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“With hat or without?” She tipped her head on one side.
“With. It’s a great hat.” He clicked several, then hesitated. “We could send them one of both of us.” She looked taken aback. “Oh—yes—okay then.”
“They know—about us?” He cleared his throat, couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “You know, that we’re travelling together.”
“Oh sure. I did mention you were coming with me, that you had to get back to Sydney and took pity on me.”
“I would never take pity on you.” It came out with a depth of passion that surprised him.
For a moment their eyes locked, then she struck a pose, holding onto the brim of her hat. Standing next to her—of course, he had to get up close to get their heads in and she kind of leaned in too. And naturally, his arm had to lightly circle her waist. Her shoulder bumped under his armpit, her damp hair stuck to his neck. “Smile,” he said, slightly hoarse.
Immediately she crossed her eyes and pulled her squirrel face, and it took several attempts, both of them laughing, to get something presentable.
Later they lay on the beach on their towels and watched the holiday makers, little more than a dozen or so people dotted on the pristine sand.
“I can’t believe it,” she said incredulously. “If this was Europe, you wouldn’t be able to move. There would be ice-cream vendors and rows of sunbeds, and cordoned off areas for the hotels and you’d pay five euros just to put down a towel. It feels kind of surreal that there’s barely a soul here.”
Oliver glanced up the beach. “Today’s quite busy actually.”
“I have to send more pics to Evie and Felix, they just won’t believe it.”
Something twinged inside him. A little shard of envy maybe, that she was so close to these guys. Many of his so-called friendships had disintegrated after the break-up, more couples drifting into Leonie’s camp than his and, yes, sure, he’d let it happen. If he was honest, he’d kept people at a distance for years, hiding behind a barrier of charm. “You sound like you’re all very close.”
“We are.”
“You said at breakfast you were in treatment together.”
She straightened her left leg, bent her right leg, and rested her chin on it. “We were all patients at a place called Hedgedown Lodge.”
“That’s the rehab centre you mentioned?”
“Yeah, though it was more like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” Her tone was so matter of fact he had to blink to take it in.
“You mean a psych ward?”
“Not exactly. A posh psychiatric hospital for adolescents.”
“You had cancer and they put you in a psychiatric hospital!” He was genuinely shocked.
“It’s complicated.” She shoved her hat lower over her eyes.
“You don’t need to talk about it if it’s upsetting.”
“It’s not upsetting—to be honest, my stay at Hedgedown Lodge was the best thing that could have happened. It’s just, not everyone wants to know about… mental illness. They start making assumptions, like, oh, maybe she’s still a bit crazy, you know?”
“I’ve already worked out you’re crazy.”
She stuck her tongue out. “Love you too.” There was a brief silence. “I went there because they thought I had major anxiety.”
“And you didn’t?”
She paused. “After all the surgeries, my oncology team expected the pain to subside, but it just got worse and worse; in the end it was so agonising that I couldn’t do the rehab, couldn’t put weight through my leg. I was on crutches for a year. They did loads of tests, but when they came back clear the doctors in their wisdom decided I had a pathological fear of the cancer returning and that my anxiety was out of control. Mum and Dad, bless them, couldn’t cope; here I was on a pig farm in the middle of the Wiltshire countryside on crutches, crying all the time. That’s when Henry intervened and found Hedgedown Lodge. I was an in-patient at the same time as Evie and Felix, which is how we became friends.”
“And hence the cocoa pops ritual?”
She laughed. “Hands down the best thing about Hedgedown Lodge was cocoa pops for breakfast. Anyhow, eventually they worked out that I didn’t have an anxiety disorder, I had Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Have you heard of it?”
He shook his head.
