The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

Holly glanced at her as she too clicked in her seatbelt. ‘Annie needs tampons.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ She didn’t reply that Holly could have just texted her that request – or indeed Annie herself. Was this an opportunity for the two of them to make up?

They pulled out of the short cobbled drive and onto the lane. It was single-width with only occasional passing places and Tara sent a prayer to the travel gods that they wouldn’t meet any tractors coming in the opposite direction. The village was two and a quarter miles away, but it felt longer than that as they drove in silence. Tara wished she’d put the radio on first, just for some background noise.

‘So how are you feeling now?’ she ventured, glancing at Holly, who was looking out the side window, her jaw pushed sullenly forwards. She was pale, with dark bags under her eyes, her red corkscrew curls scraped back in a ponytail and secured with a green wire toggle that looked like it should be holding up staked sweet peas.

‘Rough.’ Even the word was a croak.

‘Yeah. What we’d give for a saline drip right now, huh?’

Holly frowned at her. ‘You don’t need one. You were on the tonics all night.’

‘Well no, but I’m still feeling . . . meh.’ Her voice was quiet, the words small as though she didn’t dare to give them a solid shape; she felt a sense of shame, as though her pregnancy was something she was not allowed to acknowledge. Holly stared at her with an inscrutable expression. Tara kept her eyes on the road, her grip tightening on the wheel. ‘. . . Do you think anyone clocked that I was faking?’

There was a pause. ‘No. They were all too busy getting hammered themselves. I don’t think it would cross their minds that anyone would willingly not drink themselves into oblivion at a twenty-first, much less that one of us might be pregnant.’

‘Yeah. It wasn’t much fun having to pretend like that.’

‘So then don’t. Just tell them.’ Holly gave a bored shrug, as though it was no big deal telling people she was dropping out of her studies, abandoning her high-flying career before it had even begun, becoming a mother by twenty-one. ‘Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be.’

Tara felt stung by the words. Her situation was complicated and to suggest otherwise was facetious – but she bit back her indignation, not wanting to get into another argument. Holly on a hangover was the proverbial bear and sore head. ‘It’s too early,’ she mumbled instead. ‘I’m only nine weeks . . .’

A red kite suddenly shot past the car, giving them both a fright, and Tara slammed on the brakes. ‘Oh holy shit!’ she cried, feeling her heart rate shoot up.

Holly didn’t say anything, her silence somehow withering as Tara tried to collect her wits. She was jumpy and anxious. They drove along again, past the low mossy drystone walls.

Holly shifted in her seat, and Tara noticed she still looked green around the gills. ‘So what’s Alex up to this weekend, anyway?’ she asked flatly.

‘Um, well . . . bonding with my father, mainly.’

‘You what?’ She could seemingly only manage to hitch up one eyebrow in response.

‘Yeah. They’re playing golf together right now.’

Tara glanced over as a silence stretched again and she saw her friend looking at her with an expression that suggested she’d sprouted a second head. ‘Alex? Alex is playing golf?’

‘With my father. Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘. . . Wentworth.’

Holly spluttered with sudden laughter, the sound erupting from her like a volcanic eruption, surprising them both. Tara cracked a tiny smile.

‘Does he have the right clothes? I mean – the socks alone! Does Alex even have a matching set?’

‘Probably not . . . He’s never played before,’ Tara grinned. ‘Dad will have to get him kitted out.’

Holly tipped her head back against the headrest, clearly amusing herself with a visual montage. ‘Ah God,’ she mumbled. ‘The thought of him hacking those greens in Fair Isle socks . . .’

Tara felt her grip relax around the wheel as the tension between them slackened somewhat. Ambition hadn’t been their only bond; they shared a wicked sense of humour too. ‘What’s Dev up to?’

Holly’s smile disappeared in a flash. Seemingly even Dev’s name was now off limits. ‘Why would I know?’

‘You didn’t ask him on Friday?’

Holly shook her head. ‘Nope. His comings and goings are none of my business.’

‘Oh.’ Tara offered nothing more. There was no point. If her friend was going to be adamant that they were not a ‘thing’, that they merely slept together and what he did during daytime hours was none of her concern, what could she do? Seemingly nothing she could say was right.

They passed the village sign, white-painted with a flowerbed of crocuses planted around it. Someone had left a Coke can on the top. Weathered stone cottages stood barely a hip-width’s pavement back from the road, fresh eggs – blue, brown and white – left in an honesty box on a deep windowsill. A noticeboard fluttered with pinned memos for babysitting services, the upcoming Spring Fayre, requests for lambing help, cars for sale . . . A decommissioned red phone box stood on a grass verge opposite the Snooty Fox pub where they had caroused last night, and the village store was housed in a pretty whitewashed building with wooden crates of fruit and vegetables stacked in tiers outside. But for the fact that the carrots looked stringy and there was some obscene graffiti inside the bus stop, it could have been a Richard Curtis film set. It felt like stepping back in time, to an age of innocence and decorum, and it certainly explained a lot about their friend Sophie. Were they all products of their upbringing, Tara wondered? Alex certainly was – free-spirited, irreverent, independent. Holly was grounded, loyal, plain-speaking and fiercely ambitious. In which case, how did hers manifest in her? Especially when she always went to such lengths to hide it?

They parked and staggered out of the Mini, Holly hungover and Tara deeply nauseated.

‘Papers, bread, milk, Nutella