Fen smiled but said nothing.
Bella felt the lurch of dread: there wasn’t going to be a next summer. That’s what Fen was thinking. Wasn’t it? All weekend they’d been carefully skirting the subject of what had happened at the airport, as if some tacit agreement had been made to not discuss it until they returned home.
It was Sue’s fault. Sue and her big mouth. Was it impossible to go to an airport without bumping into someone from your past? Bella had known Sue since they’d worked nights together at Royal Bournemouth Hospital. She could be warm and funny, but also fantastically gossipy.
‘Wave and walk,’ Bella had whispered to Fen when Sue began steering her luggage trolley towards them.
But Sue was fast. She’d pounced on Bella, clutching her arm. ‘Bella! It’s been so long!’
‘Oh. Sue. Hi. Great to see you. But, listen – we’re running late for our flight, so—’
‘I won’t hold you up. It’s so good to lay eyes on you again! We all miss you! And I just want you to know, Bella,’ she went on, lowering her voice, ‘we were all so sorry about what happened.’
And then Fen, in her straightforward, unmasked way, had asked: ‘What happened?’
There it was. The question laid so straightforwardly that Bella had no choice but to answer.
She had watched Fen’s expression cloud with confusion, colour draining from her face.
It wasn’t that Bella had intended to keep secrets from Fen. It was just that she’d got so used to lying that it felt like the truth.
27
Fen
Fen felt the crest and fall of the waves. She wanted to close her eyes, drink in the sensations – but Bella was talking to her, her voice fast and bright, fingers squeezing at her arm. She used to find Bella’s habit of touching whoever she was talking with endearing, as if her excitement and warmth bubbled out of her body, unstoppable. This morning, though, she needed space.
Her head felt too busy, too loud. Being back on Aegos was far harder than she’d expected. Rationally, she knew there were plenty of happy moments during that long summer seven years ago, but all her body remembered was that one night. It was like spilling red wine on a beautiful new sofa: it didn’t matter that the rest of the sofa remained in perfect condition – the only thing you noticed was the stain.
Yannis cut the engine. For a blissful moment, all Fen could hear was the settling of waves and a faint sea breeze clinking a wire against the mast. Light-footed, Yannis crossed the deck, hauling a salt-crusted anchor from the bow. The tails of his shirt lifted as he launched it overboard. A deep splash, then the heavy rope uncoiling behind it at speed.
Beside her, Bella clapped.
She did that a lot – clapped her hands together when anything excited her. Fen used to find it cute, but lately that gesture had begun to irritate her, too. She tried to refocus on the glittering sea because she didn’t want to be someone who saw flaws where others saw gifts, but she couldn’t fully tune in to the beauty of the day.
The sense of dissatisfaction in their relationship had crept up on her so slowly that she’d barely had a chance to put a name to it. Then, after that awful encounter at the airport with Sue, Fen had wanted to turn around right then, leave. Bella had begged her not to go, promised they’d sort everything out – and then the other hens had arrived, and Fen felt like she had no choice but to see the weekend through.
Bella was nothing like Fen’s previous girlfriends, and that had been part of her appeal. She loved her sassiness, the way she blasted into a room in a cloud of perfume and infectious energy. She loved Bella’s knack for creating fun from thin air – a boring drive to a homeware store could suddenly turn into an adventure with Bella, who’d demand that they pull over so she could dance to the busker playing a fiddle, or watch a film despite it being ten o’clock on a beautifully sunny Saturday.
She had a gloriously dirty laugh. You could hear Bella laughing three rooms away. And she was sexy as hell, no doubt about that. Fen didn’t even want to know where or with whom she’d learned some of the things she knew.
But sex and laughter – as delicious and addictive as they were – weren’t enough.
The only thing that was enough was love.
And Fen realised she didn’t love Bella.
28
Eleanor
Eleanor let her shoulders sway to the yawing of the yacht as it turned on its anchor. She briefly closed her eyes behind her sunglasses and breathed. The air tasted clean and salt-bright, the faint fragrance of herbs drifting from the land.