Chapter 6
Bex tried to summon up the enthusiasm to choose the Easter eggs she needed for the hunt she would be hosting at the farm.
She usually loved this time of year, but with the official opening of the campsite just around the corner, reviewers already testing it out, and everything that was going on with her mum, she could do without another event to organise right now.
Her parents still hosted a small egg hunt at their house every Easter, a tradition carried over from when she and Briony were young, but when Bex and Matt had started their family, they’d wanted to mark the holiday in their own way too.
The boys would have happily taken part in ten Easter egg hunts if they got the chance and they’d always seemed delighted that both their parents and grandparents went to so much effort.
The egg hunt at the farm was something Bex had looked forward to every year since Henry was a toddler and he’d wandered around the garden outside the farmhouse, earnestly searching for eggs from the ‘Easter Bundy’, as he’d called him, inadvertently making their Easter visitor sound very threatening.
Despite the name mix-up, Matt had taken on the role with gusto, wearing a costume Bex had ordered online.
The two of them hadn’t been able to stop laughing at their little boy giving the Easter Bunny the name of a serial killer and Matt had joked he’d be able to wear the same costume at Halloween.
Bex had been excited at the thought of so many milestone moments, high days and holidays ahead of them, making their own family traditions along the way.
The arrival of the Easter Bunny on the farm had been the first of them.
Their annual Easter egg hunt had grown over the years, as had their family.
By the time they had all three boys, the Easter egg hunt had begun to include some of Henry’s friends, and then later Ollie and Tom’s too.
These days it had become a pretty big event with up to thirty children getting involved.
The other parents were always happy to pitch in and contribute to providing the eggs, but this year it was going to be bigger than ever.
Tristan and Bex had decided having an Easter-themed event on the farm would help promote the campsite.
It might be mostly local children attending as the paying guests would start arriving after Easter weekend, but it would provide a lot of content for their social media pages, which no doubt many of the parents would want to share, and it all helped to spread the word about Mordros Farm Campsite.
It had all seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now Bex wished she could forget about Easter altogether.
The only way she wanted to spend her time and energy was on tracking down Briony.
Right now, Bex was at the cash and carry in Newquay, dragging a flatbed shopping trolley behind her, like a prisoner hauling a huge ball and chain in their wake, and it felt every bit as exhausting.
‘Come on, Bex, pull yourself together and just bloody well get on with it.’ She said the words out loud, earning herself a sideways glance from a man whose trolley was already stacked high with boxes of crisps and her stomach rumbled in response.
She hadn’t eaten anything yet today, and she’d barely touched her dinner the night before either.
She just couldn’t focus on anything the way she normally would.
Bex hadn’t felt like this in years, not since…
No, she wasn’t going to think about Liam.
She hadn’t allowed him to take up space in her head for over a decade and a half, and she wasn’t about to start now.
If she was going to have to face Briony again, she didn’t need the spectre of her ex-fiancé looming large as well.
Seeing Briony would be hard enough. Bex had long since moved on; she was happy now: she had a husband she adored, three gorgeous boys and a life she loved.
Except for the part about her mother’s cancer, it was about as close to perfect as anyone could possibly hope for.
So the idea of seeing Briony again should be easy.
She had nothing to prove any more, she wasn’t the heartbroken mess Briony and Liam had created without a second thought, but the idea still made it feel as if her blood had turned to ice in her veins, nausea swirling in her stomach whenever she thought about talking to her sister again.
She was a stranger now, but it was somehow more than that.
All the things Bex had thought she knew about Briony had turned out to be wrong and she was still grieving the life they’d shared that had felt like one big fat lie after Briony and Liam’s betrayal.
Every childhood memory was tainted by what had happened.
All those Christmases, birthdays, days out and confidences shared between the two of them had just been an illusion and it felt like Briony had robbed her of so much more than just her useless ex-fiancé.
Now, she couldn’t think about any of those memories in the same way as she should be able to do, because of their deceit.
Bex had loved Briony with every fibre of her being and her sister clearly hadn’t even loved her enough to stay away from Liam.
It was an old wound now, but the signs should have been there for Bex.
After all, Briony had spent months asking Bex if she was sure Liam was the one and suggesting that his intentions might not be genuine, eagerly passing on rumours she’d heard about his reputation.
Bex had thought it was just her little sister being protective of her, the way she’d always been for Briony, because she hadn’t been able to believe for a second that it might be because her sister had wanted Liam for herself.
Maybe Briony had hoped she could have her cake and eat it.
That if Bex had decided to end her relationship with Liam, it would have left the way clear for her to make the move she’d clearly always intended to make.
Except Bex hadn’t wanted to listen, and in the end Briony had gone for it anyway.
Of course Liam had fallen for Briony; she was fun, beautiful and carefree.
And in the wake of discovering Liam and her sister together, Bex had been left feeling sad, ugly and embarrassed.
Despite how grateful she was now that she hadn’t married Liam, her confidence had taken the kind of beating she wasn’t sure it was ever possible to fully recover from.
She’d pushed those feelings of inadequacy down so far that most of the time she forgot they were there.
Now she was terrified they might reappear with a vengeance as soon as she saw Briony.
But she still wanted to see her more than anything else.
Not because she had any delusion that life was like a Disney movie and they’d fall into one another’s arms, with the past forgotten.
No, she wanted to see Briony because her so-called sister might be the key to their mother’s recovery and she’d do anything – anything – to make that happen.
She couldn’t afford to indulge her own feelings and she needed to get her act together, starting right now.
Within half an hour, Bex had completed the shopping for the Easter egg hunt, racing around like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep.
She headed straight back to the farm; the Easter eggs stacked so tightly in the boot that they didn’t even move as her car bounced up and down along the track.
She didn’t have time to stop for potholes.
All she could think about was checking her phone to see if there was any response to the email she’d sent Briony the same day that Ken had given her the email address.
It had been a short and not-so-sweet message, getting straight to the point, so that her sister wouldn’t labour under any illusion that this was some kind of olive branch.
Hello Briony,
I’m sure I’m the last person you expected to hear from, and I never thought I’d contact you either, but Mum has liver cancer.
The doctors have said she’s eligible for a transplant from a live donor.
It involves removing part of the donor’s liver, which over time is able to grow back.
Of course I offered straight away, but she won’t hear of it because of my boys.
She said she’d never forgive me if I reached out to you to tell you what’s happening, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take to avoid losing her.
I hope you feel the same way and that between us we can persuade her that she has to let one of us be the donor.
If the tumours she has grows any bigger, she’ll no longer be eligible for a transplant, so time is of the essence.
Please contact me at the email address above as soon as you can, or on the mobile number below.
Thanks, Rebecca.
She hadn’t been able to force herself to sign the email off as Bex.
She almost never used the name Rebecca, except for things like doctor’s appointments.
If anyone ever used the name it didn’t even feel as if they were talking to her, and somehow that made it the perfect way of signing off her message to Briony.
The formality and unfamiliarity of the name kept a distance between them.
She’d made it clear in the message that, whatever happened, they’d never recapture their old closeness.
This was just a means to an end, not some kind of new beginning.