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

by Belinda Jones

  ‘Mmm, lusciously limey,’ he grinned. ‘Mind if I try another?’

  He leaned in again, continuing to tease my lips with his, making my head light and my heart dizzy.

  Suddenly he tilted his head back, seemingly assessing me. ‘I think we should do a duet.’

  ‘What kind of duet?’ I asked.

  He gave me a look that made my inner organs do a Mexican wave and beamed, ‘Every kind of duet.’

  For once I didn’t go for the joke or the mockery, I just grinned back at him. And then a new song came to mind. One with a Spanish lyric:

  Que Sera, Sera…

  About the Author

  Emily's first grown-up job was at the Observer newspaper (targeted for their headed stationary so she could create an illusion of gravitas for her personal celebrity-stalking letters). That whim fulfilled, she headed to Just 17 where she met her BFF Belinda Jones. (The pair were actually told off for giggling too much in the Carnaby Street office.) From there she wheedled her way through Smash Hits, For Women, the Daily Star, FHM, Sky, more!, OK, Sports Quarterly and various others as a freelance writer, and now runs a swanky covers band that plays anywhere from Rome to Royal Ascot. This is her first short story.

  Visit the Sunlounger website at www.va-va-vacation.com/emily-o-neill

  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.

  TRUE LOVE NEVER DIES

  ***

  Lynda Page

  Destination: Ibiza

  Sitting at a table in a seafront cafe, nursing a glass of cold lager, Rosamund Landers looked out across the wide expanse of fine golden sand, as waves lapped gently on the shore. The warm sun caressed her bare shoulders, a gentle breeze wafting through her loose, professionally cut, fair hair. Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes and issued a deep sigh. She had dreamed of this day for twenty-five years and finally it had come; she was back, rather than stuck in grey, dreary England, living a life meant for someone else.

  It was the late sixties when, as a slim, pretty eighteen-year-old, she had first set foot on the beautiful Spanish island of Ibiza. She had just passed her final exams at secretarial college and was about to embark on the daunting world of work. The three friends she had met on her course were also being rewarded for passing their finals by their parents funding their holiday abroad. For her friends’ middle-class parents, the cost of the holiday was just loose change in their pockets, whereas her own working-class parents had had to save long and hard to afford the trip. Putting aside their anxieties about their daughter being in a foreign country for two long weeks where anything could happen to her, they agreed to let her go, giving her the opportunity to see some of the world beyond England’s shores, something that hadn’t been possible for them when they were her age.

  The moment Ros stepped off the plane she felt like she’d arrived in paradise. Instead of rain dampening her skin, the sun's rays warmed it; instead of her view consisting of red bricks and black smoking factory chimney stacks, all she saw now was an endless blue sky and fields full of wild flowers stretching to mountains in the distance. Boarding a clapped-out bus that would have been scrapped as unroadworthy back home, the girls clung to their seats for dear life as the driver crashed the gears, careering at speed along narrow lanes to their hotel. It was a newly opened high rise construction that was a blight on the landscape of a small, pretty coastal town whose history went as far back as Roman times but whose prosperity had fallen into decline since the end of the Second World War. Welcoming tourists into their community was deemed by the towns' officials to be the only way for it to survive.

  As soon as the girls had unpacked their cases in their basically furnished rooms, they donned their colourful beach dresses over their skimpy bikinis and headed off to the beach. Lying on their towels, the other three soon fell asleep, hoping to refresh themselves after their journey in readiness for a night of revelry in the local bars and discos. After a few minutes though, Ros realised that lying in the searing heat wasn’t agreeing with her; it was making her feel restless and her skin began to itch. She decided to go back to her room and have a rest on her bed. As she made her way back up to the hotel, she had to negotiate a large expanse of scrub land. Following the path that cut through it, she suddenly came across another path that forked to her right. Her natural curiosity made her wonder where that path led to. With all thoughts of a rest gone, she headed off down the path to find out. She seemed to have been following the trail for quite a while but the foliage around her was too high and thick for her to see through or over, so she couldn’t guess whether she was actually still in the town or if she had walked beyond its perimeters. Worried now about getting lost, her common sense told her she ought to turn back. She was just about to when the sound of music and voices, the odd braying of animals, reached her ears. It was coming from ahead.

  Without warning the path suddenly came to an end at a large clearing. She stood memorised at what she saw. It appeared that she had stumbled upon a hippy community. She had read about such places in magazines, and seen news reports on the television, but had believed these communes all to be in America. It seemed she had been wrong. People, ranging from her age up to their late twenties, were sitting outside makeshift wooden huts and tents, carving objects out of wood, threading handmade beads into necklaces and bracelets, or weaving grass mats. By the feet of some people, mongrel dogs lay dozing in the hot sun. A couple of men were sitting cross-legged on the ground, strumming guitars, whilst long-skirted women with plaited hair danced in a dream-like state around them. Shabbily dressed children with grubby faces were running around barefoot. Several people were painting canvasses on easels. Others were tending goats in pens on the far side of the clearing. Parked next to the animals' pens were two old Winnebago camper vans, one painted all over with colourful flowers, the other in equally colourful psychedelic artwork. Several women were working together, cooking food in a large pot hanging over an open fire. All in all there were about sixty individuals going about their business. What was most striking to Ros was that they all looked so relaxed and deliriously happy, unlike the folks back home in grey, grimy England.

  She jumped as she felt a hand on her arm and spun round to find a tall, shaggy-bearded man in his mid-twenties, dressed in a loose-fitting orange smock and baggy cord trousers with scruffy sandals on his bare feet, looking back at her. He was carrying a fishing rod over his shoulder and a net filled with several fish. As she looked into his startling, glacier blue eyes, her heart skipped a beat, a shiver of electricity ran down her spine and her legs turned to jelly. It was like this man was a magnet pulling her towards him. She tried to explain that she wasn’t trespassing but had arrived by accident, but his effect on her was so strong she could hardly speak.

  He smiled at her and the tone of his voice was gentle and warm when he said to her, ‘We don’t bite, you know. Everyone is welcome here. Come with me and I’ll get you a drink, you look like you could do with one. My name is Sebastian.’

  Like a child being led by the Pied Piper she followed him into the clearing. He acknowledged his fellows as they passed and went over to the women by the cooking pot, where he handed them his catch before making his way over to a shack, which didn’t appear to have a door. Sebastian disappeared inside the shack, emerging moments later carrying a jug and two battered tin mugs. He invited Ros to sit on one of the colourfully patterned cushions by the side of the doorway. Without hesitation she did so. Pouring water from the jug, he handed a mug to her, then poured one for himself. Putting the jug and mug down on the ground beside him, he pulled a tin out of his shirt pocket and proceeded to roll himself a cigarette, just like she’d watched her father do. But to her bemusement he added something green to the tobacco. Lighting the roll up, he took several long draws from it, then handed it to her, telling her, ‘You need to relax, loosen up, a dr
ag on this will do the trick.’ She didn’t smoke, had tried it once only to be violently sick so had never intended to again, but now she took the roll up from him and followed his lead by drawing deeply on it. Within moments she felt a lightness swamp her body, and any awkwardness, any tensions evaporated. When the man leaned over and gently kissed her, she could not have resisted even had she wanted to. She then sat entranced as he proceeded to enrapture her on how idyllic life was for all those that lived in the commune, whilst all the time his magnetic eyes seemed to be pulling her into their depths.

  Later that day, Ros returned to the hotel to collect her belongings and leave a note for her friends telling them not to worry about her as she had unexpectedly met a friend and was going to spend the rest of her holiday with them. For the next thirteen days she became completely immersed in life in the commune, happily playing her part in earning her keep in whatever way she was able, whilst savouring the freedom and unrestricted way of life that was so far removed from her own existence back in England. And each night she lay cocooned in Sebastian’s arms on a grass-filled mattress on the mud floor of his shack, listening to his words of undying love, how meaningless his life would be without her, how he had waited so long for his soul mate to join him and now that she had his life was complete.

  When the day of her flight home arrived she had no intention of catching it. The thought of leaving Sebastian was unbearable. Her life was here now with him and the rest of her commune family, and that’s where she was going to stay until the day she died. Sebastian, though, didn’t believe it was right that her parents should learn of her plans via a note given to them by her friends. He felt she should tell them face to face and receive their blessing. Very reluctantly she agreed he was right. They were, after all, the people who had loved, protected and supported her throughout her life and it was the least they deserved. With her case repacked, and feeling as though she was leaving part of herself behind, she set off back to the hotel in time to catch the bus to the airport. Sebastian’s promise that he would be counting the hours until she returned, ringing in her ears.

  She wasn’t surprised that her three friends were curious as to what she'd been up to but all she wanted was to get the journey over with so that she could speak to her parents and be back in Sebastian's arms as quickly as possible.

  She didn’t expect her parents to accept her plans immediately, but she was sure that once they saw that she was not going to budge they’d have no option but to accept her decision. But that wasn’t to be. Her parents were not about to give their blessing to their beloved daughter ruining her future by going to live in a foreign country with a man she barely knew. Had these few days living in a fantasy world stripped her of all her morals and common sense? Could she not see this relationship for what it was: just a holiday romance? And one that had gone too far for her parents' liking, what with Ros being underage and having sex outside of marriage. They knew that as soon as she had walked out of the camp a man like Sebastian would be eyeing up his next bed mate and not giving Ros a second thought.

  She had screamed and shouted that they were wrong. Sebastian loved her, wanted to be with her for the rest of his life, wanted her to be the mother of his children. Realising that Ros was determined to leave with or without their blessing, they took the desperate measure of relieving her of her passport, along with what money she had left from her holiday fund. They then dragged her kicking and screaming up to her bedroom, locked the door and told her she wasn’t going to be let out until she saw the error of her ways.

  Ros knew she had no way of returning to Ibiza. She could earn the money to pay for her flight but she couldn’t leave the country without her passport. Although it seemed a lifetime away, she had no choice but to bide her time until she was twenty-one; then her parents would have no parental rights over her and she could do exactly what she wanted whether they liked it or not. Sebastian had made it clear how he felt about her and would wait for her, she had no doubt about that.

  She had no intentions of settling back to life in England but despite this she soon found a job she enjoyed, rekindled her relationship with her friends and started going out socially, enjoying herself. Then she met Rob. He was not Sebastian by any stretch of the imagination, but he would do to pass the time until her twenty-first birthday. Her loving, close relationship with her parents was never the same again though. She was sullen with them, only speaking to them when she had to, and she never told them anything of a personal nature. She knew she was hurting them but then they had devastated her, so it was the least they deserved.

  It was eighteen months since she had left Sebastian, and she was marking off the days until they would be reunited, when she discovered she was pregnant. A drink-fuelled romp with Rob at a friend's party had led from one thing to another and her whole world collapsed in a heap. Sebastian was a free spirit, and she knew that arriving with a year-old infant in her arms wouldn't phase him in the least, but Rob would never allow her to take his child away to be raised by another man in a different country. To Rob and her parents, marriage was the only option. She took no responsibility for her pregnancy but blamed Rob entirely for taking advantage of her when he knew she’d had too much to drink. She made the poor man suffer by constantly reminding him that the pregnancy had been his fault, putting him down and snapping sarcastic comments at him when they were amongst family and friends. Regardless, Rob was a devoted husband to Ros, seeming to be blind to her cruel treatment of him. Through his hard work he made sure Ros wanted for nothing. He bought her a lovely house in a respectable area which he gave her free reign to decorate and furnish; he always made sure she had money to spend on herself; he took her and their two children regularly away on holidays; he constantly paid her compliments; he regularly took her out socially and on a Friday he would always arrive home from work with a box of chocolates and a bunch of fresh flowers for her. But nothing Rob did for Ros ever made her happy, ever made her glad to be alive. The only man that could evoke those emotions had been cruelly denied her. She liked to believe that Sebastian was in Ibiza still mourning her loss, trying to cope with life without her, like she was without him. But she was astute enough to realise that he was a man with needs and by now he would have found someone else. But she was positive he would never love that someone like he did her.

  She was forty-three when it struck her that she was free to be with Sebastian for one and all. She was leaving the train station after waving her youngest child off to university, her eldest having already left home a couple of years before to join the army, when she realised that she no longer had any responsibilities on a day to day basis towards her children. She was, in fact, free to do as she pleased. A deeply buried zest for life suddenly exploded from within her. Her decision was instant. She would go back to the commune and seek out Sebastian. She was older, not so pretty any longer, not quite so slim either, but then he would have aged too and she was confident their love for one another wouldn’t have altered. True loved never died, it was said. She wouldn’t tell another living soul what she was going to do. She would be deemed mad, selfish and thoughtless for abandoning her husband who openly adored her for a man she last saw twenty-five years ago whose only assets were a goat, a shack and a few pennies in his pocket. But they had no idea how Sebastian had made her feel and no amount of explaining would make them understand that she was willing to give up everything just to be with him.

  She departed days later, moments after Rob had gone to work, leaving him a scribbled note on the dining table. And now here she was, back where she had longed to be for so many years, having a drink to calm her nerves before making her way to the commune and into Sebastian’s arms.

  She was just downing the last of her drink, preparing to leave, when a shabby-looking middle-aged couple, each carrying a loaded basket full of assorted handmade objects, parked themselves down at the table next to hers. There was something familiar about them and Ros realised that they had lived in the shack next to Sebastian�
�s; during her two weeks there she had become quite friendly with them.

  Without hesitation she addressed the woman. ‘Excuse me, but do you still live at the commune? Will Sebastian be there at this time of day or will I find him in the town somewhere selling his wares?’

  The woman eyed her strangely and responded guardedly. ‘Yes, a few of us still live in the commune. It’s hardly a commune as such any longer though, just a few old stalwart hippies reliving the good old days, mainly because we’ve no means to get ourselves back home and nowhere to live even if we did manage to scrape the fare together. I don’t recall this Sebastian you asked about though. When was he there?’

  Her heart thumped painfully. He had to be waiting for her, what was she going to do if he wasn’t? ‘Er... he was living there in the late sixties.’

  The man with her then spoke up. ‘I remember him. Tall chap, had unusual blue eyes. You remember him too, Jenny. He used to help me tend the weed garden behind the animal pens and in return I’d keep him supplied.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do now,’ she mused. ‘About a year he lived with us.’ She gave a distant smile. ‘That man had a charisma and charm about him I’ve never seen in a man before or since, and he knew it too. He could charm his way into any girl's knickers he set his sights on within minutes of meeting her. He would entice her to have a couple of drags on a spliff and the poor thing would soon be putty in his hands. The intelligent girls only lasted a few days with him before they wised up to the fact that he was stringing them along with his declarations of undying love, of them being his soul mate, that he would die without them, wanted them to be the mother of his kids… It was all just cock and bull to keep them in his bed until he got fed up and wanted someone new.’