Page 64 of Ask Another Day

Holly nodded. ‘I didn’t speak to Seb for years afterwards - not until Mum and Dad’s funeral.’

‘What about Sloane?’

‘I didn’t want to lose both of them. I didn’t even tell Sloane that I’d seen them together. But, it didn’t matter in the end. She ghosted me. It started off as a few unanswered texts, and then she changed her number.’

‘OK, so that’s what happened at the birthday party. What’s the deal with the conversation at the weekend with Seb?’

‘He said Sloane told him I thought of him as a brother, and could never fancy him.’

‘She didn’t? Oh my God, Holly, she is Iago. At least Seb didn’t kill you though.’

Holly shook her head. ‘You are so weird, Rose, but I love you.’

Rose ran a hand through her hair, and winced.

‘What?’ Holly asked.

‘I get the trauma of the scheming Sloane did. But now you know neither of you think of the other as a sibling, what’s the emergency? Surely, now, it can be game on. I mean why aren’t you currently with him, instead of me, making up for the last twelve years of lost time?’

Holly sighed. ‘It feels like we’ve missed our chance. Everything felt perfect in 2007. The planets were aligned for us. Maybe we just weren’t meant to be?’

Holly reached for her trusted fortune telling cube that she’d left out on the table.

‘Seb gave me this for my birthday.’

‘On that birthday?’

Holly nodded. ‘Has mine and Seb’s time gone?’ she asked as she pressed the all too familiar rubber button.

Rose snatched it out of her hand before Holly could read the message.

‘You can’t let it decide,’ she said, outraged.

‘I don’t see why not. It hasn’t failed me yet.’

But Rose wouldn’t let her have it back. Instead, she pushed the button herself and asked, ‘Has Holly been using you instead of making her own decisions’. She blanched a little as she read the response.

‘Come on, disbeliever, what does it say?’

‘Yes,’ Rose read out the word, her scepticism fading.

Holly smiled, ‘Even though he broke my heart that night, I kept his gift and I’ve used it nearly every day since.’

‘Except, he didn’t break your heart, did he? Sloane did. Please talk to him?’

‘I don’t think I can, though. I feel so stupid.’

Whatever Rose was about to say was interrupted by a delivery arriving, and Holly left the pub to deal with the quiet commotion outside.

*

Rose watched on through the window. It looked like Holly would be busy for a while so she decided now was as good a time as any to sneak back to Luke’s warm chest. Before she could do that though, she felt a tug at her elbow.

‘Morning, Natalie,’ Rose said, not needing to look to know who it was.

‘Morning, Aunty Rose. I found a letter,’ Natalie announced - with absolutely no preamble. Rose loved pre-schoolers.

‘Is it for your Mummy?’