He began to get his things as Mary walked in.
‘You look so much better, ma’am.’
Todd had to agree. The red was beginning to look more of a brown and nothing was peeling. Which he was grateful for as that would have earned him a death sentence.
‘Mary, call me Katie. How many times do I have to ask you to call me Katie?’
Todd smiled to himself and went to change.
‘So, is everything clear then?’ Katie asked Mary. As Todd got changed he couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. He was about to leave, but he opened the door and stopped.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Katie. Please. Can I get you something to drink before you start?’
‘A glass of water, please.’
‘Oh, sit down while I get it for you,’ Katie smiled.
‘I can—’
‘Nonsense, Mary, let me do something nice for you, after all you do for me.’
He saw Mary sat bolt upright on the cream suede sofa, her uniform riding up around her knees. Her hands were folded on her lap. Todd couldn’t bring himself to leave. He had never seen Katie like this before.
‘Is it all right?’ Katie asked.
‘It’s very nice,’ Mary replied.
‘Oh, good.’ She was visibly relieved. ‘So, Mary, do you live on the island?’
‘Yes, all my life.’
‘And do you like it?’
‘I do.’
‘I bet. It must be lovely to live somewhere so beautiful. I live in LA, which to be honest is really fake. And ugly and filled with pollution. I used to live in the countryside in America. It was beautiful there.’
‘It was?’
Katie nodded. Still Todd hung back. He’d never heard this about Katie, and certainly not from her.
‘Do you have family?’ Katie asked.
‘A husband and three children.’
‘And do you love them very much?’
‘I do.’
‘Oh, Mary, I long to love like you.’
‘Eh?’ She shuffled around a bit and tried to pull her uniform down slightly. Todd noticed that Katie was oblivious to her discomfort.
‘To have a man to love and who loves you. To have children who need you, who depend on you. My family back home, in the country, they didn’t really love me. They do now, but only because I send them money. Can you imagine having to buy love?’ Todd felt terrible for her.
‘No?’ Mary looked shocked as a tear rolled down Katie’s cheek. ‘You know you have a fine husband.’
Todd felt his blood run cold; now he felt terrible for himself. ‘I do, but, well, this is meant to be a secret, but as we’re such good friends I can tell you. He doesn’t love me.’
‘He doesn’t?’
‘No. He loves men.’ Katie collapsed in tears as Mary took her in her arms and comforted her.
Todd froze. Did Katie not know that he was still here? She had just told their maid his big secret. The one that no one was supposed to know outside the studio. Fuck. He couldn’t believe it, and he didn’t know what to do. Unable to face the scene in the living room he escaped through the other door and angrily took his script to the pool. He was angry with Katie for blurting out their secret; he was angry with himself because her tears spoke volumes.
‘You’re working again,’ Marcus said.
‘Never ends,’ Todd replied, sitting up. He looked at Marcus flirtatiously.
‘Can I clear the breakfast things?’
‘Sure.’ Todd frantically searched his brain for something to say. ‘How long have you worked here?’ Not great, but a start.
‘Just over a year. My parents have a small hotel in Barbados, so I thought I’d take a different place to learn the ropes.’
‘That’s great!’ Todd chastised himself for being such an idiot. ‘Are you planning on running it one day?’
‘That’s the plan. I’ve got ideas; I’d like to make it more upmarket. That’s why I came here, although this isn’t what I had in mind, to be honest.’
‘Thank God.’ Todd laughed, and began to relax. This was nothing to do with Katie, it was to do with him. If she had someone to confide in then why couldn’t he?
‘So are you enjoying your honeymoon?’ Marcus’s intention was clear.
‘Not really.’ Todd looked him straight in the eye. If Katie was going to be indiscreet, what was there to stop him?
‘Can you get out?’ Marcus asked. Todd was taken aback by his forwardness, but also turned on by it.
‘Not tonight. I agreed to have dinner with Katie.’ He needed to tread carefully. He couldn’t blow this; he’d come too far to risk everything for one night of lust and, despite her betrayal of him, this still wasn’t fair on Katie. He was disappointed, bitterly disappointed.
‘There’s a place in town. I can get someone to drive you. Tomorrow?’
‘I can’t...’
‘I’ll send a car. It will be waiting at the front at nine. No one will know.’ He stared at Marcus, who looked and sounded determined. Todd felt his heart speed up.
‘But...’
‘It’s up to you. The car will be there.’
As he watched Marcus leave, he knew that he couldn’t be so reckless. Could he? Katie had been pretty reckless. Perhaps two could play at that game after all.
16
The Love Resort Evening Entertainment
The entertainment schedule below is run on a weekly basis and is the same every week, unless advertised otherwise.
Monday—Couples’ Karaoke
Tuesday—Romantic Disco
Wednesday—Couples’ Talent Competition
Thursday—Taste of the Caribbean, Limbo Night!
Friday—Love Songs with Juliana
Saturday—Live Romantic Piano Renditions by Candlelight
Sunday—Romantic Barbeque
*
‘I have called you all here because I want them fucking well sent home.’ Anne-Marie paced the office, while Ed, Lily and Abigail sat listening.
‘We can’t send them home,’ Ed said. ‘Think of the publicity.’
‘What about the other guests, Ed? What about Todd and Katie, hmm?’
‘But, Anne-Marie, what about your book?’ Abigail put in.
‘Well, that’s not going to get written. Oh no, not at all while I have to suffer in the face of those awful people. It’s as if they all entered the competition to spite me, to hurt me, to ruin me.’ She was thunderous.
After their impeccable behaviour (according to Lily) during the previous day, Anne-Marie had felt more hopeful. How lovely that Jimmy and Emily were taking a beautiful romantic cruise together. How wonderful that Carla told Thea that she would follow Lee to the ends of the earth. How romantic that Thea had confided in Carla that Tim wrote her love letters and poems daily. How heart-warming that Lee had told Tim that he didn’t notice any woman other than Carla. How utterly charming that Tim had told Lee that Thea was his soul mate. For a while she had thought that her book was back on track.
But they’d blown it. When Anne-Marie had attended the evening entertainment to watch them, she’d thought that it would be to enhance the days’ events and get more material. Not to ruin her night, and cause her book what might be irrevocable damage.
They’d arrived at the romantic disco just after nine. The first thing Anne-Marie noticed was that there were five of them, not six. Jimmy was missing. She discovered that Jimmy had a bad case of seasickness and was in bed. So much for a romantic hero. They didn’t get seasick. Then Tim, of course, went to the bar and started lining up drinks. The other guests couldn’t fail to notice how he ordered four different drinks at a time, and then tried to get the others to do the same. The amount of alcohol he consumed in one night was more than most of the guests consumed in their whole stay. He was clearly taking advantage of her hospitality and she was mad as hell. She had been talked out of telling him off about breaking into the bar by Ed, who said that they needed to keep things sweet for the public
ity, but she was itching to get her hands on him, jumped-up drunken bastard that he was.
Her paying guests watched the group with growing unease, and then when Tim started singing along to the disco, he had the cheek to try to make them all join in. Some of them did, others looked horrified. A few guests even walked out in protest. Anne-Marie was furious. The competition winners were cheapening her resort. When they were supposed to be making it classier!
‘It’s karaoke night on Mondays,’ Anne-Marie had protested in vain. Abigail was nowhere to be seen, Ed and Lily had gone to talk to all the other guests to pacify them, leaving her all alone with ‘those people’.
Lee asked Emily to dance and kept giving everyone the thumbs-up as they swayed along to Whitney Houston. He even had his hand on her bottom! Carla looked as if she would cry, until Tim grabbed her for a dance and then promptly fell on top of her. Anne-Marie didn’t know what to do; she wanted to kill them all.
She called a premature halt to the entertainment at eleven, sending the DJ away before she went angrily home. Then when she woke she discovered that Tim had found the karaoke machine and held his own karaoke night. The bare-faced cheek. And Ed and Lily hadn’t stopped him. They said they were unable to, because quite a few of the other guests joined in, but Anne-Marie didn’t believe that. They kept the barmen there until four, and they probably upset the other guests. After all, she’d had two complaints already that morning! She could no longer cope with them. It had only been four days and they were already ruining her life.
Her nerves were shot to pieces. The book that she was trying so desperately hard to write was being ridiculed by these people. Abigail wouldn’t be able to protect her forever and she had promised her a book. She couldn’t bear the thought of upsetting dear Abigail. But did these young hooligans care? Of course they did not.
One guest had been woken by Emily throwing her shoes at Lee, who’d ducked and they’d hit the guest’s window instead. Then Carla had been found crying hysterically by another guest, who had escorted her to Lily, who had to put her to bed. Lee was asking anyone who would listen to him, ‘What the fuck is it with women?’ and Tim had been singing ‘Hound Dog’ at full blast on a loop for half an hour. She was amazed that only two couples had complained. She guessed the others were far too polite. She wouldn’t entertain Ed’s suggestion that some of the guests had enjoyed themselves, she just wouldn’t.
‘I want them on a plane home,’ she screamed. ‘Today.’
‘Anne-Marie, we have the interviews of the competition winners tomorrow; we need them here for that. Otherwise how will we explain it to the magazine?’
‘And what if they go home and tell everyone, or a newspaper or something, that you threw them out? They’ll twist it and make us look bad,’ Ed added.
‘So what do you suggest?’ her eyes were blazing.
‘I suggest, darling, that you get tomorrow over with and then you give them a talking to,’ Abigail said calmly.
‘Oh, Abigail, where would I be without you? Will it really be all right?’
‘Of course, darling. Now Lily can deal with the guests who complained and maybe you should go for a lie-down,’ Abigail suggested.
‘I will, and don’t forget to keep an eye on things. God, Ed, Lily, you should never have let this happen.’ She swished out of the room.
*
‘That was some row we had last night,’ Lee said as he woke up.
‘I don’t really know what to say.’ Carla really didn’t; she didn’t remember much apart from sobbing her heart out.
‘It was my fault, you’re right; I behaved like a total wanker.’
‘Is that what I said?’ She couldn’t exactly remember. However, she was certain that Lee’s attention to Emily was the cause of the row. He’d spent nearly the whole evening with her. It rankled. It made her want to kill the other girl. Especially when they’d danced so closely together. Now it all flooded back. She was jealous but she was also humiliated because she was sure that everyone saw her crying.
‘Oh yes, but with a few hundred “fuckings” thrown in. I think I’m going to the gym and then to see if I can get a game of tennis,’ Lee said.
‘Fine.’ She didn’t have the strength to argue. She watched him go, and knew that she was in real trouble. Frustrated, she decided to spend the day on their private balcony, reading, recovering from yet another hangover and reflecting on where she was going wrong. She couldn’t help but blame Emily. Just because her boyfriend wasn’t there, she had to commandeer Lee’s attention. And he hadn’t been sorry. Not as sorry as he should have been. His apologies were perfunctory, but she could see his mind was elsewhere. She knew instinctively that it was Emily he was thinking about. She felt her stomach churn. She was close to losing him and she was scared.
*
‘Are you all right?’ Jimmy asked as Emily woke.
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Well, you were very angry with me for staying in bed last night and you lost your shoes.’ He had been unable to get any sense out of her when she’d got in. She had been acting like a madwoman.
‘Did I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, I was just drunk—you know what Tim’s like. Sorry.’ Jimmy opened his mouth, then closed it again. He knew better than to push her.
Emily and Jimmy barely spoke through breakfast. Jimmy didn’t understand it. He’d tried so hard to ask her about the evening last night. It was awful for him having to be away from her and maybe that’s why she was angry. She was upset with him for leaving her with two other couples, and he could see why. He was grateful that he felt better today, so he could make it up to her. He’d make sure he was by her side for the rest of the trip, and then she’d be back to her old self in no time.
‘Em, what do you want to do today?’ he asked.
‘Have you seen any of the others?’
‘No, no sign. Maybe if we go and sit by the pool, they’ll join us.’
‘OK, darling, that’s what we’ll do.’ Emily seemed to brighten; she even managed to give him a kiss.
*
‘Tim, you can’t drink that,’ Thea screeched as she woke up and saw Tim drinking red wine from a bottle.
‘Why, is there something wrong with it?’
‘No, Tim, there’s something wrong with you. It’s nine a.m.’ Thea woke in a foul mood, which she attributed to yet another hangover, and the fact that Tim had managed to disrupt the resort again last night. Through her hangover haze she could remember Anne-Marie’s fury. She’d tried and failed to stop Tim. Then Carla had been in a right state, calling Emily a whore, and sobbing. And she wasn’t sure but she thought that she heard Emily calling Lee a bastard and throwing her shoes at him. She rubbed her head. It had been a mad night.
‘Oh, I suppose it’s a bit early.’ He failed to look contrite.
‘Tim, you stopped drinking at four. Well, I thought you did, but maybe you didn’t.’
‘I did.’
‘That’s it. I’ve had enough.’ She flung herself out of bed, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and, picking up her bag, she opened the door.
‘Where are you going?’ He sounded panicked.
‘Out,’ she shouted.
‘Thea, Thea, don’t leave me,’ he begged, as she walked away. She took a path that led her round the resort. She was fuming and needed to walk off the anger. She was tempted to go to Anne-Marie and ask if she could send her home, but then Anne-Marie would eat her up. Her disapproval of them had been clear last night. Under the influence, they’d found it amusing. Now, though, she felt ashamed. They were on a free holiday, thanks to Anne-Marie. The least they could do was to show her some respect. But she really felt that this holiday was a terrible mistake, that the competition was a mistake, that she wanted—no, needed—to go home. Tim was out of control, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
She felt herself begin to sweat, she was walking fast and the heat was getting to her. Her flip-flops began to rub at her t
oes, so she slowed down. She strolled, more calmly past the flower garden, past the perfectly manicured lawn. She could smell the scent of freshly cut grass mingled with the heat and the faint floral smell. She felt even calmer as her surroundings began to work their magic on her.
Thea returned to the room feeling fine. Her walk had helped to clear her head. She had to carry on, no matter how hard it was, and just hope that she could reassert some sort of control over Tim.
She let herself into the room and noticed that the drink was gone. Tim was on the terrace, eyes closed as if he was asleep. She was sure he’d just hidden the booze somewhere, but she didn’t like to ask, and when he finally woke up he didn’t mention it. She didn’t see him have a drink for the rest of the day; she was impressed with the effort he was making. He appeared to be genuinely contrite. Perhaps things would be all right after all.
*
Jimmy, after a silent day, was actually glad to see the others as they walked into the restaurant.
‘Come and join us,’ Thea said pleasantly. Tim was next to her.
‘Hi, guys,’ Emily said enthusiastically, as she sat down. ‘How are you?’
Carla asked Jimmy; Jimmy noticed that she ignored Emily.
‘Fine. Feel a bit stupid.’
‘There’s nothing stupid about seasickness. Every time I go to France on the ferry I suffer from it.’ Jimmy smiled at Carla, but then he wasn’t sure if he should. After all, Carla was acting as if Emily didn’t exist. He was confused, especially as the mood was fairly subdued. He felt as if everyone knew something that he didn’t.
‘I wonder what tonight has in store for us,’ Tim said.
‘Shall we order? I’m starving,’ Lee said quickly.
‘Sure,’ Carla said, picking up the menu.
The atmosphere really was strained; even Tim was quieter than usual, Jimmy decided.
‘What exactly went on last night?’ he asked good-naturedly. Carla and Thea looked at each other, then looked away; no one would meet his eyes. Jimmy began to feel panicked.
‘By the way, before we get carried away, we’ve had a warning,’ Thea said, ignoring Jimmy’s question. ‘I bumped into Ed earlier and he advised us, in that friendly way of his, to keep a low profile.’
The Love Resort Page 14