‘Where are you going?’ asked Sarah. ‘I thought we were trying to stay up for one last sunrise.’
‘I’m just going for a walk. I want to try and sober up a bit or I’ll feel terrible for the flight back tomorrow.’
Sarah ran after her as she walked up the sand.
‘Are you really feeling ill or are you just trying to torture yourself? ’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you might find Alex and Freya in flagrante behind the sand dunes.’
Grace felt unusually irritable. ‘Why are you talking in Latin? You’re not a lawyer yet, you know.’
Sarah raised her brows.‘Touchy,’ she said and Grace tried to smile.
‘I’m not torturing myself,’ she replied quickly. ‘Freya will want the luxury of soft cotton sheets, not some gritty sand dune. Anyway, I’m not bothered. I’m really not.’
‘He’s only eighteen, after all,’ said Sarah more kindly. ‘Probably a bit immature. There’re many more fish in the sea.’
Grace nodded as convincingly as she could. ‘I just need to walk off the drink. It’s a long flight back home.’
Sarah eyed her sceptically. ‘You sure?’
Grace nodded. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Catseye Beach was the longest on the island, a half-mile stretch of sand that shone like a silver ribbon in front of her. It got quieter and darker as she left the bonfire behind and Grace welcomed the isolation. Sarah had been right: the last thing she wanted was to catch Freya and Alex at it in the sand dunes, and she didn’t want to go back to the house because Freya’s room was next to hers.
What a cow, she thought angrily. Freya was supposed to be her friend! It was bad enough that she had been flirting with Grace’s father at dinner but what she had done with Alex was nothing short of a betrayal. She knew I was interested, we talked about it earlier on, she thought. Freya had never shown an interest in Alex before. Maybe that was it, maybe Freya just wanted to prove she could pull Alex. For some people friendship didn’t matter; everything was just a game. It was all about power, survival of the fittest.
And that was the real reason Grace was angry; she was angry at herself. She’d tried her best by the pool, inviting him on to the tiki swing, letting her kaftan slip off one shoulder ... She cringed. But she was an amateur. Freya was obvious. Subtlety never won prizes – not when it came to sex and eighteen-year-old boys ...
She had reached the end of the beach now and climbed inland through a thicket of red and black mangrove. The dark didn’t frighten her; she felt completely at home on the island and loved its remoteness from the world. As a child, she would pretend she was some character in Lord of the Flies and spend whole days exploring on her own, looking for sea turtles or exotic flowers.
She was walking up a steep path back towards the headland when she heard a rustle in the long grass next to her. Someone was sitting there, a familiar shape.
‘Alex?’ she hissed, squinting in the dark. ‘Is that you?’
He sat up holding a cigarette and notebook in the strong moonlight.
‘Writing some lyrics,’ he said, a little embarrassed.
Noting he was alone, Grace laughed, mainly from relief. ‘How can you see what you’re writing?’
‘Can’t really,’ he said, flicking his lighter so she could see the blank page in his book.
‘I see you’ve found your muse, then,’ she said, sitting down beside him.
‘Cheeky. These things take time,’ he replied defensively. ‘Keith Richards used to spend days writing songs without going to bed.’
‘Ah, but didn’t he have Mick Jagger to help him?’ she said, all the time her mind repeating, Where’s Freya? Where’s Freya?
She took a deep breath. Just bloody ask him.
‘Well, I didn’t think I’d see you for the rest of the night, lover boy,’ she said as casually as she could. Even in the moonlight, she caught the look of surprise on his face.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You and Freya.’