Sunlounger - the Ultimate Beach Read (Sunlounger Stories Book 1)

by Belinda Jones

  About the Author

  Carrie Duffy grew up in Selby, North Yorkshire before moving to Paris at the age of eighteen. She went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University before training as an actress. Her novels IDOL and DIVA were published by HarperCollins, and are glamorous bonkbusters set in the worlds of music and fashion. Carrie lives in west London and is currently working on her third novel.

  Website: www.carrieduffy.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/Carrie-Duffy/206886522702389

  Twitter: @cazduffy

  Visit the Sunlounger website at www.va-va-vacation.com/carrie-duffy

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

  You can also chat with the authors on the Belinda Jones Travel Club Facebook page.

  Return to the contents list.

  A ROAD TRIP TO REMEMBER

  ***

  Ilana Fox

  Destination: Los Angeles & Las Vegas, USA

  Charlie wasn’t going to be happy when he discovered she’d run away, Amelia thought as she took a sip of whisky and tried to push the image of her former boyfriend out of her mind. The smoky liquid burned as it touched her tongue, and as Amelia forced herself to swallow it she tried not to think about what it meant that she was now single again; that she’d just walked out on the love of her life.

  It had been suggested that she watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean, but all Amelia could focus on was her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling window. Her light brown hair was tired and dull – her highlights had faded a long time ago – and there were dirty-grey bags under her bloodshot eyes. She had a sense that the whisky in her hand was supposed to either jolly her mood or numb her pain, but she knew it was going to take more than a little bit of alcohol to help her get over Charlie. Again.

  ‘How are you holding up?’ a voice said from the other side of the room, and Amelia turned to see Jo gently rocking her newborn baby in her arms. Jasper’s milky-blue eyes fixed upon his mother, and Jo smiled down at him before she turned her attention back to her best friend.

  ‘If you can’t tell the difference between jetlag and heartache that’s got to be a good thing, right?’ Amelia cracked. In the distance the sky was ablaze with the blood reds and violent pinks of a typical LA sunset, but Amelia barely noticed the colours as she flopped onto one of Jo and William’s expensive-looking cream sofas. All she could think about was Charlie and the expression on his face when they’d had their final explosive argument.

  ‘So what happened?’ Jo asked as Jasper began to fall asleep in her arms.

  ‘Charlie promised that we’d start saving so we can buy a flat together and think about doing the grown-up thing of marriage and kids, but every time I tried to talk to him about it he changed the subject. If he’s not willing to commit now he never will be… so I confronted him, we had a huge row about me not being patient, and I left.’

  Amelia had never wanted to settle down – she’d done the London dating scene so expertly that she was considered a pro – but several years ago she’d bumped into Charlie, her first proper boyfriend from when she was in her early 20s, and she’d fallen in love with him all over again. Charlie at thirty-five was a lot different from the Charlie she’d known aged twenty-one, and he’d changed from the playboy who’d broken her heart. Yet he was still bad at the grown-up things – at paying the bills, at acting his age.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you came here,’ Jo said as she broke into Amelia’s thoughts. ‘Take some time to concentrate on you and to recover. LA is probably the best place in the world to pamper yourself.’

  Amelia nodded, but her insides felt anesthetized – and not just from the effects of the sleeping pills she’d necked so she’d not cry on the flight from London.

  ‘Being with Charlie made me realise that I want a family… but I feel like I’m running out of time,’ she whispered. Amelia rarely admitted the thoughts she kept hidden in the bottom of her heart and she flinched at how vulnerable this made her feel. ‘What if I never get over him?’

  Jo reached over and took Amelia’s hand.

  ‘You will,’ she said. ‘I promise you that you will.’

  The weeks passed but Amelia remained on autopilot. She began every day with a run on Santa Monica beach, became a regular in the local organic coffee shop, and she spent her evenings cooking elaborate dinners for William and Jo to thank them for allowing her to stay – even though she could only manage a few bites of food herself.

  Amelia believed that you had to fake it to make it, yet the superhuman effort it took to pretend she was okay exhausted her. She couldn’t sleep due to the happy memories of Charlie that bloomed as she closed her eyes at night, and in the daytime she felt like she was underwater. Despite Amelia’s fixed smile, Jo and William couldn’t help but notice her sorrow. They decided to do something about it.

  ‘We’ve come up with a plan for you,’ Jo said one night as they sat down for dinner. Amelia eyed her warily.

  ‘Now, don’t look like that,’ William chimed in, and he grinned at his wife. ‘Anyone would think Ames doesn’t trust us.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you,’ Amelia began, ‘it’s just that I’ve known Jo for an extremely long time… and she comes up with crazy ideas.’

  ‘Crazily successful ideas,’ William said, and Amelia was forced to agree with that, at least. Years earlier Jo had set up her own magazine which she’d gone on to sell to News Corporation for a small fortune, and she was currently juggling new motherhood with running her own tech start-up from the spare bedroom.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’

  Jo beamed. ‘We’ve devised a treasure hunt for you!’ she exclaimed, and Amelia stared at her in bewilderment.

  ‘You’ve done what?’ she asked again.

  ‘We’ve created a road trip for you! Well, for us, really. I have a few meetings at the tech hub in Las Vegas, and I thought we’d take a couple of days to drive through the desert. I mean, we could do it in a day, but then we’d miss out on seeing loads of cool places. We’ll take the Mustang, drive with the top down, and pretend we’re Thelma and Louise.’

  Amelia stared at her. When she got excited, Jo’s faced glowed pink just as it had done when she’d been 16 years old.

  ‘But what about the baby?’

  ‘I promise to give him my full attention,’ William said. ‘I’m looking forward to our boy-bonding time.’

  ‘And what about, well – everything else?’ Amelia asked.

  Jo laughed. ‘There’s nothing stopping us! I’ve put together some clues and I’ll be right by your side in case you can’t work them out – it will be brilliant!’

  ‘I have always wanted to go to Vegas…’ Amelia said slowly. Jo grinned at her.

  ‘And when we arrive there will be a brilliant surprise.’

  Amelia smiled. ‘A male stripper with y-fronts made of dollar bills?’

  ‘Something even better than that.’

  ‘We’re The Nymphs of the Evening / Above the Arrowhead and Big Bear / Our food comes with Bible verses / To show we really care.’

  Amelia read out the first clue in a voice still thick with sleep and turned to Jo in amusement. ‘How on earth am I supposed to work this clue out?’

  Jo grinned back at her, and from the depths of her oversized Marc Jacobs shopper she pulled out a road map and her iPhone. ‘Through the magic of old-school travel paraphernalia and modern technology of course. This is the route we’re driving –’ Jo ran her perfectly manicured fingernail along Route 15 – ‘and every clue is a stop on the way, in order.’

  Amelia accepted the map and stared at it until Lakes Arrowhead and Big Bear – situated just on the outskirts of LA – jumped out at her.

  ‘Are we going to some lakes?’ Amelia asked, her voice full of confusion. ‘Or are we going somewhere above where the lakes are?’ The two towns above the lakes were called Hesperia and Victorville. She’d not heard of either before.

  Jo nodded a
t the iPhone in Amelia’s hands. ‘Why not Google the clues?’ she asked, and Amelia suddenly felt weary. She appreciated Jo’s effort, but why couldn’t they just jump on a plane to Vegas like everyone else?

  However, Amelia did as she was told and typed ‘Nymphs of the Evening’ into Google. The top result was for the Hesperides Wikipedia page, which therefore made it obvious that they were going to Hesperia, not Victorville. She tried again, this time searching for ‘food Bible verses’ but the only results that came up were scriptures about how food was the glory of God.

  ‘Are we going to a church?’ Amelia asked doubtfully. If Jo thought the best way for her to get over Charlie was to find religion – or perhaps Scientology – she’d turned more LA than she’d thought.

  Jo laughed. ‘Not quite,’ she remarked, and she glanced at her watch. The sky was a beautiful lemon yellow tinged with rose gold, but dawn would soon disappear and when it did LA’s famously heavy commuter traffic would appear. ‘By the time we get to Hesperia you’ll have worked it out, I’m sure.’

  As the hours crept up on them, Amelia was astonished to find they’d still not left the never-ending sprawl of LA’s suburbs. Their bright red Mustang inched along the smog-filled arteries of the city that were jammed with car drivers full of self-importance and impatience.

  ‘I hoped we’d miss this traffic,’ Jo remarked as the car moved slowly and steadily through Burbank, through Pasadena, through Arcadia. ‘But as soon as we get to the highway it should be a different matter – the rest of the drive should be a breeze.’

  Jo was right, it was. As they left the rambling city behind and got onto the interstate proper the cars fell away, and soon they were almost alone as they cut through a ragged terrain of dark green mountains speckled with desert sand. The view was unlike anything Amelia had seen before, and she couldn’t take her eyes away from the window.

  ‘We’ll be hitting Hesperia soon,’ Jo said after a while. Amelia had allowed herself to fall into a dreamy fantasy of making this journey with Charlie, and Jo’s voice broke into it. She immediately felt annoyed with herself – this was her reality now. ‘Have you worked out where our first stop is?’

  Amelia shook her head and looked at her phone again. She opened a browser and tried a several different variations on ‘Bible’, ‘verse’, and ‘food’. Nothing came up, and she was aware of her stomach rumbling in hunger. It felt like it hadn’t done that in a long time.

  ‘Can we stop for lunch before I work out this clue?’ she asked Jo, and Jo took her eyes off the road for a second to smile at her.

  ‘Our clue will take us to lunch,’ she said, and Amelia suddenly realised that the first stop on the treasure hunt was a restaurant. She immediately began Googling places to eat in Hesperia and the same result came up over and over again: In-N-Out Burger. She did a quick search for the name of the restaurant and ‘Bible verse’ and knew she’d hit gold: In-N-Out food wrappers were printed with discreet religious passages.

  ‘We’re going to In-N-Out Burger’ in Hesperia,’ Amelia announced confidently to Jo, and Jo nodded happily.

  ‘That we are,’ she replied.

  It wasn’t until she’d caught Jo’s eye that Amelia realised that she’d just eaten her first full meal since she’d left Charlie. She’d wolfed down the Double-Double cheeseburger, fries and strawberry shake in minutes.

  ‘It’s good to finally see you eat something substantial,’ Jo murmured softly, and for the first time since she’d arrived in California, Amelia realised how worried Jo must have been about her.

  ‘I just hadn’t felt hungry until now,’ Amelia admitted. ‘Ever since I left London my stomach has been in knots.’

  Jo nodded. ‘What do you think has changed?’ she asked, and Amelia considered it.

  Perhaps it was the sight of the open road and the thought that she could go anywhere and do anything… or perhaps it was because she felt like she was running away from her problems and she needed to eat to survive. Whatever the reason, she felt better now that her stomach was full; she felt solid and energized… and she had the next clue in her hands, which had been given to her by the perky girl behind her counter.

  Amelia shrugged, but she bestowed a smile upon Jo that her best friend hadn’t seen in a long time. ‘I just really love burgers,’ she replied, and they got back into the car to continue their journey.

  ‘A place in the next city / We want to show you dreams / In glorious Technicolor / Drive up to our screens.’

  This time the clue was easier. Amelia immediately guessed that they were heading to a drive-in, and after consulting the map she worked out where they were had to go to: Barstow was the next city, and the Skyline on Old Highway 58 was their cinema.

  ‘Ever since we watched Grease at school I’ve dreamed of going to a drive-in,’ Amelia confessed. ‘Do you remember watching it when we were meant to be doing our homework? We were probably about fifteen and I desperately wanted to be Olivia Newton-John.’

  Jo laughed. ‘So did I – I dreamed of being able to transform from being invisible into someone really hot.’

  ‘You were hot in your own way,’ Amelia stressed, but Jo laughed.

  ‘I think it’s safe to say that I was an ugly duckling back then – but you looked past the superficial and liked me for who I was. I’ll never forget what a good friend you were to me, and I love you for that. We all love you.’

  Jo’s kind words pierced through the imaginary force-field that Amelia had constructed around her to deal with her break-up, and she felt tears begin to prickle at her eyes.

  ‘Everyone loves me but Charlie,’ Amelia whispered, and she was furious with herself that she’d gone from thinking of happy things to feeling the despair of her breakup so quickly. Jo took one look at her friend and pulled the car over. Dust rose as the wheels hit the desert sand, yet Amelia didn’t notice or appreciate the movie-like effect Jo had created.

  ‘Ames,’ Jo began, ‘Charlie does love you – I know he does. That’s not why you ended your relationship with him. You ended it because you felt like he couldn’t give you what you wanted or needed.’

  Amelia sniffed. ‘If he loved me he would have done,’ she said in a small voice, but she knew that Jo was right. Charlie had been in love with her in his own way – it just hadn’t been enough for her. It hadn’t been the sort of love she was looking for.

  Jo leaned over and squeezed Amelia’s hand tightly. ‘This is the first time you’ve mentioned Charlie since the night you arrived,’ she commented, and Amelia blinked. For weeks her spirit had felt frozen, but the treasure hunt under the soaring sun had begun to thaw it, and she could no longer keep her emotions in check. ‘I think that’s a good thing,’ Jo continued. ‘You can’t keep all this stuff bottled up. It’s not doing you any good.’

  ‘I just can’t bear to say it all out loud,’ Amelia replied, and Jo nodded sadly.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But in time you’ll remember the good things and will be grateful that you experienced them, and you’ll slowly start to forget about the bad.’

  As the car pulled back onto the highway, Amelia thought about what Jo had said, and by the time they reached the Starlite Drive-In she realised that her friend was right… about everything. In pure LA-speak she needed to embrace the change in her life and find some good in it – starting here, and starting now.

  ‘What are we going to watch?’ Amelia asked Jo as the car slowed down outside the large outside screen. Jo bit her lip and turned to Amelia with a hesitant smile.

  ‘An Affair to Remember,’ she admitted, and as the title of the film fell out of Jo’s lips, Amelia began to understand what this road-trip was really about – it was about coming to terms with what had happened with Charlie, and learning to let go.

  ‘Anything can happen, don't you think?’ remarked Deborah Kerr’s character on the large screen and then the closing credits of the movie began to roll. Amelia leaned back in the leather car seat with the satisfaction one only feels when they’ve seen
a fulfilling movie. It felt good to relax… but as this treasure hunt had shown her, it felt even better to keep on moving forward. The more they drove, the more it felt as if she came to terms with her failed relationship.

  ‘So what’s the next clue?’ Amelia asked. The sun had dropped behind the mountains and the bronzed desert sand was cooling as night began to fall.

  ‘It’s not really a proper clue,’ Jo said, ‘more like a mini clue.’ She reached into her handbag and pulled out the next envelope, which she passed to Amelia.

  ‘We’re by a haunted slip-road,’ Amelia read, ‘A place to come when blue / Come eat away your evening / And say hello to Peggy Sue.’

  Amelia pulled out her iPhone, Googled ‘Peggy Sue Barstow’ and was gratified when the first result was ‘Peggy Sue’s 50s Diner’ on the outskirts of the town.

  ‘We’re going for some dinner, a bit of spontaneous rock n’roll dancing at the bar, and then we’re getting an early night at the inn next door,’ Jo explained, and rather than feeling disappointed that they weren’t travelling much further along the highway to Vegas, Amelia realised that their evening sounded absolutely perfect.

  The next morning Amelia marveled to Jo about the perfect night’s sleep she’d had. ‘I haven’t slept so well since I arrived in the States,’ she remarked as she tucked into a breakfast of waffles, bacon and maple syrup. When Jo pulled a face at her she realised her faux pas. ‘I mean, your guest bedroom is extremely comfortable, but there’s something about being on the road that tires you out.’

  Jo grinned and took a sip of coffee. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘I slept like a log too – but that may have something to do with the fact that William’s tending to Jasper.’