Page 2 of Ask Another Day

‘It’s been good to catch up with you, Hols,’ he said as she moved towards the changing rooms twenty minutes later.

He kept calling her that - Hols. During the course of their lesson, she realised she liked it. The nickname made her feel like a teenager again, it reminded her of the times he’d shout it down the school corridors to get her attention. One memory in particular pushed its way to the front; she’d come to his rescue once, lending him her calculator for a test, and he’d chased her down the corridor afterwards, picked her up and spun her in his arms declaring she was a star. Then he’d started serenading her with the namesake song. She’d thumped him playfully and insisted to be put down, but had secretly loved the attention. Owen was like that with all the girls at school. He was a shameless, if not harmless flirt. But when his attention had swung her way, she’d always made the most of it.

‘How about it then?’ Owen dragged Holly out of those pleasant memories - life had been so much easier at sixteen.

‘Sorry? How about what?’ God she must have looked like such an idiot, she thought, as she scrabbled to piece together what he might be asking her.

‘Dinner, next week? You can show me where’s good to go around here now.’

‘Dinner? With you?’ her lips stumbled over the words.

‘Yes, Hols. You know dinner… a meal you can eat alone or,’ he gestured between them and her eyes tracked the movement, ‘with someone else.’

He raised his eyebrows in question.

Holly’s eyes grew wide, alarm coursing through her. And, instead of responding like a normal person, she scrambled for the door and mumbled out an incoherent reply.

‘Sorry,’ she said as she regained her faculties to speak coherently, ‘I just realised what time it is. I need to get back to Eleanor’s to pick up Natalie’. She rushed off into the sanctuary of the changing rooms without a backwards glance, wishing the ground would swallow her up.

*

Outside The Book Nook, two hours later, Holly had managed to work herself up into a frenzy as she waited for Rose and her brother to get back from wherever they’d taken themselves off to. Pacing the pavement was keeping her distracted, but it wasn’t helping to prevent her spiral. Each step seemed to send a message to her brain that her world was imploding. Holly had lied to Owen. Eleanor had already agreed to look after Natalie, her three year old daughter, for the day. They had a whole schedule of reading and baking madeleines mapped out. But it had been the perfect excuse to get away from him, and his distractingly beautiful chest, as quickly as possible. Her spiral had also caused her to question her little fortune teller - it had told her the signs were favourable. But this didn’t feel in any way favourable. Yes, she’d survived the lesson physically. Metaphorically though? She wasn’t sure.

At the sound of an approaching car, Holly turned to see Rose and Luke arriving in what Holly assumed was the car he’d been working on for Rose for weeks. She was still getting her head around the current new normal of her best friend dating her widowed, brooding, brother. Although she knew it wasn’t fair to call him brooding anymore. At one point, he could have given Aragon a run for his money. His angst-ridden existence appeared to be in homage to Viggo Mortensen’s portrayal in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

But that wasn’t him anymore. Ever since Hannah’s death, Luke had been a shell of himself. When he wasn’t doting on Natalie, he’d shut himself away to work on his cars. In the days and weeks after Rose had arrived in the Bay though, he’d slowly been coming back to life. To look at him now, sitting next to Rose, it was like she was seeing her brother again for the first time in six years. He wasn’t exactly the same, losing Hannah had broken part of him, but Rose had pieced him back together and filled the cracks with gold. He was the human embodiment of Kintsugi. He was a beautiful, altered, version of himself.

Her spiralling thoughts stilled for a split second as she took him in. Her panic about Owen and the swimming lessons came into focus properly. She knew, deep down, she was overreacting - that there were worse things she could be freaking out about. But her lizard brain was there on the sidelines, and even though she wanted to process her concerns calmly, she couldn’t. Her panic took control again, making her irrationally irritated with her brother.

‘Thank God you’re back. I needed to speak to you, like two hours ago,’ she barked at Rose as soon as they got out of the car.

Luke brushed a kiss to Rose’s temple and smiled at Holly in that smug way he knew riled her up, choosing a path that would annoy her rather than even attempt to placate her panic.

‘Everything OK, Sis?’ he teased.

‘No. Everything is not OK, you git. You stole my friend for the morning and I needed her.’

Pulling Rose to his chest he went to kiss her again, ‘I’m not sorry in the slightest. You need to learn to share.’

She could have said something back, but she didn’t want to waste time arguing with her brother. Knowing she needed Rose to ground her, she grabbed her friend by the elbow and pulled her away from Luke. His laughter floated around her, needling her like the tiny purple thistles in the moorland.

‘Where are we going?’ Rose called out as she was hauled away from the bookshop and Luke’s irritating laughter that followed them down the cobbled street.

‘Somewhere quiet where I can have my meltdown in peace,’ she hissed, pointedly looking away from Luke. Hearing the deep rumble of Luke’s mirth was bad enough, but if she had to see his face, she might storm back to him which would waste more time. Her panic was now a tangible force swarming inside her, and she needed it gone.

Within minutes, they’d haphazardly traversed the cobbled street that led down to the beach.

‘Holly, I know you’re in the midst of some kind of breakdown, but can we please not have this chat here? I’m freezing,’ she groaned out, shivering to add to the effect of her plea. But it fell on deaf ears.

‘You’ll just have to deal with it, Rose. This can’t wait. I’m seriously freaking out here.’

Tugging her cardigan in as close as possible to fend off the bitter chill from the sea, Rose rubbed her hands together to try and work up a little more body heat.

‘OK, hit me with it.’

‘So this morning was my swimming lesson. And it–’

‘Went brilliantly. Great! Good chat,’ Rose interrupted as she went to move away, but Holly tugged her back down to the cold, damp rocks.