One of the Girls(61)

Lexi looked at her from beneath the rim of her hat. ‘I know Bella can come across as a bit … feisty, but there’s another side to her. She’s one of the most caring people I know. Generous, too. Bella would do anything for her friends.’

Friends, yes, Eleanor thought. But what about the rest of us? ‘Why did you invite me on this hen weekend?’

Lexi blinked, as if surprised by the non-sequitur. ‘Because I wanted you to come.’

Eleanor’s hands had freed themselves again and her fingers had started scratching her forearm. ‘Or because you felt sorry for me?’

Lexi paused from rowing. ‘I feel sorry that you’ve lost Sam. I’d feel terrible for anyone who’d lost their fiancé. But no, that’s not why I wanted you to be here. I invited you because we’re going to be sisters-in-law. Because I want us to get to know each other. Because we’re going to be family.’

It was a good answer and Eleanor was pleased with it.

‘Why would you ask me that?’ Lexi said.

‘Bella said you invited me out of pity.’

Lexi’s eyes widened. ‘What? I never said that to Bella. She had no right to say otherwise.’

Eleanor shrugged. She glanced at the oars hovering above the glimmering sea. ‘You’re not getting us very far. Want me to have a go now?’

The boat skated gently across the surface, a lengthening wake stretching behind them. The visibility was so clear that Eleanor could still see the round white pebbles of the seabed.

She rowed them towards the cliff line, submerged rocks wavering beneath the surface, studded with sea urchins. She was grateful for the light breeze cooling the sweat lining her back.

‘Eleanor,’ Lexi began. ‘I don’t want you to think I was being secretive, not telling Ed about the baby. I’d hoped to talk to him before anyone else found out.’

She shrugged. ‘I know.’

Lexi pressed the heels of her hands into the wooden seat. ‘Do you think he’ll be happy?’

A little frown appeared between Lexi’s brows as she waited for Eleanor’s answer. ‘I’m sure he will. He adores you.’ There. That was something that was true. God, this boat was tiny. She pulled harder at the oars to keep her mind focused.

‘Were the two of you close growing up? I’ve always envied people with siblings.’

‘Have you? Well. There was a three-year age gap between us,’ she said, as if that were an answer.

Lexi waited, evidently expecting more. When Eleanor offered nothing further, she asked, ‘So, what was Ed like?’

Is she fishing? Perhaps this was why Lexi had invited her out on the boat. She needed to pick her words carefully. Filter. ‘He was sporty. On all the teams – football, cricket, rugby. He worked hard. Liked to do well.’ Maybe she could just get a CV printed.

‘Did he get on well with Sam?’

Tension fizzed down the length of Eleanor’s neck. She thought of the two of them in the same room together, the way it made her skin feel too hot, her clothes too tight, like she couldn’t get enough oxygen. She ploughed the oars into the water. ‘Ed and Sam were very different.’

‘I know Ed worries that he can’t help, that he isn’t doing enough.’

‘It isn’t a problem you can fix with a credit card.’

Lexi baulked.

Eleanor’s filtering clearly needed work. Still, she didn’t have the patience for dealing with other people’s sensibilities, not when she could still remember being led into a private room in the hospital, told to wait there for the doctor. She had paced, eyes to the door, watching for whoever was coming. Finally, a woman in scrubs entered, her hair pinned back in a low, neat bun. She wore frameless glasses and Eleanor wondered if they slipped down her nose when she operated, and whether contact lenses might be more suitable. The doctor clasped her hands together as she spoke and Eleanor noticed how dry the skin on her knuckles was and decided it must be from all the washing. She was still looking at the cracked skin at the edges of her thumbs, and wondering whether the woman had ever tried using Neutrogena, because Eleanor suffered with dry skin in winter when the studio was cold, and she’d tried just about every hand cream and it was the only one—

‘Miss Tollock?’ the doctor was saying. ‘Do you understand?’

Eleanor had looked up, right into her eyes. ‘Sam is dead.’

‘Yes. I’m so sorry.’

Later she was told that she could see his body if she wanted to, and she did want that. She needed to see him because this big, terrible thing was happening, and she needed to tell him about it, and hold his hand because that’s what she did when everything was too much – she held his hand. But of course his hand felt all wrong – cold, unyielding, not his big bear grip, just a flaccid, empty hand. She kissed the back of it, but it even smelt wrong – antiseptic, sterile – and her lips brushed the bee-sting mark where the IV line had been. Then she’d clamped her teeth around a few hairs. She ground them between her teeth, then swallowed. She couldn’t say why she did it. She knew it was odd, but she didn’t care. She would have swallowed him whole if she could, because she knew that was the last time she would ever see or touch or be with him.

Now she looked up and found Lexi staring at her expectantly. Had there been a question she’d missed?