Olivia laughed, and the conversation took a much more upbeat tone. They moved on to funny parenting stories and most embarrassing moments and terrible teenage hairstyles. Somehow the hours just slipped by. Em made everyone a round of fried-egg sandwiches when they became peckish, and Maggie brought out mugs of hot chocolate sometime after that. Despite some of the more harrowing parts of the conversation, Maggie realized that she was enjoying herself enormously. She didn’t really have girlfriends like this at home. It had been surprisingly lovely to talk so openly to the other two, to get things off her chest and to feel validated and supported in return. Chances were the three of them wouldn’t see each other again, once they were back in their ordinary lives – Em was in Cheltenham and Olivia in Bristol – but that just lent the evening an extra frisson of liberation; they could truly be honest, let off some real steam.

That said, it was getting very late now and Maggie was starting to think about her bed.

‘This has been such a strange holiday,’ she said, smothering a yawn. Strange but unexpectedly cheering in a lot of ways, she thought. She felt a different person, with her new haircut and attitude and, for the first time in years, the future felt . . . interesting. In two days she would pick up Amelia. In two weeks she would go on her date with Paul. She was going to be a better, bolder Maggie and there was plenty to look forward to.

‘You’re telling me,’ said Em, with slightly less positivity. She had sunk lower beneath her duvet in the last half an hour, as if she was ready to sleep too.

Silence fell, except for the faint glugging of the water in the swimming-pool filter and the soft bumps of the inflatable flamingo against the metal steps as it cruised in slow, blind circles.

Maggie was just about to suggest they called it a night when Olivia spoke. ‘I might regret this tomorrow,’ she said hesitantly, ‘but I was wondering . . . can I tell you guys a secret? Like – something really big?’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was the following morning and Olivia was packing up her belongings, feeling apprehensive. She had spent the last twenty years, pretty much, feeling weighed down by the past, dogged by the shadows. Maybe it went even further back to when her mum had disappeared and the colour had bleached out of her world. So what had changed today? On the face of it, nothing, apart from her hangover. She had woken up that morning the exact same person she had been the night before: the same combination of cells and nerves and muscles, the same history and memories and experience. Messy blonde hair that needed cutting, extra pounds lurking around the middle – yes, all still there. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had.