‘Is everything okay?’ she asked. She knew better than to pry but, hearing his lies on the telephone, she knew he must have been talking to Karin.
‘Fine,’ he replied, reaching over to rub his hand on her flat brown tummy.
Behind her shades, she squeezed her eyes shut to push any thoughts of Karin from her mind. It was Summer and Adam’s first weekend away and she wanted it to be perfect – so far it had been. She had boarded The Pledge the night before at Porto Ercole. She and Adam had had supper at Il Pellicano, the de-luxe retreat hanging on the hillside just outside the port, laughing and kissing and enjoying the sunset like any other couple.
The next morning, the captain had sailed to Giglio, a small island off the coast, where he had dropped anchor in a quiet cove and they had dived naked into the cool water.
Now it was lunchtime. There was an ice box full of beer and white wine, cheese, olives, bread and cold langoustines the size of bananas. The walnut deck of The Pledge glinted in the sun, the water wrapped around it like jade shantung silk shot through with silver. The coast rose out of the sea, all granite cliffs, lapping caves and hillsides of scrub. Despite being the height of season, they were almost alone bobbing on the water – there was only the tiny white hull of one other yacht far away on the horizon.
Summer took a sip of Peroni, removed her bikini top and lay back on a towel in just a white thong, her sun-streaked honey-blonde hair that had been dyed back to its natural colour days earlier, fanning out around her head.
‘Mmm … Are you deliberately trying to tempt me away from lunch?’ asked Adam, crawling over on his hands and knees and rolling on top of Summer, taking one nipple between his lips.
‘Adam Gold!’ scolded Summer, widening her legs and then wrapping them around his body. ‘Luigi is just over there,’ she giggled.
‘I pay him firstly to be a good skipper and secondly to be discreet,’ smiled Adam lazily. ‘Besides, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.’
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Adam knew he’d made a blunder. Summer sat up and swung her legs away from him, pulling the towel over her breasts. She felt so stupid; of course he did this all the time. She had allowed herself to believe that the trip to Italy was a real step forward for their relationship. It was one thing meeting for afternoon sex in discreet boutique hotels around London; it was another spending two days together on Adam’s yacht. She had taken it as a sign of growing commitment, even daring to hope he might end his relationship with Karin so that the two of them could be together properly. But ‘nothing he hasn’t seen before’? She accepted that Karin would probably have frolicked on the same deck she was sitting on now – but were there
others?
The sea was calm, just the gentle flutter of a breeze.
‘Are there others?’ she asked finally. Adam propped himself up on one elbow and fiddled with his sunglasses.
‘Summer, I thought we weren’t going to talk about things like this,’ he said, trying to touch her arm.
‘Is that what we said?’ she snapped, pulling her arm away.
He pulled a face and shrugged.
‘I guess what you’re telling me is that, if I ask you difficult questions, I’m likely to hear things I don’t want to hear?’ said Summer slowly. ‘I’m not stupid.’
‘No, you’re not,’ said Adam quietly.
There was a long pause as Summer stared up at the cliffs, watching the birds wheel round and round above them.
‘So how about you move out of your mother’s flat?’ said Adam.
Summer sat up with a start, her pert, sun-bronzed breasts jiggling.
‘What? What’s brought this on?’
‘Well, you can’t think it’s a good idea still to live downstairs from your mother.’
Summer frowned. ‘Adam, what are you saying?’
He brushed his hand down her thigh. ‘You don’t want to become her, do you?’
Summer drew herself up on her knees so she was towering above him. ‘I’m not sure I like the implication of this,’ she said. ‘Molly may have her faults, but she’s my mother, Adam.’
‘Summer, you’re smart and beautiful and good. You don’t name-drop endlessly. You don’t do drugs. You don’t want to spend my money …’ He smiled wryly. He had taken her shopping the weekend before in Prada. As a VVIP he had half the shop closed off so they could shop in complete privacy. But if the store had been anticipating a big spender like Karin Cavendish who would spend £50,000 on his credit card without even blinking, they were disappointed by Adam Gold’s new girlfriend. Summer had only been interested in a small leather tote.
‘What are you saying about my mother?’ repeated Summer. But she knew what Adam was saying. Molly was a party girl, a gold-digger, a single-minded bitch when the mood took her. And he was right, she didn’t want to end up like her mother; not far off forty-five, unmarried, flogging gifts on eBay.
‘Honey, I’m not saying anything,’ replied Adam. ‘She’s with Marcus. So she’s my friend.’
‘Exactly. And she likes Marcus very much,’ Summer added, not terribly convincingly. ‘So please, whatever you’re trying to suggest, don’t.’