Three's a Crowd (8 page)

We were silent for what felt like a long time. Then Eve leaned back and put her hands on the sand beside her.

“I hate the way I look,” she said.

I stared at her. The moon was shining on her hair, lighting the side of her face. She was, without doubt, the best-looking person I’d ever met. “But you look amazing,” I frowned. “You’re . . . you’re beautiful.”

She smiled sadly at me. “That’s what I mean.” She paused, scrunching a handful of sand between her fingers. “It’s like . . . like being pretty is all anyone ever sees. No-one sees
me
. Who I am.”

I reached out for her hand. “I do,” I said.

Eve gazed at my hand on top of hers. She pulled hers away and let the sand run out from between her fingers. “Do you?” she said, dully.

“Yes.” I scrambled onto my knees, eager to prove it.

“How do I feel about my dad, then?” she asked.

“Um . . . well . . . you love him, obviously, because he’s your dad.” I paused, trying to work it out. “But he also annoys you, like with the singing thing and ’cause he’s weird with you about boys and stuff.”

Eve shook her head and stared out to sea. “I adore my dad,” she said. “I always have. When I was little I couldn’t wait for him to come and take me out. I wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before, I’d be so excited. And then sometimes he wouldn’t make it and I’d get so upset.” She paused and when she spoke again her voice was practically a whisper. “When he did come, it was always so fantastic. He was so handsome and he’d take me out and buy me stuff and make me feel like a princess.
His
princess. Like the most special person in the world.”

I looked from her to the sea, stretched out in front of us like a soft, dark blanket.

Eve sighed. “But when I got older I realised that he didn’t see who I was at all. He doesn’t want me to grow up and have a life. He just wants me to stay his little Babycakes. Only there for him to look at and show off. And, as far as I can see, that’s what all guys want.” Eve’s voice wobbled. “They don’t care who you are, just so long as you look hot and their friends are impressed.”

“That’s not me,” I said. “That was Ben, maybe, but. . .”

“Then why d’you get so jealous all the time?” Eve started sobbing, her voice all broken and small. “Why can’t you see how I feel about you? Why don’t you trust me?”

I couldn’t bear seeing her cry. I hugged her, stroking her hair. “I
do
trust you,” I said. “It’s the other guys I don’t trust.”

Eve pulled away from me, wiping her face. She smiled exasperatedly at me. “God, Luke. That’s
exactly
what my dad says.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll change. I’ll stop being jealous. I promise.” I pulled her towards me again.

“EVE!” Jonno’s voice bellowed in the distance.

Eve sprang away from me. She scrambled to her feet.

“Quick. Go.” She pointed to the woods behind us. “Hide there until he’s gone.”

I stood up and grabbed her hand. “No,” I said. “We’re not doing anything wrong. Why should I hide?”

Eve’s eyes widened. “He’ll kill you if he finds you out here with me.”

The sensible part of me was pretty sure she was right. Or close enough to it. But I was angry. “He’s got no right to tell you that you can’t see me. Why don’t we just go and tell him we’re going out together?”

Eve looked at me as if I was mad.

“EVE!” Jonno’s voice was getting closer.

Eve wrenched her hand out of mine.

“What are you so frightened of?” I whispered, suddenly seeing it in her eyes. “I mean he might be pissed off to start with, but there’s nothing he can he actually
do
about us being together, is there?”

Eve blinked at me, then turned and ran rapidly along the beach.

I flumped down on the sand, watching her disappear behind the line of trees.

“There you are, Babycakes.” Jonno’s voice – part angry, part relieved – grated on my nerves. “I was worried about you. I don’t like you coming out this far by yourself.”

She wasn’t by herself. I was here. I was looking after her.

Eve said something quickly I couldn’t catch.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Jonno said. “I want you to sing every night. Just a couple of numbers, when Lola takes her breaks.”

I froze. No way. Eve and I were already separated in the mornings and afternoons. The old bastard couldn’t do this.

“It’ll be good for you – build your confidence,” Jonno went on. “And it’ll give you something to do while you’re here.”

You mean give her even less time to enjoy herself. With me.

“But Daddy, I was so scared.” Eve’s voice rose to a squeak. “I don’t think I can.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Babycakes. You sounded fantastic. Everybody said so. I talked to the band. They reckon you need a bit of work on the performance side of things, but you’ve got all the raw materials. Lola’s done a song-list for you to choose some songs from. Here.”

I heard the sound of paper rustling.
Tell him, Eve. Tell him “no”.

But in my heart I knew it was hopeless.

As their voices drifted out of earshot I heard her little-girly voice, all anxious and eager to please: “Okay, Daddy. Okay, if that’s what you want. Of course I will.”

I flung myself back on the sand and thumped it, hard.

I woke the next morning to find Ryan prodding my shoulder.

“What?” I said, irritably.

“Up,” he said. “We’re on pool duty, nine till eleven.”

I groaned and sat up. “What time is it now?”

“Five to nine.”

“What?” I scrambled out of bed and reached for my shorts. “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

“Who am I – your mother?” Ryan grinned at me. “You make up with Eve, then?”

Last night flooded back. After Eve had left I’d stayed on the beach a long time, falling asleep and waking up cold much later.

“I think so.”

Ryan sniffed at a T-shirt, then pulled it on over his head. “You missed a great night at the Garito. Catalina asked where you were. And Alejandro was there too.”

“Who’s Alejandro?” I said, trying to copy the way Ryan pronounced the “j” as an exaggerated “h”.

“The drummer from the band – remember? He’s cool – loads of money, but doesn’t flash it around. His dad’s one of Eve’s dad’s business partners. That’s why he’s here, playing in the band. But he’s really into rock music. He’s going on tour with some Spanish group when he’s finished here.”

“Sounds like he really opened up to you,” I stuck my head under the cold tap in the bathroom. “D’you think you’ll kiss on the second date?”

“Piss off.” Ryan appeared in the bathroom doorway, grinning. “Chloe did most of the talking. I just stood there, chatting up all the hot girls who were hanging around hoping Alejandro’d speak to them.”

A minute later and we were out the door and racing round to the pool. Jonno was already out there, cigar clamped between his lips.

He pointed to his watch as we ran up. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, sir,” Ryan panted. “Won’t happen again.”

“Make sure it doesn’t,” Jonno growled.

We set out the loungers and sun umbrellas. Soon the pool area was full of small kids with their parents, splashing and yelling in the water.

Catalina turned up half an hour into the shift. She went straight over to Jonno, who was leaning against the pool bar, drinking a cup of coffee.

I looked up, expecting to see him shouting at her for being late, but to my surprise they were laughing together.

“How come she doesn’t get told off?” I said to Ryan as we sorted through the dirty pool towels. “She’s way later than we were.”

Ryan gave me a withering look. “Why d’you think?”

Catalina skipped towards us with a smile.

“Where are you last night?” she pouted up at me. “You said you come to El Garito.”

I smiled uneasily. “Fell asleep on the beach,” I said.

Catalina brushed past me, reaching for the pile of clean towels. She put her hand on my arm to steady herself. “Mmmn,” she said, squeezing above my elbow. “Nice muskells.”

Ryan snorted as Catalina wiggled off down the side of the pool, towels in her arms. “One day, that girl is gonna get sooo busted,” he said.

I watched her lean over and take a drinks order from one of the sunbathers.

“You’re just jealous ’cause it’s my muskells she likes,” I grinned.

But inside my head, in a part of my brain completely separate from how I felt about Eve, I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to kiss her.

Eve didn’t appear all morning and she didn’t reply to my texts. After pool duty finished, I wandered around for about thirty minutes, looking for her. Eventually I gave up and went to do my homework in the unairconditioned broom cupboard. It was even hotter and noisier than yesterday.

I struggled with some maths questions on probability, then – deciding I deserved a break – checked out my emails. There was another message from Mum.

Dear Luke. Not sure if you got my last email. Here’s the early scan of the baby. All healthy as far as they can tell. It’s too soon to know, but I’m sure it’s a boy! Lots and lots of love to everyone, Mum.

I clicked on the attachment. A fuzzy, black and white photograph flashed onto the screen. I stared at it for a few minutes but couldn’t, for the life of me, work out any part of it that remotely resembled human life. Remembering how annoyed Chloe had been at me yesterday, though, I printed it out and shoved it in my pocket.

Pushing away thoughts of Dad and how he would feel about the baby, I sent an email back to Mum saying how pleased Chloe and I were that everything was okay.

See? I’m not completely insensitive.

I ploughed on with the next load of maths, a series of immensely complicated and incredibly boring equations. My head grew heavy. In fact, I was almost asleep on the keyboard when Ryan and Marco barged in.

“Brought you some lunch.” Ryan shoved a slice of dried-up pizza under my nose.

I showed Marco and Ryan the baby scan.

“Can you work out where its head is?” I said, my mouth full of pizza.

Ryan pointed to a dark curve in the bottom left of the picture. “Maybe that?” he said.

“I thought that was its bum,” I said.

“No. That it pee-pee place,” Marco said.

We all laughed.

Ryan and Marco stayed for about ten minutes. I was half listening to their conversation, half working on my equations, when the sound of girls giggling nearby drifted in from outside.

Our heads turned together to look out through the window.

Most of the female staff seemed to be gathered on the grass at the near end of the pool, along with a smattering of teenage-girl hotel guests. A lone male, dressed only in swimming trunks, stood in their midst.

“That’s Alejandro,” Ryan said, delightedly.

I peered at him. The sulky drummer of last night had gone. In his place was a tall, smiling guy with a tan and a six-pack.

I grimaced. “Looks a bit full of himself.”

“That’s the funny thing,” Ryan said. “He looks the way he does
and
he’s loaded and yet he’s totally sound.”

“Is true,” Marco said. “I know Alejandro only since few weeks. He is . . . how you say . . . a baby magnet.”

“Babe magnet,” Ryan corrected him.

“
Si
. Babe magnet. But he very respectful with girls. Nice guy. Everyone like him.”

“Has he got a girlfriend?” I asked.

Marco shrugged. “
No se
. I don’t know. But he never push with girls. And they all like it. I think even my Catalina like him.”

I caught Ryan’s eye and felt myself reddening. My phone rang and I bent over the text. It was from Eve, saying she was going to have to spend the afternoon rehearsing with the band.

“Great.”

Ryan peered at the text over my shoulder. “Well, why don’t you go and watch?” he said.

I looked through the window to where the band’s good-looking and apparently unattached drummer was still chatting and joking with the girls outside.

Forgetting my promise to Eve not to be jealous any more, I decided that watching her rehearsal was the best way of keeping an eye on both her and Alejandro.

“Good idea,” I said, flipping shut my phone. “I think I will.”

The rehearsal was not going well. Eve had spent hours practising the first two songs on the list Jonno had given her, but the pianist – the grey-haired leader of the band – was not satisfied. He kept exploding into rapid-fire Spanish and stomping round the stage waving his arms theatrically in Eve’s direction.

“He says you must look at the audience more,” Alejandro said.

Alejandro.

It was horribly clear to me that, without him, Eve would be having a far worse time than she was. For a start, he translated everything the irate pianist said into perfect English for her. On top of that, he repeatedly told her she sounded good
and
he appeared to be the main reason why the rest of the band didn’t get bored with the constant stoppages. He laughed and joked with them in Spanish whenever the pianist brought the music to a standstill.

None of this, of course, made me like him.

The rehearsals took place in the nightclub. This looked rather drab and dirty by daylight, all scuffed wooden floor and stained, brown sofas. The air con made it feel even bleaker. I was sitting at a scratched metal table near the back. Without its white tablecloth and candles, it looked like a camping table.

“Or like Lola without her make-up,” Eve said, bitterly, in one of the short breaks the pianist had given her.

Lola herself turned up about halfway through the rehersal. She had what looked like a furious row in Spanish with the pianist, then came and flung herself down beside me.

I squirmed uneasily as she leaned closer.

“You like the music?” she drawled.

I shrugged, trying not to stare at her chest. Close to it was impossible not to notice – it filled almost all the available space in my field of vision.

“Or maybe you like singers?” Lola lingered on the “s”, placing her hand on the back of my chair. I fixed my eyes on her face. Hard, black-ringed eyes. Red, pouty lips. She was like a cartoon of someone hot – utterly fake. Absolutely terrifying. And deeply, sluttily sexy.