Lobsters (12 page)

I picked up a newspaper from the rack and spotted the six-year-old copies of
ZOO Magazine
which were still up on the top shelf, untouched by the looks of it. I suppose the elderly women who run the shop were simply too terrified to take them down. I grabbed one and flicked through. Megan Fox – and her breasts – featured heavily.

‘Wow. She's got great tits.'

I swivelled round to be confronted by the black-haired girl I spotted on the walk up the hill yesterday. She was holding a basket full of bread, eggs and bacon and had obviously been peering over my shoulder at the magazine.

She had a thick, ridiculously sexy American accent. Her long, black hair was pulled back into a ponytail and a tight Rolling Stones T-shirt showed off her impossibly tanned arms and belly. And never mind Megan's tits – hers were even more amazing up close and without the rucksack straps impeding them.

‘Do you think they're real?' she asked, pointing to the breasts that Megan was trying (not very successfully) to contain with only her bare hands.

I hastily jammed the magazine back on to the rack.

‘Yes … No,' I stammered. ‘I mean … it's a horribly sexist magazine, isn't it? I was just going to … complain, actually.'

‘Oh no, don't do that,' she smiled, taking the magazine back
off the rack and placing it in her basket. ‘You need all the excitement you can get in a place like this.'

We walked out of the shop together – leaving our money for the food, newspapers and soft-core pornography on the counter – and continued talking as we wandered towards our bikes.

It turned out she was not American, but Canadian – from Calgary. Her name was Erin. She had come to Sark with her mum and step-dad. She's didn't get on particularly well with either of them. She was twenty-two and studying Fashion and Design at a college in Toronto. She had no qualms in admitting that she found Sark interminably dull and she told me she was really pleased to have met at least one person around her own age.

She talked
a lot
. By the time we had wheeled our bikes to the road that leads to my gran's house I had barely said five words.

‘Where are you staying?' I asked, boosting my verbal total up to nine in the process.

‘In the big house down by the windmill,' she replied. ‘Do you know it?'

‘Yeah – that place is massive.'

‘Mm,' she nodded. ‘I've basically got a whole wing of it to myself, which is kind of cool because my mum and Martin can't keep checking up on me.'

She stopped suddenly in the middle of the road and studied me closely. ‘How old are you?'

I decided honesty was not the best policy here.

‘I'm … twenty. Just turned twenty.'

She examined me intensely for another second or two, as if deciding whether or not she believed this. I considered telling
her I was burnt in a fire, but decided against it. Finally, she smiled.

‘You know, you should come over and check the house out. What are you doing tonight?'

This was
huge
. I was being invited to a deserted wing of a mansion by a hot twenty-two-year-old Canadian fashion student with large breasts. This was bigger than huge. This was
massive
.

‘Nothing,' I said, trying to remain (outwardly) calm.

‘Cool. Well, why don't you stop by the house at, say, nine? Come round the back. I can let you in through the window.'

‘OK, great,' I said, starting to feel anxious already.

She hopped on to her bike. ‘See you tonight.'

She cycled off. I climbed on to my bike and was about to head back to my gran's when I saw her stop about ten yards down the road.

‘Hey, Sam,' she shouted, unflapping the copy of
Zoo
from her bike basket and pointing to Megan Fox. ‘I hope I can live up to your high standards.'

I hadn't realized it was possible to feel sexually aroused and slightly terrified at the same time. I laughed and gave her a thumbs up. A fucking
thumbs up
. Who am I, The Fonz? I am literally the least cool person on the planet. She smiled and rode off.

I cycled back slowly, thinking over what had just happened. I figured I should be happy. I was potentially about to lose my virginity to a hot Canadian girl during a supposedly dull family holiday. However, the problem was that ‘I lost my virginity to a hot Canadian girl during a supposedly dull family holiday' is
every virgin's classic default lie. No one would
ever
believe me. And, in the end, losing your virginity isn't really about you – it's about everyone else. It's about telling everyone else that you've done it, so you can get on with doing it again. Properly, this time.

I could just see Robin's face when I told him, ‘Oh yeah, I shagged this really fit twenty-two-year-old fashion student from Calgary.' He'd have none of it. He'd want proof. Even a photo of me and Erin together wouldn't be enough. He'd want a full-length HD sex tape.

I considered signing up to Facebook. Maybe I could befriend her and then ask her to publicly confirm that we had sex by posting a signed declaration on my wall? That wouldn't be awkward at all.

Anyway, maybe the ‘I lost my virginity to a hot Canadian girl on a supposedly dull family holiday' line is now so clichéd that it's actually become believable again. Because no one would have the audacity to tell such an obvious lie.

By the time I got back to my gran's, though, the fact that no one would believe me seemed totally insignificant. I couldn't pass up an opportunity like this. It was happening. It had to happen. Tonight.

7

Hannah

Meeting new boys is something we talk about constantly. It's always on our to-do list. But the problem is, meeting new boys is actually really hard to do. Living in London makes everything worse because it seems like everyone else is doing all this cool stuff that we're not doing. There is this whole world of bars and clubs and cool scenes that we have no idea how to infiltrate.

Tilly isn't even eighteen yet so she still can't get in anywhere. We are relegated to house parties and sleepovers and sometimes going to birthdays at boat clubs, and that's about it really. It's supposed to be the time of our lives, but it doesn't feel like it.

Meeting the boys felt exciting because the last time we met boys we didn't know (apart from the buried Sam night), was in Year 9 when Grace met Jake at her Drama class. Secretly, we all hoped this holiday would bring us new boys. And for once, something we had wished for had actually happened. And happened in tanned, cool-named, book-reading form. And on the first day we got here.

Getting ready we were all a bit mental. Even Stella wasn't as cool as usual. She had talked incessantly about Pax. About his body, about his gap year in Australia and Thailand, about his
tattoo and how he played the guitar. She kept changing her outfit and reapplying her lipstick. Grace was on edge and I could tell things were a bit tense between her and Tilly. None of us had mentioned anything about her flirting with Pax's mate, James.

When we left and started taking the obligatory pre-night-out photos, Stella finally called her on it.

‘Grace, you need to relax. It's not like you're married to Ollie. I mean, if it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be. Maybe this is like, the
test
. Like you need to do it to prove your love or something …'

Stella made it sound like Grace
should
pull James. Like it was a necessary part of reaching some relationship zenith with Ollie. It irritated me. Grace would obviously regret it if she did it. If we were going to pass any comment surely it should be that it wasn't a good idea? It grated. Because Stella just loves the drama, and knows Grace pulling James will bring her closer to Pax.

She talked about Pax in the same way she talked about Charlie when she first met him. Although Charlie hadn't been mentioned once since the boat. You wouldn't think she had just lost her virginity to the person she'd been casually stalking for two years. Although I would pick Pax over that douche any day, so I can't really blame her.

The restaurant the boys picked was not exactly the little taverna I had pictured. It reminded me of the cafe at my local swimming pool. I felt a bit silly in my white body-con dress, so I put my cardigan on as we walked in.

Stella seemed impervious and paved the way for us all in her sequinned hot pants and Kurt Cobain T-shirt. She likes all eyes
being on her, and they were. Saying hello was more nerve-wracking than on the boat. Stella was at ease though and within ten minutes I heard her asking Harry whether they played dubstep at the club we were going to go to later.

The boys were like all groups of boys. There was Pax, who was the leader. He had to be cool as well as fit because boys don't elect their leaders based on looks alone. Then there was Harry, the second-in-command, almost as good-looking as Pax. Then James, the joker, and Jordan, the not-as-confident one.

And then there was a boy who hadn't been on the boat. He was Pax's cousin, a year younger than them, and obviously different. He was slighter than the others, with mousey-brown hair and freckles. He didn't tan like they did, or dress like they did or have their easy outgoing banter. They didn't leave him out or behave nastily to him – I don't think boys really do stuff like that – but there was just an invisible line. You could just tell he wasn't one of them. He wasn't from the same place as them or part of their gap year in-jokes. He wasn't sprinkled with the same Abercrombie soft-focus haziness they were. He was called Casper.

We drank wine with the meal, like parents at a dinner party. It was like we were all play-acting at being adults, and that made me think of Sam and our cheek-kissing conversation. At the beginning it felt awkward but by the main course everyone had relaxed.

I tried to do my slow mannerisms and to seem mysterious but it's harder than it looks. James and Grace getting it on was obviously a foregone conclusion. She laughed hysterically at
everything he said. At one point everyone was talking about what A levels they did and Tilly said, ‘
Ollie
did Biology' and just looked at Grace. I suppose she has the right to feel loyal towards Ollie; she's had to hang out with him loads. I just didn't understand what the hell Grace was doing, when she loves Ollie so much.

After a while I got sick of being enigmatic and slipped back into being my normal self. Grace was telling James about a YouTube clip of a girl who is obsessed with sloths.

‘
How
can you not have seen it?' I said.

‘Because I'm not a girl.'

‘As far as I'm concerned, if you don't like sloth videos you don't even have a soul. You are just a sloth-hating death-eater. Haven't you ever seen their little faces?'

To underline my point I did my impression of a sloth waking up, which involves a lot of puffing my cheeks out and screwing my eyes up. James and Grace cracked up and from the end of the table I could hear Pax laughing too. Our eyes met and he shook his head and smiled at me.

I saw Stella catch it. Instantly, she laid her hand on his forearm. ‘When did you get your tattoo?' she said. His eyes were back on her again.

Pax had a tattoo on his chest of a swallow surrounded by some black symbols that looked like Chinese letters.

‘I got it when I was travelling in Thailand,' he said. ‘It's an ancient Thai proverb that means, “The bird that flies highest always avoids the cage.” Basically, it reminds me that I need to keep aiming for the stars if I want to stay free.'

I glanced at Grace and Tilly to see if they were also cringing into their napkins, but they were both smiling and nodding politely.

Stella looked suitably awestruck. ‘Wow, Pax,' she cooed. ‘That's so deep.'

She turned her wrist to show him her snowflake, glistening against her tan.

‘That's
epic
,' Pax said. He said ‘epic' a lot. ‘What does it mean?'

I knew exactly what it meant – that Stella had seen an Instagram picture and copied it.

‘That I'm an ice queen,' Stella fired back, and Pax raised his eyebrows and shot her a cheeky smile.

‘I bet you are,' he whispered.

That was it. I thought they'd probably be pulling by the time we got the bill, but as we left the restaurant to decamp to a bar, I stopped to change into my flip-flops and Pax hung back to talk to me.

‘You came prepared,' he laughed.

‘Yeah, I hate my feet aching and I don't want to tread on broken glass or something. Although I have brought my European medical card, so I could go to the doctors.'

I have no idea what made me say that. It is one of the most ridiculously stupid things I have ever said. Let alone to a boy.

‘Oh, have you? Think that makes you special, do you?'

He was laughing.

‘No. It makes me practical. We could get run over.'

And then he took his wallet out of his pocket.

‘Yeah, but having the card doesn't cure you, does it? You can't use it to administer to the wound. Anyway, you're not so special, I've got a mum too.'

And from out of his wallet he pulled a European medical card. The thought of Pax being connected to anything so run of the mill as a mother seemed weird. He seemed so independent and adult. We laughed about the sort of injuries we'd need our cards for out here: donkey attacks, incessant music-induced comas and poisoned Jägerbombs.

He was actually just a normal person. In the same way celebrities and presidents must be when they're with their mums eating Marmite on toast.

We were so far behind the others by now that we had lost sight of them completely. And all of a sudden, although nothing had actually changed, it turned awkward. I could feel we were both aware that we were a boy and a girl, alone together.

‘You're really nice, Hannah. I hope you get into York.' He sounded offhand as he said it. He was kicking a stone along the road, looking down at the ground.

I nodded. I sort of knew saying ‘I do too' would mean ‘Yes, I want you'.

And I wasn't really sure whether ‘Yes, I want you' was what I wanted. He was so fit that the answer had to be yes, Stella or no Stella, but then was it?

I stopped walking for a second, ‘Maybe I should put my shoes back on. We're not far from the club now.'

I walked to the kerb and sat down and he sat next to me. His brown legs stretched out next to my pale ones made me look
almost translucent.

‘You are ridiculously brown,' I said.

‘You are ridiculously pale. I burnt myself a bit today,
actually
.'

He said it as if he was defending himself. He pulled his T-shirt up and revealed his slightly red stomach. I could see the top of his bright white Armani boxers. They were so bright they looked radioactive. None of my underwear has ever been that white, even when it was brand new.

‘It's
burning
.'

He lifted my hand and held it against the red patch. His stomach felt smooth and toned and I could feel it rising and falling gently with his breathing. He was the most attractive boy I had ever seen, and I was touching him. And it wasn't just an accidental brush of hands. It was so deliberate I couldn't hide from it. I didn't move my hand. Almost like I was daring myself to see what would happen. When I did put it back down by my side again he put his hand over mine and held it. I could hear my heart beating so loudly it drowned out everything else. Stella's face popped into my head, and the way Pax had looked at her after dinner. And then, for some reason, I thought of Sam. Next to his gentle shyness, Pax seemed a bit too confident somehow. A bit too socially at ease and perfect.

‘We should catch them up,' I said.

I took my hand away and we both got up. And then he was standing in front of me. He stepped towards me, to the place you only step for one reason. I knew he was trying to get me to look at him so I just kept looking at the ground.

‘Hannah.'

I had to look up. I could see the amber flecks in his green eyes. He leaned towards me and kissed me on the cheek and whispered in my ear.

‘Can I kiss you?'

I put my arms around his waist and pulled him closer. He smelt like chlorine and salt and aftersun. We stood there holding on to each other really tightly.

And then he pulled away just enough to hold my face in his hands.

His lips were so gentle when they met mine.

Sam

I told my parents I was going for a long bike ride after dinner. They seemed suspicious. Their suspicion was heightened when I drained three glasses of white wine during the meal. My mum, clearly concerned by the fact I couldn't get up from my chair without steadying myself on the table, insisted I wore a helmet and a gigantic luminous poncho.