One of the Girls(92)

– Definitely happy.

– He was sitting on the terrace wall, chatting to us.

– That’s right. We were just chatting.

– Those gifts – the ones we gave out on the first night – we were talking about them. Showing Ed.

– Yes! The sculpture. He’d been admiring his sister’s sculpture.

– He’d set it down on the wall, carried on talking, but then he caught it by accident with his elbow.

– Turned to grab it …

– Tried to reach for it …

– But … but the movement unbalanced him.

– He went to right himself …

– But couldn’t.

– It all happened so quickly.

– It did. So quickly.

– He fell.

– Yes.

– Ed fell.

– That’s what I saw.

– Me too.

– Me too.

– Me too.

– Me too.

– Me too.

When we looked up, blue flashing lights were already travelling across the dark mountainside. The police were almost upon us. We watched in silence as they grew nearer, closing in.

No one said it. We didn’t need to because we all remembered. We were standing right there on the terrace when we’d agreed it. The third rule. The final rule. The promise we’d made to each other at the very beginning.

‘What happens on the hen weekend, stays on the hen weekend.’





THE WEDDING

(Sixteen months later)





93

Lexi

Lexi was sitting nearest the aisle, ankles crossed. The late-September sun cast golden light across the field, the swaying grass glowing amber. Beyond the scent of wheat, she caught the salted hint of the sea. In the fields, cattle grazed beneath billowing white clouds. Later she’d need the jacket that was draped over the back of her chair, but for now she was just right.

It was a beautiful location for a wedding: a rolling hillside in West Dorset that sloped lazily towards the sea, thirty wooden chairs set on either side of a mown grass aisle. An archway of flowers in place of an altar. There was no church or priest in robes; there were no dust-lined hymn books.

If Lexi had planned her perfect wedding this, she decided, would be it. Small, intimate, among close friends and family. Nothing like the wedding she and Ed had organised.

Had life worked out differently – had the hen weekend ended a day sooner – she would be married now, and Ed would be sitting beside her, a wedding band worn on the tanned hand that he’d once placed tenderly around hers as he told her he loved her. The same hand that had sliced through the herb-scented night, slapping Ana. The same hand that had knocked Eleanor backwards off a kitchen stool. The same hand that had steered Sam towards a flight of concrete steps, blindfolded.

She wondered when she’d have first noticed the cracks – because she would have. She’d already sensed a low, beating feeling inside her that said, Wait! I’m not sure, but instead of listening to that rising instinct, she’d thought the problem was with her. Strange the way women so often do that – look for the fault within themselves.

The months following Ed’s death had dragged Lexi to a dark, breathless place. The changing terrain of her grief was tangled so tightly with guilt and fear that for a time there was no light, only doubt: Could I have reached for Ed? Would it have made a difference? Should we have told the truth?

Struggling to cope alone in the city, Lexi had returned to Bournemouth to be closer to Bella, to Robyn – and surprisingly, to her mother. On the hardest days, the beach offered her solace, when all she felt able to do was walk its wintery shores. But gradually, gradually, as her stomach swelled, the first glimmers of light returned.

Even though she couldn’t be certain whether she was mourning Ed or an image of him that had never existed, she finally allowed herself to remember the happy moments, too. Ed was still the man she’d danced with to Prince, both of them in their pyjamas; still the man who’d brought her breakfast in bed; still the man who’d given her the most exquisite and startling gift of her life …

She looked at their baby, Wren. She was ten months old now. Her little fists gripped at the neckline of Lexi’s top as she pulled herself up to standing, tiny feet pressing into Lexi’s thighs. Lexi dipped her head, placing a kiss on the tip of her pink nose. Wren giggled, delighted.

Lexi searched, as she often did, for traces of Ed in her daughter’s face, finding them in the almond-shaped eyes, the strong brow. Wren reached for Lexi’s necklace, drawing it towards her gummy mouth.

Watching Wren, Lexi knew that she had a choice. She could mourn the past, the things that could have happened differently, the misjudgements she’d made about Ed – or she could choose to live in the moment.

And this moment – her daughter safe and thriving – was enough.





94

Ana

Ana stole a glance at her son. Seventeen and already two inches taller than her. He looked so handsome in an open-necked shirt, his curious dark gaze turned to the sky, where a buzzard circled.

Now that he’d started college, the crowd Luca used to mix with were already beginning to slip away. There was a girl on the scene, too. Zelda. Ana hadn’t been afforded the privilege of meeting her yet, but from the way Luca laughed more often and easily, her presence was welcome.