All Inclusive (22 page)

‘Hey look at that!' She pulled Ned into the shelter of the stairwell as she spotted movement by the hut. ‘There was someone in there all the time!' And so there had been. Ned watched, feeling like a spy, as a couple slid out of the door. Please, he thought, please don't let them investigate to see what I put in the bin.

The two from the hut kissed briefly and the woman started walking (thank goodness) along the beach in the direction of the pool terrace.

‘Well! You couldn't mistake who that is!' Beth said. ‘That long blonde flag of hair could only be Gina's. The woman never stops!'

The man whistled softly and Gina turned, waving and blowing him a kiss before continuing on her way.

‘And that,' Ned told her, ‘is Carlos. I only hope she hasn't knackered him too much for the diving tomorrow. You'll know who to blame if we get washed up on the shore of Tobago.'

Delilah couldn't stop yawning. It was way after midnight and she needed her bed. Her head ached and she was starting to feel shivery in spite of the sweaty heat of the night. They were outside the club now, drinking at a table in a crowded courtyard lit with hurricane lamps. What a brilliant evening. Sam had stayed close to her most of the time, although he hadn't made a move on her. That would be down to Nick being there, she thought, because Sam was obviously interested. All evening he'd kept giving her little touches that were like small ownership gestures. Claiming her,
that's how it felt – she was completely geed up with longing for him just to give in and kiss her. Now, sitting beside him, she could feel the length of his thigh against hers. Occasionally his hand brushed her leg and he was doing that teasing thing that boys at school did when they fancied girls. He'd been taking the piss about her ignorance of West Indian music. Fair enough, but why should she have heard of 2Ntrigue? Just because he said
everyone
knew about him, didn't mean that she had to.

‘Sorry,' he apologized now, hugging her close to him and kissing her cheek, ‘I shouldn't laugh at you, girl.'

Oh the bliss of feeling his strong body against her like that, scenting it, even though it was just for a few seconds and he was being no more than friendly. All the same, he hadn't been like that to Sadie or Melina. Just her.

She yawned again. Nick looked at her quickly. ‘You tired, Del? You feeling OK? I should be getting you back to the hotel.'

She gave him a furious look. How dare he? She'd decide when she'd had enough.

‘We're moving on to Ellis's place for something extra,' Sam whispered. ‘Maybe you should go back, hey? It'll be a late one and the smoke's gonna be bad for you.'

‘No! No I'm fine! I don't want to go yet.'

‘Well I'm off to find a cab,' Michael said, looking at his watch and standing up. ‘You young folk go and have more fun if you want but it's time for my beauty sleep. I'll be happy to see Delilah back to the Mango, Nick, if you want to go on with the others.'

They were talking about her as if she wasn't there, or as if she was three years old or a parcel or something. Insulting or what?

‘But . . . Nick . . .' No-one listened to her. They were all getting up now. Party over. Oh, great.

But as the others went ahead through the courtyard's archway that led to the road, Sam took Delilah's hand and pulled her gently into a dark corner behind a low fan-leaved shrub. Delilah suddenly found she was being kissed, crushed firmly against Sam's muscled body. His hand was smoothing confidently down her side and finding its certain way under the edge of her short skirt, caressing the soft top of her thigh. And just as suddenly, just as she was relaxing into it, it was over.

‘Hey Delilah girl, you're tired and it's late,' ‘he told her, gradually letting her go. ‘I like being with you but tonight you're too young for where we're going. OK? Go back to the Mango and I'll see you very, very soon,' he promised, his fingernail gently scratching the back of her neck as he walked her through the archway to join the others.

Michael had already hailed a taxi. Tingling and close to delirious with happiness, Delilah climbed inside and flopped onto the back seat.

He really likes me. He wants me, but he cares enough to keep me safe, she thought as sleep came close to catching up with her, that's got to be good. It proves he's a nice guy, not just a user. And that kiss. Just a taster for now, loads and loads more of that to come.

And Gina, she thought with delicious satisfaction, as she fell asleep against the cab's window, Gina eat your sodding heart out.

28 ml Cointreau

28 ml gin

14 ml apricot brandy

56 ml pineapple juice

56 ml passion-fruit

slice of orange

Lesley watched from behind a clump of hibiscus as Len jogged down the lane from the top of the hill back into the hotel grounds. Then she carried her cup of tea to a table on the far corner of the pool terrace beneath the tamarind tree, where he wouldn't immediately see her when he returned. He'd assume that at this hour she would still be in bed; his early-hours thinking time was, she understood, a vital and private start to his day and he wouldn't be thrilled to find her waiting to chat to him on the terrace, where he liked to do his cool-down stretches in meditative peace.

Tough, she thought as she peeled a banana and took a sweet delicious bite. Today, like it or not, he was going to have his body checked out. This overdoing the sports combined with overdoing the booze and
food was getting way out of hand. Yesterday he'd come back from tennis (played in the midday sun, how stupid was that?) sweating like a racehorse and with his face the livid colour of tinned tomato soup. Suppose the heartburn he grumbled about really did turn out to be his heart – literally burning away? If he dropped dead tomorrow it wouldn't be a big surprise, but there'd be no satisfaction in being able to say ‘I told you so' to the corpse of your adored husband. It looked as if it was her job to stop things going that far.

In spite of her attempts to persuade him to have his vital signs checked by the nurse in the Haven (by appealing to his instinct for getting his money's worth, pointing out that it was included), Len had stubbornly refused. In fact, he rarely ventured in there, considering men who went in for bodily pampering to be flaunting that bit too much of their feminine side. He made exceptions only for the odd deep-muscle sports massage when applied to muddy and injured rugby players, with the proviso that any essential oils be limited to wintergreen and camphor. So Lesley had persuaded Ellis to trick him into the dive shop and not let him out till he'd had the divers' BP monitor firmly Velcroed round his arm, and results duly noted and lectured upon if necessary. There were to be no arguments about it – if he wouldn't let Ellis have a look at him, Lesley intended threatening to shut up shop in the sex department for the rest of the holiday. And Len wouldn't like that one bit: he considered a good helping of the conjugals, as he referred to it, to be an essential ingredient of what defined All Inclusive.

Lesley watched from her hiding place as Len puffed onto the terrace and stood for a few moments panting and gasping, leaning heavily on a table top for support and looking frighteningly close to collapse.
She was alarmed to see him holding his chest, rubbing at it as if there was something in there to be massaged away. She hoped to goodness it wasn't clots, aneurysms and sundry other cholesterol-built nasties in his bloodstream.

Len hadn't noticed her – she was partly obscured by a couple of yoga enthusiasts with their bums in the air, saluting the sun. Just as he made a start on the calf stretches Ellis appeared, right on cue. Good man, she thought. Perfect timing – if you were allowed to buy drinks in this place, she'd owe him a large one.

‘Len, my man! Just the fella,' Ellis called across the terrace from the dive-shop doorway. ‘Come in here with me, I got a fancy new sport computer to show you. Come and try it, tell me what you think.'

And Len fell for it, keen as a puppy after a bouncy ball. Excellent. He liked gadgets – loved playing with the computer at the gym that told him how many calories he'd burned, how much of the virtual Tour de France he'd covered, how many kilos he'd lifted that day. Let's hope, Lesley thought as she got up and made her way across the beach for her early dip, that he'd take as much interest in what the blood-pressure monitor told him.

A blessed bit of peace. Beth stretched out on her lounger and started on the first page of a new book. There was nothing, to her mind, quite so relaxing as having a pile of reading matter and plenty of guilt-free time to get through it. It was bliss to be away from work and have no Witjuti grubs to purée, no kabanosi sausage to grill, no moose nose to de-hair for World Wide Wendy. The only hassle had been lugging a great heap of books with her on the plane, freshly trawled from the Gatwick bookstores. Next year, if they came
back here, she decided she would buy her holiday selection a few weeks early, resist (with difficulty) beginning to read them and send them on ahead to the hotel by Federal Express.

Beth hoped for at least an hour's peace. Delilah had gone for an archery lesson (with dire warnings from everyone to be more careful where she aimed her arrows than the unfortunate Valerie had been last year) and would not be bothering her for cash or attention for a while. Nick was playing tennis with Sadie – his doubles partner for this week's hotel tournament. And yet . . . here came Cynthia, making her purposeful way towards her across the terrace, clutching her flower-trimmed raffia-crocheted beach bag and looking as if she had something important to say. She looked perfectly put together – if a bit like a child dressed for a party by an overfussy mama – everything carefully matched as ever. This morning she was togged up in a glittery candy-pink and white spotted bikini, a short fringed wrapover cover-up in the same fabric and a pink straw hat with white ribbon. She even wore tiny white beaded earrings and a pink bracelet. Beach Barbie – you couldn't help but think it.

She could imagine Cynthia browsing in a smart boutique where the clothes were not on hangers and shelves but packaged up as entire outfits, displayed in cellophane-fronted boxes and fully accessorized right down to shoes and jewellery. Beth was loath to indulge in catty thoughts, but it did cross her mind that a glimpse inside Cyn's wardrobe might be an interesting character analysis. Did she store everything by colour? Would there be rails of, say, blue items arranged from pale baby shades through to navy, each of which had a special goody bag of matching extras and all the right shoes boxed and labelled, possibly
with Polaroid photos on the fronts? She always seemed quite a sexy sort, Cynthia. She'd have imagined she'd have a certain amount of seductive element with regard to clothes.

‘They could almost be brothers, couldn't they, our men?' Cyn commented to Beth as they both waved to Bradley and Ned who were walking down to the sea, ready to set out on Carlos's boat with the other divers. ‘They're really quite alike.'

Beth couldn't agree at all – OK, both were tallish, similar in age, both quite broad across the shoulders and each still had their own quite acceptable teeth and hair, but apart from that, well she wouldn't have trouble telling Ned from Bradley in a bad light.

‘I can't really see it myself, Cyn. Bradley's much darker and his hairline's completely different. Mind you, I suppose they all look much the same wandering down the sand in wetsuits.'

‘Shows off the male body rather well, skintight black neoprene, doesn't it?' Cyn smirked, then turned to Beth with sudden curiosity. ‘So what was he like, this secret man of yours? What happened?'

‘What man?' Beth was puzzled, then recalled the cross-purposes conversation from a few nights ago. ‘Oh I see what you mean. No, Cyn, that was a mistake; you completely got the wrong end of the stick. There's no-one.'

‘Mistake? They're
all
a mistake . . . Well nearly all,' Cynthia said rather bitterly, her eyes still on the divers who were now climbing into the boat. ‘Come on, Beth,' she cajoled, perching on the next lounger and looking as if she intended to stay till she'd heard something satisfying scandalous, ‘you can tell
me
about him. It's not as if you live close by and have to spend the rest of the year worrying I'll spread it around all
your friends. You could think of this as a sort of confessional!' Somehow she made this sound less like something that would have priest-like secrecy and more like gossip that would be ‘confided' to
Hello!
magazine.

‘I might, if I had anything to confess!' Cyn's persistence was beginning to annoy Beth. Why did she keep on like this? Which part of the denial wasn't she understanding?

‘I'm boringly monogamous, me. Sorry to disappoint!' Beth flicked over a page in her book, hoping Cynthia would take the hint. She only had half an hour left now till her Aroma Spa Ocean Wrap, and she didn't want to spend it arguing with Cynthia about men she hadn't slept with. Perhaps she should make up a few, if it would get rid of Cyn; possibly invent a steamy orgy with a school rugby team. Would the bloody woman then go away happy?

‘All right! If you insist!' Cyn gave in with a strangely twisted smile. ‘But I know about women like you, all holier-than-thou and butter wouldn't melt on the surface. Underneath, you and me, we're not that much different. You'll see.'

Beth watched Cynthia as she got up and stalked off towards the beach, swinging her girly little basket. What in the name of buggery had she been talking about with that mildly threatening ‘You'll see'? Beth, completely befuddled, rather thought, and certainly hoped, that ‘see', in this context, was something she wouldn't.

Time to move. Beth reluctantly gave up on the book and wandered off towards the Haven by way of the Archery field. Delilah, Michael and Mark were there, lined up with a dozen others, learning the basics of firing at the targets way down at the far end against the
wall of the Frangipani bar. She stopped to watch as Jerome, the instructor, wrapped both arms around Delilah and showed her exactly how to aim. Did he really need to do that, she wondered, realizing at the same time that of course he didn't. Jerome was a one-time Olympic medallist: getting a bit touchy-feely with attractive young female guests was probably the only perk of this job. She watched Delilah giggling as she snuggled back against his body. Did she have to be quite so flirty? Perhaps she should have a word with her about the careless putting out of signals. She was a gorgeous young thing, looking so much better now from spending time in the sun – she didn't have to act as if she was either desperate or grateful for every bit of male attention.