‘It’s fascinating. I’m thinking it’s exactly the sort of thing I need.’
Fen looked at Robyn. ‘Come by the studio some time.’
Robyn smiled, the sun finally cresting the mountain, lighting her face. ‘I’d like that.’
Our friends are the people who understand us. They know Marmite on toast is our comfort food, they share our obsession with stationery, they’ve seen where we keep the emergency supply of chocolate. Our friends know the story of our first kiss, or the song that will pull us onto the dance floor, or why we can’t listen to David Bowie without crying.
The biochemistry of our bodies changes when we spend time with good friends. A beautiful cocktail of our happy hormones – oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin – elevates our mood. Studies have shown that friendships can strengthen the positive neural pathways in our brains and improve our emotional intelligence.
You might even say that friends are medicine.
But then any biochemist will tell you that medicine to one person can be poison to another.
16
Bella
Bella floated on a lilo beneath a cloudless blue sky. She loved the sun. She would date the sun. Nothing seemed quite so urgent or drastic when the sun was shining. She had never understood people who didn’t like the heat. Robyn had always claimed to prefer winter. What was good about grey skies, bone-clenching cold, or side-sleeting rain?
Bella had great admiration for the Mediterranean lifestyle: daily siestas, wine with lunch, and partying until dawn. ‘You got all the Italian,’ her father was fond of saying, giving her chin a playful squeeze. He was from a village on the lakes near Verona but had met Bella’s mother in London when he’d been working as a hotel porter. They’d fallen in love, married, begun a family, but she could never be persuaded to leave England. Moving from London to Bournemouth had been her compromise: a beach beside a town.
There was a flurry of footsteps along the poolside, close and uneven, followed by a whoosh of laughter. Bella looked up just in time to see Lexi launching herself into the air, tanned knees hugged to her chest. She bombed into the pool in an explosion of water.
Soaked, Bella squealed as her lilo bucked in the rippling pool. She tried to keep her balance but could already feel the sudden, unstoppable lurch. She tipped in – sunglasses, lipstick, blow-dried hair and all.
Underwater her sunglasses swam free of her face and her legs thrashed madly. She surfaced coughing and laughing. ‘You dick!’
Lexi was laughing so hard she could barely tread water.
‘My sunglasses!’
‘I’ll get them!’ Lexi dived down, a flash of limbs disappearing into the chlorinated blue. She surfaced moments later with a pair of drenched dark glasses. She swam them back to Bella, propping them on her wet head, the lenses studded with water.
Bella seized the moment to press down hard on Lexi’s shoulders, shoving her under, laughing. Silver bubbles rose to the surface, Lexi’s hair fanning around her face. When she came up for air, she arced a fountain of pool water from her mouth.
Bella was helpless with laughter. Kids. A pair of kids goofing around in a pool. That’s all they were. All she ever wanted to be.
They both swam to the poolside, breathless, giddy. They rested their forearms on the warmed concrete. Bella ran a knuckle beneath her eyes, removing the trails of mascara. ‘I’m thinking you should sack off the wedding, and we should live here.’
‘We can survive on ouzo and olives,’ Lexi agreed.
‘Take long siestas.’
‘Work really, really hard on our tans,’ Lexi added. ‘But what would we do for money?’
Bella thought for a moment. ‘You’d make an excellent goat herder.’
Lexi laughed, her teeth white against her sun-kissed skin. Bella reached out and touched the bridge of her nose. ‘Freckles are out.’
‘Already?’
Lexi’s freckles made her look young and fresh-faced – the Lexi of her teenage years. Bella remembered moving to a new school in Bournemouth when she was thirteen, pretending to be all tough-girl-London. She’d seen Lexi and Robyn sitting together at the edge of the school field, laughing, shoulders quaking, hands gripped. They looked not only happy but easy together, like they fitted.
Those two, she’d decided in that moment. Those were the two girls she wanted to be friends with.
Lexi slipped from the pool, leaving a trail of wet footprints as she returned to their sun loungers.
Bella followed, squeezing water from the ends of her hair. ‘Where’s Robyn? I’ve not seen her all morning.’