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‘Fine, I’ll get to know her,’ Holly said. ‘But if she’s horrible to me again, then that’s it. Friendship is off the cards for good. And you’re not allowed to say nice things about her to me or try to change my mind, get it?’

‘There’s that maturity I was talking about.’ Jamie smirked.

6

It was first thing the next morning when Holly rang Giles. She had sent him a message the night before, just to check he got home okay, and he had replied straight away to say everything was fine and there was no need to worry, but you could say anything in a text, couldn’t you? She wanted to know how he actually was. Whether he was in pain, or had been suffering with dizziness or loss of sight. She wouldn’t put it past him just to pretend everything was all right to Sienna so that he didn’t worry her. But that wasn’t Holly’s only reason for calling him. Hope had overheard her talking to Jamie and Fin about the accident and had been so upset, she had needed to spend the night in Holly’s bed. Now Hope was up and desperate to speak to him, and Holly knew she’d get no peace until she had.

‘Will those stay in your head forever?’ Hope said, commenting on Giles’s row of stitches.

‘Nope. They’ll disappear when my head’s all healed,’ Giles replied.

‘Disappear?’

‘Yup. Like magic.’

Hope turned to look at Holly excitedly. ‘Can I get some? I want to see them disappearing. I’ll record it on your phone. It’ll be really cool.’

Holly raised her eyebrows at her daughter. ‘No, you can’t, and it won’t be really cool to get stitches. Stitches mean you’ve hurt yourself. Hopefully, you won’t ever need to have them. Now I thought you want to speak to Uncle Giles?’

With a slight pout on her lips, Hope turned back to look at the phone.

‘Is it painful?’ she said.

Giles shook his head. ‘It should be. But it’s not because the doctors have given Uncle Giles lots of nice tablets to make the pain go away.’

‘Giles,’ Holly snapped.

‘What?’ He let out a slight groan as he spoke again. ‘Fine. The doctors have given Giles lots of nasty tablets to make the pain go away. Terribly bad things. I wish I didn’t have to take them.’

He looked through the camera at Holly and smirked and, as much as she didn’t want to, Holly couldn’t help but reciprocate. He had a way of doing that, weakening her resolve and making her relent, although she could see what he’d said about the painkillers was true. There was a definite looseness to his expression that she hadn’t seen before.

Hope opened her mouth with another question likely teetering on her tongue, when a loud voice squealed from offscreen.

‘Gilesy, what are you doing? Where are you?’

‘Who is that?’ Hope asked, not used to having people interrupt her time talking to her Uncle Giles.

‘You know who that is. It’s your Aunty Sienna.’

‘Aunty Sienna?’ The surprise in Hope’s voice matched perfectly the somersault in Holly’s stomach. Aunty? When had Giles started referring to Sienna as Aunty? Never in her presence and by the look of confusion on Hope’s face, she didn’t know who he was talking about either. But before Holly could comment, Sienna’s face appeared on the screen behind him.

‘Oh, Holly,’ she said. ‘It’s you. How are you?’

A low buzz rolled through Holly’s jaw as her back teeth ground together. She tried to force a smile.

‘Good morning, Sienna. We’re fine, thank you. Hope just wanted to check in on the patient.’

Sienna leaned forward, kissing Giles on the top of the head before she spoke.

‘Oh well, he’s doing fine. Just fine, and we are looking forward to Friday night, aren’t we? Giles has told me all about the wedding. It sounds like it was such a magical event. Hopefully, you’ll all have some more stories about the day. I love wedding stories, don’t you?’

The muscles in Holly’s cheeks were starting to ache from the strain of holding her smile in place. Was Sienna serious? Did she not know her personal wedding story? Or lack thereof?

She drew in a slow breath, readying herself with a curt, yet reasonable reply. But before she could get a word out, Sienna was speaking again.

‘Well, we better get on with things. Thank you so much for calling to check on us. Hope, see you soon.’ Sienna offered a short wave. A moment later, the phone line was dead.

‘Wow, she seemed nice,’ Hope said.