Misspent Youth (28 page)

L
IGHT FROM A SHARP CRESCENT MOON
illuminated Hawksbill Bay’s middle beach in a gentle silver shimmer that turned the sand a spectral platinum and the palm fronds a ghostly oyster-gray. Out to sea, the fancy yachts were lit up by strings of colored lights hanging between their solar panels. Overhead, the constellations formed a loose phosphorescent mist sketching the zodiac across space. Little wavelets sloshed timidly beneath them, providing the only natural movement in the dusky seascape as Jeff walked back to the chalet after dinner. He’d taken his sandals off, carrying them in a crooked finger. The soft dry sand flowed over his toes as he walked, still warm from the brutal afternoon sun.

Both the girls had scampered on ahead as soon as they’d left the restaurant. He could see them as black silhouettes against the lazy silken sea, holding hands as they paddled through the fizzing fringe of surf. They talked quietly together, a conversation occasionally punctuated by one of Karenza’s blithe giggles or an exclamation from Annabelle as she pointed at some fresh part of the superb celestial canopy.

He shook his head softly as he absorbed the scene, laboring to imprint the memory on his mind. This was without doubt the richest world he could ever have wished to be reborn into; every moment of it should be preserved.

A cascade of shooting stars sliced sparkling contrails across the eastern side of the sky. The girls laughed delightedly at the spectacle. Jeff caught up with them, receiving a kiss first from Annabelle; then Karenza stepped up for an equally amorous clinch. He put his arms around both of them, feeling light-headed from the wine they’d had at dinner and the unique aphrodisiac of the night that was to follow. Annabelle leaned in against him, smiling adoringly, and the three of them angled back across the beach, making for the steps that led up to their chalet. The veranda light was on to guide them, a warm topaz glimmer at the top of the little cliff.

Jeff’s excitement quickened with every step. Perched on the tip of the promontory, the chalet was isolated from the others. With that came a perfect sense of liberation. Nothing here bothered him, or Annabelle. In the bar earlier that evening the big wall screen had been showing a European news stream. Commissioner Cherie Beamon had belatedly announced her candidacy for president, allowing media analysts to gleefully demolish her chances with sharp sound-bite summaries condemning her as too late, and too ineffectual. A convoy of three refugee ships attempting to cross the Mediterranean had been intercepted by EuroNavy frigates, and was being escorted back to North Africa. Cameras tracked desperate individuals flinging themselves overboard in an attempt to stop the voyage back to purgatory. Marines in fast inflatable boats zoomed through the waves, plucking the flailing figures out of the water.

Jeff had sipped his chilled Manhattan with a financier called Gore Burnelli who owned one of the yachts anchored offshore, the two of them discussing the industrial-financial implications of the superconductor project while the dreadful images went unwatched. Annabelle was on the other side of the bar, gossiping with the lively
Sunset Marina
group, telling them all about Stephanie and the beach party. Immersed in the sanctuary of the resort there was no way any of them could engage with the events being portrayed; it was as if they had been relayed from a different, distant planet.

The chalet’s living room lights switched on automatically when they came in, casting a faint, cozy coral glow across the polished hardwood. Jeff’s PCglasses were on the table, emitting the small ruby-red laser sparkle that indicated a priority call. There was no way the interface management program would let it through unless it was genuinely urgent. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he complained. When he held the glasses in front of his face he saw the txt icon was from Alison. That was unusual enough to make him hesitate.

Annabelle’s nose rubbed against his cheek. “Leave it,” she murmured. Karenza was standing at her side, an arm draped over her new friend’s shoulder.

“Just gimme one second,” he pleaded; three Viagra capsules and furious lust were giving him a huge erection.

Annabelle and Karenza shared a demure glance. “Okay then,” Annabelle said. “We’ll leave you to it.” They walked arm in arm into the deep shade of the master bedroom. The door was left half open, permitting a sliver of light from the living room to fall across them.

Jeff hooked the mic down in front of his mouth. “Click, display txt.” Alison’s txt message was curt and to the point, telling him Tim had had an accident on the Jet Ski. The boy had been taken to Peterborough hospital. “Click, call Alison.” The PC-glasses’ standard management display expanded across the lens. On the other side of the crawling neon-glow script the girls began a lingering kiss.

“Jeff?” Alison said. “Thank Christ you called.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know. He was riding that damn Jet Ski again. I didn’t even know he was doing it, he told me he was out to see friends. I didn’t know, Jeff.” Her voice sounded anguished.

“Okay, it’s all right, just tell me what happened.”

“Nobody knows, really. He was riding where he shouldn’t be, or something. There was some sort of crash. The staff at Tallington called an ambulance. They took him to Peterborough’s emergency room.”

As the kiss finished, Karenza nuzzled Annabelle’s ear and began whispering, her eyes looking back tauntingly at Jeff. Annabelle nodded dreamily in agreement, and they moved deeper into the bedroom, where the shadows folded around them.

“How is he?” Jeff asked. “What sort of injuries are there?”

“There was a lot of bruising and grazing, that kind of thing. He’s twisted his ankle badly and dislocated a shoulder.”

Jeff shifted slightly, one foot pushing at the bedroom door to send the fan of dusky light sweeping across the darkened room. “Alison! How is he
now
?” The light drifted across Karenza, who had discarded her little black cocktail dress. Her mass of hair flowed freely, cloaking her back. She looked like an erotic ghost.

“I think he’ll be all right. He was unconscious when they brought him in. But he was awake just before I got here. They’ve put him under observation for the night; they said that was the best thing. He was in mild shock. They thought he might have been concussed, as well.”

Jeff let out a long breath that fright had gathered inside him. “So he’s going to be okay then?”

Karenza stood behind Annabelle, and slowly slid the straps of her dress off over her shoulders, letting it slither onto the floor. Annabelle turned around, putting her hands together behind her head, proudly showing off her body.

“You know doctors,” Alison said. “They won’t commit themselves to anything. The hospital was more interested in what kind of insurance rating he had.”

“Typical.”

“When can you get here?”

Karenza ran her hands sensually over Annabelle’s big breasts, admiring their size; cupping them to find out how full and heavy they were. She smiled slyly as Annabelle’s nipples turned rigid between her skillful fingertips.

Jeff recognized the heat that had risen to Annabelle’s face. Karenza beckoned.

“Jeff?” Alison demanded. “When’s the next flight out?”

Annabelle followed Karenza obediently across the bedroom.

“Do I need to be there? It sounds like he just took a few knocks, nothing too serious.”

“Has all that Caribbean sunlight fried your brain? You’re his father, you should be here. And this is the perfect opportunity for the pair of you to patch things up; show him how much you care.”

Jeff heard Karenza’s husky voice coaxing Annabelle into position, full of reassurance and praise. Then Annabelle’s soft euphoric cries began to fill the chalet, quickly rising in pitch.

“Probably, yeah,” he said. “But a couple of days either way won’t make that much difference. And getting an early flight out of here is going to be tough. Look, I’ll call you tomorrow and find out how he’s getting on, okay? Maybe you can persuade him to accept a call from me.”

“That’s not good enough, Jeff, and you know it.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.” With calm precise movements, he took his PCglasses off and strode into the master bedroom. On the four-poster bed, a blissed-out Karenza was making love to Annabelle. Jeff’s gaze never left them as he unhurriedly removed all his clothes. The girls widened their embrace to welcome him.

T
HE HOSPITAL HAD ISSUED
T
IM CRUTCHES
, his case nurse ordering him to keep his weight off his sprained ankle for at least a week. His cuts and grazes were sealed away to heal behind artificial skin. An electronic monitor bracelet gripped his wrist, its sensors linked to the hospital through the datasphere. “Only for another twenty-four hours,” the doctor told him. “We just want to be certain you’re on the mend.” Tim nodded meekly; his head was still woozy from the drugs they’d used to make him sleep.

He limped out to the taxi with Alison, wincing as he eased himself into the backseat. She sat beside him, watching him with attentive concern.

“I’m all right,” he insisted.

She smiled tightly, and nodded.

The physical pain was almost nonexistent compared to the hot embarrassment he was feeling. “Thanks,” he said awkwardly.

“What for?”

“Taking me back. I was a bit of a fool.”

Alison lit a cigarette, ignoring the glare the driver gave her in the mirror. She waved the smoke away from Tim. “Actually no, you were a
big
fool. Don’t ever do anything like that again, do you hear? I’m too old to be getting these kind of shocks.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“I should bloody well hope not.”

“Did Dad call again?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much. He was upset that you didn’t want to talk to him.”

“Huh!” Tim turned to stare at the landscape through the taxi’s window.

“Tim, he does love you. More than I do, even. And all this has made me realize just how much you really do mean to me. You’re making him suffer badly by not taking a call.”

“Good. Maybe he’ll know what it’s like.”

“It’s not the same, Tim. What he and Annabelle did was pretty awful, I know. But you’re his son, and you were injured, rushed to the hospital. He’s desperate with worry.”

“Not desperate enough to come back.”

“That’s not fair, either. It’s difficult, not like when he and I were young, and there were dozens of trans-Atlantic flights every day.”

“Maybe.” He sank back deeper into the seat, scowling as his shoulder protested. He simply wasn’t used to pain or illness of any kind; whenever bugs got passed around at school he always seemed immune to them. “Was he really concerned?”

“Very much, yes. Look, you don’t have to say much, just stick your tongue out at him and make a farting sound if that’s what you want. Show him you’re alive and kicking. It would mean an awful lot to me, you know. I hate this whole business.”

Despite himself, a tiny smile played along Tim’s mouth. “Does it have to be a farting sound?”

“That’s my boy.”

T
HE REPORTERS WERE THANKFULLY STILL ABSENT
from the entrance to the Manton estate. By some miracle, news that he’d had an accident hadn’t yet leaked from the hospital. They drove past the estate’s regimented houses, where disapproving residents watched them from their patio chairs. When they reached Alison’s bungalow they couldn’t park in the drive. A van and a pickup truck were already occupying it. The van belonged to a commercial house-cleaning company, while the pickup had the name of a landscape gardener printed down the side. Behind them was Sue’s Merc coupe. Tim blinked at it as he lumbered out of the taxi. He shot Alison an astonished look. She merely shrugged gamely.

The back of the pickup was already full of hedge trimmings, branches pruned from trees and shrubs, and a half dozen black polyethylene bags bulging with cuttings and weeds. Three men were working hard on the front garden, cutting the privet bushes back into shape and spreading mulch over the freshly weeded borders. Tim hadn’t ever known the bushes were topiary. A big mower robot was trundling across the lawn, shaving the grass down to a golf-course neatness and scarifying the abundant moss.

Tim was just about to ask what was going on when his mother came out the front door. Without a word she put her arms around him and hugged tight. Tim didn’t protest what the embrace was doing to his wrenched shoulder.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Don’t you ever
ever
do anything like that again.”

It looked like that was shaping up as the theme of the day. He tried to give her a reassuring smile when she let go, but it faltered when he saw the tears glinting in her eyes. She wiped them away quickly.

“I’m sorry,” he told her earnestly. “That wasn’t me. Really. That was somebody else, somebody stupid. He’s gone. Honestly.”

“Thank you.” She kissed his brow, then straightened up. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

Tim was sure he must have been away for a month. The cleaning crew had magicked a complete transformation on the inside of the bungalow. Carpets were still slightly damp, smelling faintly of chemicals but revealing colors he’d never seen before. Wooden furniture had been polished to a smooth sheen, while painted wood had brightened by several shades. Windows were now fully transparent. His bed was made up with freshly pressed linen that he recognized from the manor. “Mrs. Mayberry brought it over,” Sue said. The wardrobe was full of his clothes, all neatly laundered. Two plastic boxes were crammed with other essentials from his room, crystals loaded with software and games, PCglasses, his personal datasphere interface module, peripherals, books, badminton racquet and shuttlecocks, along with a whole load of other junk.

“Thanks, Mum.”

S
UE AND
A
LISON
had obviously established some weird kind of truce. They were civil to each other the whole time. Tim sat in the living room, studying the newly manicured back garden while Sue made tea in the kitchen. He’d checked that out earlier, too; the freezer was full of new food packets, almost all of which were his favorite meals.

“Who’s taking care of all this?” he asked, waving an arm vaguely toward the clean flagstones of the patio.

“Your father is,” Sue said firmly. “He’ll see the invoices on the household account when he gets home. If he’s got a problem with that he can complain to me.”

“Oh.” Tim took a drink of his tea.

“He can’t just sling you out and expect you to cope like some sort of charity case. Whether he likes it or not, he has responsibilities.”

Tim considered that quietly. The concept of responsibility wasn’t one he’d connected with Jeff recently, nor Annabelle. But it did seem a more adult trait than the heedless exuberance they practiced.
Or jumping a Jet Ski.
“I’ve still got my allowance.”

“Which he’ll have to review. It was fine for when you were living at home, but now that you’re heading off for university that’ll need revising upward.”

Which was a prospect that Tim savored.

“Are you going to talk to him?” Alison asked.

“Suppose so.”

Alison told her domestic computer to connect them. Tim sat back in the couch as the big wall-mounted screen lit up, grateful to have his mother beside him. His father must have been waiting for the call: When the image came up it showed him sitting expectantly in a room with wooden floors and walls. There was a veranda behind him, with a glimpse of very blue sea in the background. It looked beautiful.

Jeff leaned forward in his cane chair, giving the screen an intent stare. “Tim. You don’t look too bad, son.”

“I’m all right.”

“I haven’t slept all night from worry.”

“It’s just some cuts and stuff.” He lifted his leg up to show the camera the thick layer of artificial skin wrapping his swollen ankle. “And this.”

“What did the doctors say?”

“Nothing much, they’re monitoring me.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Tim wondered if Jeff was feeling as discomfited as he did—he certainly looked very self-conscious. There were a whole load of things he wanted to say, maybe even shout at him again. But not with his mum and Alison in the same room.

“Uh, Annabelle says hello, and she hopes you’re all right.”

“Really?” Out of the corner of his eye, Tim could see his mother’s expression turning severe.

“Tim, I’ll be back in a few days,” Jeff hurried on. “I’d be truly grateful if I could come over and talk to you. I know I can’t put right what’s happened, but please don’t shut me out. You mean the world to me. After what happened on the Jet Ski I know that more than ever. I was really frightened for you, son. So if all you want to do is shout at me and tell me how vile I’ve been, then feel free. If that’s the price of seeing you again, I’m more than happy to pay it.”

Tim hung his head, unable to look at the camera lens. Blokes just didn’t talk all this emotional stuff, it was embarrassing. “I’ll be around for a while before I go to Oxford. If you want.”

“I do, Tim. I want that very much. And thank you for giving me the chance. I love you, son.”

“Yeah. Well. Okay. I’ll maybe see you when you get back, then.”

Jeff’s understanding smile lingered a while after the rest of the image vanished from the screen. Tim shook his head gravely, not quite sure who had been forgiving who.

“You did well,” Sue assured him. “He knows he’s the one that has to grovel.”

“I don’t think I really want that. I just…I want everything to have not happened.”

“There’s a lot of things in my life I feel the same about,” Alison said as she lit another cigarette. “You’ve just got to face them down and—”

“Move on,” Tim said. “Yeah, I think I’ve got that message now.”

H
E WAITED UNTIL LATER THAT EVENING
, after his mother had left and when he was alone in his room, before calling Vanessa.

“My God,” she squealed. “Are you all right? Martin called me and told me what happened. His parents were given a real dressing-down by the Tallington people for letting you out unsupervised. What were you thinking of?”

“I wasn’t, really. That was the problem. I was…I don’t know, angry with the world, I suppose.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Only when I laugh.”

Her smile of admiration was wide and sincere. Tim had never noticed before how big her smile actually was; on a face that was so compact and dainty it was almost overwhelming.

“You still staying with your aunt?”

“Till I go to Oxford, yeah.”

He hadn’t known how easy she was to chat to, either. They talked away for over half an hour, their conversation butterflying through subjects. It was strange; he didn’t try to impress her or be smart or cool. There wasn’t a lot of point—she knew him too well for that. Yet she still kept talking and joking with him. In the end he simply said: “My ankle should be all right again in a few days. Is that invitation to come and stay still open?”

“’Course it is.”