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

by Belinda Jones

  ‘How are you feeling, Miss?’ the cover boy asked. ‘If you need a hospital, I can take you, but maybe if not, we can look for your bag. Normally, it is dropped so the robber cannot be connected to the crime. Empty of money, of course, but anything else…’

  She thought of her lipstick, first. It was new, her one extravagance before the trip.

  ‘You’d do that?’

  ‘I hope someone would also help my sister in London,’ he said, and offered his hand.

  She looked at the hand. The skin was brown, marked in places, with healed scars. A worker’s hand. She blushed.

  ‘You don’t look very steady but…’

  Was he blushing too?

  ‘Yes. I am a bit… light-headed.’ She grabbed his hand before he could take it away again. His palm was smoother than she’d expected, warm against hers. She felt less unsteady, but somehow more light-headed than before.

  He walked fast, his eyes moving up, down, left, right. There was a stack of furniture piled up in front of a doorway, and he let go of her hand for a few seconds to check behind the battered chairs. She shivered.

  ‘We will find it, miss!’ he said, and the warmth of his hand again was all the convincing she needed.

  ‘I’m Della. Not Miss.’

  ‘De-ya,’ he said, his accent softening the hard double ‘ll’. ‘Pretty.’ And then his eyes met hers and she wasn’t sure if he meant the name or… ‘I am Jordi.’ As they walked, he took his hand away again, then put it out to shake hers. A sweet, formal gesture that made her giddier.

  They were getting further from the square. Her head and arm throbbed more with every step. There were no more camera-toting tourists, but it was busy in the dark street, with women carrying bags full of groceries, or pushing buggies. A homeless man pushed a shopping trolley piled high with random pieces of metal and wood.

  Jordi let go of her hand again and approached the man, chatting in a different language to the one he’d used with the two old ladies. The homeless man glanced at her, then quickly away.

  For the first time, she wondered if wandering the streets of a lawless city with an implausibly convenient Good Samaritan, and no phone, was such a good idea.

  What if… Jordi was less cover boy and more Barcelona’s most wanted?

  As he continued talking to the homeless man, Della thought about her ladies back in the library, fighting over the copy of the Daily Mail. What would they think of a girl being lured to her death after a street robbery on the streets of Barcelona?

  ‘What was she thinking?’ she imagined them saying at elevenses. ‘Silly girl, brought it on herself.’

  Jordi was beckoning her, and looked confused when she backed away. But – and she knew this was the kind of stupid British politeness that could get her killed – she wasn’t quite ready to embarrass herself or him by running.

  ‘De-ya!’ he called out, and there was an impatience in his voice she hadn’t heard before.

  Stay, or go?

  She could hear her own heartbeat.

  GO!

  She began to run, but her legs weren’t working properly, like in a nightmare where your body turns to lead. But the bleeding from her arm was real and so was the pain in her head.

  Now she moved, but there were so many obstacles slowing her down. The motorbike speeding towards her, the dog licking its bum, the kids playing football. It was like being in some hideous computer game.

  She looked over her shoulder.

  Jordi was running after her.

  So was the homeless guy, his trolley rattling menacingly over the cobbles, random pieces of wood falling onto the street behind him.

  The noise made her teeth chatter.

  She kept running. She wasn’t sure what she’d do when she ran out of breath.

  Jordi was gaining on her.

  ‘De-ya! Dey-AAA!’

  She didn’t have much more in her but if she could just get—

  ‘Shit!’

  She tried to stop in time but her knees smashed right into an orange toy car being driven by a plump Chinese tourist with a helmet and a goatee beard.

  Was this silly car a hallucination, caused by the concussion? The pain in her knees was too real for that. She had to keep going, the square couldn’t be much further ahead and then she’d almost be back at the hotel.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘De-ya? Are you okay? You nearly had an accident—’

  Della spun round. If nothing else, the tourist in the dodgem would be a witness, so surely Jordi wouldn’t try anything. ‘Get away from me, I don’t know why you’re even…’

  She glanced away from his curious face, and down towards the hand that wasn’t resting on her shoulder.

  The hand that was holding a denim bag with a butterfly appliqued to the front.

  ‘How? I mean…’

  The guy with the trolley had lost most of his cargo but he was smiling as he sped towards them.

  ‘My friend here had just picked up your bag. I was…negotiating with him.’

  ‘You were going to pay him, for my stolen handbag?’ Della turned round to give the guy the dirtiest of looks, but he was still grinning at her. ‘But…that’s an incentive to steal again.’

  ‘No. No, he didn’t steal it. I mean, look at his shoes? Would a mugger wear those?’

  Della looked down at the man’s trainers. The soles were hanging onto the fabric uppers by the thinnest of threads, so they moved at a slightly different pace to his feet.

  ‘I was simply asking him also if he had any ideas who dropped it. But yes, I offered to pay him by buying him some food.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m afraid your money is gone,’ Jordi said, opening the bag. She could see her phone and keys: the make-up pocket was still safely zipped up. ‘So I wondered if I could buy you a coffee too. Give you a chance to recover, clean up. Unless you need the hospital?’

  ‘I–I’m okay. I should go back to my hotel. Or to the police.’

  Jordi sighed. ‘I will take you if you want. But the police, what do they have to go on?’

  ‘He was wearing black jeans. His face was thin. Bad teeth…’ Even as she spoke, she realised it wasn’t much. And after that run, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to make it back to her hotel without sitting down first.

  ‘I know a little place, not far from here…’

  She’d expected a cave-like bar, with stained tables and candles stuffed into empty rioja bottles. A grizzled barman with a three-legged dog would have been a nice touch, too.

  Instead, she was sitting with Jordi on plastic chairs in the main square, guarding Trolley Man’s trolley and backpack while he was inside raiding the all-you-can-eat buffet counter. It was only metres away from where she’d been attacked.

  ‘Jordi, I want to apologise for running away like—’

  ‘No. Is okay! After what happened, pfft! Is nothing. But maybe now you can know there are good people in our city, not only bad.’

  Good people like you, Della thought.

  Trolley Man – he’d refused to tell Jordi his name – sat down next to them, carrying the leaning tower of food. The sight of his plate, and the thinness of his bones, shamed her even more.

  ‘You hungry, Deya?’

  She was about to answer that she’d only just had breakfast, but then realised it was almost one o’clock. And that, actually, her stomach was rumbling.

  It was a buffet, but the food looked tempting. Jordi helped her pick Spanish foods: country bread, fresh tomatoes heavy with ripeness, neon orange gazpacho soup. A plate of hot ‘fideua’ noodles with seafood.

  ‘And of course, crema catalana,’ Jordi said, putting a wobbling beige jelly onto her tray.

  He paid for her lunch and for a glass of red wine for them both. ‘For the shock.’

  Back in the sun, he showed her how to rub a clove of cut garlic onto the bread, then squash the ripe tomato till it soaked in, and finally top the bread with olive oil from the plastic bottl
e on the table.

  ‘Simple. But delicious, no?’

  It was.

  ‘So, now you tell me why you are alone. Your boyfriend is doing the tour of Camp Nou, our famous football stadium?’

  ‘I’m here on my own.’

  He shook his head. ‘A conference, maybe? Business?’

  Della sighed. ‘Nothing like that. I wanted…to get away from it all.’

  ‘And why my city? For the culture, maybe? For Gaudi?’

  The name rang a bell but she couldn’t work out quite why. ‘I’m sorry, who—’

  Jordi frowned for the first time. ‘The guy who designed our famous buildings!’

  The frown made him look more like of a cover boy. But she cringed: she’d gone down in his estimation. She looked ignorant. ‘I…I decided not to read anything about the city before I came. To have no preconceptions. So I could be open minded. Experience it fully.’

  The frown softened a little. ‘It is a good thing to be open to new experiences.’

  Oh god, he thinks I’m here to have sex with strangers, Della thought. But she couldn’t think of a thing to say that wouldn’t make it worse.

  ‘So your experiences so far? No. Don’t tell me. What view could you have of Barcelona except a negative one?’

  ‘The view is improving,’ she said, but then choked. God, did she really say that? Luckily he didn’t seem to have noticed her clumsy compliment.

  ‘So. Now, fideua.’ He handed her the bowl of saffron-coloured noodles, studded with prawns and little clamshells. But she was distracted by his hands again. Clean nails, long fingers, with healed white scars, like the flaws that make a diamond individual. ‘Like paella but better.’

  He pronounced the ‘ell’ as ‘eh’, the same way he said her name, and she wanted him to say it again and again.

  ‘Why better?’

  ‘Because, De-ya, the pasta takes no time to cook. So the seafood is fresh, not-overcooked.’

  It tasted of the sea, but more bracing. Neither of them talked for a while. When she’d finished, she asked him, ‘What about you?’

  He shrugged. ‘I would say my life is much less interesting that our friend’s here,’ he said, nodding towards Trolley Man. ‘I live where I was born.’

  ‘I still live in my home town, too.’

  Jordi laughed. ‘In the same flat where you were born? At the age of thirty? Barcelona is a city of dreams but to make the dreams happen takes money. And right now, there is no money. Same for our friend, he dreamed of living here. And now look at what he must do, raid the refuse to live. Maybe even the man who robbed you was a dreamer, once.’

  Della saw a flash of that skinny face. ‘I’m not about to feel sorry for him.’

  ‘Of course not. Is not what I meant. If I found him, I would teach him a lesson for doing such a thing to a visitor. You deserve hospitality, not…’

  She looked into his face, righteously indignant, and his anger on her behalf gave her a little thrill. Not that she wanted anyone taught a lesson, but…well, it didn’t take Freud to work out why she was impressed by Jordi, after Antony and the rest of her fey, literary ex-boyfriends who’d have disappeared in a puff of hash smoke at the faintest hint they had to defend her honour.

  ‘What do you do, Jordi?’

  He sensed her looking at his calloused hands, and hid them in his lap like a boy caught red-handed. ‘Whatever pays. Building work. Labouring. Whatever I can find. Work here is hard to find.’

  Della nodded. ‘Tough times,’ she said, thinking of her beloved library.

  ‘How about a city tour, to distract us from the economic crisis? I show you the things the books never would.’

  She was about to tell him she should go back to the hotel. But she looked again at his hands, and thought they looked, well… safe. She nodded. ‘I’d like that.’

  He smiled and passed her the white jelly. ‘Crema catalana.’

  She lifted a spoonful to her mouth. It was sweet and smooth and cool. ‘Delicious.’

  Jordi grinned as though he’d cooked it himself.

  The tour was every bit as random and chaotic as the city, but it had just as much magic.

  They fed scraps of lunch to stray cats that roamed in the park behind the zoo. The moggies seemed to taunt the lions in the cages beyond, limboing under fences and rolling around in the dust.

  Jordi produced ping-pong bats from his backpack and they played a fierce match in the sun, surrounded by children who cheered whenever Della won a rally.

  ‘And now, something very special, something you are lucky to see. But first, give me un momento. I will be back.’

  He left her outside a shop where they were making toffee. She watched as the confectioner pulled and pushed strips of molten pink caramel. The smell was like honey on toast.

  ‘For you.’

  Della turned to see him holding a long-stemmed rose. Orange, this time. She smiled: it wouldn’t be polite to tell him it was the second rose she’d had in three hours, or that the first one only seemed to have brought her bad luck.

  Though maybe it had also brought her Jordi.

  ‘This is a very special day here in Cataluña,’ he began.

  Her smile became more fixed. ‘The festival of roses and books?’ she said.

  Jordi looked disappointed. ‘Oh. You have seen it already then?’

  ‘No, no, just…’ She realised she sounded impatient, and that wasn’t fair. ‘Carry on. Tell me all about it.’

  ‘Is my favourite day for two reasons. One, books, for me, are a passion,’ he said.

  ‘You like books?’ She knew she sounded surprised.

  Jordi frowned. ‘Ha! You look at my hands, you think, an uncultured person. But I spent four years studying Spanish and English literature. Emily Bronte. Jane Austen. Ernest Hemingway.’

  Della blushed. She’d never judge someone like that at home: her library regulars came from every walk of life. But she couldn’t think of a way to explain why she’d projected her own stupid prejudices onto him without tying herself in more knots. Better that he thought she was ignorant than that she insulted him again.

  The heat was intense, and the air felt sour and smoky. The caramel was burning now, and she wanted to be back home, shelved in, where nothing would unsettle or surprise her.

  Or excite her?

  ‘Are you annoyed with me, De-ya?’

  ‘Not with you. With myself. I didn’t mean - look, this has been great but…’

  A familiar sound distracted her. Wheels against cobbles. Spinning fast.

  She looked up and saw Trolley Man moving towards them at a hell of a whack. But he wasn’t alone. He was chasing someone. Someone in dark jeans—

  It was instinct to put out her foot.

  The man’s face twisted as he realised what she’d done. By then it was too late for him to stop himself falling.

  ‘It’s him!’ she said. ‘The robber!’ pointing as the man – older than she’d realised, but whip-thin – fell and cracked his jaw sickeningly against the cobbles.

  But, impossibly, he was scrambling back to his feet. Trolley Man was too far behind, shouting words that Della couldn’t understand but was pretty sure were obscene.

  Jordi looked at her. And then he understood.

  He flung himself at the robber, reaching out to circle the man’s legs and then falling himself, with an even sharper crack of bone against stone. The robber’s skinny ankles were slipping through his hands, but then Jordi grabbed the frayed ends of his black jeans

  Pulled hard.

  Almost in slow motion.

  The robber crashed down onto the street a second time.

  Jordi cried ‘Bastardo!’ as he struggled with the man. The robber was still fighting back, throwing punches at random, but enough of them to make contact twice with Jordi’s impressive cheekbones. Both robber and Jordi looked momentarily stunned.

  ‘Jordi! Don’t get hurt. The police will—’ She looked round to see anyone in uniform but the street was d
eserted.

  And then in one smooth move, Jordi slapped both the man’s hands together, using his own as a kind of human handcuff, and pinned them behind his head. The robbers legs were kicking in the air.

  ‘It is him, right, De-ya?’ Jordi turned back to her. A bruise was already blackening his right cheek.

  ‘Um.’ She leaned in. It was hard to tell now the guy’s nose was bleeding from his fall, but then she saw his crooked teeth. ‘Oh yes.’

  Jordi turned away. He hissed right in the man’s face. The robber tried to argue back, but the quieter Jordi’s voice got, the scarier it become.

  ‘Jordi, it’s okay. We can leave it to the police, now.’

  ‘But there is no evidence—’

  ‘I want to give a statement if I can. Try to stop it happening again. It’s what I’d prefer.’

  He half-smiled. ‘Whatever the lady wants…’ He leaned back, confident enough now to use just one hand to pin the man down, and reaching into his own pocket for his phone. As he called the police, the robber lay on the ground, his face set in a sneer.

  No getting away this time.

  Jordi bought her fresh doughnuts from a stall, with a little pot of chocolate sauce to dip.

  ‘More food?’

  ‘You had a shock,’ he said. ‘You need sugar.’

  The police had taken the man away, told her where to go to make her statement. It was clear it wasn’t the first time he’d been arrested.

  ‘You look quite pale yourself, Jordi.’

  ‘Is true. I was so angry, but normally, I am a thinker, De-ya. And, I think, you want a man who is a fighter.’

  ‘I don’t actually want anybody.’

  ‘Nooo!’ he said, as though that were a tragedy.

  ‘Well…’ she noticed a little dot of chocolate on his chin. He was adorable. ‘I don’t know anymore. When I came here, I didn’t think I wanted anyone.’

  ‘And what has changed between then and now?’ he said, and there was a hint of mischief in the question.

  ‘A change of perspective. Or maybe the craziness of your city is infectious.’

  ‘So you don’t hate us all. For what happened.’

  She looked down at the battered handbag she was keeping clutched under her arm. A rather battered looking orange rose was poking out of the end. It must have been knocked in the scuffle with the mugger.