After a lengthy silence, Fen asked, ‘What do you want?’
It was such a simple question. She was asked it every day – in a café, or by her mother, or even at work – but right now, Fen’s gaze square on hers, the question seemed like the biggest and hardest thing she’d ever need to answer.
Thought and logic, which were her language, seemed to dissolve, and all she could feel was something deeper within herself, a heat burning at her core.
She sensed the whisper of an answer. But it was a ludicrous one. She couldn’t say it. Shouldn’t even think it. It was absurd.
And yet, when she had first seen Fen on this cliff, she had felt something cleave open in her chest, an expansion, a need, a desire. And she was sure that Fen had felt it too, was feeling it right in this moment.
Robyn’s hand was still beneath Fen’s. She wanted to look down at them and memorise the places where their skin touched – yet she didn’t want to break Fen’s gaze. Their eyes felt locked.
She turned her hand within Fen’s, palm to palm. Felt the slide of their fingers, like roots searching, linking together, enclosing. She squeezed. The answer was clear and bright.
You. I want you.
Robyn didn’t know if she was straight, or gay, or something outside of a box meant for ticking. She only knew, like some deep oceanic roar in her blood, that she wanted this.
She leaned towards Fen, eyes open, never looking away.
Their lips met. She felt the soft give of Fen’s mouth. She tasted of night and stars and pine. Their lips and tongues and mouths moved together in a slow dance, her body alight with desire. This kiss was the warmest, deepest pleasure Robyn had known.
Her fingers moved to the nape of Fen’s neck, feeling the brush of her shorn hair, and lower to the smooth glide of her skin.
The whole world fizzed. Kissing Fen was like sinking beneath the surface of the sea, but instead of it being airless and dark, it was lit with phosphorescence so luminous that she knew she’d never see the world the same way again.
68
Eleanor
Eleanor lay in the bottom of the boat, the vodka bottle half-empty, listening to the wash of water against the hull.
Memories of Sam were swimming close, then pulling away, like the tug of waves – blanketing her, then exposing her. She only wanted the warm memories, yet a current of other images was dragging her towards a darker place: a call from a hospital; her hands gripped to the sides of a plastic chair as she waited; a surgeon removing her glasses, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Two words kept surfacing in her thoughts. Human error.
Someone made a mistake.
We all make mistakes! Oh, well! Never mind!
But he was dead. One human error – and Sam was dead.
His life over. Her life over.
She had read every detail of the disciplinary hearing. She’d read that Sam had been given the wrong drug, one that contained penicillin, which he was allergic to. Co-amoxiclav instead of co-trimoxazole. A few letters’ difference. A different blend of chemicals. That was all it took to make his blood vessels leak, his throat constrict, his body tip into anaphylaxis.
Eleanor knew all about this. She’d read the report so often that the staple at the corner had rubbed loose. She knew it was an accident. She’d memorised the name of the senior nurse who’d made the mistake. On a Tuesday afternoon when she’d failed to sleep for the third night in a row, she’d driven to the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, hands trembling on the wheel, her vision swinging. She’d wanted to look the nurse square in the eye and ask, Do you have any idea what you’ve done?
But the nurse no longer worked there. Got a new job, the receptionist had told her cheerfully. Eleanor pushed her fists deep into her pockets. She didn’t ask where or doing what. That was where she had left it, there on that ward. She didn’t want to track her down. What was the point? Sam was gone.
And then, all those months later, she had been sitting in her flat, eating her one-person serving of shepherd’s pie, trying so hard not to ruminate, to move forwards – when that nurse’s name popped right into her inbox.
An invite to a hen weekend.
Four nights in Greece.
Just six of them chosen.
Signed:
Kisses and love from the Maid of Honour,
Bella Rossi
69
Bella
The bottle of ouzo swung in Bella’s hand as she lurched on, the dusty ground hard beneath her bare feet. She was navigating the cliff path by the torch on her phone, boulders and shrubs rearing from the shadows.
She staggered, weaving dangerously close to the edge. The torch’s beam slipped over the cliff, shining through the night, down, down towards the dark mouth of the sea.