Not in her eyes.

Chapter Eleven

Bell walked over the soft carpet of pine needles, the sun glancing through the trees and heralding another thumping hot day. The air was ominously still, no trace of a breeze, sooty terns gliding effortlessly on the thermoclines. She wished she had some of their early-morning grace but she had woken with a distracted, nagging feeling, unable to fall into the deep and dreamless oblivion she had craved. She had kayaked back over here last night after the others had caught the ferry back to the city; it had felt too sad to be the only one left in the little yellow house, so she had put the key back in the Croc and crept into her cabin. Perhaps it was that extra day off on Friday, the holiday weekend a little too good, but she wasn’t ready for reality yet. She already knew it was going to bite.

She stood in the shadow of the trees and watched the twins play in the shallows as memories played insistently through her mind, refusing to let her go just yet. They were abbreviated flashes, like a black-and-white cine film – the shock of those startling eyes he preferred to keep hidden, the reserve that had quickly become abandon, the low groans as their hands had roamed, his sadness in profile in the dawn light, his quiet acceptance of what must be in the pub garden . . . It had been a lapse of reason, a kink in the time continuum when they had briefly stepped out of their own lives and become different, other people. Rationally, she knew that. It was just a one-night stand. A hook-up. She couldn’t make this into more than it was.

She watched as Hanna came out of the cabin, clasping a coffee between her hands, her gaze on the horizon. She was wearing her white linen shorts and favourite blue blouse, her hair drawn back in a sleek ponytail – a vision of composed femininity, impossible to link to the drunken wreck who had stumbled in, dishevelled, on Thursday night.

She had left a posy of wildflowers in a glass beside the bed and a box of Bell’s favourite biscuits from the bakery on the table, along with a yellow post-it on the top with ‘so sorry’ written in neat script and a sad-face emoji drawn beside it. Bell had sighed at the sight of the apology. It was something, she supposed, to make their reunion less awkward; but there still needed to be an explanation, some reason that ‘justified’ Hanna abandoning her children in their beds. It couldn’t be left unexplained.

Hanna turned and went back into the house again and Bell, knowing she couldn’t hide out forever, stepped out of the trees with a sigh and onto the gentle curve of the tiny beach. The girls were as bare as babies and digging a trench with long-handled spades. Their high-note chatter carried like burbling water, and she found herself smiling as she approached. Their fine blonde hair was worn in matching French plaits, but the gentle fuzz around their heads suggested those styles had been put in one, or even two days before. The same ones she had done before she’d left?