‘Brave of you to come. It’s lovely that you’re here for Lexi.’
Robyn smiled. ‘Wouldn’t miss it.’
‘You’ve known each other since school, is that right?’
‘Yes. Met when we were eleven.’ Lexi had been beautiful, even then, before they really understood what beauty was and the power it held, yet she always looked tired, shadows under her eyes. Robyn’s mother often commented, That girl needs to go to bed earlier.
Robyn quickly understood that Lexi’s parents were for talking about in hushed voices. Her mother was an ex-professional ballerina who drank every night, and her father raced cars. That was his actual job: racing car driver. It was like two children had been asked, What do you want to be when you grow up? and they’d drawn a blonde ballerina and a dark-haired racing car driver holding a trophy – and that was Lexi’s family. Robyn had been fascinated by them – the rule-less bedtimes, the lack of questions over where Lexi was going and with whom, the bottles of champagne routinely drunk without celebration.
‘Bella started at our school a couple of years later,’ she told Fen.
‘When she moved down from London?’
‘That’s right. Bella spent the first term telling anyone who’d listen that she’d be going back to the city the moment she could.’
‘Always a people-pleaser.’ Fen grinned.
Robyn remembered teenage Bella with her clumpy mascara and high, dark ponytail, two sections of dyed-blonde hair pulled loose around her face. ‘Bella knew every Italian swear word. In her first week she taught our Geography teacher how to say “What a gorgeous sunset!” when it actually meant, Eat shit and die!’
Fen laughed.
In that same term, Bella had announced she was a lesbian. ‘I prefer women,’ she’d said with such ease and confidence that no one even blinked, no one questioned it, or laughed. ‘I’ve got three older brothers, and there’s only one bathroom in our house. If you’d seen the stuff I have, you’d be put off for life, too. Women, we smell nicer. We look nicer. Our skin is soft. We have curves. We’re just – better.’ She’d shrugged as if she’d decided it there and then. Yep, women. Better.
Lexi and Robyn were intoxicated. They wanted to keep her. They wanted Bella to fall in love with Bournemouth, so that she’d never leave and take her spark and sass back to the city. So their duo became a trio – and it worked. They each had their role. Lexi was the face of the group, wild, untameable and untethered by her parents. Bella was the voice, loud and deliciously outspoken, often honking with infectious laughter. Robyn was their collective conscience, loyal and thoughtful, ready to steer them right.
‘Is that them?’ Fen asked, gazing down towards the water.
Robyn saw the two of them wading towards the shore in bikinis and felt a pang of disappointment that they hadn’t waited for her to swim. ‘Yes,’ she answered, watching as Bella doubled over with laughter. She’d always laughed hard and easily, her whole body weakening as if she couldn’t carry the weight of the hilarity and she’d simply collapse onto whoever was nearest. They wrapped towels around their waists, then began climbing the stone steps to the villa, where Bella would start pouring the drinks and the night would begin.
She turned back to Fen. ‘Did you run in the mountains?’
‘I stayed near the cliff line, but there is a trail that takes you right up into the mountains. I’m going to hike it tomorrow.’
‘Really?’
‘Not much of a pool-lounger. I’ll set off early, while it’s still cool.’
‘That sounds incredible.’
‘Come.’
One word. So simple. An invitation.
‘Oh, I’m not very fit. I’d slow you down.’
She looked at her. ‘I’m in no rush, Robyn.’
She didn’t know what to say, so chose, ‘Okay, then.’
Right there, on the clifftop, Robyn felt the shimmering heat of her old self, still beating.
We arrived on that holiday with baggage.
We packed Grecian sandals and oversized sunglasses, floaty summer dresses and waist-cinching shorts. There were Turkish towels in soft stripes of blush and stone, washbags bulging with shimmering eyeshadows and bronzers and gloss. There were new paperbacks ready to be thumbed, and bottles of sunscreen holding the coconut-scent of summer.
Beneath the holiday trappings were other things, private things, just for ourselves: a sleeve of unlabelled pills tucked into a side pocket; a slim bottle of gin rolled within a towel; a faded photograph of a man with warm eyes slipped inside an envelope.