All Inclusive (11 page)

Beth tried hard to clear her head of all mundane thoughts, the better to absorb the benefits of an hour and a half of being deliciously slathered with aromatherapeutic gunk (the Tranquillity Option: lavender, camomile, melissa, geranium – to soothe and relax). Petallia was doing her highly competent best, working her way limb by limb round Beth's supine body. Every now and then, sensing tension, Petallia would smile and murmur, ‘Relax,' in a soft, soothing tone.

This was, after all, a key element of a stay at the Mango Sport 'n' Spa. You were supposed to leave all domestic dross behind and forget all the niggling concerns of day-to-day home routine. If there were problems to return to, you were supposed to face them mentally and physically equipped, invigorated and empowered. At least, that was what Louella, the hotel's yoga guru, had informed her class while Beth, Delilah, Lesley, Gina and Cyn had been crouched and hunched like a row of Sainsbury's chickens down in Child's Pose in the Wellness Pavilion that morning, trying not to giggle.

And what a surprise
that
had been, Cyn and Bradley arriving. Ned hadn't seemed particularly thrilled about it when he'd got back from the town the day before and told her. In fact he'd been downright abrupt, catching up with her as she and Lesley had a glass of fizz at sunset with a grumpy ‘Cyn and Bradley have turned up.' But then who
would
be in a good mood after sharing a long cab ride (plus airport detour) with the dreadful Angela?

Beth now tried deep, even breathing and concentrated instead on trying to shut out the background soundtrack of communicating marine life. Why, she then found herself wondering as Petallia deftly smoothed scented oil up and down her right arm, why (and how) exactly had someone first concluded that this whale-song stuff was calming and gentle? Suppose the whales were not actually wallowing joyously in the ocean, beatifically cooing sweet notes of love to each other, but shouting furious things to their young, a sort of sea-life equivalent of ‘You're not going out dressed like that!' Maybe the one that was now going ‘Wwhooo wwhooop' in this scented darkened room was actually bellowing to its teenage whale calf, ‘If you don't eat that plankton, you'll get it served up at every mealtime 'til it's gone.' And why whales? Sensitively recorded and with a bit of suitable accompanying harpsichord perhaps, the sound of cats purring could be just as rhythmically soothing as this.

Slip slap went Petallia's expert fingers on Beth's right thigh, denting deeply into all the places that Beth would identify as chubby. She imagined the honeycombed pockets of fat beneath the skin, constructed like one of those cross-sections of a quality mattress that appear in ads in the Saturday newspapers. She was depressingly convinced that whatever creams and
lotions were rubbed in, however many volts of electronic toning were applied, these pockets were constructed with a semi-permeable membrane allowing flab to percolate in but never out. Except with Cynthia – something in her had obviously unstoppered and let any last trace of surplus fat out of her. Far too thin, that's how she was looking this year. Lovely as it was to see her, it had been a shock to realize how very slender Cyn had become when she'd appeared in the yoga class that morning. Losing a bit of weight was one thing; having successfully stuck to a diet called for congratulations to be offered in an obligatory, sisterly woman-to-woman gesture, albeit through envious, gritted teeth. But Cyn looked somehow shrunken and drawn, so that her head seemed a bit too big for her body. Her fine-boned face was etched with the tiniest creases, and the overbright glitter in her eyes told Beth (and Lesley, who had made a comment when Cyn went off to the loo) that something was deeply amiss. Perhaps she was ill.

‘I expect she'll tell you,' Lesley had teased as they poured freshly juiced mango at the breakfast buffet that morning. ‘You've got that Agony Aunt appeal.'

‘People do tell me stuff,' Beth had sighed, thinking of Worldwide Wendy and her intimate discussions of internal secretions. ‘I must have been given a confiding face.'

‘Oh you have,' Lesley had agreed. ‘And you always seem to be so calm and relaxed. I envy you. I might look like a big, fat good-time sort but I'm all a bundle of worry inside.'

Petallia held up a big ochre towel to screen her eyes from the dire sight of exposed flesh as Beth turned herself over with extreme care (for how easy but how undignified it would be to crash to the floor from this
plank-narrow bench) and settled herself on her front. Perhaps, Beth thought, she'd have more chance of escaping her own thoughts in this face-down position. Perhaps at last she'd start to feel nothing about anything, think nothing about anyone and actually feel the benefit of all this me-me-me attention at last. Beth sighed as she lay beneath the firmly kneading hands of Petallia, annoyed at herself for wasting the benefits of this session, intended to smooth away her own inner troubles, by worrying about someone else's. Cut it out, she told her brain, just leave it. Enjoy the moment; don't waste it. But it was too late. Just as she was beginning to sink into a near stupor as Petallia kneaded her back, she felt the masseuse's fingers doing the pit-pat raindrop thing up and down her spine. A few moments of utter silence followed and then a tiny bell tinkled. All over.

Delilah padded along the shore, knee-deep in the sea, feeding chunks of breakfast bread to the shoals of minute greedy fishes that flowed around her ankles like a silky drift of patterned fabric. She could see Michael further up the beach, mooching along by himself past the early morning t'ai chi group. He had a look of that artist, the blond gay one who lived in California, Delilah thought as she watched him coming nearer. David Hockney, that was the dude, all floppy yellow hair and quite cool glasses. They'd studied him in art at school and in one of the photos she'd seen of him he'd been wearing a cream outfit and a beaten-up straw hat like Michael's.

She liked Michael, she decided, as she watched him stop to pick up a shell from the sand and stand looking at it for a few moments, turning it over and then putting it in his pocket. He was really brave to have
come here with that horrible always-cross ex-wife and his selfish Sadie daughter who'd wanted to cut her whole family right out of her wedding. How mean was that? Michael was all right. He'd definitely be OK at a wedding; he was the sort you could have a laugh with about the bridesmaids' dresses and he was also someone who, like Delilah, had tagged along on this trip without being properly attached to anyone.

What had gone wrong with him and the wife, she wondered? He'd certainly pissed off the Angela woman big-time for her to be so horrible to him. Perhaps there'd been an issue over sense-of-humour failure with her.
Not
a woman you could ever rip the piss out of and then say ‘Joke!' She'd probably hit you with a brick.

‘Good morning, Delilah!' Michael called as he approached her. ‘Tell me why you're paddling around throwing food into the sea. Is this a variant on anorexia? Have you also chucked in a plateful of bacon and eggs that you'll swear to your mother you've eaten?'

Delilah laughed. ‘No! How rude is that! If I
was
anorexic that would be a terrible thing to say – it could set my recovery back by months!'

‘Oh I know, I know.' Michael shrugged. ‘It's one of the many subjects you're not allowed to mention to teenage girls, isn't it? Even the porky ones.'

‘Especially the porky ones. They might have bulimia or binge-eating issues,' Delilah agreed. ‘What I'm doing is I'm feeding the fish. You only have to wade in a few inches and they're all round your legs. Look! Aren't they brilliant?' She pointed down at the sparkling clear sea.

Michael peered into the shallows. ‘Ugh, slimy swimming things. The teeming life of the ocean is best
viewed from a safe dry vantage point, I think. Do you fancy a trip out in one of those glass-bottomed-boat things later? I'd ask Sadie, but now Mark's arrived she's all wrapped up with him. Literally, I should think at this early-morning moment. Or is that something else I shouldn't mention to a teenage girl?'

‘No you shouldn't,' Delilah advised him solemnly. ‘A teenage girl could decide you're being gross and disgusting.'

‘Apologies. Yet again,' Michael offered, then delved into his pocket. ‘Here, have this very pretty shell as a token of my contrition. Or are you now going to tell me I'm upsetting nature's balance by picking it up from the sand?'

‘Thanks. I don't know much about the nature-balance thing. We haven't done seashore. For GCSE it was mostly oilfields and hill farms and the traffic system in Swanage.' Delilah looped up a corner of her sarong into a pocket and tied the shell safely into place. ‘And yes, I would like to go out on a boat with you, as long as . . .'

‘As long as I promise to keep off forbidden topics?'

‘No!' she laughed, ‘I like forbidden topics. It makes a change from people who are always so careful to talk to me as if I might explode any minute. All I get here is safe, dull suck-up stuff like, “That Rachel Stevens song's really good isn't it?” and, “I expect you've got that new Busted album” when they haven't a clue, I mean like I'd care about crap pop? What I meant was, I'd like to come as long as the boat doesn't fill up with people you've already picked fights with.' Delilah bit her lip. ‘That's probably something
I
shouldn't have said too.'

Michael laughed. ‘No you're all right, and you're dead right. We'll sneak off when none of them are
looking. About mid-morning suit you when they're kippering on the loungers or doing beginners' snake-charming or whatever?'

‘Snake-charming! I wish! Yeah I'll come. I hope we see turtles.'

‘Me too, and a big shark. I shall tow it back and set it on my beloved ex-wife. They'd be pretty evenly matched. See you later.'

This was where it could all start to go horribly wrong, Ned thought as he checked his regulator and picked up the air tank ready to walk down the beach to the dive-boat. There was a good-sized crowd going out on the first dive today – sixteen or so. They had three instructors among them, but there was still potential for accidents if anyone was determined to get careless.

‘I've been really looking forward to this,' Bradley said, hauling up the zip at the back of his wetsuit. ‘You can't beat a good wreck dive.'

Well, you could interpret that in one of two ways. Ned prayed silently that Bradley was referring to the magic of underwater sea-life. He could, on the other hand, be looking forward to a cuckold's watery revenge – making sure that Ned got the ultimate punishment for messing with his wife and somehow got ‘lost' inside the rusted cargo hold of the old sunken Marylla ferry boat. He could just see him, surfacing in a pretend panic, devastated to have let down his dive-buddy, swearing he'd never dive again, how was he to face Beth, all that. The perfect murder. They'd never even find his body; he'd be shark meat by the time they sent a search boat out.

‘Do you think that big old grouper is still living in the hole in the hull?' Bradley went on as he adjusted his mask strap. ‘You wonder if it's the same one, don't
you? Year after year, it's there. I wouldn't have thought they'd live that long. Maybe it's a thriving fishy family business: the senior member gets to occupy that hole and pop its head out every hour to entertain the daily divers.'

What a good bloke Bradley was, Ned thought, feeling sly and unworthy. Bradley wasn't going to kill him – he couldn't be that good an actor; he was too damn nice. He obviously knew nothing about his wife and her latest extra-marital adventure (if Ned
was
her latest; possibly there'd already been time since spring for another brief dalliance or two). If he – Ned – had expected to meet up with Brad again this year, would he have taken it as far as it went with Cynthia? Impossible to come up with an answer. He liked to think it would be a resounding ‘no'. If it wasn't, if it was even a shady ‘maybe', then what kind of bastard did that make him? And did it make any difference? Surely he was a bastard anyway for cheating on Beth, a woman he saw every day and completely loved. Why was he getting all chewed up about behaving dishonestly to Brad? It was because he felt the dishonesty was still going on, that was why. It was because they weren't being equal here: Brad took it for granted that Ned was a Good Bloke. Beth, of course, knew different. But by not bagging up all his possessions for Oxfam, scratching ‘Bastard' on the car roof or blowing their joint savings on a slow racehorse, she was choosing to believe that the better side to him was redeemable.

Ned knew only two things for certain at this moment. One was that he wished he'd persuaded Beth that Mexico might be fun this year, and the second was that he very much hoped he'd return from his dive without Bradley having stuck his diving knife through his windpipe.

Beth lay on her lounger in the gently wafting shadow of the big date palm, some way along the beach from the main pool, the bar, the jacuzzi and all busy activity. In keeping with the earth theme of the massage room, she'd had an urge to lie in the sand at the sea's edge, immersing herself in the elements, but had resisted. With sand gluing itself to all the oils on her body she would end up looking like a fish finger. At least, and at last, she was now relaxed completely, and emptying her head of all thought. Her eyes were closed, her breathing calm and even, and her book lay abandoned on the sand. A bit late, but Petallia would approve. The sea was all she could hear, plus now and then the faint buzz of light chatter as a group of people nearby bobbed idly in the water, discussing their mosquito bites and the many muscles that ached from the power yoga class they'd over-ambitiously joined the evening before.

Petallia had given Beth a list of what not to do in the couple of hours following her aromatherapy session, and Beth was busily and obediently not indulging in sex, cigarettes, food, alcohol, caffeine, sun exposure or sporting activity. Nor, at last, was she thinking about paint colours, Nick and his domestic arrangements, whether Wendy would fire her for refusing to pluck a puffin, what was quietly bugging Lesley or why Cynthia had become so skinny. Perhaps it was this final non-thought that had a talk-of-the-devil effect for, while Beth was drifting to a geranium-scented nirvana, along came Cynthia herself, noisily dragging a lounger to the spot beside Beth and plonking herself down on it with a gusty sigh.