Three's a Crowd (12 page)

As I got closer to the pool I could hear raised voices.

Was that Jonno? I had never heard him shouting. Eve told me he frequently lost his temper with the senior members of staff, but never in public.

I sped up, turned the corner past the trees and came face to face with Lola and Jonno having a massive argument by the pool.

I joined the crowd of hotel guests watching them from the pool bar. Lola was still in her jeans. For some reason the first thought that struck me was that she wasn’t changed, even though she had to be on stage in less than fifteen minutes. What was she doing?

“Shit, Jonno. How can you be so blind?” Lola’s face was scarlet, her arms waving wildly through the air.

“Be quiet.” Jonno’s face was bright red as well. He was obviously making a huge effort not to shout again. Instead he kept reaching out, trying to pull Lola away. More hotel guests were arriving, clearly drawn by Lola’s shrieks. The few remaining little kids still in the water, were being bundled away by anxious-looking mums and dads.

I spotted Eve, Chloe and Alejandro standing on the terrace by the lobby entrance and raced round to them.

“Get your hands off me,” Lola screamed.

I reached the others. “What the hell’s going on?” I said.

Eve shook her head. “Lola’s gone mental.”

“Totally off her head.” Chloe glanced at me. “She was talking to Jonno at the bar and then, out of nowhere, boom.”

“Like she exploded,” Alejandro added.

“No waaaay.” Lola’s ear-splitting screech made me jump. “Don’t you dare say that. I wasn’t drunk. It
was
her.”

A large crowd had now gathered behind Lola on the grass. Jonno glanced round, taking in all the people watching them. He moved even closer to Lola, talking rapidly. His face was grim: jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. He looked to me as if he’d like nothing better than to push Lola into the pool.

“Talk about embarrassing the guests,” Chloe giggled.

“For Crissakes,” Lola shouted. “Don’t you even want to know who she was with?”

Jonno shook his head in frustration. I could see his mouth forming the words, “calm down”.

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Lola shrieked. “Just because you can’t accept your daughter’s more adult than you want her to be.”

What?

Eve was wide-eyed beside me. “Why’s she talking about me?”

“SHUT UP!” Jonno exploded.

There was a shocked silence round the pool. Lola stared at him triumphantly. “I saw her last night,” she said. Her voice was quieter now, but the pool area was so still she would have been heard if she’d whispered. “I saw her going into a boy’s room at two-thirty last night.” Lola pointed to where we were all standing on the grass near the hotel terrace. “She was with him.”

Now everyone was looking at us.

I blinked rapidly. Lola
must
have been drunk. I hadn’t been with Eve that late. I’d left her at the hotel at, what, one-thirty? Certainly not after two. And she hadn’t been in my room at all yesterday evening.

And then I realised Lola wasn’t pointing at me. I looked down the line of us – from Eve, to Chloe to Alejandro.

I stared at Alejandro. The tan had turned to a deathly grey. There was fear written all over his face. And something else. Something unmistakable. Guilt.

No.
It couldn’t be true. It must have been some other girl. Eve would say so. I gripped her arm. “Eve?” I said, hoarsely. “What’s she talking about?”

But Eve was pulling away from me, moving towards Alejandro. Jonno was pounding over, breathing heavily. Seconds later he was beside them, fists clenched at his side. He looked at Eve.

“Is this true? Did you go to his room last night?”

The whole world shrank to Eve’s face.

She stood in front of Alejandro, her arms spread out, protecting him from her father.

“Yes,” she said.

I know Eve carried on talking, but I didn’t hear what she said. I couldn’t breathe. I just stood there, feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach.

It couldn’t be true. She was with me. We were perfect. Together. Why would she go after someone else?

I thought of Catalina. How easy that would have been. My heart sank.

The pianist from the band was tugging at Jonno’s arm.

“Is nine o’clock, Señor Ripley,” he moaned. “We have no singer. No drummer.”

Jonno loomed over Alejandro, his nostrils flaring, his whole face clenched with rage.

“I’ll deal with you after the Open Mike.” He grabbed Alejandro’s arm and dragged him into the main lobby and towards the stairs down to the nightclub.

In the distance I could now hear the pianist and Lola shrieking at each other. But my eyes were fixed on Eve.

“Eve?” I said, hoarsely. “Please. What’s happening?”

I still couldn’t believe that she had been with Alejandro last night. She turned to me distractedly.

“Luke, it’s not how it looks.”

“What
happened
?
”

Eve glanced into the hotel. “I did go to his room. He called me. But nothing happened, I promise. He doesn’t even fancy me.”

“You’re telling me—?”

“I have to go and make sure Alejandro’s all right.” Eve edged towards the hotel door. Her eyes were full of tears. “Please, just trust me on this. Nothing happened.”

She turned and fled into the hotel.

I stared after her. There was this empty hole where my insides should have been, like someone had ripped them all out. I felt Chloe’s hand on my arm.

“Luke?” she said gently.

“Did you know?” I realised my hands were shaking and balled them into fists.

“I knew they were close, but . . . look, if Eve says nothing happened you should believe her.”

I gazed at her, numbly. “She went to his room in the middle of the night, Chlo.”

As I said the words the knowledge that it was true – and of what that must mean – finally sank in. The shock I’d felt lifted. Rage boiled up from my stomach. I tore my arm away from Chloe’s hand and strode indoors.

Dimly, in the background, I could hear her calling after me. I saw Ryan in the main lobby.

“What’s going on?” he said, seeing my face. “Luke?”

I raced past him and down the steps to the nightclub.

Jonno was already on the stage. He was standing further back than usual, next to the drum kit.

“Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to Open Mike Night at La Villa Bonita.”

I could see Alejandro behind the drums. He hadn’t noticed me. Jealousy twisted its knife into my gut. He had smiled and smiled at me and all the time he was after Eve.

With a jolt I remembered that first evening we’d gone out for a drink in Cala del Toro. How Alejandro had walked Eve back to the hotel. Is that when it had started? Or later, after his dad arrived and they went out for all those late-night meals together?

I looked around for Eve. She wasn’t sitting at our usual table. No-one was. I scanned the room. There. She was at the far edge of the stage, looking anxiously up at Alejandro. At
him
. . .

The knife twisted deeper. How bloody dare she? I’d given her my heart and she’d thrown it away like garbage.

Blood pumped through my head. I could hardly breathe. I stormed towards the stage.

Eve caught sight of me as I started pushing past tables full of people.

She shook her head then, seeing I was still coming, rushed forwards to meet me.

Jonno had finished making his announcements now. He was talking to one of the waiters, one eye still fixed on Alejandro. There was no sign of Lola. Jonno had obviously decided to go straight into the open mike session. The first singer was on stage, warbling out of tune.

Eve and I reached each other at Jonno’s regular – and still empty – table, just under the stage. She slid into the nearest chair, motioning me into the next seat.

I gritted my teeth and sat down. It was taking every bit of self-restraint I had not to yell at her. But I didn’t want to start yelling yet. I needed to hear her say it first. Admit what she’d done.

“Please don’t make a big fuss, Luke,” she said quietly. “Alejandro and I were just talking.”

I clenched my hands more tightly. The knife in my gut twisted again.

“Don’t lie to me,” I said. “People don’t go to each other’s rooms at two in the morning to talk.”

“We
were
,” Eve insisted. “Why won’t you-—?”

“What were you talking about?” I spat. “How you like being kissed? Or maybe how he likes it? Because he’s so horny you’d do anything to please him, wouldn’t you?”

Eve stared at me as if she was seeing me for the first time.

The first open mike singer finished to a polite smattering of applause.

“If I say nothing happened, that means nothing happened. Why won’t you—?”

“Because it’s rubbish. I know you fancy him. You always fancied him—”

“I don’t. I didn’t.”

“So what, then? What did you talk about?”

I stopped, my breath jerky and shallow.

“We were talking about . . . stuff. About someone he needs to speak to. Look, I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone. I promised him.”

The knife sliced up through my heart. “You promised
him
?” I hissed. “You promised
him
? What about me? What about us? You
bitch.
”

Eve blinked at me. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Fine.”

“What d’you mean ‘fine’?” I stared at her. “Are you dumping me?”

She pressed her lips together and looked down at the tablecloth.

My breath caught in my throat. “Are you going out with him?”

Eve said nothing.

I stood up and caught sight of Ryan and Chloe staring at us, horrorstruck, from the other end of the table.

Unable to meet their gaze I turned and stumbled, blindly, out of the room.

The next two hours were the worst I’d ever lived. I went down to the beach and found a deserted spot in the trees about three or four hundred yards along. I curled up in the leaf-strewn sandy grass and lay there, flooded with waves of rage and jealousy and humiliation. For the first time since we’d arrived at La Villa Bonita, it rained. A soft spattering rain that trickled down the leaves on the trees above and dripped onto me.

After a while I heard Ryan walking along the beach, calling out my name. I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
I
was nothing. Without Eve I was no-one.

I loved her so much and she didn’t love me at all.

Misery swamped me, tears and rain running down my cheeks. And then the fear – the terrible emptiness of being without her. She couldn’t leave me. I couldn’t let her go. She couldn’t want him instead.

Him.

The storm of feelings in my head settled into a single focus.

Alejandro. That smooth
bastard
.

I got up and went back to the hotel. It was almost eleven o’clock. I knew the Open Mike Night would be drawing to a close and that the confrontation between Jonno and Alejandro was about to happen.

I wanted to be there.

I had completely forgotten how unreasonable I used to think Jonno was about Eve. I wanted to see Alejandro suffer.

I wanted to inflict some suffering of my own.

The nightclub was emptying when I arrived. I saw Jonno instantly. He was still firmly planted next to Alejandro and the drum kit, chatting with some of the guests.

Chloe rushed up to me. “Luke, where’ve you been? Oh, God, you’re all wet. Ry and I were looking everywhere for you.”

I looked past her, searching the room for Eve. There she was. Still standing near the stage, looking anxiously across at her father and Alejandro.

The guests were drifting out now. There would be a ten-minute break while the DJ set up for the crappy disco that came on every night. I could see Jonno checking how many people were left.

“Luke, man.” Ryan’s voice was gentle. Sympathetic. “Why don’t we go outside. Get a beer. Just go somewhere and chill.”

I shook my head, still staring at the stage. “I want to be here.”

Ryan and Chloe exchanged alarmed glances. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Ryan touched my arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

I shook his hand off angrily. “Leave me alone.” I strode towards the stage. The other musicians had gone now. Jonno was giving his last cheery handshake to a guest, his last instruction to a waiter. Then he was free. I could see the fury in his face as he turned and gripped Alejandro by the arm.

They were speaking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I moved nearer. Eve was fluttering nervously next to them both. Jonno was clearly telling her to go. She was equally obviously refusing.

Jonno looked round, taking in the number of guests still sitting around, chatting. He turned and strode backstage, his beefy hand still gripping Alejandro’s arm. Eve followed.

I leaped up onto the stage after her, sensing Ryan and Chloe behind me.

I had been backstage many times since Eve started singing every night. It was always dark, a warren of corridors, doors, painted screens propped against walls, lighting rigs above your head. I followed the glittery swish of Eve’s dress along the corridor, past the dressing rooms and out the back.

A little alleyway, bricked off from the rest of the hotel. Nothing but dustbins. My heart started beating faster. Jonno had Alejandro pinned against the brick wall. Alejandro was struggling, but although he was tall and broad-shouldered, Jonno was simply bigger and stronger.

Rain poured down. Jonno’s hair was already plastered to his head.

“You evil little shit. If you weren’t my partner’s son you’d be dead.”

“Eve and me is talking,” Alejandro said, his masterful English deserting him. “Talking. There was nothing bad.”

“Daddy, stop.” Eve tugged at Jonno’s arm. He didn’t appear to notice her.

“Talking?” Jonno shouted. “I know what kind of talking goes on in the middle of the night. Talking innocent girls into bed talking.”

In the midst of my pleasure at seeing Alejandro literally backed up against a wall, I felt a pinprick of irritation at Jonno’s inability to see Eve as she was.

Innocent, my arse.

She was about as innocent as a rattlesnake.