Kiss Heaven Goodbye (2 page)

Grace Ashford looked down at her denim Capri pants and French navy T-shirt and frowned at her best friend Sarah Brayfield.

‘What’s wrong?’

It was what she wore for dinner every night, with flip-flops and a ponytail. How was she supposed to turn up for dinner – in a ball gown and five-inch heels? It wasn’t like they were dining at Langan’s; they were on holiday, and although
Architectural Digest
had just called her father’s Caribbean bolt-hole ‘the most idyllic private island in the Bahamas’, the reality was it was just low-key and relaxed.

‘What’s
wrong
?’ asked Sarah with a dramatic arch of her eyebrow. ‘What’s wrong is that we’ve been on a paradise island for one week now and you have made precisely zero progress with Boy Wonder. We need drastic action. And, more importantly, we need cleavage.’

Grace groaned. Sarah had always been very dramatic. Throughout their entire time at Bristol University her friend had toyed with the idea of being an actress before six job offers on the milk round had made her swap her plans for RADA for law college, declaring cheerfully that she was going to ‘sell out’.

Fearing that the night ahead might take an embarrassing turn, Grace realised that it had been a mistake to tell her indiscreet, theatrical flatmate about her secret lust for Alex Doyle, her brother Miles’ best friend – especially when they were all holidaying on the Ashfords’ private island at the same time: Miles to celebrate the end of A levels and his time at her own alma mater Danehurst School; herself to recover from the late nights and academic rigours of Finals.

Traditionally, Grace had always gone out of her way to avoid spending time with her brother and his friends. Even as a young child, she had always found Miles to be arrogant and underhand, and the people he chose to hang around with were much the same.

That was until he had brought home Alex last summer. Alex Doyle, with his spectacular good looks, sexy northern accent and poet-boy broodiness, was like a cross between the lead in a sixties French movie – Alain Delon perhaps – and John Taylor from Duran Duran, on whom she still nursed a secret crush. She hadn’t meant to fall for Alex – after all, he was three years her junior – but ever since he had visited her in Bristol and followed it up with the letter she kept stashed away in her diary, she had felt the attraction was mutual. Or was it? She wasn’t sure and she certainly didn’t want Sarah tarting her up and making a fool out of her.

‘Action? Cleavage?’ She grinned at her friend. ‘I’m the host this week, remember. It’s bad form to go seducing house guests.’

Sarah began touching up her own make-up in the big gilt mirror. ‘I’d hardly call your feeble attempts at pulling him seduction. The most you’ve said to him in the last three days is pass me a pineapple, despite him mooning around you for days.’

Grace felt a jolt of excitement. ‘Has he? When?’

‘Didn’t you see him down on the rocks with his top off? I know I did, but he only had eyes for you, more’s the pity.’

Sarah turned to Grace and pouted.‘In the words of Disraeli, action may not bring you happiness. But there is no happiness without action. You have to be bolder. Sit next to him at dinner. I want plans made for the holiday. Arrange to go up to Leeds or wherever it is he’s from. Invite him to London. A gig. He’s into music, isn’t he? Find out from Miles who he likes and get tickets, anything to get him on his own. Seduction is really quite simple you know. Especially when you wear this.’

‘Are you sure you should be going to law college? I think Sandhurst might be more appropriate.’

Sarah flung open the wicker wardrobe and pulled out a piece of leopard-print chiffon.

‘What’s that?’

‘Put it on,’ she instructed.

‘It’s see-through!’

Her friend’s lip curled upwards in triumph. ‘My point exactly.’

Grace hesitated before taking the kaftan from Sarah, wishing she could be more like her friend, the product of unmarried ‘resting’ children’s TV presenters who had brought up their daughter to have a voice, a cause and cast-iron self-belief that she could do anything or be anybody she wanted to be.

Grace’s parents on the other hand had given their daughter every material advantage. But the very wealth that had allowed it had drawn Grace into rather than out of her shell. She didn’t like attracting attention to herself. She’d spent a lifetime hearing people whispering about her when helicopters dropped her off at school or her father’s chauffeured Bentley picked her up from friends’ houses. She’d hated it and as a result she liked to blend in.

Get a grip, she told herself, squashing down the disappointment she had felt all week. You’ve got a first-class degree; you can get an eighteen-year-old to snog you.

She was surprised as she caught her reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t half bad. The kaftan was short and sheer and had a deep V-neck with topaz-coloured beads around it. The colour made her skin look more tanned and her long, thick hair more tawny, and the narrow silhouette added inches to her height. Five feet nine but not in a willowy way, Grace had wide shoulders from sports: lacrosse and netball.
Sturdy
was how her father frequently, painfully, referred to her, as if he was describing an oak tree, but the light chiffon had draped itself over her curves in an elegant and flattering way.

‘Very Sharon Stone.’ Sarah nodded appreciatively.

‘Wilma Flintstone, more like.’

She tried to pull down the kaftan a few inches to hide more of her thighs. ‘Heck, it’s short. I’m not sure my legs are good enough for something this mini.’

‘Nothing a bit of blusher can’t sort out,’ replied Sarah thoughtfully.

She knelt down and started daubing long streaks of bronzer down the outside of Grace’s thigh.

‘What are you doing?’ shrieked Grace.

‘Slimming your legs by optical illusion, of course.’

‘Well, well. What’s going on down there?’

Grace looked up to see her friends Freya Nicholls and Gabby Devlin at the door. They were both wearing tiny string bikinis, and barely-there sarongs were wrapped around their concave waists.

‘Just a little enhancement,’ said Sarah, unfazed by the girls’ disapproving looks.

Gabby flopped on to the bed, leaving dampness on the coverlet, while Freya pulled a bottle of Moët and another of Kir from her beach bag. Freya had a job lined up at the Lynn Franks PR agency in London as soon as they got back to the UK, and already she had older, more sophisticated tastes than the rest of them. The four girls were unlikely friends – according to Sarah, Freya and Gabby had dispensed with a sense of humour when they discovered that their stunning good looks were all they needed to carry themselves through life. But the two of them had taken Grace under their wing on their first day at Danehurst when she was lost and homesick, and they were sworn best friends for life by the time Grace realised they had almost nothing in common. And when they had followed Grace to Bristol to attend the polytechnic, it had seemed wrong to do anything else but invite them to live with her in the four-bedroom house in Clifton that her father had bought for her time at uni.

‘Thought we’d get the party started early,’ said Freya as Gabby went to fetch glasses.

‘So how was snorkelling?’ asked Grace.

‘Amazing,’ said Gabby, playing with the string of brown beads around her ankle. ‘You should have come.’

‘And leave
Valley of the Dolls
unfinished?’ Grace grinned, holding up a dog-eared paperback.‘After a three-year diet of Chaucer, Milton and Shelley, this is like manna from heaven.’

‘Forget the fish, the highlight of the trip was that new boat boy,’ said Freya, grabbing Sarah’s bottle of red nail polish. ‘I’m not sure where he came from but he is cute, cute, cute.’

Gabby took a sip from her tooth glass of champagne and rolled her eyes. ‘She’s desperate for a holiday shag.’

‘What about your boyfriend?’ asked Sarah disapprovingly.

‘What about him?’ Freya smiled. ‘What goes on on the island stays on the island.’

Grace took the bottle. ‘He must be one of the guys my dad has shipped in from one of the other islands. He’s got half a dozen clients coming here tomorrow evening after we’ve all gone, so they need to put on a show.’

She pressed the button on her cassette player and the sounds of Everything But The Girl floated through the speaker.

Listening to the soulful melody, Grace felt suddenly depressed and vulnerable. The fact that they were leaving tomorrow meant that all the fun, carefree days of school and university were behind them and the void of her real life was rushing up to meet her. Unlike Sarah, she wasn’t sure where her life was going to lead. Since childhood, she had been told that she would go to work in her father’s company, but she had no illusions that it would be a glamorous VIP role with a corner office and a place on the board. Her father had always seen Miles as his great successor and gave Grace the impression that her job would be a safe little distraction until she found someone suitable to marry, preferably someone with connections to add to the sheen of the family company, Ash Corp. It certainly didn’t make her feel excited; it made her feel trapped and, in a fit of rebellion nine months ago, she had applied for an MA course at Oxford, forging a new fantasy of life as an academic, spending term-time in some dreamy, spired university town and her holidays on Angel writing the new
Gone with the Wind
. Now all she had to do was break the news to her parents.

She poured a generous measure of champagne into her glass, the bubbles fizzing over the top, and drank it down.

‘That’s the spirit, Grace,’ said Freya. ‘Let’s get in the mood.’

Sarah pursed her lips. ‘Grace needs some Dutch courage.’

‘What for?’ demanded Gabby eagerly, sensing gossip.

‘She’s going to cop off with Alex tonight.’

‘Sarah!’ Grace flushed.

‘Miles’ friend?’ asked Gabby, frowning.

‘How many other Alexs are there on Angel Cay?’ Sarah replied.

‘But he’s eighteen, isn’t he?’ asked Gabby.

‘Nineteen in September.’

‘You cradle-snatcher!’ Freya laughed.

‘Actually, that means he’s at his sexual peak.’ Sarah grinned.

‘I can see I’m going to have to get really, really drunk,’ said Grace.

Outside, beyond the plantation shuttered windows, the Caribbean sun was setting, flushing the sky the colour of a Bellini. The scent of honeysuckle and jasmine floated on the breeze.

‘Where do you think we’ll all be in ten years’ time?’ wondered Grace aloud.

‘Back here hopefully,’ said Sarah with a smile.

‘I want to be married,’ said Freya, ‘to someone rich, gorgeous and famous.’

They all laughed.

‘We’ll all be married by then,’ said Gabby, as if it was stupid to think anything else.

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Sarah. ‘My mum and dad have got the best relationship I know and they’ve been happily unmarried for twenty-five years.’

‘Your parents are just a pair of old hippies. Any couple not married after ten years do not want to get married.’

‘They’re hippies all right. But they’re right for each other.’

‘Screw that,’ said Freya, holding up her left hand and waggling her fingers. ‘I want a massive rock on here.’

Grace watched them, wondering to what degree their lives were already set. Freya was off to the glittering lights of Soho, Sarah clearly had found her calling as a lawyer – human rights most likely – and Gabby, who had spent her three years at Bristol trawling the students’ union for the most eligible Old Etonians, was sure that her research and determination would bear fruit in a good marriage. Grace’s parents had decided on her own fate from the moment she was born. But with her MA course tempting her, she knew she could change her destiny. Right here. Tonight, if she could find the courage to tell her dad she didn’t want to join the family business.

No pressure then, she said to herself, smiling, feeling a flutter of hope as the champagne bubbles went to her head.

‘To sexy men,’ said Freya, raising her glass and downing the gently fizzing liquid in one.

‘To Angel Cay,’ followed Sarah.

Grace felt a rush of hope and expectancy. ‘To tonight,’ she said, clinking her glass against the others’. ‘This is the last few hours of our youth and the start of the rest of our lives. Let’s make it a night to remember.’

2

Lying on the deck of
Beautiful Constance
, Robert Ashford’s ninety-five-foot motor yacht, Alex Doyle pushed his sunglasses further up his sunburnt nose, still not quite able to believe how a boy from a two-up two-down in Macclesfield was able to live a life like this. As far as the eye could see, turquoise waters stretched out towards the horizon, the blue sea broken only by the outlines of the cays. There were 365 islands in the Exumas – one for every day of the year – and as he lay there,
Beautiful Constance
was heading towards the most beautiful one of all. Angel Cay, the Ashford family’s private island, rose like a mirage out of the clear water. Peaks of tropical jungle – mango, palm and coconut trees – were ringed by sugar-white sands. The pale blue Caribbean plantation house stood on the crest of the tallest hill with a wraparound view of sea, sky and tropical vegetation. Squinting, Alex could see specks of bubblegum pink on the beach.‘Flamingos!’ he chuckled, pulling out his battered Olympus Trip to take this unlikely snapshot of paradise. Whoever said money didn’t make you happy hadn’t been to Angel Cay.

Today they had taken the yacht for some snorkelling off the cays, where the fish were as brightly coloured as Christmas baubles, and this afternoon they had cut out towards Harbour Island for some deep-sea fishing. Sitting in the chair struggling with the line, he’d felt like he was living some feverish Hemingway-fuelled fantasy. Over the course of this holiday Alex had experienced things he’d seen only in James Bond movies – private jets, Jacuzzis, tennis lessons and backgammon, fine wines that cost more than his mother’s car, liqueurs you had before
and
after your exotic dinners of lobster and quail. To think he hadn’t even wanted to go to Danehurst, the school that had put these opportunities within reach.