One of the Girls(35)

God, she loved everything about him.

She finished her wine. Wondered if she could get away with opening another bottle. She didn’t want to run the villa dry on the second night. She’d slipped a bottle of gin in her case for emergencies, but Ana was already in their room. She briefly flirted with the idea of crawling her way to the suitcase beneath her bed, but then thought about the possibility of coming eye to eye with a cockroach or scorpion.

Looked like it was just her, an empty glass, and the dark stretch of night. The pool glowed eerily on the terrace. Nope, she wouldn’t be floating in there again any time soon. She’d still not got over the shame of Lexi happening upon her and the awkward conversation that had followed. For the remainder of the weekend, she planned to work very hard on not being weird.

There were footsteps behind her and she turned, her chair creaking, to find Ana crossing the terrace carrying a bottle of ouzo and two glasses. ‘Want a nightcap?’

Eleanor smiled. ‘Thought you’d gone to bed.’

‘We’re on a hen party, aren’t we?’

‘Indeed we are.’ She pulled out the chair beside hers and Ana took a seat.

She poured them both generous measures, sliding one across to Eleanor. They clinked glasses. ‘Ya mas!’

Ana was a good roommate. Didn’t talk too much. Didn’t lay claim to the bathroom shelves or dresser. She liked the way she walked, too: steady, confident, shoulders back. Nothing haughty about it: she just walked as if she were in no hurry. Eleanor decided she would practise that walk when she was back home. (She’d only agreed to be less weird for the weekend.) Ana untied her headscarf, then pushed her fingers against the roots of her braids.

Above them a spray of fairy lights twinkled through the pergola, clambering alongside jasmine and grapevines.

‘So, you’re going to be an auntie,’ Ana said, smiling.

‘I guess so.’

‘How do you feel about it?’

‘I don’t know.’ She couldn’t trust her emotions these days. It was like they’d been knocked off-kilter and where most people felt one thing, she found herself feeling something very different. ‘Pleased?’

‘Pleased with a question mark?’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t expect it.’

She’d never heard Ed talk about wanting a family, couldn’t imagine him cradling a child. A beat of memory arrived like a shadow: the doll she’d loved as a child, an ear cut off to reveal the horror of stuffing. Ed in his room, face impassive. ‘That’s awful,’ he’d said when confronted by their mother, who was holding Eleanor’s hand. ‘Why did Eleanor do it?’ Ed had asked. Eleanor had stared, confused. Through her tears, she’d seen her mother’s gaze flicker uncertainly to her, then felt her grip loosen, let go.

She pushed down the memory and instead thought of the way Ed lit up when he was with Lexi. She imagined visits to Lexi and Ed’s home once the baby had arrived. Eleanor would bring over something she’d made in the slow cooker and a cake with freshly whipped cream. It was a nice image. Fanciful, perhaps, since when had she had an invite into Ed’s home?

‘Do you think Ed will be a good father?’ Ana asked.

Eleanor felt a tiny icicle creaking between her shoulder blades. Ana was watching her closely, as if she were reading something written in her expression. ‘He’ll want to be the best,’ Eleanor said eventually.

‘Are the two of you close?’

Eleanor was silent for a moment. ‘Ed calls every week. Pops in when he can.’

‘That must be nice.’

Eleanor wondered if it was. Her face must have shown her doubt – it had a habit of letting her down like that – because Ana asked, ‘What, it’s not nice?’

‘They’re duty visits,’ Eleanor admitted with a shrug. Ed had been good to her when she lost Sam, barely leaving her side in the days after he died, but gradually his concern for her had shifted, changed shape. ‘He’s usually in a hurry to leave. I don’t think he likes being around me when I’m sad.’

Ana’s brow dipped. ‘Why not?’

‘It’s been almost a year now. Ed finds it indulgent.’

Ana went very still. ‘Indulgent?’

‘Yes.’

She blinked. ‘He’s said that?’

Eleanor felt a thrilling sense of the telltale. ‘Yes.’

Ana’s back seemed to straighten, vertebra by vertebra. ‘A long soak in a bubble bath is indulgent. A second slice of cake is indulgent. Grieving for the person who you planned to spend your life with is not indulgent. How dare he!’

Eleanor found herself sitting taller as she pictured herself using Ana’s words, repeating them to Ed. She felt a spark of fire in her belly, a heat that she liked.

The interesting thing about a spark, Eleanor thought as she looked at Ana, was that it either burns out, or begins to smoulder – and then flame.





FRIDAY





26

Bella

Bella stood at the bow of the yacht, hair blowing in the wind. Sea spray misted her sunglasses and the air fizzed with salt and ozone. She wanted to do Titanic arms to make Lexi and the others laugh, but she didn’t trust boats. Two hands on the guardrail at all times, thank you.