He pulled her down onto the sand next to him.
‘Do you remember how we found this place?’
‘I remember that we nearly drowned! The tide just came from nowhere…place filled up within seconds.’ She had panicked as salty water began crashing in through the rocks from both sides, recalling how he had gallantly thrown her, squealing, over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried her up the wobbly rope to the safety of the cliff’s edge – her very own hero. Reaching the top, they had collapsed into fits of giggles; skin warmed by the flushes of their respective orgasms and the last rush of the ecstasy pills they had earlier ingested. It was only now though, all these years later that she realised the true gravity of it.
‘We could’ve both been killed.’
‘We were fearless back then. High on life…’
‘Amongst other things,’ she quipped.
‘…living in the here and now,’ he continued, a little wistfully and his words got lodged somewhere inside his chest.
‘Ah yes…the preserve of the young,’ she said, overcome by a gentle compulsion to brush the hair from his eyes, wishing with every fibre of her soul that she did not love him like she did. So many wasted years.
‘Our whole lives ahead of us…’
There was a moment’s pause, his words hanging heavy in the confined space between them.
‘I never thought I’d ever be forty,’ he said. ‘I mean, at twenty, forty seems ancient, and yet the years just slip by and before you know it…’ he exhaled, ‘makes you wonder what it’s all about.’
Of all people she understood. After all, she had dedicated herself entirely to this man next to her. Every breath in her body had belonged to him. Like a fool for twenty years she had suffered his infidelities and tolerated his pretentious friends, putting his needs and dreams before her own. Above all though, she had given him her child-bearing years. Today she turned forty years old, arguably too late to have a baby, at least according to the Daily Mail. It had always been ‘next year,’ or ‘after my latest exhibition ends.’ Deep down she’d known he didn’t want a child, or maybe he just didn’t want one with her.
‘Forty,’ she said the word aloud as though it were foreign. ‘It doesn’t seem possible we’ve got so old.’
‘We’re not old!’ he objected. ‘Forty’s young.’
‘Yeah, if you’re sixty looking back, not twenty looking forward,’ she sighed and he wished she wouldn’t say such things. Glass half empty.
‘Forty is the new thirty anyway,’ he said in a bid to boost what he suspected was the onset of one of her black moods. He could sense them coming now, the storm rumbling in the distance.
Rebecca wondered if she should simply confront him and be done with it. She had been too weak to challenge his indiscretions in the past and had spent years despising herself for it. What a sad and gutless woman she was, devoid of all backbone. Was she so desperate to keep him in her life that she was prepared to allow him to destroy her like this? There could be no greater despair than what she felt right now, not since she’d discovered that Jed and Em were having an affair. Her husband and her best friend, the two people she loved most in the world. Em…anyone but Em! There was an inevitability about it she supposed, a sort of fait accompli, her handsome, talented husband and her beautiful and wild best friend. She had always lived in Em’s shadow, from the very first moment they had met twenty-eight years ago. Em, propped up against the bicycle sheds at school, a Benson and Hedges between her glossy lips and an insouciant stare. Like everyone, she had fallen in love with her on sight.
It had been twenty years ago since they had first come to Ibiza, her and Em, breathless with the exuberance of youth and the anticipation of two sun n’ fun filled weeks on the notorious party island. The studio they had shared overlooking San Antonio Bay had been paid for courtesy of one of Em’s recent modelling assignments and was a stone’s throw from the infamous Café del Mar. It had been there, watching as the sun melted like orange sorbet into the sea, that Em had introduced her to Jed Barrett.
‘He’s a photographer from London. Great kisser,’ she had whispered with a raised eyebrow. ‘But he’s far more your type…’
Rebecca stared at her husband now as he lay down on top of her inside the cave, and she wondered if it were any more possible to love and hate someone as simultaneously as she did in that moment. Loving him was like having a terminal disease, one that would almost certainly kill her in the end if she didn’t put a stop to it. She’d spent the past five years a virtual zombie as it was, pumping herself full of Prozac in a daily bid to numb her frenetic emotions.
‘I was thinking,’ he said. ‘Sounds dangerous,’ she joked.
He wrinkled his nose at her.
‘…I was thinking that as it’s your big birthday tonight, that we would do something, you know, special…’
‘This is special,’ she said wondering if he’d ever felt the same way about her as she’d felt about him. Had he loved her unconditionally with a passion so ferocious that it felt like falling into an abyss? Did he ache for a kind word from her, a loving look? Would he have forgiven her an infidelity or two, learned to forget and move on, or would it have given him an excuse to turn his back on her for good? Questions she was too afraid to ask. Questions she already knew the answers to.
‘We can’t have your fortieth pass by without a proper celebration,’ he said, sliding his knee across her body with a lascivious grin. Shards of light shone like laser beams through the cracks in the cove, slithers of sunlight bouncing off the rocks, just enough to illuminate his handsome face.
‘So anyway, Mrs I-don’t-want-to-celebrate-my-birthday-even-in-Ibiza, I’ve booked us dinner on board a boat down at the Blue Marlin beach club tonight. Beautiful little vessel she is, though I say little…anyway, it’s all booked for 9pm. I thought we’d have a few cocktails beforehand, watch the sun go down at La Trinxa first, then head back to the hotel, get our glad rags on, have the full works on the boat, Champagne, lobster… then, if the mood grabs us,’ he playfully squeezed her torso, pinching her flesh between his fingers, making her squeal, ‘we can go clubbing.’
‘Clubbing?’ She gave him a sideways glance.
‘Hell, yeah! Let’s show these young whippersnappers how it’s really done,’ he said, thumping his bare chest. ‘After all, we were here when Ibiza was, you know, real Ibiza, back in the day…second summer of love and all of that, the birth of acid house and dance music… We set the standard Bex, our generation, Generation X. Pacha and Manumission, Space, Amnesia… Don’t you remember how exciting it was to be part of it all?’
She didn’t, not really.
‘I suppose,’ she shrugged.
He rolled off of her and groaned.
‘Come on Bex, we’re in Ibiza. Ibiza for fuck’s sake…’ he stood then, ‘stop being so moribund! We’re here to party!’
He sat down again, rant short-lived like a match flame.
‘Look,’ his tone was softer now, ‘I know you’ve found this milestone difficult, Jesus, I know I did, but believe me it’s a damn sight better than the alternative.’
She smiled affably. He really didn’t have a clue. She was sorry she wasn’t exactly in the fiesta mood, but he was screwing her best friend, her best friend! And by all accounts it had been going on for some time.
Rebecca had seen the warning signs months ago, recognised them like old, unwelcome friends who turned up unannounced; the lack of eye contact following a direct question, the clandestine phone conversations that were cut short whenever she’d entered the room, the unplanned late-night shoots that invariably ended with him rolling in late in a waft of warm beer and perfume.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Em had laughed dismissively when Rebecca had voiced her concerns that she thought he was ‘up to his old tricks’, but it had belied Em’s own lack of eye contact and shaking fingers. She hadn’t needed a confession; she wasn’t sure she could bear one. Besides, despite his best efforts to the contra
ry, Rebecca had seen the text messages. A suspicious wife will always find her husband’s hiding places.
I have 2 C U. Em x
Do you think she’s suspicious? J x
Maybe we should just tell her? I feel so bad... Em x
We’ve come this far…got 2 stick 2gether. C this thru. J x
She had stared at those messages until the words had begun to look Greek. Anyone but Em. Was this how he would repay her years of unswerving loyalty, by taking her best friend, a woman she had loved and trusted for twenty-eight years, a woman she practically considered her own flesh and blood?
Jed Barrett clocked his wife’s static expression and felt himself deflate.
He would have to play one of his trump cards, a little earlier than planned but no matter.
‘Hey, I’ve got something for you…’ he said, pulling a little white box from the pocket of his Bermuda shorts. He had such a great body, naturally lithe and perfectly toned courtesy of hours spent in the gym. It had hardly changed in two decades.
‘What’s this?’ she enquired, eyes widening as she saw the words ‘Yves Saint Laurent’ emblazoned on the front. ‘My god, Jed, it’s beautiful,’ she gasped, lifting the gold charm bracelet from the box.
‘A charm for every year we’ve been together,’ he announced, cheerfully. ‘I hand chose them all.’
‘I adore it,’ she said, voice cracking with emotion as he fixed it around her wrist. His ability to gift well was on par with his ability to know how and when to say the right thing. That and lying.
‘A woman in love will believe anything she wants to hear,’ she heard her mother sigh, her sad resignation ever more apparent with each indiscretion she had disclosed to her, ‘once a cheat always a cheat.’
‘It really is beautiful Jed,’ she thanked him, holding her adorned wrist up for inspection, wondering if Em had helped him choose it and if it had been followed by an afternoon of florid fucking in their marital bed on her 2,000-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
That’s just the start, there’s more where that came from, and—’ he opened the small rucksack he’d brought with him, producing two chilled mini bottles of Bollinger.
‘You’ve thought of everything!’ she laughed, the sound of exploding corks echoing around the cove like machine gunfire.
‘Happy birthday, Bex.’ He kissed her then, his champagne-sweet lips soft against hers and she felt the familiar pull of him. He was right about Ibiza; there was magic here, she had felt it on the night they had met twenty years ago just as she felt it now, his naked body on top of hers, his knee urgently pushing her legs apart, gasping as he entered her, burying himself deep into her in long soft strokes that gradually built into hard, frantic thrusts. Her orgasm, when it came, was even more intense than usual and she cried out his name, wrapping her thighs tightly around the small of his strong, athletic back, grinding her pelvis into him, the champagne mixing with her saline tears as they slid, silent and unnoticed down her cheeks.
They lay together quietly for a few moments afterwards, their bodies warm and twitching with post-coital endorphins and champagne, slithers of sunlight illuminating the darkness of the cove, painted yellow stripes on rock.
‘I like it here,’ he said, eventually, ‘our own little love hole where it all began.’ He leaned onto his elbow and kissed the tip of her nose so affectionately that it took the breath from her. ‘You, me, naked with just a bottle of bubbly, it feels like a new beginning.’
She could not speak. Her throat was too tight with emotion.
‘You know I love you, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she managed to whisper. ‘I do.’ And she knew he meant it – in his own way.
‘Smoke?’ she suddenly said, pulling a pre-rolled joint from her Dior raffia beach tote with a wry smile.
He sat bolt upright with a look of thrilled amusement.
‘You’re not the only one who can surprise, you know,’ she smirked.
‘Well, I say, Rebecca Barrett!’ he playfully mocked her, keenly taking the joint from her fingers. ‘Where did you get it from?’ he was as intrigued as he was chuffed. ‘You haven’t dabbled in years.’ This was more like the old Bex; young and fun and up for anything. He felt a flutter of hope.
‘Em got me it,’ she lied, surreptitiously gauging his reaction with a sideways glance.
‘Good old Em,’ he laughed.
‘Yes,’ she said tightly, ‘good old Em.’
She watched as he eagerly lit it, taking long deep pulls and blowing perfect smoke rings up into the air above them.
‘We should get going soon,’ she suggested, shuffling closer towards his warmth, placing her head onto his soft, smooth chest and gently closing her eyes. He began to stroke her long, naturally blonde hair – undoubtedly her greatest asset. ‘The tide…’
‘We’ve got ages yet, another hour at least I reckon,’ he placated her with a yawn.
Rebecca listened for a while as her husband’s heartbeat began to settle into a slow rhythmic thud, the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he drifted into a shallow slumber, sated from his orgasm coupled with strong marijuana, and attempted to banish the terrible idea that had pierced her mind. She watched him, the soft flutter of his thick eyelashes, his lips gently parted in that familiar half smirk he had when sleeping. She saw her mother’s told-you so-expression flash up in her mind as she confessed his latest, worst betrayal of all, the pitying looks on the faces of their mutual friends and the uncomfortable avoidance that would inevitably follow. She felt the shame and humiliation as though it were tangible, like acid drops on the tongue, the aching loneliness and pain of divorce, the hopeless futility of the past twenty years of her life…
The sound of the incoming tide was growing closer now and eventually she lifted her head from his chest and began to dress, carefully stepping into her bikini bottoms, sliding her kaftan over her body awkwardly.
‘Goodbye my darling,’ she whispered, as she bent down and kissed him gently, sliding his mobile phone from the pocket of his shorts as she glanced at him one last time. ‘Sweet dreams.’
Navigating the old rope was as tricky as she’d expected. As with most things in life it was much harder climbing up than it was coming down. By the time she’d reached the top she was sweating profusely, hands shaking uncontrollably, chest heaving hard with exertion and adrenalin. Then Rebecca Barrett pulled the old rope ladder back up to the top of the cliff and walked away.
*
Sa Trinxa was heaving with scantily dressed revellers dancing to warm-up tunes as they slurped neon pink cocktails, gearing up for an evening of hedonism ahead. Ordering herself a large mojito, she practically knocked it back in one hit in a futile bid to steady her wind-chime nerves. The Ibizian sun was setting in the distance now; a blood-red wound, it illuminated the entire skyline, bathing the island in a rich warm glow, the promise of a new day – but first the night! Hand unsteady, she raised her tumbler towards the sky in salutation, ‘Happy birthday to me.’
Back at the hotel Rebecca nervously checked her Cartier watch – a sweetener he’d given to her after that dalliance with the Chinese girl – or had she been Thai? She couldn’t quite remember now. Throwing her bag onto the pristinely made bed she quickly undressed and turned on the shower in the en-suite wet room, welcoming the powerful jet of water as it impacted with her skin. From the corner of her eye she saw his phone where it had fallen from her bag on the bed. It was flashing.
Drying herself roughly with a fluffy white towel, she took a deep breath and picked it up. There were seven missed calls, four from her as planned and three text messages from Em. Instinctively she had wanted to open them but refrained. She was done with being stupid. Discarding it, she snatched up her phone and began to compile a text message to her husband, shaking fingers barely able to tap the letters on the keyboard.
Where the hell R U? Am getting worried…
It was 19.47. Plenty of time to calm herself down she reasoned, gather her thoughts, ma
ke up her face and go to meet him as planned.
Catching sight of herself in the mirror, Rebecca Barrett barely recognised her own reflection; a stranger’s face blinking back at her. It was as if she was a voyeur; on the outside of her life looking in. She swiped a gin from the mini bar in an attempt to banish thoughts of her husband waking with a start, groggy and disorientated, calling out for help once he realised that, panic ensuing, the rope, and his phone, were missing, the in-coming tide beginning to lick the insides of the cave like flames. She had read somewhere that drowning was supposed to be one of the better ways to go, virtually painless, especially if you didn’t fight it, though how anyone could possibly know… Still, it gave her a modicum of comfort. She pictured him in those final moments as the realisation dawned that she was responsible for his predicament; would he be shocked, angry, betrayed and scared, all the things she had felt throughout the entirety of their marriage? Throwing back her drink and swiftly pouring another she checked her watch again. The tide would long be in now. It was done. Over.
*
The atmosphere was buzzing down at the Blue Marlin beach club and restaurant. The fragrant evening air warm and almond scented, punctuated by the sound of laughter and the chinking of glass, pumping beats emanating from the DJ booth, heads bobbing, bodies swaying. El ritmo de la noche.
Sunlounger - the Ultimate Beach Read (Sunlounger Stories Book 1) Page 60