Ibiza Summer (13 page)

‘Almost ready,’ I said to no one in particular half an hour later, daring to take a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was wearing my red-and-white polka dot
bikini, the Fifties style one that I hoped had a Marilyn Monroe vibe about it, and Narinda had lent me one of her kaftans, a beautiful silky red one that had intricate gold beading on the front. I
had tied my hair back – as neatly as my hair could go – off my face and put my big sunglasses on and, for a split second, I didn’t recognise myself. Was this glam, sophisticated
girl I saw in the reflection really me? I almost looked cosmopolitan, like someone else I might see on the beach and admire, even if I did say so myself. I wished so much that Rex could see me now.
If he hadn’t fallen in love with me already, then surely, once he clapped eyes on me looking like this, he would be powerless not to.

‘Stop looking at yourself,’ Ellie said, smiling as she caught my eye.

Embarrassed, I felt my face flush bright red and I turned away from the mirror, but Ellie put her hand on my arm and stopped me.

‘You look really great, Iz,’ she said softly, taking a step back to get a proper look at me. ‘Really sophisticated and grown up.’

I stood there, stunned. ‘You really think so?’ I said, rubbing my lips together to evenly distribute my red lip-gloss, and feeling so chuffed that my chest visibly swelled (which was
not such a bad thing, all in all). ‘Sophisticated, you say . . .’ I turned to the side and began inspecting myself from a different angle in the mirror. ‘And grown up . . .’
I said aloud, almost forgetting that Ellie was actually still there as I held my nose in the air and flicked my head back like the celebs do on the red carpet when they’re posing for
photographers. ‘No, please, no more photos,’ I said, holding my hand up in front of my face, ‘have some respect for my privacy; I’m a human being too.’ I clutched my
chest and put one hand up to cover my face dramatically.

‘You,’ Ellie said, unable to stifle the amusement on her face, ‘are a first class nut-bag, Isabelle Jackson. Now come
on
,’ she said. ‘If we don’t get a
move on the boat will leave without us.’

f I had thought Alfredo’s party was full of beautiful people then nothing could have prepared me for the sight
I was confronted with as we boarded the imposing party boat. I was surrounded by bikini-clad beauties in what seemed like their hundreds, their bodies lithe and golden and glistening with oil,
glossy hair pulled up high in ponytails on their heads or casually hidden underneath super-trendy Stetsons or floppy Sixties straw sunhats. I suddenly felt small and insignificant and nothing like
I had done back at the apartment, even after Ellie’s unprecedented compliment. The smell of expensive suntan lotion filled the air, making it fragrant and sweet as everyone frantically began
to stake their claims on the best sunbeds on the top deck. Needless to say, the first thing Ellie did upon boarding was bag us each a well-positioned lounger.

‘Girls,’ announced Charlotte, as she provocatively undid her white sarong, allowing it to slip to the floor and expose her bronzed curves, ‘let the sunbathing
commence!’

Ellie and Narinda wandered off to check out the rest of the boat and get some drinks and left Louisa, Charlotte and me to settle down for an afternoon of catching rays. I reclined on the soft,
stripy lounger and involuntarily let out a sigh.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax but it was impossible for all the thoughts fighting for space in my head. I grappled with my brain, trying to block them out, metaphorically putting my hands
over my ears and saying ‘la la la, not listening’, but I knew that I would have to tell Rex the truth about my age sooner or later. I tried to imagine how he might react. Would he just
continue the conversation as if nothing of great note had been said, or would he sit there, openmouthed in abject horror?
Oh God, I so wish I had just told the truth from the off. It would have
been so much easier.
As it was, I was swinging between being utterly convinced that Rex would never have got involved with me in the first place, and then sure that he would see the real me and
not care, regardless of how many years I’d spent on the planet. ‘Age is just a number anyway . . .’ I remembered him saying on our first date. I was hoping his reaction would fall
into the latter category, obviously, but the chance that it might not be made me want to lose my lunch over the side of the boat. On top of that, there was something else niggling me. Rex was
almost ten years older than me – that much
was
the truth – and even though I had never felt so intensely about anyone in my life before, or more relaxed with anyone, this
unnerved me a little. I mean, would we want the same things from life? I felt irked with myself. Why couldn’t I just do as Willow had suggested? Just enjoy these three weeks with him and have
an amazing time and not worry about the future.

I sat up abruptly. It was time to text Willow. I needed a distraction and, moreover, support.

HEY U
.
AM ON A PARTY BOAT SUNNING MYSELF
+
LISTENING
2
TUNES
.
WOT U UP
2?
IZ X

I waited for my phone to beep back. Willow was a super-fast texter who never left her phone out of sight. And seconds later sure enough . . .

NO WAY
!
AM I JEALUS OR WOT
?
CHILLIN WIV CHAN
.
WOTCHIN FRM HERE
2
ETERNITY
.
HOWZ IT GOIN WIV DA DJ
?
TELL ALL
.
W X

I stared at my phone, my eyes blurry from the heat and sun cream.
CHILLIN WIV CHAN
.
WOTCHIN FRM HERE
2
ETERNITY
.

How could she?
From Here to Eternity
was
our
film. It was sacred to
us.
I felt a pang of jealousy swiftly followed by hurt.

I poised my fingers to text back, but hesitated. What would I say? I wanted to tell Willow, my best friend in the world, all about the trauma I was facing and the web of lies I had spun. I
wanted her help. I needed her to tell me what I should do, what my next move should be, like she had always done. I didn’t want some new, unknown girl lingering in the background. I
shuddered.
Stop, Izzy, stop it now!

I had to text back. I didn’t want her to think I was blanking her.

I NEED YOUR HELP WITH DJ MAN
. I wrote, and then immediately deleted it and tapped out:
ALL IS COOL BABES
.
FINGS GOIN GR
8.
GETTING A GOOD TAN
.
NJOY DA FILM
.
IT
’
S DA BEST
.
MISS U LOVE U
,
IZ X

It was best not to mention anything. I just couldn’t deal with it on top of everything else.

I pressed ‘send’ and fell back on to the sun lounger.

Everything had changed. I’d been in Ibiza less than one week and suddenly I didn’t know who I was any more, like the past sixteen – almost seventeen – years had happened
to someone else. My friendship with Willow – who had been my rock my whole life, there for me without fail in every love crisis, family crisis, clothes crises and countless hair crisis
– that I had valued and treasured all my life suddenly felt fragile and disposable, and it shook me to the core.

Rex was right, I decided. Texting
was
rubbish.

‘They’re starting to throw the champagne off the boat. C’mon, let’s go and see if we can get some.’ Ellie and Narinda had returned from the bar
laden with a tray of ice-cool drinks. Grateful for the distraction from my thoughts, I sat up and slipped my flip-flops on my feet. ‘I’ll come and watch,’ I said. ‘Wait for
me.’

‘OK,’ said the handsome deck guy dressed in white shorts and an equally white T-shirt. ‘On the count of three. One . . . two . . . !’ We were on the lower deck now,
closer to the sea. It was coming towards the end of the afternoon, but the sun was still strong and blazing on my back. A fairly impressive crowd had gathered, waiting for him to throw the first
bottle of champagne overboard.

‘Go for it, Iz,’ Ellie said encouragingly, as I found myself at the front of the gathering crowd. ‘You’re in a great position.’

‘But I can’t dive,’ I said panicking, looking back at them as more and more people gathered around the front of the boat, putting distance between us.

‘Just go for it!’ said Charlotte. Narinda, who was holding Ellie’s hand, began shouting, ‘Go Izzy, go Izzy!’

‘I can’t,’ I said, gripped with terror. ‘I don’t like deep water . . . There could be sharks!’

But the pressure was on me now.

‘Yeah, you can . . .’ Ellie shouted from somewhere behind me. ‘You can do it, babes.’

The force of the gathering crowd was almost pushing me overboard and my heart was in my mouth. I daren’t look down. There was no way I was going to dive. After all, this was the only girl
in the whole of her junior school who didn’t manage to dive down to the bottom of a three-metre-deep swimming pool and retrieve the brick in her pyjamas, for God’s sake, let alone jump
into the abyss surrounding us for a bottle of bubbly, watched by a bunch of Ibiza’s elite. How had I ended up in this mess?

It was just as I was thinking this that I saw him. He was on the top deck of the boat chatting to someone: a girl. Yes, it was Jo-Jo. I could see her now, resplendent in a shiny green bikini and
matching sun hat, and Steve, his best mate, was on the other side of her. Rex was shirtless, dressed only in baggy denim shorts with a thick leather belt around his waist. He looked tanned and
strong and his brown skin was shining in the heat of the sun. Had he seen me?
Could
he see me? I ducked down slightly in among the crowds of spectators and would-be divers, relieved of their
shelter. What the hell was he doing here anyway? He hadn’t mentioned any boat party to me on the phone, but then again, I realised, neither had I.

‘Three!’ bellowed the guy in the white shorts. And I dived – well more panic-jumped than anything, before he could quite finish the final ‘e’. I held my breath
while pinching my nose tightly and tried to think of dolphins as I hit the cold water.

Of course, I didn’t manage to actually grasp the bottle of champagne. I was too busy trying to stay alive. I scrambled back up the rope ladder to the safety of the boat to the cheers and
whoops of a delighted Ellie and Co.

‘You’re one brave girl,’ Narinda said, as she helped me up the last rung of the wobbly ladder.

‘Way to go, Iz,’ Ellie said, handing me a towel to dry myself with. ‘You nearly did it. You were only centimetres away from the bottle. ‘Come on, let’s buy some
champagne anyway.’

A bottle of bubbly later, Ellie and gang were getting well into the party spirit. I on the other hand, was gripped in a nightmare of unadulterated fear and panic.
I had seen him, here on the
boat.
I wanted to run, to shrink, to hide – somewhere,
anywhere
but we were on a boat and, even though it wasn’t exactly dinghy-sized, I knew there was no escape and it would
only be a matter of time before he saw me. I felt physically sick. Soon I would be shamelessly exposed as the fraud I was.

The sun was setting now and I managed to extricate myself away from Ellie who, slightly giddy from the bubbly, kept putting her arms around me and saying, ‘I’m so proud of you
jumping in like that; I mean I’d never have done it . . .’

I moved through the crowd. It was cooler now that the sun was going down; soon darkness would be upon us and I felt a little relieved by this. I could hide better in the dark.

It was coming up for ten o’clock and the boat was in full swing. Despite the chill of the night air, many people were still in their bikinis or shorts, warmed by the
day’s earlier rays and hours of dancing. I, on the other hand, had brought a little denim mini to put on over my bikini and a soft knitted cream cardigan. I had also convinced Charlotte to
lend me her Stetson in the hope that it might provide me with a disguise, enabling me to hide my face. I wrapped my cardigan round my shoulders and surveyed the scene from underneath
Charlotte’s hat. I decided to brave the semi-naked dancing bodies everywhere and make my way up to the top deck to go and watch the stars – I needed cheering up. I had a quick scan
around to make sure Rex wasn’t up there first though and when I saw that the coast was clear, my body, which had been rigid and stiff with panic since I’d seen him, began to loosen,
just a little.