An uneasy hush fell on the group.
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ Simon said, when nobody responded, ‘drunken swimming is never a good idea.’
His words only served to lengthen the awkward silence, until Valentina, glancing around the group, her face drawn in a frown, said, ‘Have I said something wrong? Alastair?’
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, reaching for her hand.
‘But it is, I can feel it. All of a sudden everyone is so quiet. I have said something wrong, what is it? Please tell me.’
Alastair hesitated and in that moment the penny must have dropped with a heavy clang, and Valentina gasped. ‘Oh, my darling, I am so very sorry, forgive me, please! Oh, how could I be so clumsy with my words when your wife died the way she did?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s fine, don’t give it another thought.’
‘No, it is not fine. I am cross with myself. How stupid you must think I am. Your friends must think the same too.’
‘Of course they don’t.’
Under the brim of his baseball cap, Simon rolled his eyes. He’d lay odds on her knowing exactly what she’d said. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust her one little bit.I’m watching you, he thought. Trouble was, he reckoned Valentina was watching him in return.
‘We should play a game,’ said Danny.
A sleepy groan came from Rachel where she was lying stretched out in the sun. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Don’t be so antisocial,’ her brother told her.
‘What kind of a game?’ asked Jenna.
‘If it involves moving,’ Rachel said, ‘count me out.’
‘How about French cricket?’ suggested Danny. ‘I put the old bat and ball in the locker on the boat.’
Another groan from Rachel. ‘I have a better idea, how about we carry on just as we are?’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Simon.
‘Anything else to eat for anybody?’ asked Frankie. ‘If not, I’ll make a start on tidying things away.’
‘I’ll have another pork pie if there’s one going spare,’ replied Callum.
‘Me too,’ joined in Danny. ‘A pickled onion wouldn’t go amiss either.’
‘Help yourselves, there’s plenty here.’
‘Somebody pass me a sausage roll, please,’ said Simon.
With everyone busying themselves around the plates and plastic boxes of food again, and all thoughts of playing a game now forgotten, for a split second it was as though nothing had changed. Here they all were just as they’d always been, enjoying a picnic on the river; but one look at Valentina, with her arm placed possessively around Alastair, and that thought turned to dust.
How had she done it? How had she wormed her way into Alastair’s heart in so short a time? Had she merely seized her chance when he was vulnerable and still recovering from Orla’s death? Could any woman have done that given the circumstances?
More than anything Simon wanted his old friend to be happy, but Alastair didn’t look happy in his opinion; he looked permanently on edge. Frankie had said much the same earlier to Simon when they’d been alone before setting off in the boat, but always one to be fair, she had quickly justified her comment by saying that probably anyone would look anxious in Alastair’s shoes right now. ‘He’s desperate for us to like Valentina; it’s important to him.’
Watching a blue and white boat decorated with bunting puttering by, a man and a woman at the helm and a perky Jack Russell sitting on the prow, Simon finished eating the sausage roll Callum had given him. He rubbed the flakes of pastry from his hand and closed his eyes. He tried to think of something about Valentina that he liked. Just one thing would do.
His eyes didn’t stay closed for long; a noisy boat was approaching with a party ofhullabaloosonboard. Simon had heard the wordhullabalooused a lot when he and Danny had been invited to stay at Linston End as boys. Alastair’s Aunt Cora had regularly employed the expression, having adpoted it from Arthur Ransome’s description of the reckless holidaymakers on the river who went too fast in their lavish motor cruisers, often with music blaring and voices raised, destroying the peace and quiet. Right now river etiquette was being blasted to hell and back by this particular boat of boisterous day-trippers – girls in bikinis were shrieking drunkenly and lads, stripped to the waist, were clowning around, pushing and shoving each other and running the risk of falling overboard. The parent in Simon wanted to chastise them for their raucous behaviour and warn them to be more careful. But they weren’t his children, so he closed his eyes again and forgot them.
After dozing off for a while, he woke to hear that the conversation had turned to fate versus plain old happenstance. Valentina seemed to favour fate.
‘I knew from the moment Alastair and I went diving that day in Sri Lanka that we were destined to be more than friends,’ she said. ‘I just knew it. Especially when he got into difficulty.’
