Rosie and Wren appeared with Riley swinging happily from their hands between them. When she saw Amber, Riley lunged towards her.
‘Is Jayden here?’ she cried, tugging on Amber’s hand.
‘Told you!’ said Rosie apologetically.
‘Big crush. . .’ said Wren with a shrug.
‘He’s gone to watch the rowing race,’ Amber answered and then to the women, ‘Shall we all go?’
The fire station backed onto the river and was next door to the rowing club. The banks were lined with picnickers and Amber pulled a blanket from her massive shoulder bag, spreading it on the ground for the women to sit. Riley refused to sit and jigged from leg to leg as she searched the crowd for Jayden. When she spotted him a few feet away with the River Rats, she promised her mums she’d be ‘right there’ and darted over. Rosie opened her backpack and pulled out a bottle of wine and four plastic glasses.
‘I feel somewhat unprepared,’ Isabella said, taking the glass on offer with a thanks.
‘Don’t worry, we came with double,’ said Wren, opening her rucksack to show another bottle nestled there.
A firefighter with a microphone announced the Brave Bluetits would be passing in the next few minutes and Isabella shaded her eyes to look at the skies.
‘Not up there!’ Rosie laughed.
‘In there,’ Wren said, pointing at the river as the first of the all-woman wild swimming group came into view. Wearing woolly hats and goggles, some in wetsuits, others swimsuits with gloves and booties, a steady procession of more than twenty women swam past, treading water in front of the rowing club to wave and be cheered in return.
The Bluetits adjusted their goggles and swam further upriver to climb out at the jetty. They shook their bodies like dogs drying in the weak sun and then donned dry robes to keep out the chill that would inevitably set in. The first swimmer, who must have been eighty, took the collection bucket and shook it along the bank, grinning and chatting.
‘What a woman,’ Rosie said.
‘Respect,’ said Amber.
Millie Malone appeared out of the crowd with a couple of other young girls.
‘Ciao, Millie,’ Isabella called and the girl grabbed her two friends by the elbows and steered them over.
‘Ciao,’ she replied shyly, flashing a look at the other women.
‘Come stai?’ Isabella asked, keen to see if their sessions were paying off and Millie would be more confident in her next reply. They’d been painting side by side for a week now; the main restaurant walls were finished, and they were now onto the more time-consuming woodwork, the gloss. Millie had turned up quiet and shy the first day, listening more than she spoke. But by the end of the week, when Millie was back in her own home, she turned up with brighter eyes, keen to answer any question Isabella threw her way. Always, at the end of the hour, Isabella asked whether she would like a drink of lemonade and Millie would grin and say, ‘Sì, grazie.’
‘Sto bene, grazie.’ Millie grinned now. It was a good answer.I’m fine, thank you, instead of just ‘good’ or ‘fine’. Isabella grinned back.
‘Next week it’s getting harder,’ she warned but she knew that Millie would be up for it.
‘I don’t know if it’s okay to ask, because you’re being so kind already,’ Millie said, biting her lip, ‘but this is Ava and Bex and they wondered if they could come along to our Italian sessions?’
‘We can paint too?’ said the girl on the left, twiddling her nose ring.
‘Or help with something else?’ the other girl added, from somewhere underneath a sweeping black fringe.
Isabella thought about it for a second.
‘Sure,’ she said, nodding. ‘See you Monday.’
Millie replied with an immediate ‘Grazie,’ and the two new recruits shyly added their thanks before heading off up the bank.
‘Told you she was cool,’ the women heard Millie say and Isabella felt a rush of pleasure. Amber clinked plastic glasses with her.
‘As if you haven’t got enough on your plate. . .’ Rosie mused.
‘They’ll be a help,’ said Isabella, thinking of the toilets that needed painting and the windowsills, and the wine cellar, and, and, and. . . The list went on. ‘In fact, while we’ve been talking Italian, Millie’s been a godsend. So with another couple of helping hands, we’ll get the painting done in no time.’
The firefighter on the microphone cleared his throat.
