‘Yes, at least six times a day, but she’s got my number and surely she’d call after getting a message telling her that Mum has cancer.’ Whatever Bex might think of her estranged sister and the things she’d done, she couldn’t believe she wouldn’t call after hearing news like that.
‘You know there’s a chance that your email went to her spam folder too, so she might not even have got it.’ Rowan bit her lip and Bex’s head dropped into her hands.
‘I can’t believe I didn’t think about that.’ She forced herself to look up at her friend again. ‘How am I supposed to get hold of Briony when email’s the only way of reaching her?’
‘You’ll have to ask your mum for her contact number.’ The voice behind Bex made her jump, but she recognised it even before she turned around. It was her mother’s best friend, Linda.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ Jumping up, she huggedthe woman she considered to be her auntie. Linda had been one of the people who’d rallied around Bex in the wake of the wedding being called off, and she’d also been the voice of reason when Bex had tried to insist that her parents choose between her and Briony. Her relationship with Linda had also given her comfort when she’d become upset that her own boys wouldn’t know their aunt. Thank God the boys had Triss. And although her sons might not have an auntie by blood who they got to see, she hoped some of her friends could fulfil a similar role in their lives to the one Linda had played in hers. These last few weeks had brought home just how important it was to have friends who felt like family.
‘I’ve started volunteering at the hospital shop on the days I’m not at the museum.’ Linda was a force of nature and worked alongside Donna at the Museum of Cornish Heritage, which was situated on the coast road towards Port Kara, just outside of Port Agnes. Local history had always been Linda’s passion, but Bex should have known even working three days a week in her beloved museum wouldn’t be enough for her. ‘I got roped in by my friend, Gwen. I think you know her from the school, don’t you?’
‘We do, she’s the treasurer of the PTA, but then everyone from Padstow to Camelford knows Gwen.’ Bex caught sight of the woman under discussion and gave Gwen a wave. ‘We were just talking about you.’
‘It’s a rare day when I’m not up for discussion.’ Gwen dropped one of her trademark winks, before a serious expression settled on her face. ‘How’s your mum doing? I know Donna doesn’t want everyone knowing what’s going on, but I saw Ken when he brought her in for a scan and I could tell how worried he was. When I asked if he was okay, he just broke down on me.’
‘Poor Ken, I know Mum’s the one with the cancer, but I don’tthink she realises how much pressure she’s putting on him by insisting on acting as if there’s no problem and not letting any of us even try to help.’ Bex couldn’t stop herself from emitting a shuddering sigh. ‘I was just saying to Rowan that I haven’t had any response from the email I sent my sister, and Mum is the only one who’s got her mobile number. So Linda’s right, I’m going to have to find a way of getting her to give it to me.’
‘How are you going to do that, when your mum said she’d never forgive you or Ken if you told Briony what was happening?’ Rowan looked at her quizzically.
‘I’ll just have to get creative. I tried telling her that this might be my chance for a reunion with Briony when the transplant was first mentioned, but Mum wasn’t fooled. Maybe I need to try again and tell her that all of this really has got me thinking that life is too short and it’s time to bury the hatchet with Briony, even if in reality, the only place I want to bury the hatchet is in her head.’ The force of Bex’s words surprised even her, and Linda gasped, before she asked a question there was no straightforward answer to.
‘Do you really still feel that strongly about it, after all this time? Now you’ve got Matt and the boys.’
‘Most of the time I don’t think about what she did at all any more, and I’m genuinely glad it happened, because I wouldn’t swap the life I’ve got now for anything else, but just lately…’ She trailed off for a moment, before letting out another long breath and continuing. ‘Just lately, I feel angrier than ever. If Briony hadn’t done what she did, she’d be around now and we’d be facing this side by side and trying to make Mum see sense,together. We’re each other’s only siblings and she’s the one person in the world who can really understand how I’m feeling at the moment. We should be leaning on each other now and sharing how worried we are. I’m so angry with her for not making thatpossible and if I have to lie to Mum, and keep pretending I want to make up with Briony until she finally believes me, then that’s what I’m going to do.’
‘What about Iris? I know you didn’t want me to ask her if she could track Briony down, but surely it has to be worth a try?’ Linda’s daughter was a researcher working in London and if anyone could find a way around the roadblock they’d reached in trying to contact her, it was Iris. But she was also Donna’s goddaughter and Bex hadn’t wanted to put their relationship at risk, but with every day that passed her principles were getting shakier. She just wanted her mum to take the chance of a complete cure before it was too late.
‘Okay.’ She nodded, looking towards Linda and Gwen. ‘But I’m going to talk to Mum as well and if lying to her is wrong, I’m just going to have to live with it, to make sure she lives too.’
‘All I’m going to say is that life can sometimes lead you to places you never expected it to.’ There was no judgement in Gwen’s tone and her words seemed to hold all the more gravitas because of it. ‘So you just need to be prepared to face whatever might happen as a result.’
‘Nothing could possibly be worse that the prospect of losing Mum and, as for my relationship with Briony, that was broken beyond repair a very long time ago, so I can’t see how anything that might happen between us could possibly make that worse.’
‘Well then, you seem to have a plan A and a plan B.’ Gwen put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. It was a gentle gesture of affection so Bex couldn’t have begun to explain the sense of unease that lingered even after the older woman had removed her hand. It was probably because she’d been given a warning she’d chosen not to heed and, whatever the consequences of that might be, she’d just have to deal with them.
Holly should have been busy filming a video to post on her social media platforms. ‘Woody’s Words of Wisdom’ was something she posted every Wednesday, mostly because the alliteration of doing it on Wednesdays was irresistible. It had quickly become her most popular kind of content. Every week she would post a reflection on what she had learned about her life on the road. She covered all kinds of topics from how freeing it was to rid herself of most of her personal possessions to live more simply, to giving advice on the options for earning money in non-conventional – but still entirely legal – ways.
The hashtag #WoodysWordsofWisdom had begun trending on the social media platforms she used from the third video she’d posted, and now she never missed a week. Usually, it was easy to find something to talk about. There’d always be some interaction in the course of seven days that sparked an idea. But this week, for the first time ever, she felt as though she had absolutely nothing to say.
Originally, she’d intended to post about the concept of ‘home’ and what that might mean to different people. She’d felt sure that being back in Port Agnes and venturing into the village itself would spark an idea, and maybe it would have done if things had worked out differently. She’d been having such a good time getting to know her nephews a little bit and the thought of making sand angels on the beach with them had immediately taken her back to the first time she and Bex had done it. Local children often bemoaned the fact that snowfall in Cornwall was a rare occurrence and so opportunities to build a snowman or have a snowball fight were few and far between. It had been their mother who’d come up with the idea of making the beach into a winter wonderland of sorts for the localchildren. They could build a snowman out of sand, with enough water and a little bit of ingenuity. Sand-balls would definitely have been a risky idea, so instead she’d bought a huge bag of foam balls and the children had been able to throw them at one another. Snow angels were replaced with sand angels, and it had been an idea that had caught on in Port Agnes and beyond. It wasn’t something that she and Bex had limited to the winter, either. So the fact that it was spring now was no barrier as far as Holly was concerned.
She’d felt a twinge of sadness that the boys didn’t seem to have heard of the tradition, so it clearly wasn’t something their mum did with them, but it could have been their thing; hers and the boys. Even if her nephews weren’t aware of it, she’d be able to hold that thought close to her heart once she left Port Agnes again, and maybe they’d remember her because of it. All of that had made her feel so happy to be home again, but then she’d spotted Ken and she’d been confronted with her parents’ lie about being away on a cruise, in a way that had made if feel as though she’d been slapped around the face with a wet fish. The idea of talking about home felt ridiculous now.
One of the things she’d planned to say was that home wasn’t necessarily a place, it could be a person, or even a feeling. But she didn’t have anyone to call home, unless you counted Merlin and Woody, not even her parents. They’d chosen to lie to her rather than spend time with her, and the only feelings she’d been left with were sadness and loneliness. The void that had seemed to open up in her chest at the sight of Ken had caused her physical pain, as if her heart really had been ripped out. But the worst of it was that she only had herself to blame. She’d made a stupid mistake, catastrophic even, by coming between Bex and Liam. Any fool could have seen how that was going to play out, but she’d convinced herself that it was for the best and that it would all work out; however, she couldn’t have been more wrong. Afterthat, even when people had tried to get close to her, she’d pushed them away. Gray and Janey had been the exception, but they had their own lives, naturally prioritising time with their family and focusing on their business, and they probably rarely gave her a second thought in between the messages they exchanged. Since heading out on the road, she’d never formed a bond that tight again and she was starting to feel like she never would.
Holly had a million followers across the social media platforms she used, who commented on her posts and chatted with her as if they were great mates, and yet she didn’t have a single real friend she could call right now and offload to about how she was feeling. There was no one who’d tell her it was all going to be okay and that none of the awful things she was thinking, about how pointless her existence was, were true, or to reassure her that tomorrow would be a brighter day. She had to watch other strangers online to hear those kind of things, and try to convince herself that their messages of hope were aimed at her. Maybe that was why her videos were so popular, because hundreds of thousands of other people didn’t have anyone they could talk to either. The thought did nothing to comfort her. Even if loneliness was an epidemic, it didn’t change how hard it was to deal with, especially when she knew she’d brought it on herself.
Standing up, Holly lifted up the lid of the bench seat and pulled out a well-thumbed photo album. It was one of the old-fashioned kinds, with sticky sheets of plastic protecting the photographs and holding them in place. Her mother had put the album together as part of her eighteenth birthday gift, having done the same thing for Bex three years before. It was like a potted history of her childhood, and it was her most treasured possession. Living in a van might mean she didn’t have much space, but she’d always make room for this. She’d kept it safe during the eighteen months she’d spent on a canal boat, whenshe’d lived in a caravan in Scotland and everywhere else she’d called home in the last sixteen years, no matter how temporary. Since buying Woody, she’d sat curled up, looking through that old photo album, more times than she could count.
It was bittersweet looking at the photographs of her, Bex and their mum, when they’d been each other’s everything, long before either Liam or Ken had arrived. She adored her stepfather, but it had still felt odd to allow someone into their close-knit little family. The things their biological father had put them through and the lies he’d told had made the three of them even closer, so trusting Ken had taken a huge leap of faith, and it wasn’t one Holly had been able to take nearly as easily as her mother or sister had seemed to.
She lingered on a photograph taken on her first day of secondary school. She was wearing a blazer that had clearly been bought with the intention of still fitting her when she did her A levels. Even now she could remember being told to smile for the camera, but her mouth hadn’t wanted to comply, because of the nerves that had been bubbling up just below the surface. She’d been terrified about the prospect of starting ‘big school’ and she’d felt more like bursting in to tears than smiling, but then Bex had reached out and linked her arm through Holly’s, and she’d immediately felt a thousand times better. Having Bex by her side had been all she’d ever needed to feel safe and, if home really was a person, her sister had been it. As Holly went to turn the page now, a wet nose pushed against her arm, gently at first, then a bit more urgently.
‘Okay, Merlin, I know, I know. It’s dinner time, sweetheart, isn’t it?’ Holly busied herself getting the dog’s food, hoping that focusing on something else would help her to shake off the melancholy that seemed to have deepened from looking at the photographs, but the ache in her chest didn’t seem ready to goanywhere. Then, just as she set down the dog’s food, her phone pinged with a text. It was from Tristan.
Tristan
Hey Holly. I just wanted to say what a great time I had today. The boys loved it too and their dad said they haven’t stopped talking about you since he picked them up. I can’t say I’m surprised, you make quite the impression. Hope we can get together again soon xx
