Chapter 17
CHLOE
I can taste Christmas Day in my mouth. This strange combination of herbs, cinnamon and citrus zest swishing around in my saliva like I’ve just snogged a Christmas ham.
Why am I floating? I feel like I’m floating but then I feel the grasp of someone’s hand under my knees, another hand around my back and shoulders, and I realise I’m being carried.
To where? Panic consumes me for a second.
I let my guard down. The bottles of that herby liqueur were spiked.
This is when it all goes wrong. I want to fight whoever is carrying me but I have zero physical strength in any part of me.
Are we still on the beach because I can feel the pulse of a beat strongly inside my head.
Or is that just a banging headache? Strangely, I can also feel some sand in my butt crack. It is deeply uncomfortable.
‘Mind her head! Mind her head!’ I hear a deep Spanish accent. That sounds like Miguel. He is the one who gave us the liqueur, he is the criminal mastermind in all of this. ‘We don’t want to give her concussion too!’
‘I’m trying to protect her modesty. Her dress is very short.’
That’s Ben. Ben is carrying me. I open my eyes for a moment to check where we are and I recognise the stone walls of the villa, the old stained-glass lampshades of the upstairs corridor.
I hear him kick something, a door? He goes in and well, there’s no way of making this sound dignified, he kind of rolls me on to the bed in the way a person would unroll a carpet.
I feel myself spin out of his arms and I groan a little at the motion.
‘Grab the bin in case she throws up again,’ Ben tells Miguel.
Oh no, I threw up? Where? It might be why my stomach is making the same sound as some pipes in an old house but it also explains the taste in my mouth. I am mortified that I’ve made a fool of myself in front of everyone. Ben lifts my head and positions a pillow under it.
‘Tell me what was in that liqueur again?’ Ben asks Miguel as they stand over me.
‘It is an Ibizan speciality, a digestif. My friend José brews it himself. All natural,’ Miguel explains. ‘Benji, it’s not like he puts an ingredients list on the bottle.’
‘Is there marijuana in it?’ Ben asks.
‘Who knows? I taste fennel myself. She drank a lot,’ Miguel tells him.
‘How many bottles?’
Miguel doesn’t reply. I don’t think I know myself. All I know is that this bed is soft, so soft. I am thirsty. I think I’ve also hurt my knees. But I also hear splashing. Wait, are we still near the sea?
‘Balls, Miguel – that’ll be Zara and Jess bombing it into the pool. Please go and make sure they’re OK. They’re so drunk. Hydrate them, get them to bed,’ Ben says.
‘Yes, boss!’ Miguel says jokingly.
‘You’re not funny.’
The shutters close and I feel the whir of a fan against my skin.
‘Did you have fun? I think you had fun. I saw you dancing, it was good, no?’ Miguel asks Ben.
He doesn’t reply. I hear their footsteps padding away.
I had fun, I want to say. My memories of the evening are slowly collating but I don’t remember ever dancing like that before.
Wildly. There was something feral and freeing about it all.
I don’t quite know what to do now I’m lying here on my own.
I should get comfortable, rinse out my mouth.
But my room door opens again, and I part my very parched lips, opening my eyes to see a very blurry Ben standing over me.
‘Ben…’ I mumble.
‘Hey,’ he replies.
I feel the sensation of something warm against my face, a warm flannel wiping away the sand and, I assume, any vomit stuck to my face. I feel it against my hands and I make little comforting moans to let him know it’s nice.
‘Chloe, I’ve brought you some water. I’m just going to put this straw in your mouth so you can have some sips.
’ I feel a finger on my lips as he inserts the straw and the cool water glides down my throat as I take a few deep sucks.
It’s an incredibly soothing feeling. His hand goes to my hair, stroking my head and curling errant strands out of my face.
He picks something out of my hair with his fingers, and I pray it’s fluff as opposed to a chunk of something I vommed.
I then feel something cold on my arm, it stings a little but I don’t even have the energy to flinch. He holds something to the area and then gently swabs some cotton against it and applies something to it; I will assume a plaster.
‘You’ve got a little cut on your arm so I’ve patched that up,’ Ben explains. ‘I’m going to leave some painkillers here for you and some crackers; there are also tissues and the bin if you need to throw up again. Can I get you anything else?’
‘Can you take off my bra?’ I mumble. ‘I want to go to sleep.’
I hear him laughing. ‘I don’t think you’re wearing one.’
‘I’m not? Oh yeah.’ It was the dress. It was a slip and I forgot to pack a strapless bra. I didn’t think we’d be dancing. ‘I have little boobs anyway, it doesn’t matter,’ I mutter, realising that sentence might not make sense without the rest of my train of thought. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’
‘For throwing up. Where did I throw up?’
He pauses for a moment. ‘On the beach. You threw up on that mean girl in the sarong. It was quite spectacular. She said she was going to call the police,’ he informs me.
‘The police,’ I say, my eyes springing open in shock but then rolling shut again.
‘There were no police. We ran before that. You should have seen the others. It was quite a sight. I think Zara may have been queen bee in a prison gang in another life. She really took no prisoners,’ he says chuckling.
‘You threw up again by the car and then we stopped halfway home and you threw up outside a supermercado,’ Ben continues.
Well, I may have erased any ounce of dignity I may have left.
‘You are a very polite vomiter though. You apologise a lot in between chunders.’
‘I do?’
‘Yes,’ says Ben. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. Bleurgh…’
I manage a whisper of laughter hearing how well he can imitate me throwing up. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asks.
‘I can taste Christmas.’ He won’t know what that means. Maybe there were drugs in that Hierbas? I’m hallucinating Christmas. ‘I’m also really sandy. Why am I so sandy?’
‘We were on a beach.’
‘Oh yeah…’
‘And you kind of wrestled with that girl on the sand.’
‘Oh. Did I win?’ I ask.
‘If I was judging, I’d say yes.’
I try to punch an arm in the air to celebrate that victory.
However, I can still feel the prickle of sand in between my toes, in my scalp and lining my crack.
I guess I’m still out of my mind and I also want to sleep comfortably, so I reach down and take off my knickers, throwing them across the room.
I hear laughter and I realise that may have looked like an invitation.
‘I’ve just got sand in my…’ Find a word, a polite word, a word you can use around him that is neither crude nor sexual. ‘Flange.’
Ben laughs so hard that I have no choice but to giggle too, limiting my movement because my head still hurts.
‘Did you want me to hose you off?’ he jokes.
‘You make me sound like a wet dog,’ I murmur. ‘I think that goes beyond the service you should be offering. Yes, come for a retreat: eat, dance and let me de-sand your flange.’
He continues laughing. I can’t quite tell where Ben is in the room but the sound of him close and making him laugh is a tonic in my fragile state.
‘I really am sorry,’ I say.
‘No apology needed, Chloe.’
I hate it when he bookends sentences with my name, the way he says it softly. I may be withering away but even that touches me in parts it shouldn’t. ‘Thank you, Ben,’ I say out loud, burying my head in my pillow and rubbing at my temples.
‘Headache?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
He comes over and sits on the edge of the bed. ‘Here, have a cracker and then some tablets.’
I sit up, propping myself up against some pillows and I feel his fingers graze my lips as he tries to feed me the cracker. I chew it weakly and hear him pop tablets out of their foil wrapper before putting them in my hand and handing me the bottle of water with the straw.
‘Good girl,’ he whispers.
I pause for a moment. My headache almost clears as I hear him say those words under his breath.
I wonder if he can see the effect that has on my nipples.
I’m literally sitting here without any knickers on.
This should be playing out very differently.
I smile to myself instead, opening my eyes to see him looking at me, a hand to the side of my head to prop me up.
I put my hand to his and hold it there for a moment.
And strangely, I feel a tear run down from the corner of my eye, down the curve of my cheek.
‘Chloe, are you OK?’
I can’t remember the last time I received this level of care. And because my edges are all frayed, it is a deeply intense experience to have someone tie them up for me.
‘Can you lie with me?’ I ask. I curl up on the bed and pull Ben’s arm around me, getting him to spoon me, feeling the warmth of his breath.
He reaches over and I feel him kiss the back of my head, softly, slowly.
Our legs meet and intertwine; we fit together almost perfectly.
And there are no words, nothing more. I just close my eyes and feel myself fall into a deep and safe slumber.