70

Robyn

Robyn was so deep in her body that she was flesh and sinew and blood and heat and movement.

No thinking.

Just feeling.

Being.

A low exhale of pleasure slipped through her lips. She pulled back for a beat – only enough so that she could look at Fen.

Fen was smiling, moonlight catching in her eyes. ‘Wow.’

Robyn grinned, heart soaring.

The moment stretched and widened, the two of them held by the night, something expansive opening in her chest.

She couldn’t stop grinning.

Somewhere behind Robyn’s shoulder, there was the slide of earth beneath a foot. She was pinned so firmly in the moment with Fen that she didn’t notice. Didn’t register the shape of someone else on the clifftop, watching them.

‘How could you?’

Robyn’s head whipped around, smile sliced from her face.

Bella was standing there barefoot, a blood-red wrap cloaking her shoulders. Her face looked pale, lips dark and wide. Sand and dirt streaked her shins.

Robyn shot to her feet at the same time as Fen. ‘Bella!’ they both said, with stinging synchronicity.

Then silence.

The sea licked coolly at the foot of the cliffs. Silver stars knifed from the sky.

Three women standing on a clifftop in the dead of night.

‘How could you?’ The quiet disbelief in Bella’s question sent a chill through Robyn.

Bella’s wide, shocked gaze slid to Fen. ‘This morning … We only broke up this morning!’

Fen said, ‘I know. Shit. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m in love with you. How could you?’

‘Bella … I’m so sorry. I’ve hurt you.’

Bella looked unsteady, as if her legs were threatening to buckle. The edge, Robyn thought. She’s too near. ‘Bella—’ she began.

Bella’s attention cut to Robyn. ‘You!’ Her lips pulled back in contempt, her entire posture shifting, drawing up. ‘You fucking bitch!’

She deserved it. She knew she did. She shouldn’t have kissed Fen – yet every cell in her body had been driving her on. She opened her mouth to say something, to apologise, to try to explain, but Bella was speaking: ‘Straight little Robyn. That’s what you’ve always wanted people to think, isn’t it? But I knew! I fucking knew!’

‘I didn’t—’ Robyn tried.

But Bella was already finished with her, turning towards Fen. ‘Is little Robyn here pretending she’s never kissed a woman before? Do you think she’s fallen for you? Because it isn’t the first time – is it, Robyn?’

Heat burned in her cheeks. She could feel Fen’s focus turning towards her.

‘Robyn and I have history. She told you about that?’ Bella demanded. ‘Has she?’

Into the silence, Fen said, ‘No.’

Bella looked square at Robyn as she said, ‘Robyn is the first woman I slept with.’

Robyn’s eyes startled wide. First? No, that couldn’t be true. Bella had always been so open, so bold about her sexuality. Robyn had thought there’d been numerous others before her. ‘I … I had no idea …’ she whispered, her voice wavering.

Bella stared right at her, voice cracking as she said, ‘I was in love with you, Robyn.’

Robyn was completely still.

‘You claimed you were drunk, concussed. That you didn’t remember.’

Guilt scorched her. Robyn hadn’t known how to handle it. Hadn’t understood what had happened or how she felt, so she had closed it out.

‘When you said that, it made me feel like … like I’d taken advantage of you. That beautiful thing that happened – became something broken, dirty.’

To Robyn’s horror, she saw tears trailing down Bella’s cheeks. She’d had no idea that was how Bella had felt. When she’d seen her a few days later, Bella had been her usual self – smiling, joking, breezy, the life and soul.

I was in love with you.

‘Bella,’ she began, stepping towards her. ‘I’m so, so sorry …’

‘Don’t,’ Bella said, lurching dangerously close to the cliff edge.

‘Careful,’ Fen warned.

Bella swung around, the red wrap lifting in the night.

Robyn sensed danger, like something metallic filling the air. She kept her voice low, careful not to startle Bella, as she said, ‘You’re too close.’

With her back to them, Bella said, ‘What do you care?’ There was a change in her tone, a raw sadness to it.

‘Please, Bella, take a step away,’ Robyn pleaded.

‘No one cares what happens to me.’

Robyn knew that attention was Bella’s oxygen, but this – this felt different. There was something about her, a defeated rounding of her shoulders, a worn edge to her voice.

‘That’s not true,’ Robyn said softly. ‘I care about you.’

‘You’re lying!’ Bella let out a growling roar, an animal sound of pain and frustration, as she launched the bottle of ouzo over the cliff edge.

Robyn watched moonlight catching the bottleneck as it turned through the night, liquid glinting like mercury.

Maybe Bella had been watching it too, not concentrating, because as she stepped back, the movement unbalanced something.

Robyn saw it happening in slow motion: the loose stone beneath Bella’s heel, the instability of her foot from the scorpion sting, the tip of Bella’s body towards the cliff edge, the billow of the red wrap.

Robyn lurched forward, reached out, tried to pull her back.

But her hand met only air.

 

 

 

Not one of us thought it would end the way it did. The sea – one moment, so alluring in its shimmering glory, and the next, dark, bottomless, and deadly. It was like it had been lying in wait, biding its time. Watching it all, unmoved by our screams.