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‘Cannon ball!’
Caroline’s splash sent a wave up and it took several moments of leg kicking and flailing to wipe the salt water out of her eyes.
‘So, that was interesting.’ Caroline’s head bobbed up and down as she kept afloat. ‘I take it you want to talk?’
‘Let’s just swim out a little further.’ Holly knew an eager listener could still catch wind of what they were saying. And so she kicked her legs and swam a steady breaststroke away from the boat. Only when she’d couldn’t hear Eddie and Spencer bickering did she stop and turn to face Caroline.
‘So you really did see him at the supermarket?’
‘Why would I make something like that up?’ Holly didn’t have the mental capacity to be mad at her friend but she would definitely remember this next time Caroline doubted her about something. ‘Can you believe it? Of all the boats in all the blooming world?’
‘It could almost be fate.’ Caroline smirked.
It was tempting to ignore the comment. Before moving back to the Cotswolds, Holly would never have considered fate a real thing, but if she hadn’t caught Dan cheating on that exact day, she’d never have driven to Bourton and seen Maude, who would have sold the shop to someone else, and it was tough to believe that was just a coincidence. But this current situation? Well, if that was fate, then fate had some serious questions to answer.
‘How does it feel, seeing him?’ Caroline asked, kicking her legs beneath her to stay afloat. ‘You know he hasn’t been able to take his eyes off you. Not once.’
Holly didn’t know if Caroline was saying that in some strange attempt to make her feel better, but she knew it was true. She, by contrast, had done everything possible to stop herself from looking in Giles’s direction, though it had been far harder that she wanted to admit.
‘I’d like to speak to him,’ she admitted. ‘See how he’s been. Catch up, you know?’
‘And would Evan be present for this catch-up or not?’
Holly swiped the water, causing a large spray to splash up into her friend’s face.
‘Hey, that’s not fair! I was just asking. And you’re the one who made us swim all the way out to talk. So talk. You and Evan looked very cosy together. Bizarrely cosy.’
Holly considered what Caroline had said. Yes, Evan made her feel comfortable, he made her laugh and he made her do things she never dreamed of doing before. But this wasn’t real life. The only Holly he had ever met was one on holiday, scarily free of responsibility. And if fate was real, then seeing Giles like this couldn’t be ignored.
Their conversation was interrupted by Giles himself, shouting loudly from the boat.
‘Don’t lose these or I’ll charge you extra,’ he said and threw a large rubber ring into the water.
Caroline and Holly weren’t the only ones swimming now; Sandra and Jamie were heading straight for the inflatable.
‘Look, you can’t let your past dictate your future.’ Caroline brought them back to the conversation. ‘You never know, maybe the fate part is Giles being here, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s Evan?’
It was an idea Holly would never have considered, but if she was going to throw her hat in with fate, it only seemed fair she looked at it from both sides.
‘However, now you need to relax and enjoy the water with your best friend, who wants to get a lilo.’ Caroline started to swim back towards the boat as she spoke. ‘Are you coming? Do you want one?’
The buoyancy from the saltwater was more than enough for Holly as she lay back in the water and kicked up her feet so that she was lying flat.
‘You go fetch one,’ she said. ‘I’m just gonna float here for a bit longer.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right on your own? I don’t want you to get swept away or anything.’
‘Don’t worry, I don’t plan on going any further than this.’
As Caroline swam back towards the boat, Holly closed her eyes and felt the heat of the sun beating upon her face. This was a long way from paddling in the river that ran through Bourton, and as she floated there, she thought of her daughter. Hope would love this. She already had so much fun at the baby swimming classes they went to together. As soon as Hope realised they were at the pool, she would start kicking her legs, desperate to get in the water. Maybe Holly would try to take her more often.
She turned back onto her front, her thoughts still on Hope and swimming, only to feel her left shoe slide partway off her foot.
‘Damn.’ She reached down to pull it up, but the wake of a boat rippled past her, bobbing her up and down and knocking the shoe down to the end of her toes. Swimming in a circular motion, she tried to grab hold of it. If she lost a waterproof shoe, Evan wouldn’t hold it against her – he could well own the factory that made them for all she knew – but she was certain she could grab hold of it. With a change in tactic, she picked her leg upwards, creating an almighty splash. It helped a little, although she was then momentarily distracted by the two figures diving off the edge of the boat. It was difficult to see who it was who had jumped into the water, but several other people were shouting loudly.
Only then did she note how far she had drifted.
She kicked her foot, and the shoe slipped off altogether, floating to the surface.
