Holly sank to her knees. ‘Fuck me! I am cream-crackered! A gentle stroll, you said.’ She gave Sophie an accusing look.
Sophie laughed, falling down beside them in a joyous heap. ‘Sorry. I tend to forget not everyone has grown up with these hills. This used to be my run with my dog.’ She began picking absently at the long grass and looking out, every few seconds, over the far-reaching view.
‘You run up that?’ Holly wheezed.
Annie, in reply, laid flat out in the grass, as if just thinking about the notion exhausted her. ‘I despair.’
‘Ugh, and we’ve still got to get back down again,’ Holly moaned. ‘It’s my Saturday afternoon, fuck’s sake. I should be on a sofa right now. Eating Doritos. Watching Hollyoaks.’
‘You and me both, babe,’ Charlie muttered. Like Sophie, she was a veterinary student, but if it was clear Sophie was going to be returning to her roots as a big animal, farmyard vet, Charlie would be tending to urban customers, ‘treating talking parrots for laryngitis and chihuahuas for crush injuries when they hide beneath scatter cushions. That kinda thing.’
Liv was a medical student too, on the same course as Tara and Holly, and Annie was reading politics. They’d all been friends since their first year, when they’d been on the same corridor and shared a kitchen in the student halls.
‘I don’t suppose anyone thought to bring us some sustenance?’ Charlie asked as she finally got her breath back. ‘I definitely burned off at least a scotch egg on the way up.’
‘Actually, I’ve got some tea and biscuits,’ Tara said, reaching into her backpack and pulling out the thermos. She had just had time to refresh the hot water when they’d got in.
‘Or . . . I’ve got some whisky!’ Holly said with a devilish wink, pulling a hip flask from her jacket pocket.
‘Ooh!’ Charlie said, her arm literally swerving from left to right as she went, last moment, for Holly’s offer instead.
Everyone had a tot except Tara. Whisky was the last thing she could drink and she couldn’t explain why. Instead she fussed with pouring herself some tea, pretending this was what she really wanted, dunking the teabag repeatedly as her friends watched on in bemusement.
She took a sip – it was both tepid and too strong – and defiantly stared out towards the distant town, a dark smudge on the horizon from here. For the umpteenth time, she wondered how Alex’s breakfast had gone with her father; she had assumed one of them would ring when he’d done the deed – Alex, elated; her father, choked; her mother (when she was finally up and dressed), emotional and teary that her only daughter was getting married and when could they meet to start pinning down details? Instead, radio silence.
She checked her phone again for signal. Two bars. Decent. Decent enough.
‘Missing lover-boy?’ Liv asked with a knowing tone as she put her phone away with a supressed sigh.
‘Of course.’
‘I’d miss him too if he was mine.’ Liv gave one of her signature dirty laughs, followed by a wink and a nudge of her elbow. ‘Although I have to say you seem very relaxed about leaving him.’
‘Well, it is only for an overnight stay, so I think we’ll survive.’
‘Oh, don’t be so sure – lives have changed in shorter time frames than that,’ Liv countered. ‘And I wouldn’t give him too long a rein if I was you. He’s the sort of guy who attracts attention, know what I mean?’
Tara knew exactly what she meant, but she resented the intimation. ‘Not really.’
‘Liv means that if he was her boyfriend, she wouldn’t leave him for a single second in case another woman made a move on him,’ Sophie explained unnecessarily. Sophie wasn’t really an expert on men yet; she was still more interested in large mammals of the four-legged kind.
‘Huh. What a relaxing way to live,’ Tara replied with cool sarcasm.
‘Hey listen, I’ve only been cheated on by every guy I’ve ever dated,’ Liv continued. ‘But yeah, call me paranoid, why don’t you?’
Everyone laughed as the hip flask was passed around again, and Tara took another pointed sip of her tea. She felt off form, isolated somehow from the others. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but she sensed a distance between herself and them, starting when she and Holly had been put in different rooms. For the first time, she wondered if Holly had told the girls her secrets. On the one hand, she passionately didn’t believe her friend would betray her like that; but on the other, Holly clearly considered her decisions a betrayal of their friendship, and with her enduring anger and the palpable chill between them, the others couldn’t have failed to notice it.
‘You’ve had some rotten luck, I know. But Alex really isn’t like that.’
‘Hon, he’s a man,’ Annie drawled. ‘They’re all like that.’
Tara gave a puzzled smile. Why were her friends pushing the issue? ‘Well, Alex isn’t.’ Tara automatically looked to Holly for some backup. Her best friend knew that she and Alex were far beyond the petty jealousy stage – only she knew that he was in London right now asking Tara’s father for her hand; that their child was already growing in her belly. And besides, she knew Alex well enough to defend him against these slurs – but Holly looked immediately away again. She plucked a long strand of grass and began threading it through her fingers.
Tara felt like she’d been slapped.
‘What about Dev? D’you think he’s the cheating type?’ Annie asked, following Tara’s line of sight and looking across at Holly too.
Holly looked surprised. ‘No!’ she scoffed. ‘But only because I’m the only female this side of Moscow to find him attractive and that’s only when I’ve got my beer goggles on.’
Tara frowned. Holly hadn’t
