Holly was dragged by the hand over to the line of rowers waiting for cherry pie slices and the story of the crash was recounted to her in great, excited detail. Then she saw Julian get distracted by something behind her, put two fingers in his mouth and do an ear-splitting wolf-whistle.
‘What’s that for?’ Holly asked and glanced over her shoulder to see Emily Hunter-Brown, the woman from the hospitality tent, sashaying towards them. She moved like a Praying mantis, long legs and arms almost feeling the way in front of her, stepping over a fallen tree trunk as elegantly as she could in six-inch peep-toe ankle boots, a denim mini-dress and a huge leopard-print scarf that hung off one shoulder like she’d just dragged it on as she stepped out of bed. She was holding her turquoise hat in one hand and had taken down her ponytail so Holly could now see that half her white-blonde hair had been dip-dyed blue. Over her eyes were sunglasses the size of melons.
It felt like the whole boat club turned to look, the guys carrying their single sculls from the water paused with their boats on their shoulders, the umpires stopped mid-manoeuvre in their motorboats, even Matt paused as he towelled himself dry after his soaking.
‘Darlings…’ Emily called when she was within earshot. ‘Holly!’ She waved. ‘Annie!’ She looked beyond Holly to where Annie had got back into the van and was helping to serve the cherry pie and tea. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages, Annie. And, Holly, we hardly got to catch up the other month. You did an amazing job on the vocals. I was so impressed.’
Holly smiled almost shyly. Since she’d given up rowing she’d done some ad hoc sessions for Alan Neil who owned the Lighthouse Recording Studio and had been working for him the week The Rolling Stones had come in to record. Emily had been there as part of their exclusive entourage.
Decades ago Alan had noticed Holly’s vocal talent when she sang in the school choir, but it was around the age that she’d chosen rowing over singing. It wasn’t a choice she regretted ‒ rowing had taken her across the world, introduced her to amazing new people, pushed her to limits she had never thought possible, all the while offering her a focus away from her crumbling home life. But she was never a hundred percent certain whether she’d chosen the rowing path to spite her mother who was so keen on the singing one, or whether she’d just acted on an instinct that happened to clash with her mother’s preference. She hoped it was the latter ‒ but she remembered her fourteen-year-old self as being very stubborn.
Now, the work at the recording studio offered the option of a different path and was like a second chance, a breath of new air. The week Emily had been there had been the best week Holly could remember and she’d loved it ‒ the smell of the studio, the intensity of the work, the camaraderie and then the ensuing buzz and the wind-down that had led to lock-ins at the The Dog and Cherry, champagne in the cherry orchard and, as rumour had it, some naked midnight swimming in the river. It had been such a contrast to her life up to that point that she’d felt freer than she thought possible.
But then she’d made one classic mistake and now she was pregnant. And her mind was still clinging desperately to that sense of freedom, willing it back, willing it to stay.
‘Emily Hunter-Brown. Well, look at you!’ Annie jogged over and gave her a kiss on both cheeks.
‘Annie!’ Ludo called from where he was working furiously inside the van, ‘She comes, she goes, she does no work! Nothing!’
‘Sorry, Ludo,’ Annie laughed, then made a guilty face to Emily and Holly and sloped back to the van. ‘I’ve spent all week stuck inside the café with the builders. If I’m not there they do nothing. How hard can it be to fix a café roof?’ she added as she pulled the van door open and hauled herself inside.
‘I heard you’ve taken over the café?’ Emily said to Annie, wandering over and resting her elbows on the shelf of the ice cream van.
‘Off!’ ordered Ludo, bashing her arms away with his spatula, ‘There’s too much work for chatting.’
‘Aye, aye, tiger,’ Emily said with a giggle. ‘He’s a feisty one, isn’t he?’ Then she took a step back and ran her hand along the side of the ice cream van, ‘I loved this van. It’s so sweet… Do you remember it was every afternoon after school in the summer it’d be by the park gates? God and you used to work in it, didn’t you, Hol? I forgot about that. And Enid would always get cross cos you gave us free Mini Milks. Ha, have you got any Mini Milks, Annie?’
‘’Fraid not, just cherry pie, Victoria Sponge, tea and coffee. It’s Holly’s van now, did you know that? Enid left it to her.’
‘Is it?’ Emily turned Holly’s way. ‘I’m so jealous. I just love it.’
Julian sauntered over in just his tracksuit bottoms, his bare thirteen-year-old chest puffed out and said, ‘We cleaned it yesterday.’
‘Did you now?’ Emily said with a smirk, humouring his seriousness.
‘Oh yes. I can give you a tour if you like. Show you all the work we did?’
‘I think I’m OK, actually,’ Emily smiled. ‘But thanks for the offer.’
‘Well, anytime,’ Julian said, chucking his T-shirt over his shoulder and loping away, trying to look like a real dude. Emily scrunched up her nose at Holly to show how sweet she thought he was.
Holly laughed.
‘So what are you going to do with it? The van? Do you rent it out?’
Holly walked over to join her next to the window and the little shelf that had flower pots of cutlery and blossom twigs in jam jars on it. ‘I don’t know really, as Julian said, I’ve only just got it out from beside the boathouse. It took the whole day to scrub it down. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it.’
‘I’ll hire it.’
‘What for?’ Holly frowned.
‘You know my mum’s getting married. Again. In the South of France. She'd go nuts for this van. Like totally nuts. She loves ice cream.’ Emily walked round to the front and traced her hands over the little round vintage headlights, ‘Weirdly, her favourite flavour is vanilla. Who has vanilla as their favourite flavour?’
‘I like Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra,’ shouted Julian from where he was packing up his bag.
‘Oh god!’ Emily giggled and shook her head. ‘I’m old enough to be your mother, so stop flirting.’
Emily Hunter-Brown founder and CEO of EHB Cosmetics, was best known to the public as the girl left at the altar by Hollywood megastar Giles Fox. Branded by the paparazzi as a romantically-doomed, eternally-single party-girl, Holly and Annie knew her because she’d been at school with them for a year after being expelled from a flash boarding school in London. Her father had died when they were little, leaving more debt than money, and their mother had subsequently married a variety of very rich, very old men who kept them in the manner to which they’d become accustomed, but some were nicer than others. For their few years on the island, they’d lived in the old manor house on the other side from the boathouse, near the new-build estate. It was an old Georgian building with sprawling grounds and an east and west wing.
The year that Emily had been at school with them had been the funniest, naughtiest year they’d known. She was like this bright burst of flame; a devil-may-care, live-for-the-moment, try-anything-once-kinda girl with an infectious, dirty laugh and a face like a pixie.
‘How’s your brother?’ Annie asked as Emily finished inspecting the van and came back to stand with Holly.
‘Oh Wilf’s the same as always. Gallivanting around. I don't see him that often at the moment. He came to the island though, with me the other month when The Rolling Stones were recording. We had so much fun, didn’t we, Holly?’
Holly,