Grumbling audibly, Kate retraced her steps and climbed back over the toppled wall, making it as far as the cat that was still busy washing itself before her indecision halted her once again. Perhaps she ought to just keep going?
‘What the hell is the matter with me?’ She sighed, sitting down beside the small black moggy. ‘Why am I so bloody useless at being a human, eh?’
The cat paused mid-lick and gazed at her through narrow yellow eyes.
‘You’re quite right,’ Kate told it. ‘I do deserve nothing but disdain.’
The cat lowered an outstretched paw and showed her a neat set of claws. Either it was offering to shake her hand or wanted to scratch her face off. Kate shuffled away, figuring it was better not to find out which, and heard her phone vibrate inside her bag.
It was Toby, suggesting they meet for breakfast at a place that she discovered, once clicking on the link he had attached to the message, was less than ten minutes away.
‘I would have made a decision eventually,’ she told the cat as she stood to go. ‘Honest.’
There was nobody at the waterside café when she arrived save for a young waitress, who smiled in greeting before showing her to a table that overlooked the harbour. Toby arrived less than five minutes later, announcing himself with a loud ‘boo’ that frightened several gulls into flight.
‘Are you trying to give me even more grey hairs?’ she scolded, as her chuckling brother eased himself into the seat opposite hers.
‘Sorry,’ Toby said, sounding anything but. ‘I couldn’t resist.’
Kate continued to berate him good-naturedly as he motioned to the waitress to bring menus, her foot tapping away on the ground beneath the chair while they ordered. Breakfast was a simple ham and cheese omelette washed down with fresh orange juice and a rich, deliciously bitter espresso. As she broke off bits of leftover bread from the basket and tossed them out for the birds, Kate’s attention was snagged by a shaft of sunlight that had broken through the clouds, falling like an open sail across the white-stone buildings in the distance.
‘Not a bad place to stop for a bite to eat, eh?’ said Toby. ‘This is where the majority of the smaller boats are moored, those used for fishing or rented out to tourists intrepid enough to venture out onto the water without a guide. The main port, where the passenger ferries stop and most of the taxi boats leave from is a short walk away, along the coastal path.’
‘I see,’ she said, soothed by a full stomach and the gentle lapping of the waves. ‘You’re up earlier than I thought you’d be,’ she added, smiling as Toby yawned in reply.
‘Big day today,’ he said. ‘Got to get the catamaran over to Split to pick up some bits for the hostel.’
‘Oh? You never said.’
‘It was a last-minute decision,’ he said. ‘There’s a particular shade of powder-blue paint that my husband has set his heart on for the laundry room and it’s only available in Split. And, as we have to go anyway, Filippo and I thought we’d make a day of it, see some of our friends for lunch.’
‘Sounds nice.’
Kate waited expectantly for her invite to follow.
‘I would say come with us,’ Toby continued, ‘but I doubt there’ll be room in the jeep, not with all the stuff we need to pick up. It’s not just the paint, we’re collecting a whole load of flatpack tables and chairs for the terrace.’
‘It’s OK,’ Kate said, feigning nonchalance as she extracted her phone from her bag. ‘I’m sure I can find something to do in your absence.’
‘That’s why I’m here.’ Toby’s tone had switched from sleepy to resolute. ‘Staring at this all day,’ he said, taking the mobile from her and holding it up, ‘is not doing you any good.’
‘Hey!’ Kate made a grab for it and missed.
‘I was thinking that maybe I could keep hold of it?’ he said. ‘Just for today, so you can’t keep checking it. This phone has become a ball and chain, dragging you back to London every ten minutes. You need a break from it.’
‘No, I don’t.’ Kate’s fingers were inching involuntarily along the table.
‘Just for today,’ Toby persisted. ‘I told you when we came out here that I would support you, so please let me try. I want you to be happy, sis – happier than you are right now. I do see you, you know. I can tell you’re only pretending to be OK.’
Kate said nothing.
Toby’s second coffee had arrived, and he put down the phone in order to open a sachet of sugar. Knowing this was her opportunity to snatch it back, Kate was surprised to find that she didn’t take it.
‘OK,’ she told him. ‘You can take it – but I want you to know that I’m only agreeing to this under duress. I’m doing this purely for you, and I want it back this evening.’
Toby nodded. ‘I have the perfect idea of what you can do today to take your mind off things,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘I think you should head over there to the beach at Jerolim,’ he said. ‘It’s mine and Filippo’s favourite spot in the Pakleni Islands and it’s less than ten minutes away by taxi boat.’
Kate stared out towards the direction he was pointing, watching as gulls dived into the shallows in search of scraps.
‘The beach there is truly captivating,’ Toby went on. ‘I honestly think it will help to distract you from this’ – he held up Kate’s phone again – ‘and everything else, for that matter.’
‘OK,’ Kate agreed, although not without misgivings. His enthusiasm was making her suspicious. ‘I’ll go if you can tell me what’s so special about it?’
Toby took another sip of his coffee and grinned. ‘You’ll see,’ he said.
Chapter 8
It only took the taxi boat ten minutes to reach Jerolim, but that turned out to be more than enough time to lift Kate’s spirits. She had taken off her straw hat to stop it blowing away, and her long red hair rippled out behind her, twisting, curling and whipping across her cheeks as she turned to stare back at the diminishing harbour.
Despite the fact that it was still relatively early in the season, every space on the wooden bench seat inside the boat was taken, while the floor played host to a mess of beach umbrellas, picnic baskets and snorkelling equipment. They were sitting low enough for Kate to reach over the side and trail her fingers through the clear water. It was so blue that she half-expected her hand to re-emerge stained, as if by paint, and felt her mouth tug upwards into a smile.
Having been first on board, she was the last to disembark, and took her time clambering carefully out onto the wide stone jetty. The island had the same craggy shoreline as its larger cousin across the water, but the surrounding trees were more unkempt here than in Hvar. Kate crunched her way over flat white pebbles towards a rustic wooden sign painted with the words ‘Welcome to Jerolim’. It appeared to mark the start of a pathway, which she followed through the undergrowth.
It was impossible to hear anything except the collective hum of the crickets. They sounded to Kate as if a thousand tiny pneumatic drills had been switched on all at once. The little insects were always so busy, so insistent, yet she had grown accustomed to them so quickly. When you closed your eyes and listened in London, it was the heavy drone of traffic that filtered through first, while over here it seemed to be the birds, or the wind, or the water.
The scent of pine was rich in the air, the ground below her feet softened by fallen needles and patterned with droplets of sunlight. Kate reached instinctively for her phone to take a photo, only to remember that Toby had it. Why on earth had she agreed to that?
Distracted by her muddled thoughts, she had not been paying proper attention to where the path was heading, but now she glanced up to find that she had made it to the island’s beach bar – a small, single-storey building the colour of baked fudge.
Tables and chairs that had been fashioned from fallen trunks and stumps spread from the edge of the trail into the treeline beyond, while to the right was a shallow cove fringed with more sugar-lump stones. As she gazed
around now, Kate could understand what her brother had meant about Jerolim being special. But more than that, there was an unspoilt charm to every part of Croatia that she had seen so far; the beauty here felt less contrived than it did in the more traditional resorts in Spain and the Canary Islands, where she and James had holidayed together in the past. James preferred to book an all-inclusive, so he could take advantage of a bottomless bar and buffet, whereas Kate had always secretly wished he would suggest they rent an apartment instead, somewhere with a kitchen so she could cook for him on the nights they chose not to dine out. But she had never said anything. James worked hard – far harder than she ever had – so it was only fair that he got to enjoy his leisure time as he saw fit.
Digging twenty kunas out of her purse, Kate went to the open hatch of the bar and bought herself a bottle of water. There weren’t many customers around, save for one elderly man who was sucking an iced coffee up through a paper straw, but instead of sitting down at one of the tables, she decided to give in to the lure of the sea.
At first, as she made her delicate way over the smooth pale stones in search of a place to lay down her towel, everything about the beach seemed normal. There were children splashing away happily in the water, a dog panting in the shade of upturned fishing boat and the usual battalion of colourful parasols. It was only as Kate stumbled, her foot slipping sideways out of her sandal, that she spotted the first uncovered bottom.
The first uncovered male bottom.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Kate assumed she had caught the man changing, but he merely frowned at her, seemingly nonplussed.
It couldn’t be? Could it?
Coming to a standstill, she glanced first left, then right, the truth becoming ever more apparent with every naked breast, bum, exposed bush and . . . All the blood drained from Kate’s face. She didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. What was it that Toby had said? That Jerolim was captivating.
CAPTIVATING?
She was going to kill him. As if he had sent her off unawares to a nudist beach! What kind of brother – or indeed human – did that to a person? Kate wanted to close her eyes to it all, but she could not seem to stop seeing all the bodies, all the flesh, all the dangling bits and pieces. Turning to flee, she stared straight down at a man who had just raised both his knees and watched in horror as his testicles slipped down into the gap between his thighs.
No, death was too good for Toby. She would have to think of something worse.
A woman was heading down to the water now, her sunburnt bottom as red and shiny as a snooker ball, while a young lithe couple played a game of bat and ball nearby, her boobs and his penis bouncing about all over the place.
Kate was not a prude, but she had never even sunbathed topless before, let alone starkers. This was not the place for her – a fact that bloody Toby would have known only too well.
In her hurry to retreat to the relative safety of the beach bar, Kate almost tumbled over on the stones for a second time only to be caught mid-fall by a man who had just emerged, dripping wet, from the sea.
‘Steady there,’ he said, propping her back onto her feet. ‘Are you OK?’
‘No. I mean, yes.’ Kate hooked a finger into her sandal and pulled it back over her heel.
The man let go of the arm he had grabbed. He wasn’t much taller than her, Kate realised, as she took in a mass of dark-blond dreadlocks and a long, matted beard. Their eyes were almost on a level, his the palest ice-blue and so direct that she felt suddenly unnerved. Dropping her gaze instinctively downwards, Kate was confronted by broad, tanned shoulders, a sodden forest of chest hair and deep, sharp grooves that ran from above his hips down towards his––
‘Oh Jesus,’ she said, clapping a hand over her face.
‘I get that a lot, what with the facial hair,’ he said evenly.
She hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t. All she had seen was a dark mass of pubic hair and a flash of pale pink – nothing else.
Kate opened her fingers and peered through the gap.
‘I didn’t see anything,’ she squeaked. ‘I didn’t – I wasn’t’
The man folded his arms. They were thick and solid and covered in bleached blond hairs.
‘Doesn’t bother me,’ he said.
‘Clearly,’ she replied, her voice at least six octaves higher than usual.
‘This is a nudist beach,’ he said, sounding more amused than confused. ‘Being naked is kind of the whole point.’
‘Yes, I see that.’
Kate wondered if her voice would ever return from that of a tightly corseted mouse to normal adult woman.
‘You’re not a nudist,’ he surmised. He was clearly British-born, that much was clear from his voice, but Kate thought she could detect a slight lilt to his accent.
‘So,’ he went on, ‘I have to ask – why did you come to this beach?’
He was definitely trying his best not to laugh at her. Kate realised then how foolish she must look, standing here with her hand planted over her face, and lowered it gingerly, keeping her eyes determinedly on a point just below his nose.
‘My brother,’ she muttered, as the corners of the man’s mouth twitched. ‘He sent me here, told me it would cheer me up. I am going to put earwigs in his shoes as punishment.’
‘Brutal,’ he said. He had unfolded his arms now but made no move to locate a towel or cover his lower half. ‘Earwigs have a nasty bite.’
‘Good,’ Kate declared. ‘I’m going to need plenty of them. Honestly, though – my brother is such a dick.’
At the mention of the word, Kate was suddenly compelled to glance down again, and this time she did not manage to stop herself. The man with the dreadlocks did not so much as shift position. He must have seen her looking – he must, even now, be watching her staring at it – at him. She had to stop. Why couldn’t she stop? Oh, hell.
STOP. LOOKING. AT. IT.
‘I should go,’ she said, finally tearing her eyes away. Kate could feel the heat flooding into her cheeks as the realisation of what she had just seen dawned. She needed to get out of here – and fast.
‘Do you want to—’ the man started to say, but Kate did not hang around to hear the rest. She was already scrabbling away, half-running, half-tripping over the stones in her haste to escape from him, from this beach, from her own mortification.
Her only comfort, as she hurried back onto the taxi boat twenty minutes later, was that Hvar was a relatively large and busy island. The chances of her ever bumping into the man again were slim, if not non-existent. Life had been unkind enough to her recently, so perhaps on this occasion it would let her off the hook?
She really, really hoped so.
Chapter 9
The hammering woke Kate long before her alarm went off.
Dragged abruptly from a dream where she was being pursued by a yeti wearing James’s bright white trainers, Kate sat up so fast that the room started to spin and she had to clutch both hands to her head in an effort to steady it.
What the hell was going on?
Another flurry of bangs echoed up through the floorboards.
Kate groped for her phone. The screen was so bright that it made her eyes water and she had to squint to make out a text from Toby.
Good news. Just heard from Alex – he’ll be here in the morning to build bunks.
There was a crash from downstairs, followed by whistling.
Kate flopped back down against the pillows with a groan. Her brother had sent the message in the early hours – hopefully up late tending to all his bruises. Kate had waited on the roof terrace for him and Filippo to return from their day trip to Split, a bag of ice cubes torn open ready to throw at him. Toby, who had smirked with all the contrition of the Cheshire Cat, merely responded with an unrepentant ‘you’re welcome’ before ducking behind his husband to hide. When she had later filled the two men in on her eventful morning – including the part about the naked man she had encountered – her brother had clapped his hands together in del
ight.
‘Retribution will be mine,’ she had warned him, before adding, ‘Now give me my phone.’
There had been no messages waiting for her from James. Kate was beginning to think that her plan to disappear from England was not having the desired effect, although she had only been gone a couple of days. Surely after a week had passed, he would begin to wonder why she hadn’t been in touch?
A drill whirred into noisy life below her and Kate clenched her jaw in irritation. It was five a.m. – what kind of tradesman showed up to start work this early? This Alex bloke wasn’t exactly conventional though, not if what Toby and Filippo had told her was true. Perhaps in his weird world, it made perfect sense to fire up the power tools when most people were still sleeping?
Too tired and discombobulated to bother brushing her hair or putting anything on over the shorts and vest she slept in, save for an old hoodie of James’s, Kate put on her glasses, dragged herself out of bed and went downstairs, thinking that now she was up, she may as well do the polite thing and offer the hostel’s resident carpenter a tea or coffee, even if he was to blame for waking her up.
‘Knock, knock,’ she called out, pushing open the door to one of the mixed dormitories and walking straight into a cloud of sawdust. There was a man crouched on the floor facing away from her, his face obscured by some sort of plastic mask and his hair – no, his dreadlocks – twisted up in a man-bun.
Kate emitted a small ‘oh’ of horror, but before she could turn and flee, the drilling stopped and the man sat back on his haunches, removing his protective visor before turning to look at her. If he was surprised to see the strange woman that had barrelled into him on the nudist beach standing agog in the doorway, then he hid it well.
The Getaway: A holiday romance for 2021 - perfect summer escapism! Page 5