Page 45

Holly continued to sob, tears streaming down her face.

‘What can I do to help you now?’ she asked, pushing Maud’s comments away. She didn’t care about money. She cared about her friends. ‘I don’t have to go into the shop again today; Caroline will be perfectly fine. Is there anyone you want to see? Anywhere you’d like to go? Stow? Moreton? I’ll take you there. I can drive you.’

Maud smiled sadly.

‘I’m just going to rest a little,’ she said. ‘Just for a little while.’

39

When she reached her car, Holly sat with both hands on the steering wheel and cried. These weren’t the controlled tears that tumbled down her cheeks when she was talking to Maud; these were full-on, cascading sobs that she had no way of controlling. Ones that caused her nose to run and her throat to scratch. Ones that stung her eyes and made it impossible for her to see. Given that she was parked up on the road, where dozens of tourists were strolling by, she was sure some of them must have seen her in her broken-down state, but she didn’t care. By the time she’d stemmed the flow of tears enough to catch her breath, she sent Caroline a message, confirming that she was going to take the rest of the afternoon off.

Holly could barely recall the drive back from the hotel to the cottage. It wasn’t a long drive, by any means, but she did the entire journey on auto pilot, barely aware of anything around her. She desperately wanted to ring Evan. She wanted to sob down the phone to him and pour her heart out. But she’d spent the last two days whinging to him about Giles and her mother, and that wasn’t the type of girlfriend she wanted to be. Especially not so early in the relationship. And so she headedback home, unsure of what she was going to do next. As it happened, she found the answer, standing there in front of her driveway.

She was going to go for a ride.

This wasn’t the first time Holly had driven the Vespa on her own. In France, she’d got all the way from Evan’s villa to the marina to see Giles on his yacht without anyone to help her. And she planned on driving exactly the same way as she’d done then. Very, very slowly. She had nothing to prove and no one to watch her. Still, her nerves were high as she fixed her helmet and climbed on top of the vehicle. The most difficult part, she recalled from her drive, only a couple of days before, was going to be getting out of her driveway. After a moment’s deliberation, she dismounted and pushed the bike down towards the road, before climbing back onto the seat and switching on the engine.

Holly had intended to ride slowly, and that was how she started. She headed out of the village at an exceptionally tentative pace, before crossing over the Fosseway and taking the hill up towards Naunton. But as she twisted and turned through the country lanes, underneath the dappled patterns of light which fell through the broken gaps in the leaves, the idea of a steady sleep slipped from her mind. Somehow, being on the vehicle like this, so close to nature, was all it took to wash away her worries from the last few days. Giles being her landlord: the weight of it whipped from her as she took one corner. It was as if the air was sweeping away that worry like dust that clung to her clothes. With the next corner, which she took just a little bit faster, she let the fears of Jamie and Fin’s wedding fly fromher mind. They would sort it out like they sorted everything out. They would be fine.

With the next bend, she thought about her mother.

Wendy had lied to her. The thought caused a knot in Holly’s chest, but she refused to let it settle. She and Wendy would be fine in the long run. Holly would need to own up to knowing and Wendy would need to apologise. It wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, but she would, and they would be okay, because that’s who they were. She would forgive her mother. After all, she had only done what she thought was best.

With the next bend, Holly’s thought shifted again as she twisted the throttle a fraction more. And this time, she thought about Maud. Or more precisely, she thought about losing Maud. Immediately, the tears welled in her eyes. With her helmet on, there was no way Holly could wipe them away, and she knew that if she wasn’t careful, they’d start blurring her sight and making it impossible for her to see. But she wasn’t going to let herself get to that state.

‘You’re fine, you’re fine,’ Holly was saying to herself as she rode, but the more she spoke, the shallower her breath became, and the faster the tears fell. She was less than a mile from Naunton. She had driven and walked these roads so many times, she probably knew them with her eyes closed. But they were narrow, lined with trees and full of thick foliage. Even one of the rare passing spaces didn’t really offer a place for her to stop and regather herself. What Holly needed to do was get to the village. There would be space there, with its quaint church and wide verges. She just had to reach Naunton, then she could sit down and sort herself out. A few hundred metres, she told herself. That was all she needed, and she would be fine.

She would be fine. But Maud wouldn’t. That was the thought that filled her head and refused to shift. It was still there,running through Holly’s head as she turned the next corner. Maud would never be okay.

If Holly had been travelling slower, maybe it would’ve made a difference. If she’d been able to hear better, without her sobs wheezing in her ears, or could see through the blur of her tears, maybe she would’ve avoided it. But it was too late.

The instant she turned the corner, the car came into view. Holly yanked on the handlebars, twisting them as far as they could go, while twisting the brake and willing herself out of the car’s path. Only there was nowhere to go. Not on a country lane this narrow. Even through the blur of tears and the panic of adrenaline, she saw the tree trunk, only a couple of metres in front of her, before her front tire collided with it. A shock wave ran through her body and in a second that lasted a lifetime, she was thrown from the bike.

40

Holly had never been in a proper car crash – or Vespa crash – before. In fact, the closest she’d got was a couple of years ago when her mother swerved to avoid a pheasant in the road and they ended up in a ditch. But both humans, the car and the pheasant, had been fine. Holly knew without a doubt that this wasn’t anything like that.

Her head throbbed, and ears rang as it took her a moment to piece together what had happened. With a gasping breath, she realised that her chin was wet and instantly assumed the culprit to be blood, only to recall that she had been crying profusely before the crash happened. Those tears had stopped, but that appeared to be one of the few pieces of good news.

Another piece of good news was that Holly herself had not hit the tree trunk. The angle at which the Vespa had struck the tree meant she had been thrown into a leafy hedgerow, as opposed to another, more immobile object. Still, she could feel the stings where the thorns and branches had broken the skin and the way her head was throbbing implied there probably was a cut there after all. Wanting to assess how bad the damage was, she placeda hand down on the ground and tried to push herself up to standing, only to yell out in pain.

‘Jeez!’ More thorns and twigs dug into her palm, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was with her arm.

Rolling herself onto her knees, she tried again to lift herself up, only for a sharp pain to shoot down to her elbow.

‘Stay where you are. Stay where you are,’ someone said. ‘You shouldn’t move. Should I call an ambulance?’

‘An ambulance?’ Holly said.

With a concerted effort, and avoiding placing any weight on her arm, she tipped herself onto her knees and pushed herself up to a standing position. Her legs were trembling, and she felt distinctly less than stable, but all the same, she glanced down at the bike. An ache rippled through her chest. The beautiful paintwork of her Vespa was no more. Instead, there were dents, scrapes, and paint chipped off in various places. The front wheel was twisted at completely the wrong angle. Another sob struck Holly, adding to the guilt and embarrassment she already felt.

‘I didn’t see you coming.’ This time, Holly paid more attention to the woman who was talking to her. She was young – around the same age as her – and at that moment, so pale, she was almost translucent. ‘I’m really sorry. These roads are so narrow, with so many trees. You can’t see around the corners at all. I’m so sorry.’

‘This wasn’t just your fault,’ Holly replied. She could barely remember the moment before the crash, and she was pretty sure that had a lot more to do with her not paying attention than any form of concussion. ‘I should’ve looked where I was going more.’ Another thought struck her. Suddenly aware that she had been entirely absorbed in her own injuries and worries, she looked the woman up and down. ‘Are you okay? Is your car okay?’

The woman nodded rapidly. ‘I’m fine. I just caught my wing mirror. My car is fine. Don’t worry about it.’

‘So, what do we do now?’ Holly said.