Page 83 of Two Hit Wonder

"But…"

"Home. Now. Before I tell your mother you were spying on me."

Hamish's face fell, but he dropped back behind the wall. Maeve heard his footsteps retreating across the field, and she'd bet good money he’d be practicing the word under his breath the whole way.

Glinna was going to kill her.

She stood there for a moment, hand still on her arse where Eejit's teeth had connected, and tried to remember why she'd thought coming back here was a good idea.

Because London was worse. Because she couldn't stay in that hotel room another night, staring at the ceiling and replaying the moment when everything fell apart. Because this was the only place she had left.

She'd run away. Again. Just like she always did.

Maeve unlocked the cottage door and stepped inside. It smelled of fresh paint and new wood, the renovation finally complete. She dropped her bag by the door and sank into the armchair by the cold fireplace. The silence pressed in around her, thick and accusing. In London there had been noise. Traffic and sirens and people shouting and music bleeding through hotel walls. Here there was nothing but her own thoughts, and those were worse.

Cam's voice kept playing in her head. Over and over, like a song she couldn't stop humming.

You punched her. You were so drunk you punched her and you don't even remember.

Was she really that person? Had she really done that?

She knew she'd been bad. She remembered the blackouts, the mornings of shame, the looks on everyone's faces. But she'd never known about the punch. Iona had never told her. Had carried it for fifteen years like a rock in her pocket, and Maeve had been stumbling around oblivious, thinking she knew the worst of what she'd done.

She'd hit Iona. The woman she loved. She'd hit her and then she'd left and she'd never even known.

No wonder Iona had looked at that whiskey bottle like it was a bomb about to go off.

GLINNA ARRIVED AN hour later, without children for once. She took one look at Maeve, still sitting in the armchair, and said, "Right. Tea."

"I don't want tea."

"Wasn't asking." Glinna was already filling the kettle. "Sweet tea. For shock."

"I'm not in shock."

"You look like someone's died." Glinna found the sugar bowl, frowned at its emptiness, and started opening cupboards. "Have you got any sugar at all in this place, or have you been living on spite and stubbornness?"

"There's some in the blue tin."

"The blue tin is full of biscuits."

"Behind the biscuits."

Glinna found it, spooned an alarming amount into two mugs, and brought them over. She sat down on the footstool across from Maeve and handed her a cup.

"Drink," she said. "Then tell me everything."

So Maeve did.

She told Glinna about the article, about Elijah's betrayal, about Cam's devastation. She told her about Ellie's MS, the real reason for the reunion, the lies that had been told to get her there. She told her about the fight, about things being said that couldn't be unsaid, about the moment when Cam had looked at her with tears streaming down her face and told her the truth about that last night.

She told her about hitting Iona. About not remembering. About fifteen years of silence.

When she finished, the tea was cold and Glinna was watching her with an expression Maeve couldn't quite read.

"Well," Glinna said. "That's a lot."

"I know."