SUNLOUNGER 2: Beach Read Bliss (Sunlounger Stories)

by Belinda Jones

  What if I don’t want to move on? Tess thought rebelliously, abandoning the too-large bed and padding across the tiled floor to retrieve her bikini from the suitcase. What if I enjoy pining and moping? What if I don’t want to meet somebody else one day? Honestly, if she had a pound for every platitude she’d been given since Luke had gone Tess would have been staying at the Ritz Carlton on Seven Mile Beach, not at a dive hotel.

  As she slipped into her bikini, gratifyingly loose since she’d been on the heartbreak diet, Tess remembered how Luke used to tease her about putting on weight courtesy of all the delicious brunches and creamy mudslide cocktails. Luke, annoyingly, never gained an inch. He too enjoyed the spicy Caribbean patties and the fiery jerk pork from the smoky roadside stalls but all the diving and wake-boarding kept his stomach lean and his limbs corded with muscle. Just the thought of how his taut body had felt against hers made Tess tremble with longing and she curled her nails up into her palms as the memories washed over her like waves on the iron shore. When Luke wasn’t diving they lay on the soft sand of Smith Cove and felt the sun bronze their skin, swam in aquamarine surf and made love in the setting rays of a blood-orange sun. Tess had locked these recollections away when Luke left but returning to Grand Cayman had lifted the lid on her emotional Pandora’s Box.

  Maybe coming here alone was the big mistake her mother said it was, or maybe it was the best thing she could have done. Tess didn’t know yet, but by the time today was over she knew she’d have the answer. Of one thing though she was certain: only here could she find Luke again. Cayman was the place he’d always wanted to be.

  Today Tess was going on her first and last dive.

  She exhaled slowly, trying to steady the racing of her heart. In five years with Luke she’d never managed to summon the courage to dive with him. The thought of all that water pressing down on her like the lid of a coffin filled Tess with panic. Then there was the silence broken only by the rasping of breath and the drumming of your own pulse as the blood pounded through veins and arteries now under pressure. What Luke lived for terrified Tess, and while he’d dived she’d been content to read her book by the pool or, on adventurous days, splash about with a snorkel. That way she could watch the armies of stripy Sergeant Majors gorging on fire coral without panicking that the blue water was going to consume her.

  Although she’d only been on the island for five days Tess’s legs were already turning brown and the stinging in her shoulders told a tale of too much time spent wandering through Georgetown in the scorching sunshine, time Luke would have spent exploring the underwater realm that was Cayman’s real treasure rather than the shops crammed full of glittering diamonds and chunky Rolexes. Sky-scraper cruise ships poured sunburned tourists into the narrow streets where they gasped over precious stones, not realising that beneath their ship was a treasure-chest reef full of jewelled fish. While they dined in Burger King, little did they know that just an onion ring’s throw from their tables was the aptly named Cheeseburger Reef where tarpon and parrot fish flickered through the water. Neither did they dream that while they basked on the icing sugar sand of Seven Mile Beach, prides of lionfish prowled the surf. Luke was right; to appreciate the real beauty of this island paradise you needed a snorkel, not a sun lounger.

  Tess sighed. She’d been coming to Cayman ever since she’d met Luke, but as yet she’d failed to make her first sea dive. Luke had been patient; a qualified dive master himself he had slowly taken her through the basics of the Padi course, but each time Tess was ready to step away from the pool and out into the sea she panicked. No matter how many times Luke told her about the beautiful mermaid statue who stood only a hundred meters away on the sea bed or promised just how amazed she would be by the other worldliness of the Kittiwake wreck just off West Bay, Tess couldn’t overcome the tsunami of terror created by the mere thought of being beneath the water.

  But that had been then, when Luke was only a kiss away. Now if diving were the only way to reach him Tess would gladly leap off the Cayman Trench.

  ‘If you enjoy snorkelling then you’ll love diving,’ Luke would say. ‘It’s like another world down there, Tessie. I’d love to show you.’

  But Tess had shrugged away his offer, admired the pictures taken on his latest waterproof camera and helped to rinse the dive gear instead. If Luke had been disappointed he’d never said so but she’d sensed his wistfulness when he spoke of his dream of moving to Grand Cayman and buying a dive boat. Tess had dismissed these tentative comments as daydreams, but to Luke they had been so much more than that. If only she’d listened to him. If they’d moved to the island they would still be together. That hideous summer’s evening, two years ago now but still as fresh in her mind as though only seconds had passed, would never have happened.

  How Tess wished she’d listened to him. They would never dive together now and she would never watch Luke head out into the Caribbean Sea on his own dive boat. He was totally lost to her.

  Her fingers brushed the dive watch lovingly, the smooth glass and chunky dials as dear to her as the contours of Luke’s face. If he was here in Cayman then he was out in the ocean. Tess would have to go there too if she wanted to find him again. Her throat tightened dangerously.

  It’s been two years, Tess told herself furiously, two whole years. You should be over him by now.

  ‘Move on,’ her counsellor had advised. ‘Pick up your life and start over.’

  Tess knew that she was right but somehow this was proving impossible. Everywhere she went she thought she saw Luke. Sometimes he was just ahead of her in the queue at the supermarket checkout; at other times his broad back and dark gypsy curls were steps away in a crowd, and once she saw those laughing green eyes and his sexy wide mouth flash by on a tube train she’d just missed. Her counsellor was worried, Tess knew this much from the furiously scribbled notes and long pauses in their conversation. Her doctor shook his head and offered Prozac and her friends rapidly changed the subject whenever she tried to discuss Luke. They were sick of hearing about how hard she was finding single life and there was nowhere left to turn, nobody to understand. She had to find a way to be close to him again.

  So, against the advice of everyone she knew, Tess took matters into her own hands and flew to Cayman for this one last time. If Luke was to be found anywhere then she knew it would be in the deep blue water off the Wall, where barracuda, turtles and hammerheads reigned and where the drop to the ocean floor was Everest deep.

  Tess turned her head upside down and scooped her hair into a scrunchie. Straightening and peering into the mirror she noticed that beneath her cinnamon sprinkling of freckles she was pale. From fear of what she was about to do? Or from knowing that there was no changing the fact Luke had upped and left her without any warning? This was what hurt the most; it was so unexpected and this was why she couldn’t get over it the way everyone thought she should.

  ‘It’s just one stag weekend,’ he’d promised, kissing her and pulling her into his arms. ‘I’ll be back from Newquay before you’ve even missed me.’

  But Luke never did come back from that stag weekend in Cornwall. Instead he’d left her alone, stunned and broken, lying in their huge bed and listening to the cars swishing through the rain, night after lonely night until last week when she’d decided that she couldn’t stand it any longer. Tess had to find out if he was still in Cayman. Getting leave from work and boarding the plane at Heathrow had been easy. Finding herself on Luke’s beloved island, the setting for so many of their happy memories, wasn’t.

  Luke’s chunky Omega Sea Master watch, his pride and joy and uncharacteristically left forgotten on the bedside table when he’d shut the front door for the last time, slid around her wrist. It was over complicated for a teacher living in Harrow. Tess didn’t care what the dials meant or that it was water resistant in up to three-hundred metres, all she cared about was that this watch had been her present to him on his thirtieth birthday. Costing a month’s salary it had been worth every hard-earned penn
y to see Luke’s thrilled expression when he’d opened his gift, and it had accompanied him on every dive since. The watch didn’t belong with her. When she found him Tess would make sure he had it back and this time for good.

  The watch was telling Tess she only had five minutes until the dive boat left. Shoving sun cream into her rucksack and pushing her feet into her Sketchers she let herself out of the hotel room, running down the steps and across the courtyard. Instantly the heat reared up like a serpent, humid coils winding themselves around her nose and mouth while the intense blue of the sky make her hastily reach for her Oakley’s.

  ‘Morning Tess! You’re the last of our divers today.’ The dive master, Rob, crossed Tess off on his list and beamed at her. ‘It’s beautiful out on the water and we’ve loaded all your gear. Are you ready for your first boat dive?’

  Was she ready? Cold fear stabbed her stomach.

  ‘Here, let me help.’ Rob reached out and before Tess had the chance to change her mind he’d taken her hand and helped her on board. As the deck rose and fell beneath her feet, he added kindly, ‘You did brilliantly on your shore dive yesterday. You’re more than ready for this.’

  Tess nodded. She couldn’t speak. The skipper was casting off the lines and the boat was now heading out onto the sparkling water. Frigate birds soared above them and the white sands of Seven Mile Beach were receding fast. Within minutes they passed the sedate glass-bottomed boats and pleasure crafts moored off the reef and were heading out into the deep blue sea, that same deep blue sea that had held Luke’s heart in a way she’d never been able to.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s perfect diving conditions,’ Rob said, glancing down at her chalky knuckles as she gripped the gunwale. ‘There’ll be several boats already out today off the North Wall. You’ll love it.’

  Tess tried to smile back but it must have looked like more of a grimace because Rob hastily turned his attention to sorting out the dive gear. She felt as though she was in a dream. Had she really spent this past week learning to scuba dive so that she could visit Luke’s favourite place one final time? She’d sat on the bottom of the training pool, learned how to breathe and remove her mask before swimming out to the mermaid who was every bit as enigmatic as she smiled up from her coral bed as Luke had promised.

  Tess exhaled slowly. This was the right thing to do. Already she was feeling closer to Luke and as they approached the dive site she felt sure she would find him here in the deep cobalt sea. This was what Luke had lived for and dreamed of, and for the first time Tess totally got it. The mental elbowroom out here was staggering.

  The other boats had their flags up, divers were already down, and before long Tess’s companions had pulled on their gear. Time was on fast forward and as she waited her turn Tess’s knees were as watery as the ocean.

  You’ll love it, Tess, trust me.

  Luke’s voice was back, every bit as clear as the instructions Rob was calling out as pair by pair the divers scissor-stepped into the air. Suddenly feeling feather light in spite of her cylinder, Tess was stepping too and then down, down, down into the blue.

  Silence. Her heart beat. The hiss and suck of the air through the mouthpiece. Then weightlessness and another world, just as Luke had promised. Down and down Tess dove and with every flick of her fins she found herself further removed from life on the surface. It was like falling into an aquarium, being written into Finding Nemo and landing on another planet all at once, and if it hadn’t have been for the mouthpiece she would have laughed out loud for the pure and simple joy of it. It was wonderful and incredible. Over sponges humming with fish she swum, alongside turtles and through schools of yellow and purple Queen Angel fish until the coral abruptly vanished and only a chasm of the deepest indigo remained.

  The Wall.

  See! said Luke. Isn’t it amazing? Didn’t I tell you?

  He was ahead of her, Tess could see him now as clearly as she could see the parrot fish and the blue tangs, his green board shorts and fins always just out of reach but undeniably there. Yet no matter how hard she swam he was always a fingertip’s reach away, but at least he was here, in the warm Caribbean Sea just as she’d known he would be. It had taken thousands of miles and facing up to her greatest fear but it had been worth every second because she was close to him again.

  I’m proud of you, he said, so proud of you for doing this, Tess. You’re stronger than you ever thought you were. You’re the strongest person I know.

  Tess kicked her legs and watched silver bubbles floating dreamily up and away. Beneath the sea was where she’d always known Luke would be. Even after that knock on the door, when the sombre policeman had spoken the terrible words that changed her world forever, she’d known he wasn’t really gone. When she’d stood by the graveside, soft rain falling like tears, she’d known it wasn’t Luke she was burying, that it hadn’t really been her boyfriend whom the paramedics had pulled from the mangled wreckage of his car. How could it have been when Luke was so alive and so full of plans for their future? He’d never leave her. He’d promised. There was no way a man that alive and that vital could just cease to exist. It wasn’t possible.

  Now you can let me go, Tess. You have to let me go.

  Luke, no! I don’t want to! Tess wanted to cry out but of course fifty metres down there was no way she could speak. She tried to double her speed to reach him but her dive buddy tugged her back and reluctantly Tess began to rise to the surface, up from the dark depths of another world and back into the sunlight. She twisted her neck to look behind her but Luke was out of sight, tumbling down and down into the deep blue darkness.

  If, of course, he had ever been there at all.

  Tess stood at the prow of the dive boat staring down into the water. Behind her the others were chatting excitedly about their dive, sharing footage on their Go Pros and digital cameras, while Rob and the rest of the crew stashed their gear away. The waves slapped against the hull, glittering in the bright sunshine like the contents of a Swarovski warehouse, and Tess felt its touch on her skin as warm and as vital as Luke’s lips had been when he’d kissed her goodbye for that last time.

  She had done it. She’d returned to the place Luke loved and seen it for herself, just as he’d always longed for her to do. She’d done this last dive for him and at last she understood the magic that the ocean held. If there was one place where Luke would want her to leave him then this was it. It wasn’t time for her to dive down with him, not yet and maybe not for a very long time. Tess would return to the shore and Luke would stay here; this was how it should be.

  Luke’s dive watch hung heavy and loose on her wrist. Slowly and with trembling fingers, Tess unhooked the clasp. It was warm and heavy in her hands, as familiar as her own breath, but it was only right it stayed with him. For a second she clung to it before gradually loosening her hold.

  The watch slid from her grasp and dropped into the waves. For a moment it sparkled in the water before flickering like a fish beneath the surface and vanishing. Tess stared after it, imagining it floating down to Luke and settling around his wrist where it belonged.

  Her wrist felt bare but her heart felt light. As the boat turned for Georgetown, Tess closed her eyes in a silent farewell. It was time to move on.

  Her last first dive was over.

  About the Author

  Ruth is the Amazon top ten best-selling author of Weight Till Christmas, Rearranged, Katy Carter Wants a Hero, Ellie Andrews has Second Thoughts and Amber Scott is Starting Over. She also writes commercial women’s fiction under the pen names Jessica Fox, Lucy Hepburn and Georgie Carter. Ruth has been shortlisted for the RNA’s prestigious ‘Romantic Comedy of the Year’ award. Born and raised in the UK, Ruth is currently living in the Caribbean, on the beautiful island of Grand Cayman. Her latest novel, Escape for the Summer, is out now with Notting Hill Press.

  Ruth Saberton is represented by the Eve White Literary Agency (www.evewhite.co.uk).

  Website: www.ruthsaberton.co.uk

  Twitte
r: www.twitter.com/@RuthSaberton

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/RuthSaberton-Author

  Amazon UK page: http://amzn.to/1lR5HdV

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

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

  Return to the contents list.

  The Paris Journal

  ***

  Juliette Sobanet

  DESTINATION: Paris

  One

  ‘Olivia Banks, it’s about time we saw that pretty face of yours around these parts.’ Genie Robertson, my parents’ long-time neighbor, barrels across the lawn toward me, almost running straight into the movers I’ve hired to clear out my childhood home.

  ‘Hi, Mrs. Robertson.’ Hoping she isn’t planning to embark on one of her two-hour neighborhood gossip sessions, I pull my ever-buzzing work cell from my purse to find the eighteenth desperate text that hour from Miranda, the host of one of the most popular talk shows on television and also my obscenely needy boss back in New York.

  Did you see what a cow I looked like in that frumpy blue dress this morning? This stylist is an absolute catastrophe! Give her the ax! When are you coming back to the Center of the Universe???

  I don’t have time to respond, though, because Mrs. Robertson is in front of me now, all floral prints and perfume, tears streaming down her puffy, rouge cheeks.