THE HUSBAND HUNTERS (17 page)

‘Well she’s definitely not here,’ I said, looking around the apartment, lamely. ‘Perhaps she’ll come back on Nico’s wagon later on.’

We went to bed, feeling sure that when we woke up in the morning Tash would be back.

But six hours later, when I groggily realized there was not just banging in my head, but on the apartment door too, I knew something was wrong. I stumbled out of bed and opened the door. Kaz stood there.

‘She’s still not back,’ she said. ‘It’s 10am and there’s no sign of her.’ Kaz followed me inside and we sat down on the balcony.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked worriedly. ‘Do we call the police?’

‘What if she strolls up at lunchtime and we’ve got the police here telling them she is a missing person. We are going to look like a bunch of prize prats,’ said Kaz.

We decided to leave a note for Tash, and headed off to the beach. But visions of her body being wrapped up in a carpet and stuffed in the boot of a car kept filling my mind. It was the second time that I’d imagined such a fate for her - the first was when she’d run off with Mr Beale. But at least he’d been a respectable teacher, not some Italian Stallion who looked like he starred in hard-core porn movies. Who knows what he’d do to Tash if she resisted his perverted desires.

When daylight faded, we sat on the balcony, gloomily sipping orange juice, when Kaz’s phone suddenly bleeped with a text message. We all grabbed for it at once, but Kaz got there first.

‘Don’t worry about me, I’m fine,’ she read. ‘It’s from Tash.’

‘Where is she, what’s happened?’ I asked.

‘It doesn’t say anything else,’ said Kaz. ‘Just that she’s fine.’ Kaz texted back ‘where r u?’ but the phone remained stubbornly silent.

None of us felt like going out that night.

‘What if that text isn’t from Tash,’ I said, dramatically. ‘And he’s got her tied up somewhere, and has stolen her phone?’ None of the others had thought of that.

Soph started to cry at the thought of Tash trussed up like a chicken, bound and gagged in some filthy room whilst some Italian oik decided where to dispose of her body.

At midnight, as we had decided to go to reception and phone the police, there was a knock at the apartment door. I went to open it and there stood Tash.

I pulled her inside, frantically inspecting her wrists for the sign of rope burns. But there was none, and for someone who had supposedly been tied up and tortured for hours on end, Tash seemed remarkably cheery.

‘What happened to you, has it been really awful?’ cried Soph, flinging her arms around Tash. ‘How did you escape? We were about to call the police.’

‘What on earth for?’ asked Tash, staring at her in astonishment. ‘I’m fine.’

‘I don’t suppose it has escaped your notice that you’ve been missing for nearly 24 hours,’ I said coldly. I could barely believe the cheek of her, waltzing in as cool as a cucumber when we had all been eating our own fists with worry all day.

‘I sent you a text message earlier saying I was fine,’ said Tash, defensively.

‘Yes about five minutes ago,’ said Kaz. ‘We had been worrying about you for the last 23 hours. And I sent you another message asking where you were and you never replied.’

‘My mobile ran out of battery after I sent that text,’ said Tash, flinging her mobile onto the sofa. ‘But I knew I’d sent that one so you’d know I was all right.’

We were all fuming with Tash. Only she could have done such a selfish thing and left us all so worried.

‘Who were you with anyway?’ said Kaz.

‘I didn’t know his name,’ said Tash wickedly. ‘But I wanted to see if it was true about Italians being good lovers.’

‘And was it?’ Kaz asked, begrudgingly.

‘Oh yes,’ said Tash. ‘And I’ve found out why that red bus of Nico’s is free, and it only takes women on board.’ She paused dramatically, on her way to the bathroom. ‘It’s known locally as the Fanny Wagon, because it transports women to the clubs for all the local men.’

Kaz, Rach, Soph and I looked at each other speechless, and then we started to laugh. We couldn’t believe it. We had been enthusiastically jumping aboard Nico’s bus every night, and merrily going off into town, not knowing we were aboard the Fanny Wagon.

‘How gross is that?’ spluttered Kaz. ‘No wonder those girls from Cardiff started laughing on the first night when they told us about that bus.

‘Five fannies on their way into town,’ said Rach, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘How everyone must have laughed when they saw us get on that bus each night. And that’s why no lads ever jumped aboard too.’

As we were waiting for the coach to pick us up outside the apartment block the following morning to go home, we looked across the road and saw Nico’s wagon parked at the side of the cafe. I shuddered. I was glad we weren’t getting on that bus again. I caught Soph’s eye and she gave a weak little smile. Soph was easily upset and she had been a bit shocked by the whole Fanny Wagon thing.

The coach came up the road in a cloud of dust, and we all put our suitcases in the big hold and climbed on board.

It had been a good holiday, I thought scratching at a mosquito bite, as the coach rumbled off down the road. We passed Nico who was trimming the hedge outside the cafe, and he waved. I gave an embarrassed wave back, and then quickly looked away. I felt like I had the word ‘Fanny’ tattooed on my forehead for the whole world to see.

None of us had quite forgiven Tash, for going missing for the last 24 hours. She still thought she had done nothing wrong. When I had told her that we’d all imagined her dead body rolled in a carpet and stuffed into a car boot somewhere, she told me off for having a too vivid imagination.

‘You want to live a little, Bee,’ she had said airily.

‘That doesn’t mean shagging every dark stranger you come across, especially some lunatic who trusses himself up in chains,’ I had retorted furiously. But there was no telling Tash. She did what she wanted and there was no stopping her. I was so angry at her, I half wished that she had actually been rolled up in a carpet and dumped somewhere. It would have served her right.

******************************

CHAPTER EIGHT

I had that awful Monday morning feeling. Going back into work after a weekend was always a killer. But after a week’s holiday was a million times worse.

Maria laughed when I walked into the agency.

‘Good holiday was it then?’ she said, noting my gloomy expression.

The rain was pouring down the front of the glass doors, and I shook my umbrella viciously on the mat before leaning it in a corner.

‘Anywhere’s better than this country,’ I told her, thinking of the seven days of pure blue sunshine I’d just had, and the golden beach we had left behind. Post holiday blues was a serious thing, I thought as I switched on the coffee machine as part of my morning ritual. I had seriously felt like killing myself when I had woke up this morning and remembered that I wasn’t on holiday in Italy.

‘I could even quite happily climb aboard the Fanny Wagon right now, as long as it took me out of rainy Cheshire and back into the sun,’ I had told Rach on the phone this morning, on my way into work.

‘Crikey, you must have it bad,’ she told me. ‘You wouldn’t catch me within ten miles of that thing now.’

I stirred my coffee and took it back to my desk. I must do some work now, I thought, switching on my computer. But an hour later, I found I was still staring into space and the little box for my office password was still flashing blank on the screen.

I looked up, jolted out of my reverie, as the glass entrance doors swung open and in walked Nick. He looked sickeningly brown - compared to my white pallor from too many late nights.

‘I thought you’d been on holiday?’ said Nick, stopping at my desk and looking puzzled.

‘This,’ I said, pointing to my white face, ‘is what you call having a good time. We were too busy clubbing and meeting people to get a tan.’

‘So did you meet any potential husbands amongst the beer swilling monsters?’ laughed Nick, dumping his bag on his desk.

‘No,’ I confessed. ‘Although there were plenty of men sussing us out each night.’ I told him about the Fanny Wagon and I thought he was going to choke on his own tongue, he was laughing so hard.

‘You mean to say you only found out on the last night, and for six nights you’d hitched a ride on that thing?’ he asked incredulously.

‘Well we weren’t to know,’ I retorted hotly, regretting having told that last bit to him.

‘Didn’t you think it was strange that men were getting into taxis at the cafe instead of hopping on a free bus. Hello is anyone in there?’ he added, tapping hard on my forehead.

‘All right, all right. So we were being paraded to the locals. It’s not that bad,’ I added lamely, thinking actually yes it sounded horrendous, in an almost seedy prostitute kind of way. What must Nick think of me?

‘What on earth made you go to such a resort,’ added Nick. ‘Aren’t you a bit old to be galavanting around places like that? It’s what I used to do as a teenager.’

‘Yes well that was last century,’ I reminded him. ‘Probably about two centuries ago judging from how old and decrepit you look.’

But Nick had hit on a nerve. I had felt out of place at the clubs. Perhaps I would suggest to Tash that we go somewhere more refined and sedate next year. Mind you, if the club did its job properly, hopefully we would all be in the first flush of married life by this time next year.

I felt a bit sad at the thought that we may have gone on the last girly holiday ever. But never having the humiliation of being aboard a Fanny Wagon again wouldn’t be a bad thing. I think Soph has been scarred for life. And to go on a holiday with a gorgeous and attentive husband looking after my every need would be fantastic.

‘How was your safari trip?’ I said, diverting Nick’s attention from my holiday, and from thinking of me as a sad grubby old crone who hung around young clubs trying to recapture her youth.

‘It was an adventure to say the least,’ said Nick, coming back from the coffee machine with two steaming cappuccinos and putting one down on my desk.

‘Thanks,’ I said, taking a sip.

‘I don’t think Claire will ever want to go back to Africa again after the experience we had,’ he added.

‘I didn’t know Claire was going with you,’ I said, a dart of jealousy suddenly ripping through me. That took me by surprise. Why on earth would I be jealous of Claire? I made a mental note to ask Rach about it when I spoke to her later.

‘
Why what happened? I thought you were on a safari trip taking wildlife photographs,’ I said, puzzled.

‘We set off in a jeep to a wildlife reserve that we had been told was a two hour drive away, and it turned out to be twice that long,’ said Nick. ‘We hadn’t got a guide with us as the other couple with us had said they knew the area. When we got in the nature reserve we were driving along a track and it had been raining hard so it was very muddy and the jeep wheels suddenly got stuck in the mud.’

My eyes widened. It was already sounding scary.

‘Aren’t there lions and things on safari?’ I asked hopefully, suddenly having a lovely vision of Nick being eaten by a lion.

‘Loads of them,’ he replied. ‘ I knew that we needed to find some stones to try and wedge under the wheels to give them some grip, so we had to jump out the jeep and find some. The thing was, the only stones were in a nearby dry river bed, so we had to spend the next two hours dragging stones up from there. And it’s a well known fact that lions like to prowl along dry river beds, looking for prey. But it was the only way of getting out of there alive.’ Honestly, Nick made it sound like he was Indiana Jones or something.

‘What about Claire, wasn’t she terrified?’ I asked, hoping that she’d been so frightened she’d had a cardiac arrest.

‘She had to stay in the jeep as she was wearing a pair of white high heeled shoes, so she couldn’t walk in the river bed easily,’ said Nick.

‘What, she was on safari in a pair of white high heels,’ I said, incredulously. ‘Has she got no sense at all?’

‘Do you mean as much sense as someone getting in a Fanny Wagon and being trawled past all the men in Italy?’ Nick shot back at me. I ignored him.

‘I still wouldn’t do anything as stupid as wear a pair of heels on safari,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Mind you, what would you expect with someone that young,’ I added, giving my best pitying look to Nick. But it was lost on him.

‘So you didn’t get mauled then?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Well now you mention it,’ he said, rolling up his sleeve to show a hideous looking wound that stretched from the top of his arm right down to his elbow.

I gaped at him. Perhaps he was Indiana Jones after all.

‘Was that really a lion?’ I breathed.

‘Yep,’ said Nick. ‘I was carrying the last stone and suddenly one jumped out of a nearby bush and ran at us. I pushed Keith into the jeep in front of me, but he got my arm. I punched him on the nose and managed to get my arm out of his mouth, but not before he ripped it clean open.’

I couldn’t speak for admiration. He had gone up about a hundred feet in my estimation. I had never had Nick down for the sweat covered tarzan type who swung from vines, but here he was telling me he had wrestled a lion and won. Suddenly a spark of something shot through me, and I looked at him through different eyes. Nick was quite attractive after all, I decided, in a split second.