9

Eleanor

Eleanor tore open a paper bag to reveal a fresh, stone-baked loaf. She sawed it into generous hunks, breathing in its warm, yeasty scent.

‘Have you been to Greece before?’ Lexi asked, perched on a kitchen stool.

‘Once. With Sam.’ There, she’d said his name. It was like she needed to say it aloud several times a day for him to be real. For him to have existed. ‘It was the only holiday we took.’ It had been beautiful and magical and perfect, and if there was a week in her life – one week that she could relive again and again – it would be that one. A cheap hotel in Corfu. Paper-thin walls. A teenage couple in the room next door who got ragingly drunk every night and took turns to throw up in the windowless en suite. A strip of tavernas that catered to a British palate – burgers and chips and pizzas, with a wisp of Greek salad on the side. But nothing could touch them because they were together.

‘I wish I’d met him,’ Lexi said. ‘I know Ed thought he was great.’

Is that right?

She wanted to tell Lexi that he was more than great. Once, when Eleanor had mentioned there was nowhere to store her sculpting tools, he built her a floor-to-ceiling cupboard that same weekend – and he did it cheerfully, radio on, singing to nineties rock. He loved everything she cooked, often sitting and looking at a meal for the first minute, marvelling and asking questions. Halfway through he’d leave his knife and fork askew on the plate and pause to absorb it. He never rushed. He loved computer games, and when he disappeared into their spare room with his games console, he’d say with a grin, ‘Just off to meditate.’ He knew himself so completely – and he looked at Eleanor like he knew her too, and still loved her.

‘I can’t imagine how tough it must have been,’ Lexi said. ‘Must be,’ she said, correcting herself.

‘He died four weeks before our wedding,’ Eleanor said. ‘I never had a hen party.’

‘Oh. God. I’m sorry,’ Lexi said, looking mortified. ‘Is it awful for you, being out here?’

Eleanor knew she was being too intense, but sometimes she wanted other people to feel it. It wasn’t Lexi’s fault. ‘It’s fine. Anyway, my hen party would’ve been nothing like this one. Just lunch with my mother and Penelope who lives in the flat below mine. I didn’t miss much.’ Still, they would have had a good meal at Pinocchio’s and she did love their haddock risotto.

She gathered the thick slices of bread and arranged them in a basket ready for the table.

Lexi glanced through the open doors, where the other hens were laughing on the terrace, cast in the soft evening light. ‘I’ll take the olives out,’ she said, sliding from her stool. ‘Don’t stay in the kitchen too long. Come join us.’

The hens gave a small cheer when Lexi reached them, followed by the clinking of glasses. They all looked so light and happy and in the moment. Everyone else knew how to behave. It was like they’d been taught a lesson on HUMANNESS, and she’d missed the class and never quite caught up.

When she was at school, she’d started each Monday morning with a snake in her stomach, cold and still, shifting occasionally to remind her it lived there – and if she couldn’t feel it, it was only because it was sleeping. It didn’t take much to wake: a sharp laugh from the back of the school bus; a boy pointing at her across the hall. There’s Eleanor Tollock hiding a bollock! A teacher asking her to Speak up so we can hear you! It was there, wary and fast and poisonous.

Her brother was like the other kids, the ones who simply got it. Life. He’d know the latest bands to listen to, or that yo-yos were cool – and then not cool – or that you needed to wear your jeans low on your hips, not belted at the waist. She’d missed all those nuances. She was looking so damn hard, too. Concentrating, always a little frown line. No one likes people who try too hard, who stare.

People preferred her when she drank. She was easier. Less spiky. People said, ‘Hey, Eleanor. You’re fun!’ as if her funness was of great surprise.

At parties, she felt like a wooden actor who was constantly reading stage directions. Stop gripping the glass! Put your hands in your pockets to look more relaxed. Smile! You’re biting your lip. Smile, for God’s sake!

And then she went to that one party where she met him. ‘Sam Maine,’ she said aloud to the villa.

She’d been washing up glasses at the time. She preferred a task at a party. It was only twenty minutes till her taxi was due to whisk her home to pyjamas and mint tea. If she washed up slowly it would keep her busy until then.

‘Want a hand?’ Sam had asked.

‘No, thanks,’ she’d said without even looking up.

‘I’m not a fan of house parties either,’ he said, leaning easily against the kitchen side.

When she’d glanced up, he whispered, ‘No one does the washing up if they’re having a good time.’ He smiled.

She smiled, too.

She took him in properly then, the way his stubble thinned at the centre of his chin, leaving a smooth patch of pink skin, and the badly fitting jeans. He told her he worked in digital advertising but was still mourning the best job of his life: till boy at Blockbusters. He often said the wrong thing, told a lame joke, or didn’t get the context of what the crowd was saying. But when he got it wrong, he laughed. That’s what happened – he laughed at himself, like he found it genuinely funny. When she got something wrong, she felt shame, humiliation. Her cheeks burned and her gaze lowered.

‘How do you do that?’ she’d asked him one night when they got home from dinner with her brother and some of his friends.

‘Do what?’

‘Not care what people think.’

‘Why would I? You can’t please everyone. I reckon you should only try and please one person.’

She felt like she should know the answer. In fact, she did know the answer. ‘Yourself.’

The Wisdom Gun. That’s what he fired. Little bullets of truth that seemed so simple when he said them but so hard to find when the volume in her head got too loud. She discovered that most wisdom is hard won. In his teens, Sam had been a carer for his mother, who’d had Parkinson’s. He’d talked about how hard it was – but that there was also beauty and darkness and humour and light and love and fear and hope, all of it, because that is life. He’d learned these things from his mother, watching how she lived in those last years, and Eleanor, well she never got to meet her mother-in-law, and that felt like a terrible shame, because she wanted to take her hands, thank her for bringing up a man as wonderful as Sam.

Ten months they’d had together, when they were supposed to have a lifetime.

What the fuck, life? Seriously. What. The. Fuck.

She touched the two wedding bands she wore on a chain around her neck. His and hers. She remembered collecting them from the jewellers, Sam only dead a fortnight, and her standing at the counter, hot-eyed with emotion as she’d studied the inscription he’d secretly arranged. Always with you.

There was a loud bark of laughter from the terrace.

Eleanor’s head snapped up. She knew which woman the sound had erupted from. She watched the way she laughed with her head tipped back, drink in hand, like the world was there for the taking.

She felt the slow uncoiling of the snake in her gut. Poisonous and deadly.

 

 

 

We were all ready for a holiday.

We wanted to surrender our bodies to the hot kiss of the sun. We wanted to idle away evenings in Greek tavernas, mopping up olive oil and oregano with hunks of bread. We wanted to drink cold beers and sip the icy sweetness of Fanta Limon from glass bottles. We wanted the sea, blue and shimmering, with a pebble-white carpet. We wanted to surround ourselves with other women and talk about food and travel and sex – instead of work and children and ageing parents. We wanted to rediscover those parts of ourselves that were freer, sexier, and more fun. We wanted our friends to be our mirrors – to reflect our best, brightest selves.

We wanted it all.

And we deserved it. That’s what we told ourselves: We deserve this.

Except one of us was thinking something different. Something darker.

SHE deserves this.