SUNLOUNGER 2: Beach Read Bliss (Sunlounger Stories)

by Belinda Jones

  I don’t want to be consumed by regrets, eyes dimming with the passing of years, bitter at the cards life had dealt.

  But I felt it – resentment creeping into my bones like the cold.

  Drama college followed school and my head was full of dreams. London, Los Angeles, the world was wide open like saloon swing doors in the old Westerns, waiting for me to burst in.

  I can still remember telling him I was pregnant. I don’t know what I expected after a few months together, only that he was my first love – a young love that was all-consuming – and his accusation of trapping him winded me. He fled for Australia on an impromptu gap year – I always suspected encouraged by his parents – in fear his life would be over before it begun.

  I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t get rid of the heart beating inside me, no matter how it would change my life.

  I look around and try to soak in every detail. The pool deck is surrounded by the lush greens of plants and trees. A wisp of cloud in an otherwise perfect blue sky.

  When the waiter first took my drinks order, I could not help but catch my breath at the beauty of him. As impossibly handsome as a young Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise, with a danger to his blue eyes and disarming ease to his smile.

  He was pleasant, mildly flirtatious even, but bored. Of course he was. He wanted to serve someone he recognised – Cameron Diaz or a movie hotshot who could get him places. Every beautiful waiter or waitress wants to be an actor in LA. Most don’t make it but here in the City of Angels, dreams really can come true. It’s what keeps people going, dragging themselves to their bar job to serve the people they want to be: the story of that guy who was spotted in the cash point queue. It happened to him and he’s as big as Pitt or Clooney now. It can happen to me.

  When he asked for my second drink, he knew who I was. Someone had told him.

  Making them believe was simple. I ordered flowers to arrive at the Chateau addressed to me, before I left England.

  Then I called from the airport in an Australian accent.

  ‘Hello, is that Chateau Marmont? Oh, hi. I wonder if you could tell me if a bouquet of flowers I sent to Ms Ramsay have arrived? They have? Oh, that’s a relief. I was worried I got the wrong name – she travels under a few different aliases, I guess a lot of your famous guests do that. Ramsay’s her favourite I think. God, listen to me, saying too much as always. My mother reckons it’s a family curse. The thing is, I’m a complete idiot. I totally forgot to send a note saying who they’re from. Would you mind writing a little card or something, so Ms Ramsay knows? Aw thanks, you’re a star. Ok, you got a pen? Here we go:

  “To our favourite director in the world. Welcome to LA. We can’t wait to see you in a few weeks. Love Angelina, Brad and the kids.”

  The waiter, whose name badge said Don, was no longer preoccupied with thoughts of his next cigarette. His focus was me, sparkling eyes set on dancing with mine.

  They lasted a while, the friends I had bonded with as a vodka-swilling student sucking on Marlborough Lights. They even visited us, me and little Harrison.

  I’ll go back, I told them; I told myself. When Harrison is two. Working hard to give him a good life. When he’s five. My own little business. A sick mother to nurse. When he’s ten. Opening my second darling café which people love. Dreams on hold. That penetrating of the bones stronger by the day.

  ‘My son,’ I used to say the words over and over again, not quite believing the miracle of him, looking into his eyes of grey like a stormy sea. When he slept cradled in my arms, I put my nose under his to feel the warmth of his air. My son.

  They say that life is what happens when you’re making plans but it wasn’t a chore, looking after him – or my mother when the time came. It was a privilege. My privilege.

  Yet time ticked by.

  And the old lady I wanted one day to be seemed to fade every day. In my twilight in years to come – and come they would – I saw myself as a slightly stooped woman with white hair who sees the charm of the world, who smiles when she sees children playing in the park, happy to hear their laughter, to know they have their lives ahead.

  Not begrudge the time they have to do the things she wishes she had.

  ‘The thing about LA,’ the raspy voice of a man with mahogany skin cuts through my thoughts. He is sitting on a lounger at the other end of the pool but he is LA-loud.

  ‘I’ll tell you the thing about LA. Everyone is using everyone. But at least we all know where we are.’

  He laughs at his wit with his friend and catches my eye. Suddenly I feel tired. Overwhelmingly tired.

  My son is starting university in a few weeks, on holiday now with his friends from school while I am here. His knocking-on-forty mother who feels like a teenager inside, albeit a little more weary. Harrison still kisses me goodnight and when he hugs me, I stop myself clinging to him for dear life, never wanting to let him go. When I see him, I will squeeze him until his cheeks flush red and he wriggles away.

  No one tells you that you will love your child so much that it hurts.

  Or that you will never stop loving your mother, no matter how long she has been gone.

  ‘Another drink, Ms Ramsay? Or…’ his eyes stop dancing to hold mine, deadly serious. ‘Or, anything else?’

  I almost laugh.

  Premiere tickets, red carpet passes, launch parties, flowing champagne, five-star spas, caviar canapés, goody bags like your best Christmas.

  Only by experiencing them do I know they are nothing at all.

  And yet it is human nature to wonder: is there anything else?

  From Don’s smile, I believe there might just be. An experience I hadn’t bargained for, but why else am I here if not to ensure that old lady looks back and thinks she lived a life of few regrets?

  And after all, who am I to let Don down?

  And I see not him nodding his approval at my response, but that little old lady who knows that life is all too short.

  About the Author

  Martel Maxwell co-presents weekly magazine show On The Road for BBC One Scotland, as well as presenting short films for BBC1’s The One Show and is a regular contributor on itv1’s Lorraine.

  Martel is a radio and television presenter based in Scotland but also often in London. Previously, she worked for over a decade for the Sun, as a trainee then showbiz writer and latterly an opinion columnist for the Scottish Sun. She put her experiences of free bars to use in her debut novel Scandalous, the story of a showbiz reporter who parties too much, published by Penguin.

  After marrying the first boy she kissed (it took him two decades to ask her out) she has a baby boy and another on the way.

  Website: www.martelmaxwell.com

  Twitter: www.twitter.com/martelmaxwell

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/martelmaxwell

  Visit www.sunloungerstories.com to discover more about the authors and story destinations.

  We have everything you need to make this your Best Summer Ever!

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  A Lost Night in Louisiana

  ***

  Nigel May

  DESTINATION: New Orleans

  The first sensation Kim felt was the tickle of feathers under her nose. The second was the heady taste of dark rum on her lips. And was that some sort of sweetness she could taste? The third and most mind-slapping sensation was the feeling that somebody had scooped out her brains and placed a never-ending cacophony of saxophones inside her head. And the tune they were playing was not a welcome one.

  Saxophones? That rang a bell (or sounded a horn) – a migraine-inducing, three-million decibel one. Trying to ignore the ricochet of noise inside her head, Kim lifted her face as far off the bed sheets as she could and tried to play Sherlock with the clues she had. What was she wearing? Feet bare except for a rather vibrant collection of day-glo nail polish, denim shorts perilously short, frayed at the edges but still in place despite the top button gaping open, T-shirt raised and knotted to one side and a cascade of bright
ly-coloured beads around her neck: strings of beads interspersed with cute little plastic flamingos.

  Okay, her bedroom at her mum's house in Gloucester, this was not.

  The musical memory of saxes, the flamingos and plastic beads, the semi-plucked feathery owl-like face mask on the bed, the taste of rum and sugar…suddenly a bolt of clarity hit her like a serpent striking its prey. She was at her sister's flat in New Orleans. She'd come here for Mardi Gras and right now was definitely the morning after the night before. What the hell had she done last night? The fogginess in her mind adamantly refused to give her the answer.

  Sitting up, Kim ran her fingers through her hair. A creamy smear of gloop met her skin. A few cake crumbs fell from her blonde curls and as she looked at her fingers she could see they were streaked with smudges of brightly-coloured icing. 'Real classy,' she said to herself.

  She moved gingerly to the front room. The flat was seemingly empty of human life, not a person to be seen among the sea of plastic cups, half-full ashtrays and discarded masks strewn across every visible surface. Her solitude made sense. Her sister, Emily, would be at work, acting as an informative guide at one of the gator-spotting tours based in the swamplands just outside the city. There wasn't a thing Emily didn't know about the mating habits of the snappy-toothed swamp critters – maybe she'd be able to spread a little light on the party habits of her own sister. Something at the back of her cocktail-drowned mind told her that last night had been one to remember. It was just a pity that she couldn't. Mind you…cocktails… New Orleans' famous Hurricane cocktail – she'd downed a few of those last night, if she recalled rightly, so that would explain the smothering taste of rum inside her mouth.

  Kim reached down into her shorts pocket for her phone. It wasn't there – where was it? – but there was a folded piece of paper. Kim attempted to focus her tired eyes on the writing scribbled across the sheet.

  Hey Kim. Thank you for the most awesome day…and night! It was great to meet you and show you some of our good old Louisiana hospitality. I never knew Brit girls could be such fun. And you were a whole lot of naughty fun, that's for sure! If you would like to meet up again I could treat you to a Hurricane and we could make some more babies. That was amazing fun…you are deliciously dirty, missy!

  The note finished with a kiss and a telephone number. No name…which was unfortunate as at that moment Kim had no recollection who it was from. But he obviously knew her and it would seem that she had let him get to know her incredibly well. 'Make some more babies'! What the hell did that mean? She hadn't, had she? She'd woken up fully clothed…good sign…but the button was open on her shorts…bad sign.

  Kim ran back to the bedroom, sank down onto the bed and put her head in her hands. A pained growl of confusion escaped from her lips. 'Think Kim, think… what did you do?' she said out loud to herself, hoping that the sound of her own voice would provide some much-needed answers. It wouldn't be the first time she'd been the life and the soul of the party. Back home at uni, if they'd written a year book entry for her it would have read, 'Kim Roberts, girl most likely to dance till dawn, flirt with any Ryan Gosling lookalike and never take no for an answer', but there she'd have had her posse of college friends to look after her. If she had partaken of a little too much vino collapso or a Margarita too many then they'd take her for some fresh air. They could always sober her up and divert her from stumbling the walk-of-shame while twirling her bra in the air like some holiday-maker in Kavos. But that was thanks to safety in numbers. Here in New Orleans, there was just Emily to look after her. She'd have stopped her from doing anything stupid though, wouldn't she? She was the older, more sensible sibling after all. Emily's wisdom at twenty-five was enough to kerb the booze-drenched lunacy of Kim's twenty-one-year-old brain, wasn't it?

  She looked at the note again. There was only one way to make babies and that was by doing the horizontal hip-hop between the sheets. Fearing the worst, Kim pulled her shorts away from her tummy and looked down inside them. There was no cotton, no lace, no frills…just bare skin. A wave of fear avalanched into the pit of her stomach. This was serious. She needed to phone Emily. Now.

  Whipping up a mini-tornado of cake-smeared sheets and dirty clothes, Kim grabbed everything she could and threw it into the air in the hope of finding her phone. It shouldn't be too hard to see, surely, housed inside its bright pink case. After almost creating the biggest whirlwind America had seen since Dorothy's flight from Kansas in The Wizard Of Oz, Kim struck gold.

  A minute later, Kim was still listening to the unanswered ringing tone at the other end of the line. Glancing at the clock by her bedside, Kim realised that it was already nearly 1pm. Emily would be zooming up and down the waterways of the bayous of Lafitte right now on an airboat. She'd be warning tourists not to stick their hands too close to the inquisitive alligators, who would swim alongside the boat hoping for a tasty treat. Emily had always been animal-crazy and had taken the job on the lush swamplands straight out of university. That had been two years ago and from what Kim had seen from her sister's enjoyment when she'd been on the tour with her yesterday, Emily had no intention of giving it up any time soon. Kim didn't get it. Just glimpsing one of those reptilian beasts on the banks of the bayou would see her bolting in the opposite direction quicker than Usain.

  Kim sighed. Why couldn't she be more like her big sister? Emily wouldn't be fighting a monster hangover today, would she? She wouldn't be trying to fit together the debauched pieces of a Mardi Gras jigsaw, in an attempt to see if the night had ended as sugary sweet as a New Orleans beignet or as spicily hot as a Cajun gumbo. Kim needed to try to slot together exactly what had happened the day before. The day before the night before the morning after. The mere thought of it made her skin prickle with dread.

  There was only one thing for it. She would have to ring the telephone number on the note and ask the man himself. She didn't even know his name. How shameful was that? How to begin that conversation? 'Oh hi, I'm Kim, we met last night, I think you may have slept with me and we talked about making babies. Fancy dinner-a-deux?' No, that wouldn't work. She'd need to test the water first. She was just petrified that the water might be as dangerous as the gator-infested swamp loved by her sister. But Kim knew she had to dip her toes in, no matter what the outcome…

  After what seemed like an absolute age (in reality no more than a fearfully silent thirty seconds) she rang the mobile number on the note. After three sets of rings, the phone answered. The Southern drawl that greeted her was jolly in the extreme. 'Well hello there, Gator Time Tours, how may I help you this fine Louisiana day?'

  Whatever Kim had been expecting, these deep-south cheery tones of someone who wouldn't have sounded out of place hanging out at the corner store with Honey Boo Boo and Mama June was not it. 'Um…I…er…' was the best that a perplexed Kim could reply. Luckily for her, Kim's silence and confusion was interrupted by the man on the other end of the line.

  'Hell, what am I saying, this ain't my work phone, it's my cell. Force of habit I guess. Been answering the work phone all day. Sorry about that. Ray here, what can I do you for?' As an afterthought he added, somewhat inquisitively, 'Who is this by the way, you sure are quiet?' Kim's mind still pounded with the heavy throb of one of the most heavyweight hangovers she'd ever experienced, but at least she now knew his name.

  'Hi Ray, this is Kim…we, er…met last night?' To Kim it was more of a question than a fact.

  'Well, if it isn't my very own Daisy Duke. You still wearing those iddy-biddy denim shorts showing off those mighty fine legs of yours? They went all the way up to—'

  'I am!' barked Kim, keen to not hear the end of Ray's sentence. All she could think was, so, help me God, have I slept with one of the blokes from The Dukes Of Hazzard? If I have, I've no idea whether he's a dark and handsome Johnny Knoxville, a hairy and quirky Seann William Scott or an old and craggy Boss Hogg… One thing was for sure, as Kim sat on the dirty, dishevelled bed, she was no Jessica Simpson. She may have blonde hair a
nd denim shorts but Kim's cowboy boots were not made for walking. Hers were made for running off into the distance as fast as her shameful confusion would allow.

  'Yep the shorts are still there. In place, where they always were…where they stayed all night…' stammered Kim, hoping that she might lead Ray into divulging exactly what went on…or off, more to the point.

  'You were getting some pretty full-on looks from the party-goers at your sister's place,' said Ray. 'You could see their eyes out on stalks even from behind their masks. You sure did look pretty in your bird mask by the way. That was a fun idea of yours, to make everyone wear masks. Perfect Mardi Gras. By the way, I think I left my fox mask there. I'll ask Emily to bring it in…' Ray left a pause before adding, '…or maybe you could. That would be sweeter.'

  Kim was confused. 'You know my sister? Was that how we met, when did we…?' Kim stopped herself mid-flow. Some of the clouds in her overcast mind were parting. 'Gator Time Tours… You work there, with Emily, you helped out on the tour yesterday when I was gator spotting, right?'

  'That's me, helpful Ray, the man who cranks up your airboat and sends you on your way to meet the gators. It was awesome to meet you. I had an incredible time out on the town and back at Emily's. She never told me she has such an amazing sister. Thank you for an unforgettable night. By the sounds of it, I'm assuming that you're having a few problems remembering the finer details. And they sure were fine…better than fine.' There was more than a touch of suggestion to Ray's tone.

  'I do have a few questions about yesterday. I remember meeting you on the tour and then us all heading off to Bourbon Street to celebrate Mardi Gras but after that it all gets a bit…' Kim searched for the right word, 'hazy?'