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

by Belinda Jones

  The man they were describing wasn’t at all the one Ros had fallen in love with. ‘The man you’re talking about isn’t the Sebastian I’m looking for. He was a kind, thoughtful man.’

  ‘But there was only one Sebastian who ever stayed in the commune to my knowledge. Maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did, my dear.’ She lapsed into her reminiscing again. ‘One girl was so gullible she believed every word and he got his just deserts when she arrived back in the commune a couple of days after she'd gone home, believing she was going to be with him forever. He was so cruel to that poor girl. He wasted no time in telling her what an idiot she was for thinking he’d settle down and have a family with a trollope like her. In the end he physically pushed the hysterical girl out of the camp. Well, that was his time at the commune over too. We were a peaceful tribe, believing in love not war, and blatant cruelty to others was one thing we wouldn’t accept. We sent him packing and as far as I know he went back home to England with his tail between his legs; his days of free love were over, in Ibiza anyway. We’ve certainly never heard a word about him since.' She then looked scrutinisingly at Ros, clearly puzzled why a woman of her ilk would be enquiring after a man like Sebastian.

  She was stopped from questioning Ros by her partner saying to her, ‘Come on, love. We can’t sit around here all day, we’ve got money to make or we won’t eat tonight.’

  Ros blindly watched as the couple got up and went on their way. She was absolutely mortified by what she had learned. They must have got Sebastian mixed up with another man who was using and abusing young girls for his own sexual needs. Her Sebastian was a kind, gentle, sincere man, who would never lie to anyone or abuse them in any way whatsoever. But then the couple had described his physical appearance so accurately, and what reason would they have for lying about him? No reason at all. She felt a dark, cold mist clamping itself around her as the truth hit. She had spent the last twenty-five years pining for a man who didn’t exist. All his proclamations of love for her, the vision he had built of the idyllic life they would have together, were just a fabrication on his part to lure her into his bed until he tired of her. Her parents had been right and all they had done was protect her from a man they knew could not possibly have known her long enough for true love to have blossomed. They had also stopped her from returning in order to spare her the devastation of rejection. Had she only listened to her parents back then, how different her life and her marriage would have been for her... In truth, hadn’t she been living an idyllic life for all these years with a man who truly loved her and, if she had allowed it, she could so easily have loved in return? Yet she’d chosen to see his love and devotion towards her as a trap.

  Her whole world was crumbling around her. After what she had done, how could she ever expect her family to forgive her? Through her own stupidity she had lost everything. Now instead of mourning her loss of Sebastian she was going to spend the rest of her life mourning the loss of the people who had truly loved her. What on earth was she going to do?

  Through her turmoil, she heard her name being called. She opened her eyes to see who had addressed her but the glare of the sun blinded her and she had to shield her hand against her brow to see properly. When she recognised the figure of the man standing before her, she froze in shock. No, it couldn’t be him, surely not. Dumbstruck she watched as he pulled up a chair beside her, sat down, then just silently looked at her through eyes filled with love.

  She uttered, ‘Rob, what are you doing here? How did you know I was here?’

  He told her quietly, ‘I’d not driven far this morning when I realised I’d forgotten to pick up my diary, so I came back for it and found your note on the table. I’ve always dreaded this day coming but I’m not letting you walk away from me without putting up a fight. You’re the love of my life, Ros. Please come back home with me, back to the people who love you and the place where you belong.’

  She didn’t need him to ask her twice. Jumping up, she grabbed hold of his hand and when he’d picked up her suitcase, she ran off with him to find a taxi to take them to the airport and on back home. This time, she would leave nothing of herself behind.

  About the Author

  Lynda Page is the Leicestershire-based author of twenty-eight books. The eldest of four daughters, Lynda left home at seventeen and worked her way through a variety of office jobs. It was during her forty-five-minute lunch breaks that she began writing her first novel, EVIE. It took eighteen months to complete and then was snapped up by leading UK publisher Headline. Lynda has been under contract with them ever since. Her latest novel, THE TIME OF OUR LIVES, is the first in a new series of nostalgic, heart-warming family sagas set in a holiday camp in the late 1950s.

  Facebook: www.facebook.comlyndapagebooks

  Website: www.headline.co.uk

  Visit the Sunlounger website at www.va-va-vacation.com/lynda-page

  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.

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  HOW TO TIE A FRENCH SCARF

  ***

  Carmen Reid

  Destination: Paris, France

  After the conference, I have one day off in Paris and at first, I think it’s a terrible mistake.

  Paris in August feels dusty and airless and the tourist traps are relentlessly busy. The narrow pavements winding up to Montmartre are jammed with meaty sightseers in t-shirts and multi-pocketed shorts, cameras dangling from their red necks.

  The parched grass outside Notre Dame Cathedral is packed with hoards of schoolchildren giggling, texting, slurping at slushies. And everywhere I look there are couples.

  Delighted teen couples with their hands slipped into one another’s jeans pockets. Young couples arm in arm, hand in hand, with the moony, nothing-can-touch-us glow of happiness. Brand new rings glitter on fourth fingers as Paris, with its dreamy bridges, whispering tree-lined walks and seductive charm, works it’s magic and conjures up proposals from the moonlight.

  The couples which affect me most are the 40-somethings strolling companionably together. Her hair held back with a pair of sunglasses, his linen shirt rumpled with the sleeves rolled up. I notice golden wedding rings, worn shiny by years of togetherness… and now a trip to Paris to rekindle happy memories.

  I find I’m blinking back tears as I struggle to look away from the couple walking past.

  So I turn from the obvious haunts and meander down different streets, along cool, grey cobblestones, past tall apartment buildings with elegant balconies and faded shutters closed up against the sun.

  It’s quiet. Away from the touristy clamour, Paris is subdued because half of its inhabitants have deserted for the summer. They’ve left their marble-tiled apartments for the windswept beaches of Brittany or the fierce heat of the south coast. Those legendary destinations: St Tropez, Cannes, Nice and Provence.

  I pass little neighbourhood bakeries with signs in the window: ‘Closed until 27th August.’ It feels like a Sunday. By lunchtime, I’ve wandered towards the Sorbonne where I find a quiet café in a shady courtyard with a fountain.

  ‘Bonjour, ça va bien?’ I ask the waitress hesitantly, expecting one of those brusque Parisian stares followed by frosty English. But instead, she answers in French which I don’t fully understand and settles me into a table.

  I order an omelette, a fresh salad and some slices of baguette. I also ask her for a glass of red wine.

  ‘Room temperature or cold?’ she wants to know.

  I thought you always drank red wine room temperature. Compared to the waitress, I feel deeply unsophisticated. I stare at her red-and-cream patterned scarf and hesitate. Maybe there’s a special exception with red wine in Paris in August. Maybe there’s a special type of wine? If I’d been born and brought up somewhere along these boulevards, I would know.

  ‘Cold…?’ I reply, not sure if this is right. Not sure if this is
what I want.

  But the wine, when it arrives, is so delicious I’m reckless and order a second. Afterwards, when I step out into the bright sunshine, I feel blinded and a little hazy.

  I ramble until I find myself on the banks of the Seine. There’s a bridge ahead of me, festooned with ribbons and glinting metal decorations. I walk towards it attracted by the patchwork of colour and wonder if I’m looking at some kind of art installation.

  I walk across the bridge mystified by the hundreds, no thousands, of padlocks attached to the wire fence. What does this mean?

  Then I notice the couples dotted all over the bridge and the meaning of the padlocks becomes clear. Each one is decorated with names, entwined hearts or initials.

  Laura & Amir, Anna & Phillippe, TC and PR… all padlocked tightly together in the hope of capturing their together, forever.

  The couple just in front of me clicks their love token into place and then, laughing, they toss the tiny key, shimmering in the sunlight, down into the water below.

  Forever and ever, padlocked together.

  An elderly lady is wheeling her smart cream-coloured trolley bag over the bridge. She’s wearing sunglasses, diamond earrings, sturdy white pumps and a chic black and white summer dress with three-quarter-length sleeves and a slim patent belt.

  Proof, as if I needed it, that Parisian ladies never give up on elegance, not even in their 70s. She approaches the couple who have just thrown the key.

  ‘American?’ she asks them.

  They giggle and nod.

  ‘This bridge is for committed love. Married love,’ she tells them, ‘the Pont de l’Archeveche is for lovers.’

  The pair giggle some more and she walks away from them saying, ‘Choose your bridge wisely.’

  Well, there’s a world of wisdom in those few words, I think to myself.

  The Pont de l’Archeveche is for lovers. I regret my second glass of wine. I feel blurry and not sure whether I want to laugh or cry. For lovers. Ha.

  This bridge is for the married, padlocked to their partners. The symbolism no longer seems romantic at all. All those padlocks look like traps, locks, prison sentences.

  I wonder what my padlock of love to Geoff would look like: heavy, rusty, worn out. I’d have to come back to the bridge and wrench it off with bolt-cutters.

  I wonder if anyone does that. Or if they keep returning, heart-broken, to cry and gaze at their padlocks and wonder how such devoted love went wrong.

  I walk quickly to the end of the bridge; I don’t want to be here any longer. Everywhere I look something is making me feel wrong and out of place. The couples making me feel alone, the padlocks, the chic madams in slim linen trousers, perfect ballerinas and always the scarves – graceful, elegant, chic, pulled together- everything I’m not.

  The sun is beating down on my wine-flushed head and I need to get inside, into the cool. Soon I’m in a graceful street lined with little boutiques which feel exclusive, insider-ish; the kind of places I don’t usually dare to step inside, but I’m hot, dazzled and in need of shade.

  The bell jingles as I push open the door.

  ‘Bonjour, Madam.’

  My eyes need a moment to adjust to the low light but I soon realize there are vibrant strips of every kind of colour, fabric, pattern, shape and texture all around me.

  I’m in a scarf shop. An entire boutique devoted to neckware: how very Frrraunch.

  I’d quite like to back straight out again, scarves are so not my thing. But Madam has stepped out from behind her counter in a pair of slim capris, of course, kitten slingbacks and the kind of striped top which only a Parisian woman can wear without looking like a cross between a toddler and a sack of potatoes.

  Her scarf is arresting. It’s a wiry multi-coloured whirl of a thing that seems to exist and hover all by itself in an angelic ruff around her neck.

  ‘Je suis a votre service…’

  I catch that but not much of the rapid fire talk that follows so I have to admit lamely, ‘Je suis Anglais.’

  She switches to fluent English without blinking and talks just as quickly.

  ‘Please, feel free to look around, take your time, you are most welcome. Would you like a glass of mint tea? So refreshing when the sun is shining.’

  When the delicate glass of chilled tea is in my hands, I look properly at the swathes of colour draped around the space. I take in caramel silks, cobalt blues, fizzy limes, yellows, reds, pinks of every shade. How does anyone ever make a choice between so many colours?

  I haven’t told her yet that I’m in the wrong shop. Nothing in here can be of any use to me because I’m afraid of scarves. My hands, my strong, capable hands which can stitch torn skin together so carefully and artfully, which can wipe tears tenderly from small faces and perform any number of skilled, intricate tasks… when I touch a scarf, help! The material just turns flat and limp and useless, like bad pastry dough.

  Whenever I’ve put a scarf around my neck, suddenly I’m a frump, I’m Queenly, not remotely stylish and my hair flies up because of all the static I’ve created rolling the thing into shape in the first place.

  Besides, I’ve heard of Isadora Duncan. As she tried to drive off into the sunset, didn’t her trailing scarf get caught in the spokes of her sports car bringing her to a terrible end?

  I almost shudder. But Madam has other ideas. She’s decided to take this hesitant English woman in hand.

  ‘Why don’t we have a look for something to go with your suit?’

  I am wearing the beige linen trouser suit I thought would hit the summer-slash-conference sweet-spot. It has a squarish jacket and trousers which are long and straight – not slim or capri or showing off any chic shoes. Underneath I wear a white vest top.

  When I look in the mirror I see immediately I am colourless and bland, which is fine, because that’s how I feel most of the time. Washed out. Washed up. No, I’m actually fine when I’m at work or when I’m with the children. Then I’m busy, purposeful, happy even. It’s when I’m left alone, to my own devices, that’s when the trouble starts.

  I go over and over it all. I wonder where we went wrong. Where I went wrong. I wonder why I didn’t do something sooner. I wonder what I will do now. I’m so distracted with all these thoughts, all the decisions which have to be taken, I wonder if I will ever have the energy to move on from here.

  ‘I like green,’ Madam says, and she pulls a sumptuous emerald silk from the rail. She approaches me and I actually feel nervous. The static, the frumpiness, the whole limp pastry dough thing… it’s about to happen.

  But she winds the scarf once around my neck, then ties it loosely and she’s done. I look in the mirror. The scarf is long, thick and soft enough for this to be the perfect style for it. It’s smooth, caressing silk, which has caused no gust of static. I see now it’s not one shade of emerald but rippling, blending shades of green, like grass when the shadow of leaves from trees above are playing over it.

  Of course it’s beautiful and instantly my beigeness is punctuated with this burst of vibrant life. I finger the fringing and feel a little paper label tied on with string. The price. I dread to look. It’s bound to be 200-plus euros or something mind-boggling.

  I glance down and have to look again. Can 38 euros be right? For all this luscious silkiness? I run it over my hands and it feels like a live thing. Comforting, delicious, a talisman, a morale-boosting insulation between me and the world.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I say, surprising myself. This is the quickest decision I’ve made in weeks in my tumbled, tossed, about-to-be-divorced state of mind.

  ‘Of course,’ she smiles, ‘it’s beautiful on you. So elegant.’

  I look again in the mirror. The green frames my face, brings a hit of colour and I honestly feel a surge of confidence. From a scarf? I want to laugh at myself.

  I pay madam, remove the little paper label from the fringing and wear the scarf out into the street. I inhale and feel my shoulders drop down a little. I look properly around.
This is a beautiful street, pedestrianized, with small shops lining the pavements and four floors of elegant apartments above. Some have their pigeon-grey shutters closed against the sun, some have metal chairs and tables set out. There’s a little market in progress further along and I walk slowly past the flower stall admiring the red velvet roses and bundles of fresh lavender.

  There’s a pastry stall with apple tarts, pear tarts, thick chocolate and nut tarts. But it’s the fruit stall which pulls me to a halt. Tiny cardboard punnets are packed with fat blueberries and raspberries so plump and perfect, I have to join the queue.

  When I put the first raspberry into my mouth, it’s warm from the sun and it tastes… indescribable, like the best day of my entire childhood. Summer. Straw. Berries pulled straight from the bush.

  I can’t help smiling at the man passing by. He simply smiles back and tips the edge of his panama hat at me. And just like that, with a scarf, a raspberry and a smile, I’m freed of weeks of angst and agony. In Paris, in August, I finally understand that I can enjoy every moment of life. In fact, I’m aching to enjoy it all so much more. To take it as it comes. To squeeze the precious pips from it. To savour every ‘petit rien.’ The ‘little nothings’ of no great consequence which make life glorious.

  I stroll, eyes wide open, drinking it in, the ends of my scarf fluttering in the breeze until I am in the Jardin des Tuileries. Here are fountains, statues, acres of grass, crowds of people and the cooling rustle of trees. People have been strolling along these paths for almost 500 years. This soothes me. Puts my frets and frustrations into proper perspective.

  I choose a bench carefully and sit down to watch. Capri pants, couples, elegantly tied scarves, none of it annoys me any more. In fact, it’s become charming.