‘Ruined or not, you’ll go to your bedroom and unpack your clothes as soon as we return to Hyland Hall. This is not a request, Isobel. It’s an order. I’ve put up with this nonsense for long enough.’
Her mother’s anger vibrated between them. Perhaps it wasn’t anger. Isobel was unable to tell anymore. Where once there was certainty, she now felt only insecurity. If a hole opened in the ground in front of her, she wouldn’t be surprised. If the moon plummeted to earth, she’d think, why not? What was holding it up there, anyway?
Chapter Eleven
Sophy
Lost. That was the only word that came to Sophy’s mind as she drove back to Hyland Hall. She had read about the path to rehabilitation. The destruction of illusion and the rebuilding of a new, stronger self-awareness. She had imagined Luke emerging from the victory corner, arms aloft, exhilarated with the zeal of the reformed. Instead, he looked shrunken, hollowed out. His eyes shocked her the most. They reminded her of stones; pale, flat stones bleached by tides of tears and swept onto an unfamiliar shore. He was lost but had not been found again, either by himself or those who loved him. She had sensed Isobel’s struggle to put the past behind her and rush into his arms. Unable to do so, she had glowered at both her parents and tugged at her sleeves. Julie’s excitement had been mixed with nervousness as she asked Sophy to stay with them. Unable to bear her daughter’s pleading expression, she had hurried from the café so that the girls would not notice her distress.
She drove back to Clonmoore at six to collect them. The afternoon had shaken Luke. He embraced Julie and shook Isobel’s hand. No father–daughter forgiveness or bonding, then. Julie’s eyes were swollen. The reason soon became clear. A kiss. Isobel had told him some hare-brained story in an attempt to hurt him.
Later, when Jack was in bed and she had taken Caesar for his nightly walk, she entered the girls’ bedroom. The first thing she noticed was Isobel’s case, open and unpacked, on the floor. Julie was already asleep. Cordelia lay beside her, an eye mask hiding her bright blue stare. Isobel was reading when Sophy sat on the edge of her bed. ‘Why did you tell your father I kissed Victor?’ she whispered. ‘Were you trying to make trouble between us?’
‘How can I make trouble when it’s already made?’ Isobel retorted.
‘Were you?’
‘I was simply telling him what I saw.’
‘What you think you saw.’
‘Whatever.’ She shrugged and turned a page on her book.
‘You were deliberately trying to hurt him.’
‘So what? It’s not as if he never hurt us. Anyway, you hate him. I saw the way you looked at him.’
‘Hate is a very strong word. It’s not in my vocabulary and it should not be in yours.’
‘But is… is love? With Dad?’
‘I’ve loved him very much. But the feelings we had for each other got lost somewhere along the way to here.’
‘Can’t you love him again?’
‘Love is not a tap that can be turned on and off at random.’
‘I see.’
‘I doubt you do. Someday when you’re grown up, you’ll understand about different kinds of loving.’
‘I’m never going to fall in love. It sucks.’
‘It certainly can,’ Sophy replied. ‘But that never stops people falling deeply into the heart of it.’
She had mistaken Luke’s distressing silences after his mother’s death for grief, which had been true at first. He had adored Maddie and was shattered by her loss, as were Sophy and her granddaughters. As the months passed and he found it difficult to look Sophy in the eye or to sit still in the evenings when they would normally have chatted easily to each other, she suspected he was having an affair.
His denials did nothing to ease her suspicions. She waited outside his studio one night and followed him as he walked towards the train station. Instead of entering it, he continued on towards a square of Georgian houses. She remained out of sight as she watched him disappear inside one of them. She mounted the steps and checked the sign on the wall. He had entered a casino.
When he returned home late that night, she waited for him to tell her where he had been. Instead, he claimed to have met with a client on the other side of the city and that their discussion on a new park project had gone on longer than expected. She