Vanity (25 page)

Natalia's story was that she'd just been through a messy divorce, though she didn't give too much away, and nobody pried too much. It was as though life outside the beach didn't count for much when you were there, which suited her just fine. She had attracted quite a devoted following, though. Pretty much all of the male long-termers had a crush on her, from gauche gap-year kids to 40-somethings with long hair and guitars, to a 70-year-old French artist who liked to escape from his home in Provence every winter. Even though she was perfectly friendly and joined in with card games and other communal activities, she had a wounded, vulnerable air that made them want to look after her.

Despite her ongoing heartache, Natalia had come to love the simple way of life on the beach. Every morning, she would rise with the sun and swim out towards the horizon for an hour or so. The beach was particularly lovely at this time of day, and when she swam far out into the ocean, turning back to look at the shore, she felt at one with nature, the sheer beauty and enormity of planet Earth somehow managing to dwarf her own problems. She always swam underwater now, the days of keeping the façade intact long gone.

She would return to a breakfast of mango juice and pancakes with freshly grated coconut and honey, which she ate sitting on a beanbag under a palm tree, alternately looking out to sea and reading. Yoga and meditation on the beach generally followed. These were led by Juho, a Finn around her age who liked to escape his own country as soon as summer was out and the intolerably short days began. It was only mid-September, but Juho had said,
seriously
, that ‘the people in my country, they go mad in wintertime; they drink too much. It is impossible not to, when you have very little daylight for months. For me, beaches and meditation are better. But it is not for me to judge others.'

Juho had a beautifully shaped shaved head, high cheekbones and an impressively lean and muscular physique, and Natalia liked him. But she wasn't interested in anybody sexually, not when she was haunted by memories of her time with Ben.

The rest of the day would generally comprise a lazy stroll down the beach, some sunbathing, perhaps another swim or two, lunch (even the cheapest Thai food was delicious, she had come to realize), a siesta in the hammock on her deck, a few beers and card games with her fellow travellers in the evening.

And here she was now.

‘Gosh, you're so good at cards,' said Fliss (short for Felicity), after Natalia had won yet another poker hand with her full house. ‘You probably started playing before I was born!' She gave a dimpled smile and Natalia laughed. She wasn't going to let this bitchy little 20-year-old rile her.

‘I probably did, yes.' She realized that her arrival on Bottle Beach had put Fliss's pretty little nose well out of joint; she had been undisputed Queen Bee of the beach until Natalia had turned up, with her endless legs, sexy accent and annoying air of tragedy.

Juho, across the table, caught Natalia's eye and almost imperceptibly winked.

‘Good morning, Natalia.'

‘Good morning, Juho.'

The pair nodded politely at one another as Natalia arrived for her morning yoga and meditation. Throughout her life, Natalia had, quite understandably, developed more than her fair share of cynicism. Hippy-dippy practices were
absolutely
not her thing. And yet … There was something about doing yoga and meditating on a beach that was calming. Clichéd though it was, the sessions seemed to give her a sense of inner peace, the like of which she had not experienced since before her mother died. She still didn't believe all the mystical rubbish that Juho sometimes spouted; she reckoned that this inner peace was purely a biochemical reaction to contorting yourself into unnatural poses while sweating profusely, then sitting still and silent for twenty minutes. But if it made her feel better, who was she to knock it?

‘Is nobody else here this morning?' Natalia gestured around at the empty clearing under the palm trees. Normally, there were at least five or six takers for Juho's classes.

‘They've all gone on a fishing boat for the day.'

‘Oh …' Natalia tried not to feel hurt that she hadn't been asked on the fishing trip; she had thought she was quite popular on Bottle Beach.

Seeing the look in her eyes, Juho said, smiling, ‘Fliss suggested it after you went to bed last night …'

Natalia smiled back at him. ‘Ah. I see. I thank you.'

‘So, shall we begin?'

As they embarked on the first series of sun salutations, Natalia tried not to notice how firm and supple Juho's body was; how beautifully it moved. For these sessions, he tended to wear only a pair of white cotton three-quarter-length fisherman's trousers. He wasn't anything like as beautiful as Ben, but in his own way, he was perfectly formed. After years of servicing rich men much older than her, followed by half a decade of celibacy, Natalia's brief romance with Ben had reawakened all kinds of urges inside her. Her loyalty to Ben's memory was too great for anything more – but surely there was nothing to stop her taking pleasure in the sight of Juho?

‘Natalia?' Juho was looking at her with a hint of a smile on his face, and she had the feeling that he knew exactly what she was thinking.

‘Oh – ah, sorry … What did you say?'

‘I said, shall we do some floor work now?'

As the day wore on, Bottle Beach became more and more busy, and the air pulsated with excitement. The Full Moon Party was that night, and backpackers were arriving on Koh Phangan in droves; all the accommodation in Haad Rin was full, so people were seeking out the quieter beaches for somewhere to rest their heads. Or more probably just to dump their rucksacks – it was unlikely to be a night of much sleeping.

Natalia couldn't get into the mood for it. The quietness of life on the beach had been balm to her troubled soul, but the idea of an all-night party with thousands of young people, off their heads on various substances, dancing in the sea to thumping techno, was more than she could stomach.

‘I think I shall skip the party,' she said to the gang as they sat nursing their usual sunset beers.

‘Oh, no, Nat, you must come,' came a chorus of disappointed male voices. Juho's wasn't among them, but he smiled.

‘Oh, I think you're right,' said Fliss. ‘All that sort of stuff is probably a bit
loud
and
hectic
for you, isn't it?'

‘Yes, you are right, Fliss: I am far too old for that sort of thing.' Natalia smiled graciously back at the girl. ‘But I am sure you will all have a wonderful time.'

Later, sitting reading on her deck, she luxuriated in the uncustomary silence. Quiet though Bottle Beach was, there was generally a handful of people up and about, sharing beers and spliffs, playing cards or singing along to guitars around makeshift bonfires. Tonight, after the mass exodus (by way of a veritable fleet of longboats), the stillness was unearthly. Natalia put her book down and let her mind drift back to Saint-Tropez – a luxury she rarely allowed herself, as once she returned to the present, the sadness became almost intolerable.

That magical night at Sénéquier, the first time Ben had kissed her; speeding over the waves towards the Île du Levant, giddy with anticipation; swimming naked in the crystalline waters off the island as the sun beat down on their golden heads; the incredible sex on the
speedboat
;
night after night
of incredible sex on
her
boat
, as they whispered and giggled together in the darkness.

So caught up was she in her reverie that Natalia didn't notice the light tread approaching her hut until it was almost upon her. She stifled a scream – surely, Georgiou hadn't managed to find her here?

‘Natalia? It is I, Juho. I am sorry if I frightened you.'

‘Oh, Juho, oh, thank God.' Natalia laughed, shakily. ‘Yes, you did scare me a little. Why aren't you at the party?'

‘You know, it really isn't my thing either.' Juho looked at Natalia quizzically, and she smiled.

‘No, of course it is not.'

‘It is a beautiful night. I wondered if you wanted to take a walk down the beach with me, to watch the full moon?'

‘Yes, OK. Why not?' Natalia didn't have to think twice about it. Lying here torturing herself with thoughts of Ben was not helping matters in the slightest.

The sand was silvery and soft between her toes, and the sea glittered under the enormous moon and billions of stars. As they walked along, it felt natural to reach out and take Juho's hand. He was a good man, and there hadn't been many of those in her life. Maybe it was the stillness of the beach, where the only sound was that of the waves against the shore; more probably, it was her desperate loneliness. Juho was a good, decent man, she told herself again, trying to rid her mind of the image of Ben. Juho's bare-chested, nicely muscled body was right next to hers and, as she looked at his fine profile in the moonlight, she was suddenly desperate for something more.

She stopped walking and very slowly turned round to face him, looking straight into his kind hazel eyes.

‘Natalia.' Juho ran a finger down her cheek, looking back into her eyes. He was slightly shorter than she was. ‘You are a beautiful woman, and I find you very attractive, but I think you are suffering deeply. I want to be your friend, if you want it, but no more than that. Besides …' He paused, briefly. ‘I am celibate.'

‘Oh.' Natalia let it register for a moment, then, out of nowhere, gales of laughter started bubbling up. ‘Oh oh oh, I cannot tell you how glad I am! Oh, Juho, oh …!' The relief that she wouldn't betray Ben, even though she would never see him again, made her laugh so much that her knees suddenly buckled beneath her, and she collapsed on the sand, slightly hysterical. Juho sat down next to her, smiling benignly. Once she had finished laughing, he took a deep toke on the spliff he had been rolling.

‘You want to tell me why you are –' Natalia bit her lip to stop herself spluttering with laughter again – ‘celibate?'

‘You want some of this?' He offered her the joint and she took it. ‘It will not be forever, probably. But everything was getting too much. Back in Helsinki, I worked in
advertising
, and I was out every night, snorting cocaine, drinking too much vodka, fucking as many beautiful women as I could. Oh, let me tell you, Natalia, I would have been like totally into you in those days.'

Natalia smiled at him. ‘I thank you for that.'

‘So one day I told myself: enough. This is no good for your karma, man.' Natalia tried not to smile at this. ‘So here I am. And I feel more at peace now than I have ever been before. Does that make sense to you?'

Natalia took another drag on the spliff and looked out at the ocean, over which the enormous moon was casting an almost ethereal light.

‘Yes. Yes, it does.'

And in that moment, a lifelong friendship was born.

Sam stumbled through the wet streets of Soho on her high heels, trying not to cry, but not caring about the rain ruining her hair and make-up. It didn't matter how she looked now anyway – she'd done what she had to do. She'd been so desperate to get out of the basement studio, that she had just slung her neatly folded sweatpants and hoody on over the stockings and suspenders she'd been wearing for the shoot, without bothering to change into her comfortable cotton knickers and underwired bra. In fact, she'd been so flustered that she hadn't even bothered to fish her trainers out of her holdall, just shoving her feet back into the patent black stilettos that looked so sexy in the photos.

Now she stopped underneath a dripping café awning to change her footwear. There was not caring how you looked, and there was wearing stilettos with sweatpants and a hoody. Besides, the five-minute walk to Piccadilly Circus Tube would take more like fifteen minutes in these shoes and she wanted to get out of the rain and back to halls – her heart sank slightly at the lonely thought – as quickly as possible.

Everything looked seedier in the rain, the multicoloured neon lights proclaiming
XXXX, WE SELL POPPERS, VIAGRA, GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
all
bouncing in clashing angles off the shiny pavement. She was so sick of all this.

It was bad enough that the other girls on the shoot had been sniggering about Mark and Karolina Kristova. Some of them could be such downright bitches. But the rancid icing on the fetid cake had been the slimy photographer, who thought he had the right to run his hands up and down her body as he told her exactly how he wanted her to pose. Surely there were laws against such things?

As she walked down Berwick Street in the direction of Piccadilly Circus, she found herself bouncing slightly in her trainers. A couple of market traders leered openly at her braless breasts through her hoody, which was getting wetter by the minute.

‘Nice tits, love.'

‘Oh, just sod off.' Sam, who had been brought up to say please and thank you, was normally polite in the face of catcalls and wolf-whistles, but today she really had had enough. She suddenly wondered what Sienna was doing, and without a second thought reached into her holdall for her phone.

‘Hey! Babes!' cried Sienna, in her trying-not-to-be-posh voice. ‘How's it going?'

‘I've had a crap day,' said Sam bluntly. ‘All the girls were being bitches about Mark and Karolina, the photographer was groping me, and … and … now it's raining, I haven't got an umbrella, and I'm
soaked …
' She found herself crying by the end of her sentence, and hated herself for being so pathetic.

‘Oh, sweetheart, how utterly disgusting,' said Sienna, sounding more like herself now. She didn't bother to dumb down her accent when she was being sincere about something. ‘What are you up to now then? Are you free for the rest of the evening?'