Page 26

26

As much as Holly hoped the next forty-eight hours would bring about a sudden, overnight tummy bug, or at the very least, a decent head cold, she was truly disappointed to remain in perfect health, and Friday afternoon as she kissed Hope goodbye and headed to the railway station, she knew exactly what awaited her: a relaxing weekend of reading and catching up with Faye, and trying to get to know Sienna better too. Jamie’s words had irked her so much, she had thought about little else. Suggesting she could have feelings for Giles was a ridiculous thing to say, and she was going to prove it. She was going to learn all she could about Sienna, and who knew, by the end of the weekend, they might actually be friends.

‘You have no idea how much I need this weekend,’ Faye said as the train drew away from the platform. ‘You know, the longest stint Gavin’s ever done on his own with the kids is one evening, and I had to put them to bed before I went out. Seriously, he’s not going to know what’s hit him. And he’s under strict instructions not to call me. At all.’

Holly felt a pang of gratitude towards Ben. They had always split the parenting fifty-fifty. In fact, when Hope had been little, everything had come so naturally to him, she’d found it hard not to feel like the inferior parent. And even now, with two more girls at home, Hope couldn’t have wished for a more attentive or loving father. Of course, Ben wasn’t the only great dad out there. She knew that.

‘I suspect Giles will want to be far more full-on when you have children,’ Faye said, her line of thought obviously similar to Holly’s.

‘Oh, we won’t be having children,’ Sienna said.

Holly’s chest involuntarily spasmed as she looked at Faye. She saw she’d had a similar reaction.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Faye started. ‘I shouldn’t have?—’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Sienna said. ‘I mean, I can have children. I assume. But I’ve never wanted any. They just take over your life, don’t they?’

‘Yes,’ Holly said, still struggling to find her voice. ‘That’s kind of the point of having them.’

‘Exactly. I completely get it. You have a child, you have to make them your priority, and I don’t want to do that. I’ve spent my entire adult life learning to make myself a priority. And it’s finally got me somewhere in life where I’m happy. Why would I risk upsetting that?’

Holly hoped it was a rhetorical question, because she couldn’t think of a reply. She would never judge anyone for not wanting children. Each person’s life was their own, to live exactly as they wanted to, and Sienna’s response made sense. Only this wasn’t just Sienna’s life she was talking about. It was Giles’s too.

‘And is Giles okay with that?’ Faye said, voicing the thought in Holly’s head.

Sienna shrugged. ‘He’ll come around to my way of thinking. I’m very persuasive.’ She let out a little giggle, but Holly couldn’t reciprocate and from the way the colour had drained from Faye’s face, neither could she. Silence threatened to form, and Holly knew she had to say something. Like how marrying someone with a very different vision for the future wasn’t a great idea. After all, Giles had said to her plain as day that he wanted children before he got old. That was part of his reason for proposing.

Surely Sienna knew that? She cleared her throat, still not sure how she was going to word her statement, when Faye suddenly sparked into life.

‘I almost forgot. I brought us a couple of goodies to get the weekend started.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out three miniature bottles of Prosecco. As she handed Holly hers, she met her eyes, offering a look that said now wasn’t the time to cause issues. Holly got it. Fingers crossed there would be another opportunity, later on in the weekend, to voice her opinion on the matter.

‘The breakfast buffet, that is what I am looking forward to,’ Faye said as she went back to her bag to retrieve plastic cups. ‘Getting up late, rolling out of bed to every kind of pastry and savoury that I can eat, then rolling to the poolside. There is a pool at this place, right?’

‘Oh yes, there is. I can’t wait for you to see it. Now, let’s get a selfie. I’ve promised Giles I’d do lots of check-ins to tell him how everything is going.’

Before Holly could even put her drink down, Sienna had lifted her phone and angled it towards them. Yet rather than looking at the screen, to ensure she wasn’t pulling some hideous face, Holly was distracted by the ring on Sienna’s finger.

Holly remembered with acute detail how Caroline had forced her to look at the ring during the engagement. She recalled the way the light had glinted off it, and how Sienna had described it as delicate and understated, yet in a manner that didn’t make those sound like positive attributes. But this ring was anything but understated. The diamond was colossal, and even the band was studded with more smaller stones. Had the band had diamonds in before? No, she would have remembered that, wouldn’t she?

Unable to let the issue go, she turned away from the camera to look directly at Sienna.

‘Did you get a new engagement ring?’ she asked.

27

As the question continued to buzz around in Holly’s mind, Sienna placed her phone down on the table and lifted her hand up. The manner in which she twisted her wrist from side to side was almost identical to how she had done after her engagement, but there was no doubt that this was a different ring on her finger to the one Holly had been made to admire before.

‘Isn’t this one stunning?’ she said, her eyes glimmering almost as much as the diamond.

‘I don’t understand. What about the one Giles proposed with?’

Sienna rolled her eyes slightly.

‘It was very sweet and everything. And the sentiment was there, obviously. I’m so glad he got a diamond ring to propose properly with, but it was hardly the type of thing you want to show people when you tell them you’ve got engaged, was it? I mean, it was only just a carat. It didn’t feel right, having something so little. An engagement ring’s meant to be a statement, you know? A sign of what your married life is going to be like. And this one, this one makes a much bigger statement, don’t you think? Honestly, given our positions in life, you know, our age and how well we’re both doing, I think the jeweller really should have insisted that he look at nothing below the two-carat mark. But I’ve rectified that now. This one’s perfect. A two-point-five-carat centre, with an extra carat in the halo and pavé. All conflict-free, obviously. That was an absolute must.’

Holly stared again at the ring and then glanced down at the one on her finger. In terms of size, it was far bigger than she’d ever envisioned herself wearing, but what size carat it was, and whether or not it was conflict-free, she had no idea. She’d not had the chance to ask Evan that.

Swallowing down a lump that was forming in her throat, she looked back at Sienna’s hand. It was a stunning ring. Excessive, possibly, but beautiful. And if Giles had the money to spend on a ring like that, then why shouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t Sienna have the piece of jewellery she wanted if it was what she was going to be wearing for the rest of her life? Who was Holly to judge that?