Ibiza Summer (11 page)

And here it was. I had thought I could fall in love with Rex from the moment I laid eyes on him. Then on our first date under the backdrop of the sun and pine trees I had had an inkling it
might
be love. Now, from the depths of my heart to the core of my very being, I felt sure that it really was. An all-consuming, burning desire had taken over me: there, on the beach, holding
each other, the soft, tranquil waves washing over our toes as we moved in unison. As he held me, something inside me had let go. I was nervous, like I always was in any romantic situation, but this
was a new kind of fear. The type of fear I imagined actors might get before they go on stage to give the performance of a lifetime, paralysed with terror, but exhilarated and driven by the standing
ovation that would rightfully be theirs at the final curtain. In that moment with Rex everything in my life had come right. All my awkwardness and inhibitions abandoned me, leaving this newly
confident person in their place. It was as if I had been unzipped and had stepped out of myself, shedding the old Izzy to make way for the new one. Like I’d been born again.

t was the following evening, and Cala Jondal looked different in the shade of the night: empty with only the
moonlight to guide us and the gentle lapping of the waves – but it was no less beautiful, in fact, it was even more peaceful and tranquil than it had been in the heat of the midday sun.

After a dinner of fresh paella, Ellie and Co. had decided to go to a little gathering that Alfredo was organising down at Playa d’en Bossa beach, and I had said that I was too tired to
join them owing to my recent ‘illness’. Ellie hadn’t questioned this, but had made me promise to text when I got back to the apartment, and I’d said I would. I knew they
would be gone for the duration of the night but I still had to play it carefully if I was to meet Rex and get away with it – again.

Rex had been doing his usual slot at Café Del Sol and after his set he had whisked me off on his moped, saying he wanted to take me somewhere. I was a bit surprised when I realised he had
brought me back to the beach.
Our
beach.

‘You didn’t have to cut your set short, you know,’ I said, worried in case he’d done it on my account.

‘I really wanted to bring you here again because, well, yesterday felt so good and everything, but you know I wasn’t sure if you’d think, well, that I was trying to get you
alone, in the dark, and you know . . .’

‘And are you?’ I said, raising my eyebrows in a half jokey, half worried way.

‘No!’ he shot back, quickly. ‘Well, yes, but no, not because of
that
. . .’

He looked as amazing as ever, his glossy honey-coloured hair falling down by his broad shoulders, and the stripy shirt he was wearing set off his deep golden tan and made his emerald eyes shine.
I noticed he was wearing those little beads again and I finally remembered to ask him about them.

‘These?’ he said, putting his hand up to his neck. ‘Well, there’s a story behind them . . .’

‘Now how did I know that?’ I giggled, putting my knees up to my chest to get comfortable.

‘Up in Es Cana, you know, where I live, there’s this hippy market – I think I told you about it?’ he said, checking my expression for confirmation. ‘Anyway,
there’s this guy, Juan Pablo, and he’s just the most amazing dude ever – this real hippy from the Sixties, not one of those wannabe hippies who’re everywhere now, selling
their mass-produced tat while banging on about the evils of capitalism, but the real deal.’ He ruffled his hair with one hand and continued. ‘Well, he lives in an old van-type mobile
home with no running water or electricity or anything. He thinks television is to blame for all the evil in the world, which when you think about it probably has some truth in it, and he makes his
own fires and eats off the land by catching fish from the sea and picking fruit and olives and stuff. Anyway, I kind of met him by accident one time when I was on my way back from the market
– he sells some of his jewellery there that he makes himself – and he ran after me, saying that these beads had spoken to him. Apparently, they’d called out to him and said that I
must have them and that they would bring me luck and keep me safe from harm. I’ve never taken them off since.’

‘They
spoke
to him?’ I asked, intrigued.

‘Yeah, although I don’t think he meant it literally, because hey, I don’t think beads can talk, can they?’ He laughed and I giggled too.

‘He said that as I had walked past him, the beads began to tingle in his fingers, and he said it was a sign that they were destined to belong to me, which I thought was kind of
cool.’

‘That’s amazing,’ I said, wishing I had some talking beads too, to bring me luck.

‘I hang out with him sometimes. We fish together and build fires and occasionally I help him thread some of his beads to sell . . .’

‘And he still lives in this van?’ I asked, genuinely interested.

‘Yeah. No water, no telly, nothing . . .’

‘Wow. No TV,’ I said and I tried to imagine what my life would be like without any soaps or reality TV or music channels, and I shuddered a bit.

‘I don’t watch TV,’ Rex said casually, as if it were the most normal thing to say in the world.

‘What, ever?’ I asked, trying not to sound too freaked out.

‘Not any more. There’s too much natural beauty here to be a cabbage in front of a telly. I’m always out and about DJing, having fun, living in the real world instead of
watching fictional people living their lives in one that isn’t.’

I had to admit that putting it like that made total sense.

‘I read the papers, keep up with what’s going on in the world, and sometimes I’ll have a look on the Internet – I e-mail my folks quite a bit.’

I was glad he didn’t mind e-mail because he didn’t much like texting and I wondered if he would keep in touch with me via e-mail when I was back home. And then I realised I had
thought about home, of being without him. It made me seriously panic, so I tried to concentrate on sitting next to him right now and not worry about it. Only I couldn’t stop myself thinking
about leaving him, thoughts of those final moments kept breaking through the barriers in my mind and torturing me.

It was all so unfair. Why couldn’t we have met in London, or at the very least, England, where there wouldn’t be so much distance between us? Why did there always have to be a
goodbye? Hadn’t I said goodbye to enough people I loved already? Just when something as momentous as falling in love happens to me, it would be ruthlessly cut short. I would board a plane and
it would all be gone and I’d be back to being plain old Izzy.

‘Sometimes it’s difficult to live in the moment,’ I thought and then I realised I’d said this out loud.

‘Yeah it is, isn’t it?’ he said, turning to face me, and I was so relieved that he’d agreed and not looked at me like I was some kind of loony-toon, because what
I’d said didn’t have much to do with what he’d been talking about.

‘Everyone talks about living in the past and always looking to the future, but no one really talks about the here and now.’

I really wasn’t sure where all this profound stuff was coming from, or that it was coming out of my mouth at all.

‘You’re so right . . .’ he said, his voice trailing off.

‘Not that the past or future aren’t important,’ I continued, on a roll now. ‘Although I have to confess,’ I said, ‘sometimes the here and now does involve
watching a bit of telly.’ I tried to keep a straight face, but it didn’t last long.

‘You know what the best thing about the here and now is?’ he said, when we’d finally stopped laughing.

‘No. What?’ I asked, lowering my eyes provocatively. I was flirting – like,
badly
flirting.

‘You,’ he said, and he leaned in closer and put his arms around my neck and he kissed me tenderly, and my lips tingled too, just like Juan Pablo’s beads.

After walking along the sand, hand in hand, for a while, Rex suggested we lie down and look up at the stars, because that’s why he’d brought me here after all.

‘If we wait long enough we might see a shooting star – I’ve seen lots of them this summer,’ he said. So we both lay there, still and silent, hoping we might catch one.
But nothing happened and eventually I quietly said, ‘My mum reckons my dad is a star.’

‘Your dad?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘Yeah, after he died, that’s what she told me he’d become, although since recent events I’m beginning to think he might really be a butterfly.’

Rex sat up and crossed his legs.

‘Oh Iz, I’m sorry. I didn’t know your dad was . . .’

‘Dead,’ I said, finishing his sentence, because I was used to people not being able to actually say
that
word.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

I thought for a moment and then said that yes, I did. It had been so long since I had spoken to anyone about my dad. It was coming up to the anniversary of the day it had happened, and I always
thought about it all so much more around this time – in fact, I mostly thought about nothing else.

I had never spoken about the events of that day, the day my dad was taken from me. I’d not even told Willow all the details, unable to bring myself to repeat them in case I would suddenly
be transported right back to that very moment and have to relive the agony all over again. Until now I had kept my thoughts buried deep inside me, locked in a cage around my heart, and sometimes
the sheer weight of them pulled me down. Now, more than ever, I felt as though I needed to speak about it, to unlock some of the grief that was constantly bubbling under the surface, forever
threatening to erupt from me like an angry volcano.

It seemed somehow right to tell Rex. Just being near him made me want to tell him my feelings, explain all I knew and felt inside about everything. It was almost instinctive. I trusted him. I
knew it was crazy. In the grand scheme of things, we’d only just met. Yet despite this, it was as if he had found a window into my heart and opened it, letting out the stuffy contents,
allowing fresh air into my soul. He made me want to open up to him and show him who I really was. I knew that telling him about my dad was the biggest step I’d ever taken with anyone, let
alone someone I’d only known a matter of days. But just so long as I was with him, I sensed all would be well.

The worst, most hideous, thing of all though was that I knew I would have to lie again, explain that it had all happened coming up for twelve years ago instead of the six that it really was, so
as not to give my age away. And this felt all the more bitterly deceitful, because when it came to my dad, I never wanted to speak anything but the truth. I knew that now was not the right time to
break the whole age thing to Rex, though. Even so, this lie, told to support the other, burned deeper than ever and filled me with an abhorrent self-loathing.

As we lay there together, side by side in the sand, our bodies gently touching, I began to tell him about that day and how my dad had been hit by a car while crossing the road on his way home.
It had been a few days short of my eleventh birthday, and he was carrying presents that he’d bought for me in his arms when the car crashed into him. I told Rex about the witnesses
who’d said he didn’t stand a chance, because the car was just going so fast and everything. I imagined how the presents must’ve looked, all battered and broken lying in the road
– just like him. I talked about how the paramedics had tried to resuscitate him on the pavement and how they really tried hard for, like, twenty minutes or so, but you know, he was gone, just
like that. I told him how I vividly recalled standing behind my mum at the door when the police came, because I thought it might be my dad coming home and that I’d catch him with my presents
and that maybe he’d let me have one of them early, because my dad was like that. A real soft touch, and my mum always said I could wrap him round my little finger. And I didn’t really
know why my mum was crying so much because the police were talking with her in hushed, muffled voices so I didn’t really hear what they were saying. I sensed something terrible had happened,
though, by the way she almost collapsed and had to be helped to the armchair by a policewoman.