Page 46

It wasn’t until they turned out of Bourton onto the Fosse Way road that he actually spoke.

‘Why don’t you use the time to get some sleep,’ he said. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll drive fast. I don’t want this to take any longer than you do.’

Holly opened her mouth, then closed it again. The last thing she wanted was to get into an argument before they were even out of the Cotswolds. But then, if he wasn’t going to speak to her, why the hell had he agreed to the trip?

The longer the silence endured, the more Holly’s mind spiralled. Had he seen the email, or not? That was the first question she wanted to ask. The second was, had he spoken to Faye? Faye would completely back up Holly, at least with the pub situation, which would be enough to prove Sienna was a liar. Those two questions were the minimum she needed answers to, but this stony silence was making it impossible to know where to start, and when she did finally speak, over an hour and a half into the journey, it was a very different question that left her lips.

‘I take it you didn’t say anything to Sienna?’ she asked.

Giles scoffed. ‘No. Of course not.’

‘Right. Of course you didn’t say anything to her,’ Holly said, struggling with the silence that was falling between them again. ‘Why would you say anything? You love her. You’re going to marry her.’

‘Exactly.’

‘That’s why we’re going to look at flowers.’

‘Right. Because I love her.’

Holly nodded again. It was all the things that weren’t being said that were painful. That felt as though they were physically pulling at every muscle in her body. She couldn’t manage the rest of the car journey with this level of tension. She wouldn’t survive. Her head would explode.

‘I wrote you an email,’ she said.

For the first time, Giles’s eyes flicked off the road to look at her. ‘I know.’

‘Did you… did you read it? The other one, I mean, did you read…’ She was about to ask if he’d read the one she’d asked him to delete when Giles slammed the steering wheel.

‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ he said.

Holly looked at the road in front of her. The traffic was less than ideal, with several lorries, et cetera, but she’d seen worse. That was until she looked at the sat nav and saw that the time of the journey had just gone up by an hour and a half. With four hours still to go, it was as if they had made no progress at all. Maybe Giles’s first suggestion that she go to sleep to get through the trip wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

48

Holly did sleep. Despite bouncing around in the sports car with no form of comfortable headrest, other than her jumper, she actually managed over two hours. Unfortunately, that still meant she had over two hours left until they reached their destination and another four back, but at least it was something.

‘This is beautiful,’ she said, as she looked out of the window. At some point, Giles had come off the motorway, and they were now driving down a tree-lined A-road. It was far flatter than she expected – a sign they probably weren’t in Wales yet, but the fields were alive with the colours of late spring.

‘Do you remember when we used to do this?’ she said softly.

‘Do what?’

‘Just go for a drive. When I was pregnant with Hope, you’d just take me in the car to a hidden pub in some tiny village. Or sometimes, we wouldn’t even do that. We’d just drive around for hours.’

‘I remember,’ Giles said. ‘Those were the days when you were embarrassed to be seen with me.’

Her head snapped around to face him. ‘I wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with you.’

Although, as her eyes met his, she knew that wasn’t true. For a split second, they just stared at one another before Giles’s eyebrow rose, ever so slightly, and a smile twitched at the corners of his lips.

‘Okay, maybe that’s a little true,’ she said. ‘But you were pretty embarrassing back then.’

The conversation was a long way from flowing, but it was a lot better than it had been at the start of the trip and, as they continued, it was clear to Holly that both she and Giles were sticking to very neutral topics: the naming day, her parents’ health, and how Hope was practising constantly for her upcoming spring concert. Yet, as they neared their destination, Holly could feel the questions burning in her throat. Things she would’ve had no problem asking had they not kissed.

‘Where are Sienna’s family?’ she asked, broaching the subject as cautiously as possible. She couldn’t come straight out and call her a liar without at least some type of preamble, could she?

‘I’m not sure where all of Sienna’s family is, to be honest,’ Giles said. ‘I know she’s got a couple of relatives abroad. She was actually born in Singapore… or Bangkok, one of the two, so that makes sense.’

Holly bit down on her lip. She wasn’t going to respond to it. She wasn’t. But it was so difficult.