One of the Girls(4)

Maybe that was the problem with Robyn’s life. She’d never lived it hard enough. Never gone for broke. She’d always followed the straight path: law degree, homeowner, career, marriage, baby. Tick, tick, bloody tick.

Where had it left her? Thirty years old, living with her parents and an eighteen-month-old baby, with a career she’d been sidelined from and an ex-husband under her belt.

The B-list, she thought.

Always the bloody B-list.





We were a group – a party of hens – but we were never the same.

Not by a long shot.

Don’t forget that.

Some of us started the day with a sun salutation, or a run, or by clutching a pillow to our chests in an empty bed. Some of us arrived on the hen weekend wanting to step out of our ordinary lives and dig into our wild, free selves, to remember that’s where we roamed. Others wanted only to get through it, to chalk off the hours until we returned home.

We all had different reasons for being there. But one of us – well, she had a very specific reason for saying Yes to the hen weekend.

The problem was, none of us realised until it was too late.





3

Fen

Fen’s body tensed as she turned the key in the lock, as if bracing for a blow.

She took a steady, low inhale, then pushed open the door.

Stepping into the cool expanse, the villa greeted her with its familiar chalky breath. She tried to recall arriving here seven years earlier, wide-eyed at the sheer beauty of the island, the fizz of possibility bubbling in her chest that a new world was unfurling before her. Back then, she’d only just cut ties with her parents and their strict, church-led demands, so Fen had been entranced by her aunt’s bohemian lifestyle, filled with friends who visited with their paintbrushes and sketchbooks and wildly seductive ideas of how life could be lived.

That was the remembering she wanted.

But there were other memories locked here, too.

Dry-mouthed, Fen removed her sandals and moved lightly across the cool stone floor, eyes adjusting to the dim. She unlatched the shutters and flung them wide. Dazzling light flooded the villa, dust motes set dancing. She blinked into the sunshine.

She was wondering if she’d regret saying Yes to using the villa for the hen weekend. Her aunt had announced to Fen and Bella that she was selling the Greek villa over sashimi at her favourite Japanese restaurant – ‘Another project has come up in Croatia and I need to release some funds to secure it’ – adding that Fen absolutely must use the villa while it was standing empty.

Bella had flattened her palms to the table, leaning forward. ‘Lexi’s hen! Let’s go to Greece for her hen!’

Fen’s aunt adored the image of the villa teeming with women and music and celebration, and by the time a second bottle of saké was set on the low table, the plan had been cemented.

‘My God!’ Bella cried, rushing through the doorway, high heels clacking on the stone floor. ‘Look at this place!’

The villa had been designed in the Cycladic tradition, with a minimal aesthetic, as if chiselled from the rock it perched upon. Thick stone walls were washed white, their corners smoothed. The furniture was wooden, low, and sparse, emphasising the feeling of space. It was complemented by domed whitewashed ceilings framed by beams of salt-bleached wood.

‘Everything is so beautiful!’ Bella marvelled, her fingers trailing across the tassels of a wheat-brown wall hanging, then moving to a wooden side table hollowed from a single tree trunk. ‘Oh, look!’ Bella exclaimed, picking up a framed photo. ‘Is this you?’ She tapped a neon fingernail against the glass. ‘Girl, you’re looking smoking with those curves!’

The photo had been taken on the terrace in front of the villa, Fen squinting into the evening light, face blooming with an easy smile. She was wearing a denim miniskirt, a scarf threaded through the belt loops, with a vintage Let Love Rule vest that she’d paid three pounds for in a second-hand stall. Red sunglasses were propped on her head. She remembered going for dinner later that night in the Old Town, abuzz with energy. The memory of what happened afterwards shouldered forward with such sudden force that it felt physical. The blood drained from her face, her skin turning to ice.

Fen snapped her gaze away, ducked past Bella, and hurried out onto the terrace.

She stood in the shade beneath the pergola and set her gaze on the blue oval eye of the pool. She focused on her breath, slowing and deepening each inhale and exhale.

‘Babe?’ Bella said, following her out onto the terrace. ‘You okay?’

Fen told herself she was. ‘Fine. Just a bit light-headed after the flight.’

Lexi joined them on the terrace, drawn to the edge by the glittering blue sea. She placed her palms on the low stone wall. ‘This view,’ she said, drinking in the empty stretch of the ocean. Then she startled backwards. ‘Shit. That drop!’

Bella marched to Lexi’s side, fingers pinning her sunglasses in place as she stared over the edge. ‘Jesus! It’s lethal.’

The drop was sheer, falling over two hundred feet onto the jagged slabs of rock below. ‘It’s why the villa has been slow to sell. People are put off by the cliff edge,’ Fen explained.

Bella pointed east. ‘Is that ours?’ she said, looking towards the brochure-perfect cove nestled at the foot of the cliffs.