Eleanor poured the glossy olives into a little wooden bowl she’d found at the back of the cupboard. Everything in this villa was pared back, tasteful. She sensed that Fen’s aunt was one of those women who oozed style. She wondered if there was a photo of her. Eleanor always liked looking at people in photos: they couldn’t look back, so you had plenty of time to make up your mind about whether you liked them or not, whether you could trust them.
She opened a tub of tzatziki. Inhaled. She dipped a spoon in, then sucked the creamy, garlic-infused yoghurt straight off. She could eat it by the bowlful – slathered on fresh bread, dunked with chips, dolloped on salad: tzatziki worked in a thousand different ways. She dipped the spoon in a second time and when she glanced up, Lexi had arrived at the kitchen counter. She waited for the recrimination, but Lexi only smiled.
She sucked the spoon clean, rinsed it, and then continued fetching the rest of the ingredients. She took half a dozen plump tomatoes from the fridge. (Did Robyn have no clue? Tomatoes should never go in the fridge. Hell, she’d best check what she’d done with the avocados.) She rinsed their bright red skins, then found a sharp vegetable knife and began slicing them into thick rounds. None of the hens had the energy for climbing back into a taxi and heading to a taverna, so Eleanor had quietly begun putting together mezes, shaking roasted almonds into a little dish, arranging stuffed vine leaves on a plate, tearing and toasting pittas ready to dip in creamy hummus.
‘Can I give you a hand?’ Lexi asked warmly, setting down a glass of something fizzy on the counter. Her soon to be sister-in-law.
She looked at Lexi’s wrists. They were so slender. Could you have elegant wrists? That was how she’d describe them. No jewellery, except for the huge diamond on her ring finger that her brother had chosen.
She remembered him announcing, I’ve met someone. He’d been sitting in Eleanor’s flat, feet on the table, tie loose around his neck. It was a rare visit and she’d kept glancing at him, wondering why he’d come. There was a lightness in his eyes, a giddiness that made him look less serious.
Her brother, in love.
She’d typed Lexi’s name into Google. She didn’t even need to hit search to know that anyone named Lexi Lowe would be bound for stardom. She wondered what Lexi Lowe would do when it came to swapping that rhythmic, alliterative name for their family surname: Tollock.
Eleanor Tollock’s hiding a bollock.
It was no surprise then when hundreds of images of Lexi Lowe filled her screen. There were shots of her performing with bands and old clips from MTV of her dancing in a tiger-striped leotard. She’d clicked on a video and had been mesmerised by the way she moved, body like liquid, as if muscles and tendons and bones flowed. Even in a group of top dancers, Lexi stood out. There was something captivating about the proportions of her body, her expression – lost completely in the throes of the music. She’d watched, thinking: no wonder Ed is in love. The whole damn audience is.
When she met Lexi for the first time – dinner at her parents’ house, their mother using the best china, her father bringing out bottle after bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and trying not to stare – Eleanor had been surprised to find she liked Lexi.
Ed’s girlfriends had always been beautiful, but Lexi seemed different. She was able to tease Ed, make him laugh, question his opinions – and he listened. Maybe with her … she let herself hope.
As she looked at Lexi now, she decided that there was something about the symmetry of her features, the precise straightness of her nose, that made you keep on looking, as if beauty were something mathematical you could work out, solve.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, declining Lexi’s offer of help.
Instead of moving off, Lexi stayed. Eleanor didn’t like people talking to her while she cooked. She liked to concentrate on the food, the texture of it in her hands, tasting as she went to find exactly the right balance of seasoning and herbs.
She arranged the tomatoes on a plate with a finely sliced red onion. Then she crumbled over a block of feta, finishing with a sprinkling of fresh oregano she’d picked from a pot on the terrace.
‘I’m so pleased you could come on the hen weekend,’ Lexi said. She seemed to be trying out the words, to see whether she believed them. ‘What changed your mind?’
Eleanor blinked. ‘Not sure.’
A lie.
When Ed had told her about the hen party, saying, You should go. It’ll do you good, she’d responded, ‘Anyone who tells you, It’ll do you good, needs to live their own life.’ Ed had looked at her for a moment – she’d felt her shoulders tense, her skin tighten – and then his mouth had broken into a smile as he’d laughed. ‘Fair enough.’
But then she’d received Bella’s email. It’d popped into her inbox on a Thursday evening after a day sculpting in the garage. Her fingers were numb from the cold and smelt faintly metallic. She’d scrolled to the photos of the villa basking beneath a cloudless sky – and she’d thought, Maybe. Then she’d read the subject header: The Hen Weekend. She liked that. Not Lexi’s Hen, or Plans for the Hen. Just The Hen Weekend. Like there was no other.
She’d scanned the names – six of them; a small, select group – and felt, what? Flattered? Chosen? Then she’d noticed something else. Leaning closer, her heart kicked hard between her ribs.
The screen wavered, the words swam. She blinked, wiping a hand across her eyes.
She took a breath. Read it again.
Huh. She’d sat back, arms folded.
And just like that, she was a Yes.