant to be resting in peace.

They landed in a sorry heap at an almost perfect midpoint between the three stalls they were meant to be working on, with Georgie at the very bottom. When she raised her head, her eyes were level with the assorted footwear and ankles of what felt like half the village.Oh, my God – it was the centenary celebration all over again.

Iris was the first to disentangle herself, with Robert English wading through the crowd to pull her to her feet. Next, Aiden Barry stepped in gallantly and yanked both Nola and Georgie off the ground with more thought for speed than decorum or their dignity.

‘The storm is coming,’ he stated gruffly as he shoved them both ahead of him between the open-mouthed villagers.

Georgie was dazed, as much by her own part in the argument as anyone else’s, and Nola’s shocked expression was enough to know that she too had taken herself by surprise. They stumbled back towards their stalls as a growl of thunder yawned out across the fete. Somewhere, Georgie was aware of people around her pulling the stall down, gathering up the samples, shoving everything into bags, pulling the cover from it, then two of the men dragging it to the perimeter of the green.

Suddenly, she was standing there, alone, with her bags at her feet as the heavens opened and rain came crashing down, spiky and unrelenting against her skin, so that before she could think, she was already soaked through. Someone pulled her up. When she looked up, she saw that it was Aiden. He was dragging her away from the centre of the green, towards his jeep and then bundling her into the back seat, next to Iris, who was weeping as if her life were over. Nola was already sitting in the front seat, her neck rigid with tension.

The whole thing, this fight between them, this toxic connection felt as if it was falling away, disintegrating from within, robbed of the silence that had allowed it to ferment for far too long. It was melting like the witch inThe Wizard of Ozwith a glass of water, fizzing out of them. Georgie could feel it dissolving so it left her only with the gritty remains rather than the lifetime of simmering resentment that had marked out every moment since Myles Cutler had come between them all those years ago.

‘Oh my God,’ Iris murmured, because strangely, there was no need to shout, somehow the lashing rain on the windows was muffled so it was as if they were sitting in the deepest most drawn-out silence Georgie had ever experienced. ‘What have we done to each other?’

Nola began to cry, a soft pathetic keening sound as if they’d lost their parents and each other all over again.

‘It’s all right, Nola,’ Georgie said, reaching out to her, but Nola shook her hand away. And in that moment, Georgie wondered if anything would ever be all right again. They’d let themselves and their parents down. Among the faces of the crowd who had stood around them, Georgie remembered Stephen Leather. Oh, God, the look of disappointment in his eyes was enough to make her want to throw herself onto the ground and cry like a baby for all the damage they’d done to each other over the years. But it was too late now, wasn’t it?

*

Nola pushed open the heavy door of the jeep. She couldn’t get away from the fete or, more accurately, her sisters quickly enough. The truth was, she’d prefer to get double pneumonia than sit there for a moment longer with the pair of them.

Initially, all Nola could think was,Thank God, it’s the beginning of the summer holidays soon. And then it struck her – the drama school. What parent would want to send their child for her to teach them now? The rain was driving down hard on her back, almost painful through her thin summer clothes, but it didn’t matter. It felt to Nola as if nothing mattered anymore. By the time she’d reached the end of the green, she was soaked through to the skin, but she had no intention of turning back. It was horrendous. She’d actually hit her sister. She tried to make sense of what had just happened. They’d had a screaming match, at the top of their voices, like common alley cats and, worse, for the whole village to see. Nola was mortified. She’d never be able to show her face in Ballycove again.

She raced away from the fete, blinded by tears and shame, but it was no good. She became disorientated as a shriek of lightning struck the ground just beyond the village. She kept running, still racing towards it, knowing that it was the nearest route back to the house. In the middle of the village the streets were deserted. No-one but Nola would be stupid or desperate enough to be out in this storm.

‘Nola,’ a familiar voice cracked along the road behind her, making her heart sink even further, and she swivelled about to see the school principal open his car door to give her a lift and rescue her from the rain at least.

‘Gary.’ She wiped the tears from her face; she must look a complete mess now.

‘Get in, I’ll drop you home.’

‘No, I need to walk…’ She couldn’t get into his car, not just because she felt so wet and weary she was little more than a standing puddle, but also, she wasn’t entirely sure she could take even the tiniest amount of kindness at this moment.

‘Are you all right? I saw what happened and I…’ He moved the car forward, along the path beside her as another roar of thunder bellowed from the clouds, which seemed to hang so low now, she might touch them if she just reached up her hand.

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