One of the Girls(8)

And she had roared. She’d roared and roared – but still her body, with all its animalistic strength, hadn’t done what it was meant to. Thirty-six hours and a hoarse voice later, she agreed to an emergency caesarean.

It shouldn’t have mattered – Jack arrived safe and healthy, with a shock of dark hair and a pink face that she couldn’t stop kissing – but afterwards it mattered, when she realised the surgery involved sawing through five layers of muscle and tissue. An infection extended her stay in hospital, and her once muscular body turned soft, weak. She had no core strength, so her back took the strain – and didn’t like it.

Where she’d once had a six-pack, now there was a gap between her abdominal muscles where the inside of her stomach domed if she tried to engage them. She was doing physio, pathetic little exercises of tilting her pelvis. She’d told the woman, ‘But I used to be able to do chin-ups. From any branch, I could jump up – cling on.’ The physio had nodded patiently. ‘Small steps. You’ve had a baby.’

Yes, but there were other women who had babies – who pushed out three or four of them – and were still strong. Her body had let her down. She didn’t trust it anymore.

But watching Fen, she remembered herself like that. Powerful, fit, capable. She was in awe of Fen’s body, the ripple of muscle.

Suddenly Fen glanced up, noticing Robyn. She smiled.

Robyn felt heat rise in her cheeks. She’d always been a terrible flusher.

Fen slowed her pace, jogging lightly towards her. Tiny puffs of dust rising with each step, her calves muscular and smooth. She came to a stop, hands on hips. She was wearing an old band T-shirt, the sleeves cut off, and was barely out of breath.

‘How’s the trail?’ Robyn asked.

Fen briefly closed her eyes. ‘Beautiful. Everywhere smells of wild rosemary. There’s no one. Not a soul in sight. God, it’s glorious.’

Robyn found herself smiling, too. On the flight, Fen had been hemmed in by Bella and, in truth, Robyn had thought, If she’s Bella’s girlfriend, she won’t be my kind of person. What a ludicrous, judgemental thought. Too long living with her parents, she decided.

She took in Fen fully now. Her nose was pierced, a simple silver stud in her right nostril. Her bleached hair held an undercut on one side. Robyn wouldn’t even know how to ask for it at the hairdresser. The sort of haircut that her parents would call ‘alternative’. Everything was alternative to them. Tattoos. Body piercings. Dyed hair. Same-sex relationships.

She looked at this woman – drinking in the view, so full of life and vitality and confidence and wonder – and thought, That’s how I want to be.

‘Is there a phone signal?’ Fen asked, looking at the mobile Robyn was gripping.

‘Just about. I was trying to call my little boy. He’d just gone to bed.’ She could feel her voice threatening to crack. What the hell was going on with her today?

‘I’m sorry,’ Fen said. ‘You must be missing him.’

She nodded. ‘First time I’ve left him. He’s only eighteen months.’

‘Brave of you to come. It’s lovely that you’re here for Lexi.’

Robyn smiled. ‘Wouldn’t miss it.’

‘You’ve known each other since school, is that right?’

‘Yes. Met when we were eleven.’ Lexi had been beautiful, even then, before they really understood what beauty was and the power it held, yet she always looked tired, shadows under her eyes. Robyn’s mother often commented, That girl needs to go to bed earlier.

Robyn quickly understood that Lexi’s parents were for talking about in hushed voices. Her mother was an ex-professional ballerina who drank every night, and her father raced cars. That was his actual job: racing car driver. It was like two children had been asked, What do you want to be when you grow up? and they’d drawn a blonde ballerina and a dark-haired racing car driver holding a trophy – and that was Lexi’s family. Robyn had been fascinated by them – the rule-less bedtimes, the lack of questions over where Lexi was going and with whom, the bottles of champagne routinely drunk without celebration.

‘Bella started at our school a couple of years later,’ she told Fen.

‘When she moved down from London?’

‘That’s right. Bella spent the first term telling anyone who’d listen that she’d be going back to the city the moment she could.’

‘Always a people-pleaser.’ Fen grinned.

Robyn remembered teenage Bella with her clumpy mascara and high, dark ponytail, two sections of dyed-blonde hair pulled loose around her face. ‘Bella knew every Italian swear word. In her first week she taught our Geography teacher how to say “What a gorgeous sunset!” when it actually meant, Eat shit and die!’

Fen laughed.

In that same term, Bella had announced she was a lesbian. ‘I prefer women,’ she’d said with such ease and confidence that no one even blinked, no one questioned it, or laughed. ‘I’ve got three older brothers, and there’s only one bathroom in our house. If you’d seen the stuff I have, you’d be put off for life, too. Women, we smell nicer. We look nicer. Our skin is soft. We have curves. We’re just – better.’ She’d shrugged as if she’d decided it there and then. Yep, women. Better.

Lexi and Robyn were intoxicated. They wanted to keep her. They wanted Bella to fall in love with Bournemouth, so that she’d never leave and take her spark and sass back to the city. So their duo became a trio – and it worked. They each had their role. Lexi was the face of the group, wild, untameable and untethered by her parents. Bella was the voice, loud and deliciously outspoken, often honking with infectious laughter. Robyn was their collective conscience, loyal and thoughtful, ready to steer them right.