Chapter 1
I knew before we got there it was going to be the worst holiday of my life.
It was 1993 and I was eighteen years old, having just left school. I wasn’t bad looking—maybe a little on the skinny side, but hey, I’d been taking exams. I hadn’t had time to do a lot of push-ups and stuff. Anyway, skinny was in back then. Come to think of it, skinny’s always in. Anyway, I didn’t have a face full of zits, and I knew where to get a decent haircut and how to dress cool on sod all money. I should have been living it up in Ibiza, drinking all night and sleeping it off on the beach all day. Not building sandcastles with my little sisters on the Isle of Bloody Wight.
But I couldn’t have left Mum on her own with them. She was still reeling from finding out Dad had been having a midlife crisis—and more to the point, that he’d been having it with, among others: the new girl at the office; the sexy single mum over the road; and the nice lady who’d come round canvassing for the council elections. Mum wasn’t the only one reeling. I hadn’t spoken to the bastard since the day he’d run off to shack up with Ms Tory Canvasser.
So here I was staying in a cramped bed and breakfast in Sandown, Isle of Wight with my mum and a couple of giggling little girls, minus all my mates and any chance whatsoever of getting lucky this holiday. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.
I hadn’t reckoned with the trip to the boating lake.
Laurie and Sarah had been begging for a go on the boats ever since we’d got here, so when we got up that morning and the weather had turned a bit too grey to make the beach inviting, Mum finally said yes. The lake was just across the road from the beach, and we walked down there along the sea front. Mum promenaded along the walkway at the top of the sea wall, while I raced the girls across the sand below, climbing the steps over the breakwaters as we came to them and then hurtling down the other side. Until they wore me out, those two, and I went and joined Mum while they carried on shrieking like seagulls down below us.
Mum was smiling for the first time in ages. “Look at those two,” she said. “Who needs Euro Disney?”
That’s where Dad had promised to take us, just the week before he left and all bets were off. Did I mention he was a bastard?
The boating lake was set between the kiddies’ playground we’d gone to yesterday and a mini golf course we’d probably get to by the end of the week if the weather didn’t improve. The boats for hire, a mix of paddle boats and rowing boats, were all lined up along one side of the lake, next to a little hut where they took the money. And when I say they, I mean he. God, he was gorgeous. Tall—taller than me—and lean, not skinny, with short dark hair that fluffed up on top and rippled in the breeze that was blowing in off the sea.
He had a voice like maple syrup on pancakes, which he was using to full effect to drum up trade. “Roll up, roll up! Get your top-of-the range self-powered floating conveyances here!”
Laurie giggled and tugged on my sleeve. “Josh, why’s he saying that?”
“He means we can hire a paddle boat here,” I said with only about one percent of my attention on my little sister and the rest firmly fixed on the vision standing by the boathouse. He turned and smiled as he saw me staring. I was vanilla ice cream melting under the hot chocolate fudge sauce of his gaze.
“This way, please, ladies and gent! Now, if I can just remind you: swimming in the lake isstrictlyprohibited, as is attempting to drown younger orolder siblings, no matter how much they may be asking for it.” He winked at me as he said that, and I almost fell in the water.
Mum decided she’d feel more secure in a wide-bellied paddle boat, and the boat bloke and I held it steady while Mum and the kids climbed in. I wished I had the nerve to smile at him, maybe see if he was really interested or just messing about, but my gaze wouldn’t seem to shift from the bottom of the boat.
God knows why, but Laurie and Sarah loved that boat. They sat one on each side, turning the little handles as fast as they could, each trying to beat the other and make the boat go around in circles. I had plenty of time to lean back and gaze idly at the shore, hoping like hell my knock-off Ray-bans hid the fact I was ogling the boat bloke like crazy.