‘Ten, nine.’
‘You can do this,’ Jimmy said in my ear, then he grinned and moved into position.
‘Five, four, three, two,’ they hollered.
Jimmy glanced back at me, gave me a wink then on ‘one’ took a three-step run and jumped. The last thing I saw was the muscles round his tanned shoulders rippling as he disappeared beyond the edge of the boulder. It seemed an age before I heard his splash and then he came into sight, his powerful arms pulling him through the indigo water. He reached the shallows and looked up with a grin.
‘Go Jess!’ he yelled. ‘You can do it!’
I stood, frozen on the smooth boulder, inches from where it curved downwards towards the water. ‘I can’t! Oh my god, I can’t do it!’
‘Yes, you can!’ he hollered.
People behind me started counting down from ten.
‘Which part do I jump off?’ I shouted back.
‘Nine, eight!’
‘Like which exact bit of rock? What if I jump too soon?’
‘You won’t! Just do it!’ Jimmy’s voice echoed off the sheer rock walls.
‘Six, five!’
‘What if I jump too late?’
‘Four, three!’
‘Somebody ought to make some kind of “jump here” marker!’ I screamed. ‘If I survive and I ever do this again I’m going to do some Pythagoras and get back up here and make a jump mark so no one ever jumps too late and skids down the rock face on their back!’
‘Hurry up!’ Jimmy said, through laughter.
‘Two, one, GO!’
‘Jump, Jess!’ Jimmy called. ‘Just jump!’
I felt immense pressure, my heart was going mental. I was sweaty and dusty and boiling and terrified. The crowd behind me started chanting.
‘Jump Jess, jump! Jump Jess, jump!’
‘There’s a coral snake!’ Jimmy’s friend suddenly yelled.
‘WHAT?!?’ I ran at the edge of the rock, grabbed the seat of my bikini bottoms so as not get carved in two, and leapt. Time slowed, and I felt like I was falling and falling and falling and never going to reach the pool, when suddenly I plunged through the surface and sank into water so cold my breath got knocked out of me. Everything went dark. I plunged deeper and deeper.
‘Oh well, I did kind of like my life,’ I thought, as I sank lower and was enveloped by cool darkness. ‘I never got to sleep with Bradley Cooper, but I did get to see Matilda six times and I really liked that day at school when I was nine and I wore that polka dot ruffle skirt and David Sanders told me I looked pretty. Now where’s this light at the end of the tunnel everyone talks about? Actually, where’s the tunnel? Death needs to come with a map. Oh, hang on; I’m going back up. Oh OK. No light this time. I still have a chance with Bradley!!’ And I broke through the surface and saw Jimmy’s grinning face, his eyes sparkling with pride and his arm outstretched. I grabbed his hand and allowed him to pull me into the shallows, checking quickly that my bikini was still present and doing its job.
‘I did it!’ I was so overjoyed at having survived I leapt at him and threw my arms around his neck. ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I did it! Did you see me?!’ I looked in his face, and became aware that my breasts, with only a thin layer of wet lycra, were pressed up against his warm chest.
‘Yes, I saw you,’ he said, looking into my eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Back at the river site people were deflating their whales and unicorns, folding towels and gathering empty beer cans and plastic cups. Some were moving in the direction of the tents and caravans, some were taking stuff back to their cars and some were heading to the main field where a band was already playing. The euphoria from the jump had me chatting ceaselessly on the walk back from the pool, which had been a nice, steady, manageable gradient as Jimmy and I had fallen back from his group of friends. Once we’d packed the van ready for a quick getaway at the end of the night, and changed into evening attire (Jimmy doing it amid a cascade of glitter and bad words about his brother), we walked over to the main area, where it was set up more like a traditional English festival in a field. The only difference was it was warm and dry, and you didn’t have to wear wellingtons and a see-through rain poncho that you’d picked up at a pound store. And Alexa Chung wasn’t going to walk past and make you feel unworthy, fashion-wise.
Caravans serving food and drinks dotted the perimeter of the field and once we had a couple of beers each, we found a spot towards the back of the field and faced the stage. I didn’t know any of the bands but I enjoyed the music and loved being under the stars with a huge bunch of friendly, welcoming people. Jimmy’s group swelled as the night grew. Everyone knew someone who knew someone, and people came and went throughout the night. A handful of beautiful girls flirted with Jimmy. He had all the time in the world for them. But it became apparent that he had more for me. He kept checking if I was all right, if I had a drink, if I could see the band, if I liked the music and making sure I wasn’t getting tired. It was a heady feeling to have someone be so attentive.
Jimmy drank all night but he didn’t get messy, just sparklier and, if possible, more smiley. He was one of those rare people who become chilled-out and happy with drinking rather than boisterous and obnoxious. It was the kind of drunk I aspired to be. Although I was pushing thirty, so maybe I should have been aiming for self-restraint rather than being a cheerful inebriate.
‘I think I’d like to cultivate my personality without alcohol,’ I said to Jimmy as we walked back from a caravan that served beer in bendy plastic cups. ‘You know there are some people who are really cool and they don’t drink? Like Michelle Obama. I bet she’s cool without drinking. I think I’m only cool with liquor.’ I hiccuped and spilt beer down my leg. ‘I’ll start tomorrow.’
‘I think you’re cool all the time,’ Jimmy said as he threw an arm around my shoulder.
We walked back to where Jimmy’s gang of friends had been but the crowds had moved, so we stood at the edge of the masses and listened to the music. I was enthralled by a band with a bouncing frontman playing from a guitar made of an old petrol can, and an African woman who sang like an angel and could high-kick her leg up to her forehead. They were obviously an SA favourite because the crowd went crazy. Halfway through the night I stopped drinking. The portable toilets were disgusting and I was frightened a snake might bite my vagina if I went in the bushes like everyone else. Around 11 p.m. a DJ took to the stage. Laser lights streaked out over the crowd and everyone was jumping up with their hands in the air trying to break the beams of coloured light. Jimmy and I jumped up and down in time to the music laughing and falling over each other. He broke a few beams and I got nowhere near. When a pink beam pulsed above my head Jimmy grabbed me by the hips and lifted me up. I broke the beam with both arms and a whoop. He lowered me down, but kept his arms around my waist and looked at me intensely. Then his lips were on mine.
My sensible side, who’d clearly not been in attendance when I was visiting the beer vans, and who was sitting soberly on a straight-backed chair in her Mary Janes, spoke up.
You can’t do this. You have a boyfriend. You owe it to Pete to either work it out or extract yourselves from each other’s lives like grown-ups before you go around kissing hot guys who have been so kind and have the nicest family and a fucking bitch of a dog.
I allowed the kiss to continue a bit longer, hoping my wicked side would turn up, but she didn’t. She was probably at the front of the stage doing yard glasses with her cleavage out.
I pulled away from Jimmy.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that since—’
‘Oh please don’t say “since we first met”!’ I laughed kindly.
‘No, you had a boyfriend. And I thought you were uptight and a bit crazy.’ He grinned. His arms were still round my waist. The heat from his hands warmed my skin where my top didn’t quite reach the waistband of my denim shorts.
‘I still have a boyfriend.’
‘And you’re still crazy.’
We stood in each other’s arms while people leapt about around us.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, looking up at him. ‘I can’t do this. Not when Pete and I are . . .’ I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I didn’t know what Pete and I were. We hadn’t broken up (yet), but we weren’t exactly a happy couple either. I needed to be sure we were officially over before I did anything with anybody else. ‘I’ve got some stuff to sort out before I can . . .’ I shrugged. ‘You know . . .’
The laser lights illuminated Jimmy’s face in pulses: pink then dark, green then dark, purple then dark. In the flashes of light I could see his disappointment. It was an intoxicating turn-on.
‘I understand,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I . . .’ He looked down at me, his hands still on my waist. ‘I really like you.’ He smiled. ‘But you know that.’
I put my head against his chest and his arms folded across my back. He let out a sigh.
‘Can we hang out tomorrow?’ I said. ‘Before you go to work?’
Jimmy took a moment to answer. ‘Sure,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll take you to my hangover place – it serves the best Bloody Marys and burgers.’
‘That sounds perfect,’ I said, genuinely gutted that in two more days I’d be on a plane flying away from Jimmy and Cape Town.
Jimmy’s arms tightened across my back as though he’d read my thoughts.
The music stopped soon after and by midnight everyone had made their way back to the van in various states of sunburn and sobriety. We piled in with damp towels and swimsuits, dusty feet and missing flip-flops, empty beer cans and bags of rubbish (South Africans were very environmentally aware), and drove back along the dark highway to town. It was 3 a.m. when we pulled up outside Diego and Ian’s and everyone was asleep except the driver and me. It took a while to wake Jimmy; he’d had much more to drink than I’d thought, and when I finally managed to get him inside we found Flora waiting at the front door. She trotted ahead of me as I guided Jimmy down the stairs to his bedroom and oversaw the removal of his shoes, shorts and T-shirt, which all came off with another gust of glitter, and the tucking of him into bed in just his boxers.
‘Stay,’ Jimmy said, patting the empty side of the bed. ‘ ’S too late to get an Uber home by yourself.’
‘OK,’ I said, looking around for something to wear.
‘Wear one of my shirts.’ He flapped his arm in the direction of his pile of clothes at the bottom of the wardrobe. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ he mumbled.
‘Who?’ I asked, crossing past the bottom of the bed towards his wardrobe.
‘Pete. He doesn’t deserve you. You should be with someone who appreciates how kind you are. And who sees how much you love your sister and your niece and nephew.’
I stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at Jimmy. He lay on his back with his eyes shut, a half-smile on his lips.
‘You should be with someone who likes eighties glam rock and mixes a mean margarita and can play the piano and knows how to make an origami Yoda and has really nice toes.’
‘Should I really?’ I said with a smile, thinking that I’d really like to see the origami Yoda.
‘Just a suggestion.’ Jimmy rolled onto his side and shut his eyes. ‘Juuuuuust a suggestion.’
I rummaged through the bottom of Jimmy’s wardrobe, found a clean-ish looking T-shirt and pair of boxers and went to the bathroom to wash the suntan lotion off my face and swish toothpaste round my mouth. When I came back Jimmy was asleep, snoring softly. I went to lift the sheets and climb in but Flora hopped up on the bed, curled into a ball of snowy fuzz on the empty side and fixed me with a defiant, black-eyed glare.
‘Fine,’ I whispered. ‘You win.’
I grabbed a pillow and blanket from the hall cupboard, walked across the room and lay down on Oscar the Couch. Once comfy, I opened Instagram. I flicked through Giselle’s photos, feeling a sense of loss at the images of Pete on rock faces, beaming at the camera. He’d developed a deep tan and it hurt to see how happy he looked. I moved to Goat’s feed and scrolled through. Goat had more shots of himself, strategically framed to show a particular watch, or backpack-water-pouch, or climbing shoe, but there were still a handful with Pete and Giselle. As I scrolled through, one he’d posted that evening caught my eye. It was of Goat standing at the edge of a bonfire, obviously giving a speech to the gathered muscled, tanned, kitesurfing, shark-disregarding weirdos. I zoomed in to the background and my heart sank. There, illuminated by the bonfire’s glow, sat Giselle and Pete. Kissing.
I’d recognise those pineapple board shorts anywhere. I’d bought them for him but he’d always been too embarrassed to wear them, preferring his navy ones with the white piping down the side. I zoomed in with my fingertips. Pete’s hand was at the back of Giselle’s slender neck, her hair in braids again. She had a hand on his knee. It was such an intimate pose. They looked like a couple in love.
Even though I’d known it was pretty much over between Pete and me, I covered my face with my hands and wept, trying not to wake Jimmy with my sobs. After a moment I felt something wet and cold touch my hand. Flora stood, looking at me, her black eyes shining. She cocked her head to the side, making her puffball ears bounce, then hopped up and nestled into the curve of my body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘Good morning, sweet girl!’ Diego said as I walked into the kitchen the next morning in a pair of Jimmy’s boxers and his oversized T-shirt. He stood in the kitchen in a hot-pink vest, arranging fruit salad into two earthenware bowls. ‘You’re the girl who never leaves! Not that I want you to.’ He pulled me into a bear hug then held me at arm’s length. ‘Big night, huh?’
Ian, who was not normally at home at 8.17 a.m. on a Friday, sat on a stool wearing impeccably pressed navy trousers and an ice-blue shirt, open at the collar. He stood and gave me a kiss on the cheek then returned to his seat.
‘A late night,’ I said, my voice hoarse from lack of sleep. It had been past 4 a.m. when I’d finally fallen into a fitful slumber, my mind spinning with images of Pete and Giselle. And Jimmy kissing me. I’d woken at 7 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. My eyeballs looked like I’d exfoliated them with hedgehogs. ‘Jimmy’s still sleeping.’
‘Then you must join us for breakfast,’ Diego said, getting out a third bowl and holding up his hand at my protest. ‘We insist. Coffee?’
I nodded gratefully. ‘This is strange,’ I said, indicating the torrential rain outside and climbing onto the stool next to Ian with considerable effort.
‘But needed,’ Ian said, shifting a newspaper out of my way. ‘Rain is good news in summer.’
‘And it means your site inspections get cancelled and you can have fruit salad with your beloved,’ Diego said, passing Ian his fruit salad, which had bits of decorative mint on top.
‘That I can.’ Ian’s eyes twinkled.
Over breakfast Ian and Diego got on to the topic of why Jimmy had come to Cape Town and how they thought it would be better for his writing and music career to be back in London, but that Jimmy was reticent.
‘Jimmy has always felt that he needed to protect me from any gay backlash,’ Ian said, folding his napkin neatly and laying it next to his empty bowl. ‘Even though, if you’re going to be gay, Cape Town is the place to be.’
‘The place,’ Diego echoed.
‘Jimmy knew I was gay before I knew.’ Ian pushed his bowl to the side and picked up his espresso with hands that had been recently manicured. ‘He used to get into all kinds of scrapes sticking up for me. But don’t think he was the tough guy sticking up for the gay sissy. He might be big now but he was a scrawny kid, a foot shorter than all his mates. I was double his size.’
‘Jimmy is a pussy cat,’ Diego interjected. He stood and began clearing the breakfast bowls.
I smiled.
Ian nodded. ‘But if he thought I was being picked on he was in there like a feral cat. Most of the time I wasn’t even being bullied. Or if I was, it wasn’t for being
gay – just regular kid arseholery.’
‘Kids can be nasty,’ Diego fussed.
‘I was twenty-four when I’d worked up the courage to tell Dad. But he didn’t react well.’ A brief sadness crossed Ian’s face but dissipated in an instant when Diego laid a hand on his shoulder. Ian smiled and continued. ‘He denied it and said I was trying to be fashionable or that I was copying things I’d seen in the movies. Admittedly, I did once dress up as Julia Roberts and pretend to accept a plastic necklace from the coat stand—’
‘Who didn’t?!’ Diego exclaimed as he filled the coffee machine.
‘But he was wrong. I’m gay to my bone marrow. I didn’t just watch Will and Grace and think, “My god he has impeccable suits, I want to be like him”.’
‘You do have impeccable suits, though,’ Diego said.
‘Thank you,’ Ian said with an affectionate glint in his eyes. ‘Anyway, Dad was ashamed. And Jimmy wrote him off that day. It was either Dad or me and Jimmy chose me. And now it’s been almost ten years.’
Diego shook his head and tsk-ed.
‘Jimmy sees the situation with Dad as either/or, black or white. But life isn’t like that. There are variables and grey areas and the only way through anything is to recognise that we’re all different. A knee-jerk reaction is understandable – but it needs to be reassessed. And Jimmy just won’t do that.’
I frowned. The Jimmy I’d spent the past ten days with was the most open-hearted, non-judgemental person I’d encountered. It seemed strange to hear he wasn’t willing to forgive his father.
‘Dad was shocked, that’s all,’ Ian continued. ‘He didn’t expel me from the family, but for Jimmy he may as well have.’ Ian checked the time on his sleek watch and stood. ‘Dad and I started talking a few years later. It took him time to understand. To accept me as Ian, his son who had always been his son.’
‘He reassessed his knee-jerk reaction,’ Diego said.
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