Chapter 9
9
As our taxi bumps down a narrow, dusty road, I can’t shake the feeling that our driver may have taken a wrong turn at some point.
We’re in the north… somewhere. I know Lou said the resort wasn’t in a built-up area, but I wasn’t expecting our villa to be somewhere so secluded. We’re in a place called Sambuesa, which Nita said she had looked up and it did have a couple of shops and a bar, but I certainly can’t see any of them around here. Don’t get me wrong, this place is beautiful, with its rolling hills and sunny weather, but even paradise can be kind of unnerving when it feels so remote.
I briefly peer over my sunglasses – as though that’s going to give me a better look – before pushing them back up my nose.
‘Are you sure there’s a wedding venue out here?’ I ask.
Lou laughs.
‘Yes, somewhere,’ she replies. ‘See, this is why it’s loved by celebs and royals, because it’s so remote, so easy to ensure privacy.’
‘For you and Ellis?’ Nita jokes. ‘It’s not like someone from Bacci magazine is going to be parachuting into your wedding to get the exclusive, is it?’
‘I’ll have you know there was a bidding war, between the glossy mags, for the rights to our wedding,’ Lou replies, deadly serious, although obviously kidding. ‘But we decided to keep it private.’
‘Well, yeah, out here is certainly private,’ I reply. ‘Are you sure there’s even a villa?’
Right on cue, the villa seems to emerge from nowhere, as though it’s been carved out of the hills.
Wow, it’s beautiful. A stunning stone building perfectly placed in front of a backdrop of green hills and mountains. I don’t know if it feels like it’s out in the open or tucked away from the world, but it looks so inviting.
The road leads us up a driveway that is lined with olive trees. I feel like I can smell the leaves through the open car window and suddenly I’m absolutely starving.
‘I’m so hungry,’ I blurt.
‘I hadn’t realised the shops were going to be so far away,’ Nita admits. ‘But perhaps if we drop our things off and get changed, then maybe we can head out to explore, buy some food – stock up on a bunch of goodies.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Lou says, practically exhaling sunshine and butterflies. She must be so, so happy, and beyond excited. I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever get to feel that way but I’m starting to think my butterflies might be dead.
We get out of the car and unload our things before moving our baggage, a bit at a time, to the front door. Nita saunters along behind us, staring at her phone.
‘So, they sent me a code for the door, which thankfully I stored in my phone notes because there is zero signal here,’ she says.
‘No signal?’ I say, slightly panicked. ‘I need to work while I’m here, I need signal.’
‘You absolutely do not need to work while you’re here, because you’re off work,’ she reminds me. ‘However, don’t freak out, I’m sure they’ll have wi-fi. Everywhere has wi-fi.’
I exhale heavily. She’s right – well, about the wi-fi. Not about me not needing to work though because I absolutely do, I need to find the perfect person to redevelop our products, I need to prove to my boss that I haven’t lost my touch, that I’m not a hot mess, that it’s all going to be fine.
I also need to prove it to myself.
Nita punches the code in and, as if by magic, the door clicks open.
‘Okay, now I finally feel like I can relax,’ Lou says. ‘We’re actually here, it’s actually happening.’
‘Yeah, unless Ellis doesn’t turn up,’ Nita dares to joke.
Lou gives her a playful shrug.
We carry our things inside and – wow – this place is unreal. It’s funny, because we’re only here at this villa because it seemed like everything had gone wrong, but now things just feel… more right? As much as I love Blackpool, this place is something else. Plus, Blackpool would have been a rowdy time, with dicks everywhere – the kind you have at hen parties. I know Nita was going to get dick straws, dick badges, she was even going to get a stripper. Naked men are all well and good but I have to admit, I’m happy there aren’t going to be any here. I can’t think of anything better than a man-free week, then a wedding, then another man-free week. Sometimes I feel so, so single. It will be nice to exist without that pressure, where there’s no boys allowed, where I can just be myself. I don’t even need to feel needlessly self-conscious in my bikini, if it’s just us, and that is something money can’t buy (or I guess it’s technically something only money can buy, but you take my point).
The mostly open-plan living space looks like a great spot for socialising. This room has it all – big, inviting-looking sofas, a large dining table, a pool table, a big TV, a stereo. It’s almost a shame we’re not having a big party. It’s also hard to imagine being inside, given how glorious the weather is outside, and I know there’s supposed to be a big outdoor area with sun loungers, a firepit, a pool – the works – so I’m imagining myself living out there, even if I do need to work.
‘The light in here is just…’ Nita pauses to kiss her fingers like a chef would. ‘I’m going to take photos of this place until I get cramp in my hand. My Instagram is going to make my followers vomit with jealousy.’
‘The goal of any holiday,’ I joke.
‘Come on,’ Willow prompts us. ‘Let’s see what the kitchen is like.’
See, sometimes we do have things in common.
The kitchen is rustic yet modern. It feels so right for the place, but like it also has everything we could possibly need. Except the food and drink, of course.
‘Oh, wow,’ Nita says. ‘They even left some goodies in the fridge for us – now that’s the sign of a good host. It’s a shame it’s mostly beer and meat, but I guess we are in Spain. It’s not like the Lakes, where they leave you teabags, Kendal mint cake and jams.’
‘We’re not in the Lakes any more,’ Lou jokes, with Wizard of Oz vibes. I’m not even looking at her and I swear I can hear her smile.
‘Oh my God, you know what we should do,’ Nita says – and I can already tell by the tone of her voice that I’m not going to like it. ‘We should start this holiday off with a bang. We’re free – free from life, responsibilities, work…’
She should speak for herself.
‘I think we should take all our clothes off, right now, and run out there and jump in the pool. Think of it like a full-body cleanse,’ she continues. ‘Let’s start this trip reborn.’
I’m sure she’s being a bit sarcastic, because she’s not at all religious, but I take her point.
‘Oh my gosh, yes,’ Willow replies. ‘Let’s start as we mean to go on.’
‘Naked?’ Lou squeaks.
‘Having fun!’ Nita replies. ‘No inhibitions, nothing holding us back. This is your last week as a free woman. Get free.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Lou says, wrestling off her clothes.
‘You in, Molly?’ Nita asks me.
‘I’ll catch you up,’ I say with a laugh. ‘I need to go freshen up first.’
She’s kind enough not to push me.
‘Okay, well, all the rooms are the same, and each one has its own bathroom, so take any room you like,’ she tells me. ‘Then catch us up.’
‘I will, thanks,’ I tell her – I mean, I’ll probably catch up in my bikini, but I will join them. I like to think I’m a fairly confident person but there’s regular confident and then there is run-naked-and-jump-in-a-pool confident. I guess I’m just regular confident.
I head upstairs, feeling like a bit of a stick in the mud, but I know that my friends won’t judge me for it. I’ll always judge myself far more harshly than anyone else.
I grab one of my bags – the one I know my bikini is in – and head up the stairs with it. Gosh, it’s warm today. I think leaving such underwhelming weather at home has made coming here feel all the more jarring. I think my body was still in winter mode – spring at best.
I pick a door at random, seeing as though all of the rooms are the same, and I’m instantly happy with my choice. It’s big, with a massive bed, huge patio doors that are already open, leading out onto a balcony, already trying to tempt me out as the breeze makes the sheer curtains dance.
I’m hoping you’ll know what I mean by this, but the place just smells like holidays. I don’t know if it’s the greenery outside, the stone walls, the faint smell of the pool – everything together just creates the kind of scent that, if it were a diffuser, I could have done with it in my house through the winter to keep my spirits up.
I hear the girls screaming with joy and then a big splash. It makes me smile and pushes me to hurry up, to join them, and to try to force myself to relax. I whip off my dress, stripping down to my underwear, before leaning over my case to dig out my bikini. It’s only as I’m bent over, with my bum in the air, that I hear what I assume is the bathroom door click open behind me.
‘Oh, hello,’ I hear a voice say. It’s a man’s voice, definitely a Lancashire accent, but a total stranger nonetheless.
I spin around the spot, panicked, my eyes like a deer in the headlights, but he just smiles.
The man, who I’m guessing is in his early thirties, is standing there in his trunks. His head is tipped curiously, like he might be as confused as I am, but obviously being a man he’s not as freaked out as me, a woman, in a bedroom with a surprise man.
His dark hair is wet, with the occasional water droplet falling onto his shoulders, before making its way down his body, navigating the contours of his muscles, before hitting the floor below him. He might be a stranger to me but he’s obviously no stranger to the gym, and noticing this, as well as his bright blue eyes, gives me a funny feeling in my stomach. It’s just fear, surely, because this is a weird situation, and?—
I hear my friends’ screams rip through the air, but they’re not the fun, joyful screams I heard a few seconds ago, it’s pure terror this time.
I instinctively run out onto the balcony, to look down at the garden below, to make sure they’re okay.
As I look down at the pool, it takes me a moment to realise what I’m looking at, as my friends thrash around in the water, but then I notice that they’re not alone either. They’re still screaming, clearly freaking out, while the three men in the water with them seem to be taking it more in their stride.
‘Friends of yours?’ the strange man asks me as he joins me on the balcony.
‘Erm, yes,’ I reply.
‘Should we go down and join them?’ he suggests, unable to hide his amusement.
I nod, heading for the door, keen to get out of this room, and to the relative safety of strength in numbers with my friends.
‘Erm, one minute,’ the man calls after me.
I freeze on the spot for a second, before turning around to face him.
‘You, er…’
His voice trails off as he nods towards me, his gaze flickering briefly to my body before moving back up to my eyes.
Oh my God, I’m in my underwear. Shit, right, of course I am. I can feel heat in my cheeks rising to rival the Spanish sun but I try to play it cool.
‘Yeah, right, I’ll clow some throthes on,’ I say, absolutely butchering the sentence. So much for being cool.
He laughs.
‘See you in a sec,’ he says.
Fuuuuck. What the hell is happening? Naturally I don’t put my bikini on, I grab a sundress, and take it into the bathroom with me, locking the door behind me while I get changed. The bathroom, like the kitchen, appears to be fully stocked but, now that I’m looking closely, they’re all men’s products. Razors, shower gel, deodorant, shampoo – all in the most macho packaging, because God forbid a man wash his hair with a shampoo that came in a pink bottle. Is this his room? The random man’s? Have we like, I don’t know, rocked up at completely the wrong villa? But, if we had, why did the code work? This is the right place, the right address, it looks exactly as Nita described it. I need to head downstairs and figure it out.
Downstairs, I follow the trail of shoes, dresses and bras until I reach the back door. walking outside, after being slightly cooler inside, feels like walking into a wall of heat. It almost stops me in my tracks.
The trail of clothes is a good indicator of which way to go to find the back door but it’s ultimately unnecessary because the sound of screaming and arguing guides me effortlessly to the pool area where I find my friends, in the water, with three other men. Then there’s the man I met upstairs just now, sitting on the edge of the pool, his feet in the water to keep him cool, as they all argue amongst themselves.
‘Oh my God, Molly, there you are,’ Lou calls out when she spots me. Everyone else quietens down for a moment. ‘Thank God you’re okay.’
‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ one of the men in the pool asks.
‘Clearly, none of this is okay,’ Nita points out.
‘I don’t know, you’re a bit of all right,’ another one of the guys says to her.
She angrily shoves water in his direction, splashing him, but it comes across as vaguely flirty when nothing but a few drops hit him.
Nita puts her hands on her hips, frowning as she pushes air from her cheeks. Thankfully the pool water is protecting her modesty, but only just. It hides the detail, sure, but not the fact that she’s naked.
‘I just don’t understand,’ she says, trying to keep her fire under control. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We booked this villa,’ one of the men in the pool says. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘ We booked this villa,’ Nita replies. ‘For two weeks.’
‘No, we booked it for two weeks,’ the man claps back.
‘No, we did,’ Nita replies through tightly gritted teeth.
‘You can keep saying that, but it won’t make it true,’ he replies.
He’s in the shallow end so he stands on his feet, rather than treading water, which makes him suddenly appear much taller. He’s got a bit of a Ben Affleck vibe. Tall, dark, kind of intense. He has a sort of cheeky arrogance (or should that be arrogant cheekiness) that I can see in him already.
‘It wasn’t even listed when we booked it,’ Nita points out. ‘So how did you book it?’
‘We were told it had new owners, so we booked it through them,’ he replies.
‘Right, okay, this is nuts, but it’s the sort of thing we can only sort out with a phone call,’ Lou points out tactfully.
‘Exactly,’ the Ben-looking man, who appears to be the ringleader, replies. ‘So let’s do that.’
He sounds confident enough, which worries me.
‘Look, I feel like we’ve got off on the wrong foot,’ he says, softening a little. ‘My name is Owen.’
Nita narrows her eyes at him.
‘We’re all friends here. This guy on my left is Harry,’ he says, pointing to one of the other blokes in the pool. ‘And on my right we have Nolan.’
Harry looks like he would be quite tall. I know, I can’t see his entire body, but you can just sort of tell from his torso. He has sandy blond hair and a glimmer in his eye that makes him look like he could be trouble – then again, they all have that look. Nolan has short, light brown hair but it’s hard to say what style because they’re all soaking wet. His fringe is flat and stuck to his forehead currently.
‘And that hunk next to you is Travis,’ Owen adds – he’s talking to me.
I look at Travis, the man I just met upstairs, and give him a polite smile.
‘I’m Nita,’ she says, folding her arms angrily under the water. It’s almost like she begrudges introducing herself.
‘I’m Lou,’ she adds, smiling, giving a little wave.
‘My name’s Willow,’ Willow offers up next.
Now all eyes are on me.
‘Erm, I’m Molly,’ I tell them, for some reason sounding like I’m not quite sure.
‘Hi, Molly,’ Travis says through a grin. ‘It’s nice to meet you – properly.’
‘You too,’ I reply, trying to mask my embarrassment, because of course he saw me in my underwear before he even learned my name.
‘Okay, now we’re all friends, let’s go make some phone calls, clear this whole thing up,’ Owen suggests reasonably.
‘Yes, let’s,’ Nita replies.
‘After you,’ Owen suggests.
‘We can’t get out first, we’re not wearing any clothes!’ Lou practically squeaks.
‘I know,’ Owen replies with a wink.
‘Just get out of the fucking pool,’ Nita ticks him off.
‘All right, all right, I’m only joking,’ Owen insists. ‘Come on, lads, let’s leave them to sort themselves out.’
Owen, Harry and Nolan climb out of the pool, joining Travis on dry land before the four of them head inside. Honestly, watching them, dripping wet and nearly naked, all laughing and joking together – I feel like I’m tuned in to Love Island . They seem like the kind of lads who talk about ‘banter’ and ‘the sesh’ and their ‘body counts’. I dislike them already, although that could just be me prejudging them unfairly because I’m annoyed about this mess, and embarrassed about my part in it. Still, better to be in my underwear upstairs than down here naked with the others. Now that would’ve been embarrassing.
‘Here,’ I say, grabbing hopefully clean towels from the sun loungers. ‘Use these.’
The girls take their towels and get out of the pool.
I look at Nita and chew my lip.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ she reassures me. ‘We’ll get on the phone and we’ll sort all this out.’
‘Will we?’ Lou asks nervously.
‘Of course,’ I tell her, nodding my head like I mean it, but the problem is I’m not sure I do.
I have no idea how this is going to pan out, but I have this horrible feeling it can’t be good.