A Girl Called Summer

by Lucy Lord

  ‘Say it again, darling. Say it for Daddy. Yes!’

  ‘Yes,’ repeated Daisy, and all three adults laughed in indulgent delight.

  ‘Not sure how well this bodes for the future,’ said Bella as an afterthought. ‘Hope we haven’t spawned a girl who can’t say no.’

  ‘I think it’s terribly sweet and positive,’ said India, reaching out to stroke Daisy’s silky head. As she did so, the voluminous sleeve of her kaftan fell back, revealing her inner upper arm, which, from elbow to armpit, appeared to be one enormous multi-coloured bruise – or, more likely, several bruises, meted out over several weeks, melding into one. She quickly pulled the sleeve back down, but it was too late: from the horrified looks on their faces, both Bella and Andy had seen the evidence.

  ‘How did you get those bruises?’ asked Andy quietly. ‘They look very painful.’

  ‘Oh, I fell over. Too much to drink the other night.’ India tried to laugh it off.

  ‘I can’t see how you could bruise that bit of your arm by falling over,’ said Andy. ‘Even Bella’s not that clumsy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Bella. Then she turned back to India. ‘He did it, didn’t he?’

  India stared at them both for a couple of seconds, before realizing it was useless denying it. ‘Oh, all right, yes he did, but it’s nothing, honestly. Sometimes he doesn’t realize his own strength. Please don’t say anything, Bella. Andy? Please? My life won’t be worth living . . .’

  She stared at them both with huge, scared blue eyes.

  ‘He should be arrested,’ said Andy, furious. He had made a career of exposing men who were violent towards women, and few things made him angrier.

  ‘Andy, if India doesn’t want us to say anything, then I don’t think we should,’ said Bella. ‘But you don’t have to put up with being treated as a punchbag.’

  India’s entire body seemed to sag. ‘It’s not that simple,’ she said wearily. ‘Jamie’s stupidly rich, with half the corrupt politicians on this island in his pocket. I can’t leave him. He’d never let me have custody of Milo, even though I don’t think he likes his son very much.’

  ‘I think that any judge, seeing those bruises, would know exactly who should get custody,’ said Andy.

  ‘You don’t know Jamie,’ said India. ‘He’s very clever. And I’m OK, honestly – as long as I’ve got my boy. Jamie doesn’t hurt me all the time, either. He’s not that bad really. Please . . . promise you won’t say anything?’

  ‘We won’t say anything,’ said Bella, thinking of the unimaginable horror of having Daisy taken away from her. ‘But we’re always here if you need us.’ She reached out to clasp India’s thin hand. ‘Remember that.’

  *

  Jamie locked the upstairs bathroom door behind him and walked over to the loo, where he emptied half a wrap of coke on top of the cistern. This party wasn’t working out nearly as well as he’d hoped. No Tamara Gold, and he had the distinct feeling he’d been snubbed, by both Jack Meadows and Ben Jones, to say nothing of that snooty Eastern European tart, Natalia. Who did she think she was, the miserable old bat? He chopped out a hefty line and took a straw out of his wallet. Ah, that was better. He checked his reflection in the mirror and smiled with satisfaction. He was a good-looking bastard, he had to give himself that.

  Jamie and India had been happy, once. They had met through the Notting Hill trustafarian boho scene, on which they’d both been major players – India by virtue of her slender, high-cheekboned beauty; fey, hippyish style, and – oh yes – small trust fund set up by her aristocratic country family. Tall, handsome Jamie, who had attended a minor public school, tried to pass himself off as the same class, but was, in fact, mainly self-made. His dodgy investments had gone from strength to strength, funding the lavish, cocaine-fuelled lifestyle that he and India both enjoyed. Once, they had been partners in crime, snorting lines in the backs of cabs, giggling en route from one glamorous party to the next.

  Things had begun to go wrong after Milo was born. As soon as pregnancy had started to change India’s body, Jamie had lost all sexual interest in her, but India had reassured herself that things would get back to normal after the birth. They hadn’t. It seemed that motherhood had rendered her physically repulsive to him, even though she’d worked her damnedest with yoga, running and starvation to get her body back to the way it once had been.

  India, beautiful all her life and never short of admirers, was angry and hurt at what she saw as Jamie’s cruel rejection. The fact that certain of her friends (bitchy, dim Saffron in particular) liked to boast, with horrible smugness, about how much their husbands had loved their bodies during pregnancy, helped not one jot. Her paranoia about younger women was off the scale, and she’d have had no compunction at taking a lover herself were she not so permanently depressed and exhausted.

  Then there had been the business with the dodgy investments, which had meant they’d had to leave the UK, fast. Ibiza, where they’d spent most summers for years, seemed the obvious choice for relocation, but Ibiza’s draw for the Cavendishes was also their Achilles’ heel: the ubiquity of class-A drugs, and cocaine in particular. Not for nothing was Ibiza known as the White Isle.

  It was perfectly possible to lead a wholesome, drug-free existence here, but the club scene was a huge factor in Ibiza’s allure, and in certain circles the use of narcotics was even more prevalent than it had been back in West London, where for the most part, snorting coke was limited to weekends. Not so Ibiza in the summer, when hundreds of thousands of pleasure-seekers descended on the island and party followed party on a daily and nightly basis. It would have taken a far stronger couple than Jamie and India to resist the lure (and it was lucky for little Milo that they’d hired a very good nanny).

  As the couple’s joint dependency on the drug increased, so their relationship plummeted. What had once brought them together now pushed them apart, until they could hardly bear to be in the same room. Jamie wasn’t proud of his occasional violent outbursts, but God did India ask for it sometimes.

  Jamie’s phone beeped. It was Tiffany, his twenty-one-year-old bit on the side. Tiff, who was originally from Croydon, worked as a podium dancer at Manumission and lived in a crummy studio flat on Playa d’en Bossa; she always appreciated the expensive gifts that Jamie liked to bestow on her. She was a common little tart, of course, with her dyed red hair, heavy make-up and thick false eyelashes, but she certainly knew how to turn him on with her gorgeous young body and uninhibited attitude to sex. Tiff knew Jamie was married and didn’t give a fuck about India, as long as the presents and expensive dinners kept coming. She relished the power she had over the posh, skinny old bitch to whom Jamie had once introduced her, when they’d bumped into one another at Pacha. Jamie had clearly relished the encounter, telling India that Tiff was his new PA.

  ‘I might have guessed,’ had been India’s tart response. ‘Taste has never been your strong point.’

  Jamie read the message.

  U cumin round l8r? i want you Tx

  He immediately stiffened, and grabbed himself for a quick wank, picturing Tiffany on all fours, her arse high in the air as he took her from behind. But the coke he’d just snorted made it impossible to come, and he banged the wall in frustration, chipping one of Bella’s beautiful new cream tiles as a result.

  ‘Hey! What’s going on in there?’ called out a high, girlish voice. ‘Some of us are getting desperate out here!’

  ‘Coming!’ Jamie shouted, shoving his aching cock into his trunks and trying to will his hard-on to go away. He ran his forefinger over the final crumbs of coke and rubbed them on his gums, before unlocking the bathroom door.

  ‘Crumbs all around your nose,’ said Poppy, leaning against the wall in her yellow bikini. ‘Dead giveaway.’

  ‘Want some, sexy?’

  ‘Actually, no. But thanks for the offer.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Jamie sneered. ‘What’s with the goody-two-shoes act? You can’t tell me you’ve never done it?’

 
; ‘No, I can’t, so I won’t. But there’s a time and a place, and I don’t think a complete stranger’s house, right opposite a baby’s nursery, is the place. If you’d asked Andy or Bella’s permission, it would be different, but I very much doubt that you did.’

  The way the little bitch was talking to him so sternly turned him on as much as her slender half-naked body. Still buzzing from the enormous line he’d just snorted, Jamie pushed Poppy against the whitewashed wall and ground his mouth against hers, trying to force it open with his tongue.

  ‘You like that, don’t you, you tart?’ he breathed into her face.

  ‘You are such a pathetic loser,’ said Poppy, breaking free and slapping him hard across his face. ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t want to make a scene at Bella’s party, I would be downstairs now, telling everybody, including your wife, what you’ve just done. Actually, if you don’t leave this minute, that’s exactly what I will do.’

  Jamie, thinking of Tiffany waiting for him in Playa d’en Bossa, and reckoning that this crappy party wasn’t nearly what it had been cracked up to be, shrugged.

  ‘I was going anyway,’ he said. ‘Don’t even know why I bothered coming to this shithole in the first place.’

  *

  ‘Bye, guys,’ said Summer. ‘Thanks so much for a fantastic party, Bella. It’s been such fun. And thanks, Andy – you two are the hosts with the mosts!’

  ‘Thanks, Summer,’ said Bella, giving her a hug. ‘But without your help with the paella, it wouldn’t have been nearly so great.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon, you’d have been able to cook that on your own . . .’

  ‘Yes, I think I would,’ said Bella. ‘Though it wouldn’t have been so yummy, and I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun, stuck on my own in the kitchen all day. So thanks, lovely. We owe you.’

  ‘It was a pleasure,’ smiled Summer as she made her way out. ‘Kiss Daisy goodnight for me, please.’

  The minute the heavy old front door was closed, Bella and Andy looked at one another and laughed.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Bella. ‘I reckon I’ve got a girl crush. What do you think about me channelling my inner lesbian?’

  ‘Threesome?’

  ‘Yeah, like that gorgeous twenty-five-year-old would want to do stuff with us,’ said Bella. ‘Besides, I love you too much to want to share you with anyone, however gorgeous and lovely she is.’

  ‘Yup – me too,’ said Andy, giving Bella an enormous hug and kissing the top of her head. ‘However gorgeous and lovely she is.’

  *

  Outside, Summer was waiting for her taxi, inhaling the olive- and pine-scented air that she’d breathed most of her life, but which still never failed to make her happy, when Jack Meadows walked stealthily out of the back garden gate, looking over his shoulder in a nervous, furtive manner.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  They walked towards each other in the semi-darkness, hearts beating fast.

  ‘You told me you wanted to show me the real Ibiza, your Ibiza, but you didn’t tell me how,’ said Jack.

  ‘This is how,’ said Summer. ‘I needed to know you meant what you said. Did you really think I’d give my number to some movie star who’s about to get married?’

  ‘I meant what I said.’ Jack did what he had been longing to do all day, which was to stroke her peach-like skin. It was even softer than it looked, and as he touched her, Summer closed her eyes, relishing the sensation of his fingers on her face.

  ‘Mmmm.’ The way she said it was almost like purring.

  She opened her eyes again, and Jack looked into them.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘You know there’s loads of stuff I have to sort out . . .’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Summer.

  Jack took her in his arms and kissed her like she’d never been kissed before. She kissed him back, feeling like a teenager, when kissing had meant something and could go on for hours, the end rather than the means.

  All too soon, they heard the taxi rolling up the dirt track.

  ‘I must go,’ said Summer, giving Jack another kiss. She handed him a club flyer, on the back of which she’d drawn a makeshift map with a large cross on it. ‘I guess you don’t want to be seen anywhere too public, so meet me there at midday tomorrow. It’s the road down to my parents’ place. Should be pretty private.’

  ‘Your parents’ place?’

  Summer laughed. ‘I said the road to my parents’ place. We’re not going to hang out with Mom and Dad – what kind of pervy Swede do you take me for? As I told you, tomorrow I’m going to show you Ibiza.’

  She gave him one last kiss on the lips. Then she got in the cab and was gone.

  Chapter 13

  Jack sat in the back of the hire car, looking out of its tinted windows at the sunny sylvan landscape unfolding around him. The hire-car company was the one used by all celebrities visiting Ibiza, and its drivers could be counted on for their discretion. Jack was wearing non-descript long shorts and a baggy grey T-shirt, a baseball cap pulled down low over his face and dark glasses. Short of putting on a burka, it was as good as it was going to get, incognito-wise.

  He was enormously excited about seeing Summer again. The previous night he had lain awake for hours thinking about her lovely sunny smile, sweet-natured dark-blue eyes and slightly sing-song voice. When he had finally fallen into a fitful sleep, it was full of disturbingly erotic dreams about her. He knew he was treating Tamara horribly, but he had already decided that as soon as they got back to LA, he was going to call the engagement off. Even if this whole Summer thing came to nothing (and he couldn’t, in all honesty, see how it could come to anything, with her living here and him living in LA), the fact that he was experiencing such strong feelings proved that he didn’t love Tamara. He didn’t think that she loved him either, really, though she had definitely needed him in the past. But now she had the Dust Bowl role, her career would be going from strength to strength and she’d be a fully credible leading lady in her own right.

  Thus Jack justified his actions to himself as he sped through Ibiza’s olive-tree-lined roads to adventure and almost certain infidelity.

  The car slowed down as they approached a turn-off that led down in the direction of the sea. A large white wooden arrow with the words ‘Art Resort’ painted in rainbow-coloured faux-naïf lettering pointed down yet another rubbly white track, flanked with highly scented and very tall pine trees either side.

  After driving for a couple of minutes down the track, the hire car drew to a halt.

  ‘This is where it say, on the map,’ said the driver, leaning around to show Jack the flyer that Summer had given him the night before. Jack looked out of the window. They were still on the simple dirt track, with nothing to be seen but pine forest for miles around. Oh well, he guessed Summer knew what she was talking about.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ he said to the driver. ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘One hundred euros.’

  It seemed you paid for discretion on this island, but Jack didn’t have to worry about money, so he fished the notes out of his pocket and handed the driver an excessively generous tip, for good measure.

  ‘How are you going to get back?’ he asked. The track wasn’t nearly wide enough to turn around. The driver shrugged.

  ‘I carry on to the bottom, and turn around there. Is nothing.’ If he thought it odd that Jack was getting out here, he certainly wasn’t going to show it. It was not his job to ask questions.

  Jack got out of the car and the heat hit him afresh. He was used to year-round sunshine in LA, but here it was different. The fact that they were sitting on a rock in the middle of the sea, not far from Africa, might explain why everything felt more intense in Ibiza. He watched the car continue down the track, blowing up a cloud of dust in its wake, and wondered what was going to happen next.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘Hey,’ said Summer, emerging from her hiding place behind a large pine tree. Jack
caught his breath. She was looking even more stunning than she had yesterday, if that were possible, sporty and casual in white denim cut-offs that showed off her beautiful brown legs, grey Converse and a simple grey marl strappy vest top. She’d tied her blonde hair up in a high ponytail to keep her neck cool in the heat of the day, and the style emphasized her lovely bone structure.

  ‘Hey.’ Jack walked towards her, suddenly unsure of what to do. He wanted nothing more than to kiss the life out of her, but guessed he should let her dictate the pace. ‘We gotta stop meeting like this,’ he joked, and Summer laughed, the tension between them broken.

  ‘So – I guess you’re wondering what we’re going to do next,’ she said.

  ‘Darling, I am dying of curiosity,’ said Jack in a camp voice and Summer laughed again.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, holding out her hand. Jack took it, trying to ignore the electric jolt he felt at the touch of her fingers, and followed her into the woods. Hidden behind another pine were two bicycles, a man’s and a woman’s, and a little way beyond them was another stony white track, leading off to the right.

  ‘I told you we were going to explore Ibiza my way,’ said Summer. ‘I hope you like cycling.’

  ‘Are you kidding? I LOVE cycling!’ Jack’s smile was wide. ‘I try to get out on my bike at least once a day in LA.’ It was true. Like Summer, he was naturally athletic and the Los Angeles climate made it easy to stay fit in an enjoyably outdoorsy way.

  ‘That’s great! Shall we go?’

  ‘Try stopping me.’

  They mounted their bikes and set off along the dirt track, side by side.

  ‘So where are we going?’ said Jack, already enjoying the exercise and the feeling of the wind in his hair. ‘It doesn’t look as if this track leads down to the sea.’

  ‘Not yet, it doesn’t, though we’ll see some beaches eventually, never fear.’

  Jack laughed. ‘I trust your judgement entirely.’

  ‘This track is almost totally unused, and by coming this way we can bypass all the main roads until we hit the northern beaches,’ Summer explained. ‘The coastline is really beautiful and rugged up there, and I even know a couple of coves that, on a good day, are . . . deserted.’