Chapter 5

5

Not far now." Edd raises his voice above the sound of the engine. "Few minutes, max."

Hana glances at her watch, the face lightly speckled with sea spray. They've been going for more than twenty minutes. She looks back at the beach; the wooden spine of the jetty is barely visible. Already, the hustle and bustle of the mainland seems far away.

Pulling out her phone, Jo gestures with her hand for Hana and Maya to bunch together. "You two, turn to face out to sea." They oblige, heads gently knocking together as the RIB bounces across the water.

"We're going to hit the back of the island first," the driver calls. "Never been anything built on this side. The forest's too thick."

Caleb lets out a low whistle. Hana narrows her eyes, feeling a little jolt of anxiety as she takes in the dense wall of foliage. She can tell how dark it would be in there—sunlight watered down to almost nothing where the tree branches curved over one another like laced fingers, obscuring the sky.

"It's been too long." Maya turns to Hana. "We've been shit at keeping in touch, haven't we?"

"I know." Hana observes her cousin. Her face, close up, suddenly unfamiliar. She hadn't remembered how beautiful Maya is—the wild, curly hair and tan skin, inherited from her Italian mother. Maya looks young still, but perhaps it's just Hana's perception—she'll probably always struggle to see Maya as grown up. Six years younger, for ages Maya was a child, someone Hana looked after. It wasn't just her personality; there was something uncertain about Maya, as if she wasn't yet sure about her place in the world. Maya seemed to drift, traveling light, place to place, person to person.

"I shouldn't say we ," Maya continues. "I've been crap at replying."

"It's fine," Hana says, but the words sound flinty, and she makes an effort to soften her tone. "I didn't expect everyone to keep up the hand-holding."

Because that's what Maya did, for months after Liam's death. The accident had drawn them back together, albeit temporarily. Maya was her rock—quiet, unwaveringly reliable when everyone else returned to their own lives. Even now, Hana's not sure if the rest of the family got bored or simply forgot, the minutiae of life taking over. It's been one of the hardest things after his death itself—that feeling of being alone at the time she needed people the most.

"How are you feeling about it all now?" Maya meets her gaze. "Liam..."

"I just miss him. I didn't know it would feel like this, so... physical." She can't put the bodily sensations into words; the horrible catch in her throat when she sees his side of the bed, the hollow in her chest when she thinks about the future they'll never have.

Everything they'd lost. Because that's what grief is: loss.

Hana's lost it all: Liam's perpetual five-o'clock shadow, the way he made things come alive, talking about the world so viscerally it was like he was spreading out a map in her head. For Liam, life was one big adventure. Rivers to be kayaked, hills to be biked down. He made the world full of color, and without him it is now dark. She is dark and she doesn't know how to get back from that.

The driver interrupts her train of thought. "On your left, you'll see the villas."

He's right: nestled in the trees are glimpses of buildings—a right angle of powder-pink against the blue of the sky, a large square of window, sunlight bouncing off the surface.

The retreat is perched high above the beach, a winding set of steps snaking their way up the cliff from the cove beneath. Several large, low-slung buildings are painted in other vivid tones—blues, peach. Just below on the right, slightly offset, is a glass-bottomed pool jutting out over the rocks.

"So what do you reckon?" Seth nudges Caleb. "Bea's missing out, isn't she?"

"She is." Caleb shrugs. "We'll have to come another time."

Hana notices Seth's response to the muted reply: how he's subtly examining Caleb. He's clearly discomforted by Caleb's body language, or rather the lack of it—the fact that he isn't trying to be matey.

Maya leans in, lowering her voice. "So what do you make of that? When Bea canceled, I thought he would too."

"You knew she wasn't coming?" Hana picks up on Maya's use of the past tense.

"Yes. Jo messaged a few weeks ago."

Hana nods and it dawns on her that it wasn't an oversight—Jo not telling her—she withheld the information deliberately so that Hana wouldn't cancel too. She's not sure she would have come if she'd known Bea wasn't—they'd always needed all three of the sisters to balance one another.

Bea and Jo were two extremes—quiet versus loud. Introvert versus extrovert. Academic versus sporty. Hana, in the middle, found that if she was with one without the other it felt wrong, like she was pulled too much to either extreme.

"I'm glad you made it," Maya says quietly. "I keep thinking, we let the whole promise thing slide, didn't we?"

The promise: Stick together. Never forget. Hana flinches at the naivete in the phrase. They'd made "the promise" as kids, after the fire at Maya's house during a family sleepover, a fire that devastated not only their house, but their family too. They'd all managed to escape, except Sofia, Maya's younger sister. Her room was empty when they searched, so her parents assumed she'd already gone out ahead of them. When they realized she hadn't, they tried to head back in, but the fire crew stopped them. They were the ones to eventually find her, hidden, frightened, under her bed, but by the time they did her burns were so severe, they led to a devastating stroke. The resulting brain damage and care requirements had proved too much for Maya's parents, and Sofia now lived in a residential care facility outside of Bristol.

The promise was to stick together, the three sisters and Maya, but their once unshakable bond didn't survive late adolescence.

"We're here!" Jo's already gathering up her bags as the boat approaches the jetty. A member of staff is standing by, holding a tray of juice in tall glasses, the liquid inside a dramatic sunset orange. "Those look incredible—just what we need before kayaking."

Maya looks at her quizzically. "Kayaking? We've only just arrived."

"I've booked us a slot in"—Jo glances at her Fitbit—"half an hour."

"What about unpacking?"

"I thought everyone would be desperate to get in the water."

Maya nods, face impassive.

When the boat comes to a stop a few minutes later, Jo's the first to get out.

Turning, she thrusts out a hand to Hana. "Sorry for what I said, before, asking if you were okay," she murmurs, helping her up onto the jetty. "I just want this to go well..."

There's a vulnerability in her expression as she searches Hana's face for a reaction. Jo doesn't usually do this—show her feelings, let alone apologize—and it makes Hana start to doubt her earlier assumption about the letter she'd found. Maybe this is all it was—an apology for not being around. Nothing more.

But as Jo loops an arm through hers, Hana can't help but stiffen.

She should know better than to let down her guard.