All Inclusive (29 page)

It was now just the three of them. Everyone else had already crossed to the island to wait for the bridal party. Sadie, Michael and Delilah were helped up the gangway into Carlos's boat (scrubbed clean and strung with ropes of paper flowers for the occasion), and turned to wave to the many hotel guests who, curious and well-wishing, had assembled on the beach to
photograph the bride and wave her off to her romantic desert island wedding.

‘It'd better not rain,' Sadie said, glancing back at the pale grey line of clouds that had gathered over the island's hills.

‘The island has a rain forest: you get rain.' Michael shrugged. ‘Even if it does, it'll only be for the usual few minutes. And you'll be under that arbour thing.'

‘I'm not worried about the dress, Dad,' Sadie said as the boat lurched across the water, ‘I just think it'll be unlucky.'

‘That'll be nearly every English wedding then!' Delilah said, sensing it was her job to keep the bride's mood buoyant.

Delilah felt weak with nerves. She could see Sam as the boat approached the island, waiting beside Mark, the sun glinting off new silver beads in his braided hair. How was he going to be with her? Maybe he'd ignore her, which would be the worst case. Or maybe he'd be ordinary and normal like nothing had happened. None of it. That was how she'd play it too, she told herself; it seemed the grown-up option. All the same, she couldn't help the way her insides felt – as if she was about to take all her GCSEs all over again, this time with no revision.

Carlos handed a small bag to Michael after he'd run the boat up onto the Dragon Island shore. ‘The blue flag is in here,' he said. ‘When you're ready for me to come back and get you, just run it up the pole by the bar and I'll see it from across the water, OK?'

Mark, all got up in a morning suit, as formal as if this was a country wedding in an Oxfordshire village, stepped forward to claim his bride as Sadie climbed carefully down the plank from the boat. Angela rushed forward, fussing at Sadie's dress and brushing sand off
the hem. Beth stood on the foreshore beside Ned and caught Nick looking at Sadie with a blatantly greedy expression, as if there was something he wished he'd done. She could guess what it was. He'd have to learn, that boy, and he would, in time: you can't have every chocolate in the box.

‘Ah, doesn't she look lovely?' Lesley sighed next to Beth. ‘Weddings always make me want to cry. I've brought a box of tissues in case, so if anyone needs one, you know where to come.'

‘Mine always made me cry, that's for sure,' Gina agreed as they all began walking, following the bride and groom with Sam and Delilah, across the island to the wedding arbour where the preacher waited.

‘How many have you had?' Cyn asked. ‘You've never said.'

‘She doesn't like to have her past failures dragged up. That's why,' Dolly said, with her cackly laugh. ‘Three times wed, three times divorced and never enough alimony to keep a cat in cream.'

‘I don't need alimony, Mom,' Gina said patiently, ‘I make my own way.'

‘That's what I mean. You shouldn't need to, all those husbands. I blame myself.'

‘Well that's good.' Gina patted her mother's arm. ‘Lets me off the hook.'

‘I'll be gone by morning Gina, then you'll wish you'd spoken good of me.'

‘Mom, you've said that every day this trip till we're all sick of it. You'll still be saying it this time next year. If you wanna vacation with me next year, I'm telling you now, it'll be to an African safari. And if you're still sure you're gonna die, you can just go walkabout with the lions.'

Sadie promised to love, honour and cherish Mark,
and Mark promised to share all his worldly goods with Sadie, and they all waited as the happy couple kissed – for slightly longer than was comfortable for their audience. Beth watched nervously as Sam and Delilah eyed each other speculatively from their respective sides of the bride and groom. She hoped there wouldn't be either coolness or a row between the two of them; a wedding was no place to fall out and this was a very tiny island.

The first specks of rain started to fall as everyone gathered beside the bar and the first bottles of champagne were uncorked.

‘Oh bring on the drink,' Cyn demanded, impatiently. ‘It's the only thing that makes a wedding bearable.' Beth looked at her sharply – Cyn, she realized, was clearly already on the outside of a couple of lunchtime cocktails.

‘Cyn the cynic,' Len teased, leaning heavily on the stout stick he'd been given by the Haven nurse. ‘What have you got against weddings? You've got a lovely man there.'

‘I know that. Brad's a darling. He's just the
one
though,' she said with a brittle laugh. ‘Not really enough for a woman of healthy appetite, is it Beth?' Cynthia downed half a glass of champagne in one.

‘Don't drag me into it!' Beth told her. ‘One husband is plenty for me.'

‘Are you sure, darling?' Cynthia leaned forward. ‘That's not what you were saying before, was she Ned?'

‘What? Sorry, wasn't listening.' He backed away, looking worried. ‘Just going to have a word with Michael.' And he scurried away, looking, Beth thought, like a fox fleeing a hound.

‘Delilah, I really like you, but . . .' Sam had at last approached Delilah, edging her away from the party by the bar.

‘But,' Delilah repeated. ‘That “but” says it all. What did you think I want, Sam? All this?' She waved her arm to indicate the wedding arbour, where the rain was weighing down the garlands of flowers. She almost overbalanced and steadied herself against the bottle-palm tree. Three glasses of champagne had kicked in fast.

‘What
do
you think I want from you, Sam? Do you think I want a big white beachfront wedding, with
you
? Is that why you stood me up yesterday?'

‘Um . . . well. You're very young and I shouldn't, maybe, have . . . Anyway, I'm sorry, I don't know what else to say.' Sam smiled apologetically at her. She sensed insincerity, a punt for easy forgiveness and permission to start again with the next silly victim, presumably cleared for take-off while Delilah was still on Mango premises.

‘I'm going back home tomorrow, Sam, and you won't have to deal with me ever again. You had
sex
with me.' She almost spat the words, somehow trying to convey that this
wasn't
an insignificant event for her.

He looked around, worried who was within hearing range.

Good. Let him worry, Delilah thought, as, gleefully, it occurred to her that he might even suspect, in spite of the hotel's over-sixteens policy, that she was under age. Why put him right?

‘You could have pretended just for forty-eight hours, you know. That would have been kind, after what you did,' she went on. ‘You could have just turned up for a while yesterday and, like, said hello, even. How much could it have hurt? God, you're so conceited!' A
small part of her conscience told her that she wasn't exactly blameless here. She'd hardly been ravished against her will in the scruffy little hut. Was he going to point that out?

He shrugged. ‘Guess I am. Sorry – and yesterday, well I had things to do, like unexpectedly. You're really sweet you know.' He reached out a hand to stroke her hair and she pushed it away.

‘Oh spare me that crap,' she said furiously. ‘It's so . . . so
patronizing
. You just collect girls who are on holiday, like for fun. You do it because you
can
.'

She felt treacherously – and unexpectedly – close to tears. Now
that
she definitely
didn't
want. She was just starting to enjoy herself, to get into her stride, telling him what she thought. It would be good practice for when she was older or dealing with some hopeless, useless boy from school. Except what she'd told Sam wasn't what she thought, not really. If, after the wedding ceremony (which she'd found quite moving) and the toasts and the speeches, if he'd come over to her, led her away from the others and put an arm round her, apologized, kissed her a bit, all that, then she'd have let him take her down to the fenced-off nudist end of the island and do whatever he wanted to her, down and dirty in the sand. She'd
wanted
him to, far more than she'd wanted it the other night. It would – and she knew for sure from how her body felt as she'd watched him during the wedding blessing – be loads better than that pathetic effort in the water-sports hut. She was ready for him this time. But no. What had he done instead? Shuffled about looking like he'd rather be anywhere but here, chatting with the bar staff and joking with Michael. Making out like he was anywhere but on the same deserted half-mile stretch of island as her. She was angry.

Back home, when she told her about telling Sam what she thought of him, Kelly would be so proud of her. She could imagine her, almost see her here, rising from the waves yelling ‘Go girl!' and punching a fist into the air.

‘I don't know what to say,' Sam told her, shrugging moodily. ‘I keep saying I'm sorry – you're great, that's it. I didn't mean to hurt you.'

‘No,' Delilah said sadly, ‘I don't suppose you did. I don't suppose you gave it a thought. But do me a favour will you, please?' She'd almost run out of steam now.

‘Anything. What is it?'

‘Think about it, next time you pick up some little holiday girl. There aren't many of my age who come here, so when they do, just, like, leave them alone?'

‘You got it.'

She hadn't, she knew that. What did it matter? After tomorrow it would be back to school and the likes of Oliver Willis for her. Oh joy, something she could really look forward to. Not.

‘And you know . . .' Sam was giving her that special smile now, sure he was safely off the hook at last. ‘You know, there's still tonight back at the hotel? I could make it up to you?'

The clouds closed in, dark grey and purple-tinged and fast-moving. The rain, which had fallen in short sharp bursts, now tumbled hard and persistent from the sky. Thunder rumbled from far away and Beth counted the seconds between lightning and the distant rolls. It was coming closer.

‘I love this kind of weather,' Lesley said, as all the older ones sheltered on seats beneath the bar's verandah, clutching glasses of drink and eating chunks of
chocolate wedding cake. All the younger ones were smoking and chatting further up the beach, under the trees and the wedding arch.

‘It reminds me of being a child,' Lesley went on. ‘My mum used to tell me that thunder was God moving the furniture about.'

‘Mine told me he was throwing cabbages,' Ned said. ‘Funny, I never thought to ask why he'd want to do that.'

‘Didn't want to eat them, I expect,' Michael suggested. ‘Not everyone likes cabbage.'

‘His fault for inventing them then!' Len said, slapping his leg and roaring with laughter.

‘Not the maddest food he's come up with though. You've cooked some weird stuff for that Wendy woman, haven't you Beth?' Lesley said. ‘What's the worst?'

Beth thought for a minute, wondering if it was the champagne making her brain feel like a wet sponge. Food – cooking – that wasn't something she much cared to think about right now. It went with the Going Home idea – which she was reluctant to face before she had to.

‘Oogruk flippers,' she came up with, eventually. There was a silence, as well there might be, Beth thought; then, ‘And what the fuck is an oogruk when it's at home?' Cynthia asked. She was slurring now, Beth noticed, but she herself probably wasn't much better. Much longer on this island and they'd have to be carried off.

‘An oogruk,' Beth said, standing up as if to deliver a lecture, ‘an oogruk is a bearded seal. So first you take your oogruk. Then you cut off its flippers.'

‘Ugh! I couldn't!' Lesley pulled a face and shuddered.

‘No – neither could I,' Beth said. ‘Neither could Wendy even, if you can believe that. Anyway, then you put them in fresh blubber for two weeks.'

‘Then what?' Cynthia asked. ‘Is that it? How dull.'

‘More or less. Then you take them out again, take off the loose fur, cut the flippers up and eat the meat.
Voilà!
An Inuit delicacy.'

‘I'd rather be here, eating Caribbean crayfish,' Bradley commented, passing round another bottle. Thunder crashed again, closer this time.

‘Look,' Ned said, ‘I hate to be a party pooper but it's not getting any better, this thunder, do you think we should maybe be summoning our good boatman and heading back?'

‘Good plan. Who's got the blue flag?'

Nick found Delilah in the sea, paddling around by herself, up to her thighs, her linen dress soaking wet and clinging to her. Her hair was drenched, and all her carefully applied make-up was trickling down her face. Rain or tears? He couldn't begin to guess.

‘I don't think you should be in the sea when it's thundery, Del. Lightning might get you,' Nick called, wading in and taking her hand to lead her to shelter. ‘Hey, you're a bit cold. Are you all right?'

‘Yeah. I suppose. Just a bit . . . you know, empty-ish.'

‘Is it the wedding? All that lovey-dovey stuff? Can't be doing with it, me.'

‘Liar.' She punched him gently. ‘Don't tell me Felicity didn't get to you – that's why you came running over to St George, to be in the comfort of your loving family!'

‘Now you're really ripping the piss, Del.' The two of them walked up the beach and sat together beneath a clump of trees. Mark and Sadie were now on their own
in the wedding arbour, having a romantic moment alone with cake and champagne. Sam was spark out in a hammock, his long beaded hair hanging over the fabric and a couple of spliff roaches lying dead on the sand beneath. The rain was easing off now, but the sky was still a menacing, thundery colour.