At First Sight Hannah Sunderland (free e books to read online txt) 📖

Carrick placed the little boy down and took him by the shoulders, turning him around to face me. ‘Darlow, this is Nell. Say hello.’

I let out a quiet gasp, unnoticed, at least I hoped so, by the rest of them as I stared into his eyes.

The little boy turned to me with a bashful smile. ‘Hello, Nell,’ he said in a high, bashful voice.

‘Good lad.’ Carrick patted him on the shoulder.

‘Nice to meet you, Darlow,’ I said, holding out my hand. Darlow looked at my extended fingers, blushed beetroot red and then turned his face into Carrick’s leg, his chubby arms wrapping around Carrick’s skinny thigh.

‘Yer so predictable. Clammin’ up the second yer see a pretty girl,’ Carrick jested and scooped the boy up into the air, tossing him over his shoulder in a fit of giggles. ‘Yer can’t disrespect a lady by not shakin’ her hand. Orlagh, would yer get the door please? We’ll have t’toss him in the sea.’

Darlow began squealing and laughing, his legs kicking as Carrick held him in a fireman’s lift. ‘Sorry, lad, there’s nothin’ else for it.’

As the three of them played in a din of pure happiness, I wandered over to Charlie’s side and whispered, ‘I see what you mean about irony.’

Carrick and Orlagh had divorced because Carrick hadn’t wanted children and Orlagh had. She’d married again, this time with a man who wanted the same things as she did and she’d given birth to a child. I looked again at the little boy, now back down on the floor and running around with wide, happy eyes. Blue eyes. Stone eyes.

The steel grey sky seemed to stretch out for eternity as I sat on a patch of dry grass, looking out at the ocean, which seemed as endless as the sky. Charlie sat beside me, his legs outstretched, his arms propping him up against the relentless wind that made my skin feel beaten and tired.

A couple of thousand miles away, in a straight line across that vast, endless sea, was Canada, the States, South America. Places I had always wanted to go, but hadn’t yet. The good thing about having my semi-hermit lifestyle with Ned was that it didn’t cost much and so I had the money to go and do things like that. But who would I go with? Ned would come with me, but he’d already done it all before. I’d always felt that there’s something sad about doing things with people who’ve already seen it all. A sense of irrational FOMO that leaves you feeling sadder and more left out than anything else.

Joel had never wanted to leave the sofa that had moulded around his backside, Mum was always too busy to go any further than a short trip and I wasn’t confident enough to go on my own. I’d be a quivering wreck by the time I found myself in a bustling metropolis like New York City. I wasn’t exactly a yokel but I feared that suburban Birmingham hadn’t quite given me the street smarts I needed to not end up meeting a sticky end in some downtown alley.

I turned from the view to Charlie, who was staring out to sea with a stern sense of worry that I hadn’t seen in him before. I wondered if Charlie had done any of the things that I wanted to do. Scuba diving in crystal oceans, hiking through national parks, seeing landmarks only ever viewed on TV and which I had never quite accepted as real, simply because I had never seen them through anything other than a screen. Would he be my partner on these adventures, or would they just be replays of ones he’d already had with her?

I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked the time. We had an hour before we said we’d be back to help with dinner, but tearing myself away from this view was going to be hard. We’d taken Steve for a drive, taking in the island on a whistle-stop tour and coming to rest at what had once been a Napoleonic signal tower on the cliffs, where we had sat and failed to move from since. The tower was now nothing more than a historic pile of stones, holding its structure for only a number of feet before crumbling to a jagged top edge.

‘Where’s her husband?’ I said, loudly enough to be heard over the wind.

Charlie turned away from the view, his eyes a little vacant. ‘Donal works in Dublin so he’s not here for big chunks of time.’

‘Does he know, that Darlow is Carrick’s?’

‘He’s never said so to anyone. It’s hard to not know when the proof is literally staring right at yer.’ He sighed. ‘Add to that the fact that the name Darlow literally means “secret love” and it’s pretty much the most obvious secret in the world.’

‘Why doesn’t she leave him and go back to Carrick?’ I asked.

‘Because she’d lose the lighthouse if she did and because Carrick is a difficult person to love and Donal isn’t.’

‘Is Donal nice at least?’ I asked.

‘Ah, he’s nice enough. Doesn’t deserve to have this goin’ on behind his back, that’s for sure.’

‘Yeah, that hug at the door made it pretty clear that Carrick wouldn’t be taking up a guest bed tonight.’

‘I know, right. I’ve told them to be careful. One day Darlow’s gonna come out with somethin’ and drop ’em right in it. But I guess that if I was in their shoes and that was the only way to have the person I loved, I’d probably be doin’ the same thing.’

I felt that gnawing, unpleasant feeling in my stomach again, the one that I’d not been able to pinpoint before.

Green-eyed monster gettin’ yer down? Poor Nelly. I heard Abi’s voice from somewhere behind me but I didn’t react, didn’t even flinch, because I knew she’d be coming. Every time I saw her was whenever this feeling began unfolding in my