Page 56 of Not in a Million Years

We emerged into the hot night and walked downstairs. The sun was just beginning to slip behind the mountain, and the sea was turning the familiar silver it took on in the evenings. After tonight, I knew I wouldn’t see it again.

Over the past ten days, Andy had made what the medics said was significant progress. He could get himself along the corridor and (with difficulty) up and down the stairs on his crutches. The pain relief was doing its thing. X-rays showed the fracture was healing as it should. And so, tomorrow, he was to be discharged and fly home – or at least to London – accompanied by Daniel and me as his carers.

It was a massive relief in almost every way. I wouldn’t have to delay starting my new job. Andy had recovered better than the medical team could have hoped. Daniel and I wouldn’t be stuck paying for the none-too-cheap hotel accommodation for the foreseeable.

But. There was a but so massive I could hardly articulate it – not to myself and certainly not to Daniel. There’d be no more strolls into town in the evenings, no more sharing our dinner with the local cats, no more seeing Daniel’s face across the table at breakfast. No more going for drives into the surrounding countryside together, half-bickering over whether Daniel was adhering to the speed limit. No more combing the local shops for soft drinks and English newspapers to take to Andy when we visited him in hospital. Our holiday, which was never meant to have been a holiday but had somehow become one, was almost over. This strange intimacy that had built up would be at an end – replaced by the easy friendship I’d taken for granted for so long if I was lucky, and with our more recent animosity if I wasn’t. A few days ago, I’d have felt only relief about that. Now, I didn’t – I felt a hollow sense of something I thought might be loss.

In silence, we walked down to the pier. A few glamorously dressed people were milling about, chatting in a language I didn’t recognise. One of the women was wearing a floaty midi dress that I could have sworn was Balenciaga; her husband’s shades were branded Cartier. A stunning twenty-something woman had on a diamond bracelet that must have been worth as much as the deposit on my flat, and her boob job had probably cost close on as much. I hung back with Daniel, suddenly overwhelmed with shyness in my Topshop dress.

It’s vintage, Kate, I told myself. You’re saving the planet, one twenty-pound outfit at a time.

Then a motorboat pulled up, a wake of sparkling water following it.

‘Going to Meridia?’ the driver – or captain, I supposed he was – asked, alighting easily from the boat onto the pier.

‘Eks, aita,’ said Cartier Shades.

‘Meeldiv tutvuda,’ Daniel said. ‘Minu nimi on Daniel.’

Cartier Shades pumped Daniel’s hand enthusiastically before breaking into a flurry of words in the same language. Daniel shook his head, smiling, and responded haltingly. Cartier Shades laughed and slapped him on the back.

‘Please?’ The captain extended a hand, and Diamond Bracelet took it, stepping onto the boat like she did this sort of thing all the time, which she probably did. Balenciaga Frock, who I guessed was her mother, was next, stepping more cautiously in her towering heels. Either she hadn’t got the memo about going barefoot, or she was going to rock her Manolos until the last possible second.

It looked like I was next. I reached out for the captain’s hand, which was warm and crusted with calluses, trying to look as if I, too, had done this countless times before and wasn’t one bit afraid of capsizing the boat. All the same, when I stepped in and felt it lurch on the water, my hand gripped the captain’s for dear life, visions of me toppling into the Mediterranean Sea and having to be hauled back to shore (possibly by passing fishermen with nets, as if I was the catch of the day) flashing before my eyes.

But I didn’t fall in. Seconds later, I was sitting next to Balenciaga Frock, who smiled warmly at me and told me in fluent English that her name was Sofia, her daughter was Lisandra and her husband Andrei.

As we chatted, the boat pulled away from the jetty and moved swiftly towards the yacht. It had looked pretty big from a distance, but as we neared it, I revised my opinion. The thing wasn’t pretty big – it was bloody enormous. Against the dark water, it blazed like a lit-up Christmas tree, lights of all colours shining from its decks: one warm gold, one brilliant white, another cycling through pinks and purples and blues. I could hear music and laughing voices drifting towards us across the water, faintly but clearly audible over the roar of the boat’s engine.

‘All right, Kate?’ Daniel laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re not going to get seasick, are you?’

I turned around to glare at him, but his excited grin made me smile instead. ‘Of course I’m not going to get seasick. It’s a five-minute ride on calm water. Don’t be mental.’

‘I just thought…’

‘That because I’m scared of flying, I’d also be scared of boats? That’s completely illogical – like saying because you like cats, you’ll also like dogs.’

‘As it happens, I do like dogs.’

We held each other’s eyes for a long moment. I felt something lurch inside me, as sudden and unsettling as the list when I’d stepped into the boat. Then we both started to laugh, so giddy with shared excitement that anything could set us off. The boat came to a stop, right next to an expanse of varnished wooden deck. The captain jumped gracefully out, and we all alighted behind him.

We were ushered through to an upper deck, where waiters circulated with trays of champagne glasses. Our new friends immediately spotted people they knew and disappeared into the crowd. Daniel and I helped ourselves to drinks and moved to the edge of the space, looking down to the aquamarine swimming pool beneath us and the vast expanse of the sea beyond it, as dark as the pool water was bright.

‘I could get used to this,’ I murmured.

‘Not bad, is it?’ Daniel flashed a grin at me, and we touched the rims of our glasses together in a silent toast. ‘But I’m surprised you’ve never been on a yacht before. I’d have thought a high-flyer like you would do this sort of thing all the time.’

‘Oh, yeah. My last boyfriend had a yacht a bit like this one, only bigger.’

‘Really?’ The smile faded slightly from his face.

‘No, of course not. Come off it! I’m more booze cruise on the Thames than yacht on the Med level – you know I am.’

Daniel laughed. ‘I thought you’d have been a bit more blasé if you’d done this before.’

‘I never have. Should we find our hosts and then explore a bit?’

‘Sure.’

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