All Inclusive (19 page)

‘OK, OK, we'll leave it at that. Just . . . please, no more picking fights, all right?' Beth smiled at her daughter, who scowled back. Not ready yet then, Beth understood, to let her mother off the hook.

So how come it always happened, she wondered, as Carlos carefully backed the boat up to the soft white sand of Dragon Island, that she ended up being the Bad Party. No mystery. It came free with a mother's lot, that's how.

Dragon Island was no more than a quarter of a mile long by a hundred yards' broad strip of perfect soft sand, the flecking of coral in it sparkling a fierce diamond-white. In the centre was a grove of several dozen mature coconut palms hiding a thatched bar that faced the endless ocean on the island's far side, a wooden shack laid out as changing rooms and several picnic tables beneath giant sunshades. Oversized burnt-orange hammocks, the colour sun-faded, hung from bent palms. These were usually occupied by loved-up couples who occasionally tumbled out onto the sand, as fondling that they wrongly assumed to be well out of eyeline became over-intense.

On the beach beneath a pair of symmetrically arching trees was the hotel's wedding venue: a white-painted bower like a seaside bandstand, draped with tulle and twined with jasmine. Beth tried to imagine Mark and Sadie here a week hence, all decked out in full-scale wedding finery, but could only
picture the two of them as they appeared now: Sadie in a bikini and matching mini-sarong all patterned like army camouflage, and Mark in a shiny black and white Newcastle United FC vest and lime green board shorts.

At the island's southern end, a sign depicting a dancing couple wearing only floral garlands was nailed to a tree, proclaiming the far tip of the beach a clothes-free zone.

‘Gross,' Delilah commented to Sadie as they padded along the beach towards the bar. ‘It'll be old people showing off their flab and wrinkles.'

Sadie giggled. ‘Won't matter: you won't be able to see their naughty bits for all the fleshy overhang!'

‘Ugh, yuck!' Delilah shuddered. ‘You're making me feel sick!'

The party laid claim to a table beneath a thatched beach shade. Hardly anyone else was around. A couple of yachts had moored a little way out to sea along the beach, and a couple lay dozing on a double hammock beneath the trees.

Ned wandered over to the bar to fetch drinks and bottles of water, while Lesley settled Dolly onto a cushioned lounger and made sure she was well shaded from the glare of the sun. With all that silver fabric, its reflection could easily, Lesley considered, set fire to the wooden table and possibly the entire beach bar. The old lady's weirdly over-white teeth flashed a glinting and intimate smile at her, and Lesley felt a sudden chill of foreboding. Why had Dolly insisted on coming with them? She wasn't intending to do snorkelling, that was for sure; getting on and off the boat was enough of a struggle for her. It unnerved Lesley that Dolly was so callously blasé about her own death. Going on about how she expected it to happen any minute now was like tempting fate, and made
everyone uncomfortable. Fancy going on holiday and reminding everyone every day that the Grim Reaper was on your tail. It was selfish, that was what it was. She should either have stayed at home in Wyoming or left her death demons behind her. Surely people who had really accepted that they were about to die simply took to their beds and gave up the ghost quietly?

‘This is exactly the place I always think of when I listen to
Desert Island Discs
,' Beth was saying when Ned returned from the bar.

‘What's that on?' Sadie asked. ‘I haven't seen that. Is it on Beeb Two?'

‘It's radio, love,' Len enlightened her with exaggerated patience. ‘Radio Four.'

‘Oh. Right.' Sadie looked doubtful.

‘Bless her, she's never heard of it! Radio Four isn't music, pet,' Len continued, trying to be helpful. ‘It's mostly people talking; there are gardening programmes and plays and
Woman's Hour
. You must have heard it.'

‘OK.' Sadie looked as if she was thinking deeply. ‘So, like no music at all then?'

‘Only theme tunes, like this, everyone knows this one, even you!
Dum dee dum dee dum dee dee
. . .' Len pranced on the sand, can of beer in hand, belting out the theme tune to
The Archers
. A pair of inquisitive faces rose from the nearby hammock, grinned at Len and settled down out of sight again. Beth saw Mark raising his eyes to the skies, his finger twirling at his temple in the universal code for ‘mad'.

Dolly chuckled quietly. Beth wondered what she was thinking: you didn't get much of a clue from someone whose eyes were hidden by such very large, very dark sunglasses.

‘So on
Desert Island Discs
, Sadie,' Beth told her,
‘you get to choose your eight favourite records that you'd have with you if you were shipwrecked and all alone. And a book and a luxury.'

‘
Eight?
Like eight songs? Er, like,
why
?' Mark interjected. ‘If you was gonna fall off a ship with some music on you, you could take thousands of tracks on your iPod, no?'

‘Gordon Bennet, yoof of today!' Len roared. ‘What do they know? It's just the way the programme is! It's the
format
! Has been for donkey's years, you daft sod! You get eight songs. Not eighty, not eight zillion. You can't mess with a sacred formula.'

‘Not until,' Beth laughed, ‘some BBC spark with no sense of broadcast history updates it and we get
Desert Island Downloads
.'

‘What about them books and luxuries then? That's definitely more me.' Sadie lit a cigarette. Beth guessed her luxury would be a fag machine and a smart gold Dunhill lighter.

‘You get to take one book, apart from Shakespeare and the Bible. I keep changing mine,' Beth said. ‘Just now it's Colette's Claudine novels, but Nancy Mitford's coming up fast on the rails.'

‘I can't think of a book I'd want.' Sadie looked worried. ‘Though I liked
Harry Potter
.'

‘You could take magazines. Britt Ekland asked for back issues of
Vogue
,' Beth told her.

‘Remember Oliver Reed, saying he'd have an inflatable woman?' Len laughed.

‘What for?' Delilah asked quickly.

‘To
fuck
, honey.' Dolly's harsh voice rasped out loud and laconic. ‘Wha' ja think?'

‘Um. Oh. Yeah,' Delilah murmured. ‘Um, anyone swimming?'

‘You know what, Ned?' Beth said to him as they
went down to the water. ‘I reckon Delilah tried to drown the wrong one in that family.'

‘I'm a good swimmer,' Lesley murmured out loud to herself. ‘No I'm better than that, I'm an ace swimmer. I swam for the school. And the county. I can do this.'

She was all right in the sea back at the hotel. There was the reef not far from the shore: nothing special, just a man-made wave-breaker, a calm swimming place for nervous guests and a perch for the pelicans. When you were in the water right there it felt safe because you couldn't see the open sea over the rocks. Here on the seaward side of Dragon Island the ocean went on for ever. The next landfall from this tiny strand of sand was way out there over the horizon: it was quite probably Venezuela. If the current caught her, Lesley could be carried out to the middle of nowhere, out of sight of land and life, drifting slowly away to a lonely drawn-out death. She imagined poor Mr Benson in the grey Guernsey early-morning water, fighting to get back to land, swimming hard, sometimes thrashing out in a panic, sometimes trying to be calm, to pull strongly and steadily, only to be tugged further out to cold exhaustion and defeat. Did there come a point when you gave up and gave in? What happened if you were out there till it got dark? Suppose you saw the lights of a ship and got some hope up and then watched it pass and sail away? Agonizing, that would be. Being eaten fast and brutally by a shark might be better.

She sat on the damp sand at the edge of the water and rinsed her snorkel mask out.

‘Beth?' she said. ‘Maybe I should just stay here and keep an eye on Dolly?' It sounded pathetic, like a plea for permission to be let off the swim. Schoolgirlish.
Any minute now, she'd be telling the others she'd got a note from her mum. ‘Lesley has a slight cold and cannot swim today.'

She was a grown-up, for heaven's sake. Why not simply say she'd decided not to bother, that she'd rather lie on a lounger and stare at the sky? You were allowed to do that, when you were a grown-up. You were also allowed to have fears and to admit to them, she reminded herself firmly.

‘But the snorkelling here's really good,' Beth was saying. ‘That bit of dark blue water just out there, where the reef drops away – that's supposed to be one of the prime sites of the Caribbean for fabulous fish! And we might see turtles!'

‘I know . . . but . . .' Lesley faltered. ‘Truth is . . . I've just lately got a bit scared about the open sea. I know I'm a really good swimmer but . . .'

‘Lesley, it's fine, I'll be right beside you,' Beth assured her. ‘I'll make sure I stay between you and the next continent, truly. It would be a shame to miss out, you were really looking forward to it.'

Lesley pulled her mask over her head and adjusted her snorkel, trying a few experimental breaths. She felt like a small child, encouraged by her mother to go to a party where all the class mean girls would be.

‘OK, as long as we don't go too far from the shore.'

‘Look, I'll go one side, Len can be on the other – we can hold your hands if you like,' Beth assured her.

‘No, don't say anything to Len,' Lesley said quickly, ‘I don't want him to . . .'

‘You ready?' Len came up and slapped her on the behind.

‘Yeah, I'm ready. Don't go swimming off where I can't see you, Len,' she told him.

‘What, you worried I'll be a shark's lunch?' he
laughed, patting his capacious stomach. ‘Poor thing would find it'd bitten off more than it could chew.'

‘Len, don't joke. You don't know what's out there.' But she did. Mr Benson was out there. A horrid, agonizing death was out there. Len thought she was over it. He'd said she was being morbid, brooding over the lost guest's disappearance. He'd even joked about it. ‘You'll see,' he'd said, the day Mrs Benson had given up and gone back home. ‘In a couple of years he'll have turned up in Australia with some young thing.'

‘Oi, everybody!' Len did a mock whisper and waved the others closer. ‘Lesley thinks there's something hungry out there, listening to us, so whatever we do . . .'

‘Len! Stop it you daft sod, I only meant be careful. Stay close together in case someone gets cramp or something. And that's
everybody
, including you, Len, OK?'

Lesley splashed into the waves and ducked under the water, then rolled onto her back. Bliss. She was going to enjoy this. It was going to be all right.

Oh it was so easy. None of them were around so Cynthia could prowl where she liked. Bradley was up at the Haven having Reflexology, which gave Cyn at least a good forty minutes. And the others wouldn't be back from snorkelling for hours. Beth (sure to be Beth, in bloody charge being as sensible as ever) would hoist the blue flag requesting a return trip to the hotel, but they'd probably have to wait; Carlos wouldn't let anyone else drive his precious speedboat, and he was busy in the afternoons, zapping about in the rescue boat chasing after hopeless guests who'd sworn they were brilliant sailors but who turned out to be
completely inept at handling the hotel's fleet of Hobie Cats.

Cyn strolled along the path between the lush ginger lilies and strelitzias towards the ocean-front rooms. She didn't look sideways but listened carefully and made sure she was alone. At the final turn she hesitated and peered along the open-sided corridor where she'd find rooms 1105 to 1112. There she was, the friendly cleaner who always said ‘Hi' as if she was singing it, turning out the end suite ready for new arrivals.

‘Er – hello?' Cyn tapped hesitantly on the open door. ‘Um . . . I'm
so
sorry, but do you have a pass key? I've come back from the beach to get my sunglasses and . . . so stupid . . .' Cyn broke off and gave a small silly-me laugh. ‘I've forgotten my key!'

‘Sure! Which one?' The cleaner took a key from her pocket and followed Cyn along the corridor. ‘Oh, this one,' she told her, indicating Beth and Ned's door.

‘Thanks so much,' she beamed as the door swung open, ‘I'm
so
forgetful! It must be the heat!'

A small qualm of doubt hit Cyn as she closed the door behind her. Suppose the cleaner said something to Beth? Suppose, next time she saw her, she said something about remembering her key this time? It wouldn't matter about Ned. If the girl made that kind of remark to him he'd simply brush it off and assume she'd got the wrong person. Men never did delve into things, overanalysing, the way women did. She sometimes wished she was more like that. Wouldn't it be easier just to take everything that was said at face value, without looking for hidden intricate meanings all over the place? On the minus side though, that would mean she had to accept Ned's insistence that their affair was over. But she knew he didn't mean that. He just hadn't thought things through.

Cyn stood by the door, almost afraid to move, taking in the room's layout. It was the same as hers and Bradley's but the opposite way round, with the bed on the left. She checked the mahogany bedhead. Like theirs, it was pulled a few inches clear of the wall. She remembered the first year they'd been to the Mango, Lesley in the Sundown bar one night blurting out something about how peculiar that gap was, and did they think it was to stop the wood scraping marks on the painted wall? Gina, Beth and Cynthia had laughed at her and she'd been puzzled.

‘Noise abatement,' Beth had explained (of course she did). ‘It's so it doesn't crash against the wall and keep the people in the next room awake,' and still Lesley hadn't got it. ‘But why . . .' she'd begun. How naïve could you get?