by Mandy Baggot
‘Something boring, you mean.’
‘Yeah, something boring that won’t make Sergei think you’re giving him the come-on.’
‘It’s a team name, not an invitation to our room.’
‘Then why does it have to sound like we’re offering escort services?’
Lacey dropped the pen on the table and swiped up her drink. ‘Fine, you think of something then.’
Ellen picked up the pen and wrote something down at the top.
‘“The Dynamic Duo”? It’s lame and dull and everyone will think we’re Batman and freaking Robin,’ Lacey protested.
‘Half the people here are German or Polish. It won’t matter.’
‘It matters to me.’
‘Because it doesn’t immediately sound like we’re going to get our tits out?’
Ellen knew she’d raised her voice just a little too much and was now drawing attention from Uri and his table of relatives, as well as the stag party who had arrived that day.
An appointment had arrived in her iPhone diary while she’d been getting ready. Keegan Manufacturing. The date and time were fixed and she was terrified. Her wonderful day with Yan in Sidari, her crazy jump from the rocks surrounding the Canal d’Amour seemed like a beautiful dream that had never really happened. Real life had flooded back and was threatening to take over.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lacey asked.
‘Nothing.’ She didn’t want Lacey asking questions. Her sister had enough to think about and confiding her own problems wasn’t going to help. She’d done this. She’d known the risks. It was all on her.
‘Have you called the office today? Are you going over someone’s audit in your head?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I know when you’re lying, Ells.’
Did she? She hadn’t picked up on anything over the past few months. She offered her sister a small smile. ‘Too much sun and not quite enough wine ... yet.’
And that was her grand plan. Pretend it wasn’t happening and drown the knowledge out with alcohol. Perhaps she had more in common with the half-blood princess than she’d ever realised.
‘I’ll get us some more drinks! With your knowledge of the Eighties we’re going to ace this quiz no matter what we’re called.’ Lacey paused to think. ‘How about “Bikinied Out”?’
‘No!’
* * *
‘Question fifteen,’ Tanja started. ‘What band have a hit with “It Must Have Been Love” from the film with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, Pretty Woman?’
‘Ooo I know this! I know this!’ Lacey shrieked, leaping off her chair and waving her arms.
‘Sshh! Uri’s been trying to listen to our answers since the start. His chair’s been creeping closer and closer.’ Ellen put an arm across their quiz paper, shooting the Russian a warning glance.
‘I know this one. I really know this one!’
As she waited for Lacey to come up with the answer her eyes caught sight of Yan returning. He looked calmer, no longer rushing. She watched him meander through the crowds, stopping to speak to people, assisting them with their papers.
‘Ellen, pay attention!’ Lacey barked.
‘I don’t need to pay attention because you said you were going to give me the answer.’
‘Oh, what was their name? She had white hair and he was a bit geeky. A bit like Annie Lennox and the one who played the guitar. Dad liked them. Can’t remember his name. It’ll come to me ... give me a second ...’
‘Roxette.’ The whisper came from Sergei as he ducked his head into their huddle.
‘Oh bloody hell, you’ve spoiled it now!’ Lacey exclaimed crossly.
‘What?’ Sergei looked affronted. ‘I help you.’
‘Thank you but we don’t want to cheat,’ Ellen answered.
‘And I knew the answer, it just wasn’t coming to the tip of my tongue right away.’
Tanja called through the microphone again. ‘Question sixteen ...’
‘You come to Bo’s Bar tonight?’ Sergei asked.
Ellen watched as Sergei rested a tanned hand on Lacey’s bare arm. This was getting really dangerous now. Touching, where her sister was concerned, was the start of turning harmless holiday flirtation into something more. Lacey raised her eyes to meet Ellen’s. She wasn’t quite sure what Lacey was subconsciously telling her to do. Do something? Say something? Neither?
‘I ...’ Lacey started to reply.
‘If you like me to repeat question ...’ Tanja called.
‘What? We missed the question?’ Ellen scraped her chair back, standing up. ‘Please! Please repeat the question!’
‘Or perhaps we could go somewhere else,’ Sergei continued.
His long, lean fingers were stroking Lacey’s arm now and her sister was doing nothing to stop him. Ellen banged her fist on the table.
‘Sshh! We need to listen to the question! Lacey, pay attention.’ She gave her sister a look that had her retracting her arm from the table.
‘“Gangnam Style” was big hit all around the world. But what was name of artist who sing it?’
Lacey sighed. ‘PSY.’
‘I see you later,’ Sergei said, taking a step back away from the table.
‘How do you spell it?’ Ellen asked.
‘I.T.’
‘Very funny.’ She watched her sister eyeballing Sergei as he left. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind now, her sister was extremely close to forgetting all about her engagement.
‘I would like to go to Bo’s Bar again,’ Lacey said wistfully. ‘You’ve got to admit the limbo was fun.’
‘But you don’t want to go for the limbo,’ Ellen said. She looked up at her sister, trying to read her expression.
‘But if you were there ...’
‘Lacey, I’m not a chaperone!’ She needed to spell it out. ‘If you need me there so you can resist the charms of Sergei then there’s definitely something wrong with your relationship with Mark.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Lacey sounded shocked.
‘I’m actually sick of saying it! You’re not wearing your engagement ring and I saw the look on your face when we were at that water platform today. It wasn’t the expression of someone excited about marrying the person they want to spend the rest of their life with.’ Ellen looked directly at her. ‘It was fear.’
She watched Lacey shrink down into her seat, wrapping her hands around her cocktail glass and twisting the straw with tense fingers.
She opened her mouth to speak again. ‘Lace …’
‘OK, question seventeen ...’ Tanja moving on with the quiz put an end to the conversation.
17
Uri was standing on the stage, proudly holding his canary yellow cocktail above his head like it was the World Cup. His team had pipped the stag party to quiz glory and the Russian was milking it.
‘How the hell does a Russian know the complete back catalogue of Cliff Richard?!’ Lacey huffed, downing her third shot of the night.
‘Google. Didn’t you see him tapping away on his phone?’ Ellen asked.
‘Well if he’s linked up with the Albania network that little win’s going to cost him a fortune.’ Lacey stood up. ‘D’you want another drink?’
‘No, I’m OK.’ Ellen was watching Yan. He was holding hands with a girl of about six or seven, swinging her around on the dance floor to a Boney M number. The girl was giggling, her pig tails flying out behind her and he was laughing, grinning at her and pulling funny faces. His enthusiasm was evident. What was also evident was the snug fit of his jeans over his buttocks and down his taut thighs. She swallowed.
‘Listen, maybe we should get a bottle of wine and take it back to the room,’ Lacey suggested.
The children adored him. Ellen carried on watching as a small boy ran up to give him a high-five and join in with the dancing. Good-looking, fit, kind, funny in an annoying type of way.
‘Are you listening to me?’ Lacey’s voice, only one decibel below the sound of a Boeing Rolls-Royce
engine, drew Ellen’s eyes away from him.
‘Sorry. What did you say?’
‘I said maybe we should get a bottle of wine and go back to the room,’ Lacey repeated.
Ellen watched her sister blink moist eyes before dropping them down, her expression landing in her lap.
‘Is that what you want to do? Or is that what you think you should do because I badgered you about Mark?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, Lace, I think it does.’
Lacey let out a sigh and slumped back in her chair. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do, then!’
It was like a response from an angst-ridden teenager. Ellen looked at her sister. Lacey’s lips were pouting, her arms folded across her chest, pushing up her breasts in the bright pink vest dress she was wearing. Looking at her now she didn’t seem mature enough to drink alcohol responsibly, let alone commit to a lifetime relationship.
‘I think you should go to the beach with Sergei,’ she stated. ‘If that’s what you want.’
Lacey sat forward on her chair, her eyes widening, a mixed expression of shock and excitement coating her features. That said everything she needed to know.
‘What?’
‘Only you know what’s right and maybe it isn’t Mark.’ Ellen stopped. She could hardly believe what she was saying? Why was she saying it? Because she was fed up of keeping close tabs on Lacey like a private investigator? Because she couldn’t be bothered fending off Sergei’s amorous suggestions to her sister anymore? Because Ross Keegan who hadn’t broken her heart but had ripped her life apart was going to do it all over again when she got home?
Ellen spoke quickly, before she had time to do any more thinking. ‘Maybe it isn’t Sergei either but ... you do what you want to do, Lacey.’ She smiled. ‘And if you work anything out along the way then all the better.’
The sound of chairs being scraped back from their tables and people departing quickly from their places took her attention away from Lacey. Residents were off like bees, buzzing to different spots on the complex, looking around sun loungers, in undergrowth, behind the ice cream stand. It was the biggest flurry of activity she’d seen since the queue for toasted sandwiches that afternoon.
‘Is there some sort of weird treasure hunt we’re missing out on?’ Lacey remarked, looking up.
A thirty-something woman was diving in and out of tables, wringing her hands, a look of horror all over her face. Ellen’s stomach knotted, then her heart dropped. She recognised the woman from the restaurant. She had two sons. One was about eight and was with her, hanging on to her cardigan. The other was smaller, perhaps four or five. He wasn’t there.
‘What’s going on?’ Lacey repeated.
‘Have you seen my son? He’s four. He was dancing by the stage, just a few minutes ago and now I can’t find him anywhere.’ The woman’s voice was addressing Uri’s table of friends. ‘His name’s Zachary. He’s got blonde hair and ...’
‘A kid’s missing?’ Lacey exclaimed.
Tanja’s voice came over the microphone. ‘Attention, everybody. We are looking for small boy. His name is Zachary and he is four year old. He is wearing green t-shirt and brown shorts. He have the blonde hair and blue eyes and …’
‘I don’t like this,’ Lacey said, pushing her glass away from her.
‘The pool,’ Ellen said, jumping up from her seat.
Lacey shivered. ‘Oh don’t say that.’
Ellen began to move, pushing through tables and heading towards the lagoon pool.
‘Ellen!’ Lacey called. ‘Wait!’
‘Help look for him, Lacey and then go to Bo’s Bar! I’ll meet you!’
* * *
Yan had had the lights brought up and he’d scoured every inch of the pool with a powerful torch he’d grabbed from the dressing rooms. The boy was not in the water.
‘He’s in the water,’ Ellen stated, running breathless toward him. ‘You hear about it all the time. It’s what happened to that boy I saved from the river.’
‘He is not,’ Yan replied, waving the torch over the pool again.
‘He must be. There’s nowhere else he could be. They’re turning over the place back there.’ Ellen hitched a thumb back toward the entertainment area.
She didn’t seem able to catch her breath. She was panicked, nervously standing on her toes, stepping from one foot to the other.
‘He is not here. I promise to you,’ Yan insisted.
‘Then he must have been ... taken. Do you think he’s been taken?’
He heard the words catch on her lips and knew what she was thinking.
‘No.’ Yan shook his head. ‘That is not possible here.’ It was a small village outside of the complex, a close community, from what he had learnt from the locals who worked at the hotel. But the gate to the beach was never locked. It was a possibility someone could come in.
‘Is there anywhere else down here? How about the kids’ club?’
‘Is all locked.’
‘The play park.’
‘The mother say she has been there to check.’
Ellen’s eyes grew larger. He heard her breath stop. ‘He could make it up towards the restaurant in five minutes or so.’
All at once he understood. ‘The adult pool.’
Before he could stop her, she was sprinting across the complex.
18
‘Help!’
The words were barely making it out of her mouth. Her lungs were burning with every stride as she ran, full pelt, up the stepped incline towards the adult pool. ‘Please! Check the pool!’
She knew every single second counted. If she could get someone over there before she made it, he might be in with a chance. If he was actually in the water. But, as she rushed through the half-light, desperate, snatching at every mouthful of humid air, there was no one around. People inside the lobby bar couldn’t hear her and everyone else was down by the lagoon pool, searching.
She ran up the short flight of steps, her legs wobbling with nerves and anticipation. The moment the pool came into view she saw him. A tiny form, out in the centre of the water, face down, motionless. Before the sick feeling had even a second to start overwhelming her, she shook off her sandals and dived into the water.
Despite the stickiness of the night air, the pool was unheated and the cold bit at her skin. This was nothing like the tepid water at the bottom of the rocks in Sidari. She drove on through the water until she could grab him. Treading water, gasping for breath she turned him over, looking at his pale, lifeless face for anything, any slight indication of recovery. There was nothing. No movement, just stillness, limpness, white skin, closed eyes, light and laughter gone.
‘Ellen! Bring boy here!’
* * *
Yan was not going to give up. He had spent a week with Zachary already. He painted everything green at the kids’ club. Green sun, green car, green flowers, even the picture he had done of his mother and brother was green. Like a family of aliens.
‘Ellen! Bring him to me!’ he yelled to her.
She was shivering, holding the boy and looking at his face as if there was no hope. There had to be hope. If there was one thing he wanted to believe in it was hope. And this boy had his whole life in front of him.
Ellen swam, one arm leading her through the water, the other wrapped around the boy’s neck, keeping his chin up and his head above the surface. As soon as Yan could reach, he plucked the child from the water and lay him down on the tiled floor.
‘He’s gone, isn’t he?’
‘Sshh! You must call for the doctor,’ Yan ordered, opening Zachary’s airway with a tilt of his head. ‘Then go and get mother.’
He knew she hadn’t gone anywhere but he had to concentrate. Everything he’d learned about resuscitation on day five of the animation course he had to remember accurately now. Zachary needed him to get this right. There was no second chance when you weren’t working on a plastic dummy.
‘Ellen, get help!’ he ordered roughly.
He heard her leave then, the soles of her bare feet scudding across the tiles toward the lobby bar. Although he knew in his heart there would be none, he listened and looked for signs of breathing. Finding nothing, he pinched Zachary’s nose and pressed his mouth to his.
* * *
The barmen and the restaurant manager had followed her back down the path towards the pool, along with a gaggle of guests. The receptionist was phoning down to the entertainment arena to alert Zachary’s mother. Ellen had never felt so sick. All her problems from home, Lacey’s indecision about her marriage, everything, it all paled into absolute insignificance when put alongside what was happening right now by the water’s edge.
Ellen was biting her nails, willing something to happen. She’d take just about anything right now. Yan was pressing down on the little boy’s chest, battling to bring him back. There was nothing anyone else could do but watch, look on at the struggle, feeling utterly useless and insignificant.
Then, suddenly, a small cough broke the tension. Had she heard the noise or was she just hearing what she was hoping to? Another cough followed and then the sound of vomiting. She couldn’t help herself, she rushed forward, broke from the congregated group and went to Yan. She dropped to her knees, a euphoric feeling welling up.
‘He’s alive!’ she exclaimed, looking down at the boy.
Yan had turned him into the recovery position and now Zachary was emptying his lungs and stomach contents all over the flagstones. Yan was stroking the boy’s hair, whispering words of reassurance to him. She saw that his hands were shaking, his forehead beaded with sweat, his jeans wet from the water on the floor.
‘You saved his life,’ she stated.
He shook his head. ‘No. You did.’
He raised his eyes to match hers. Those clear, fluid, ice-like eyes delivered a loaded look that resonated deep inside her. Shivering, she put a wet hand over his, needing to make a connection.
‘Oh my God! Zachary! My baby!’
Yan removed his hand from hers, hauling himself up to his feet. ‘He is OK. The doctor will be here soon.’