About a Girl Page 21

  He really didn’t need any more details than those.

  ‘You didn’t want to get another job in advertising?’

  ‘Um, this came up quite suddenly,’ I said, not strictly lying. ‘So I thought I’d give it a shot, no pun intended.’

  ‘Let me see those pictures of me.’ He held his hand out for the camera and, once again, I handed it over. He scrolled through quickly, umming and ahhing, occasionally shaking his head and then nodding. ‘Did you love your old job?’ he asked, passing the camera back to me. ‘Were you good at it?’

  ‘I loved it,’ I said. ‘And I was so good at it. But I got made redundant. No reasoning behind it. It didn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Well, that is hard,’ he replied with a thoughtful look. ‘I do understand how you must be feeling.’

  ‘It’s just shaken me a bit,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve always known what I’ve wanted. Or I thought I did. There was a plan. Now I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s time for a new plan,’ Al suggested. ‘Maybe it was just time for a change and you didn’t realize. I know I said this yesterday, but your pictures really are very good. You’ve a talent, Vanessa ? you’re a very bright girl.’

  ‘I don’t feel that bright at the moment.’ I took the camera back and nursed it in my lap.

  Folding his arms and stretching out his legs, Al clucked and tutted. ‘I feel like that all the time ? everyone does. You’d think things would get easier as you get older, but they don’t.’

  ‘Have you made a complete cock of yourself over a rubbish man as well?’ I asked, only wondering afterwards as to whether or not I should use the word ‘cock’ in front of my Hawaiian granddad.

  ‘Sort of. Probably not in the same way, though.’

  ‘It’s so embarrassing.’ I rested my head on my knees, unable to look directly at him. ‘I can’t believe I fell for it.’

  ‘This is a man here on the island? Not someone back at home?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Holiday romance, then?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I replied, still face first into my own knees. ‘I thought I could do the whole fling thing, but turns out I can’t. For some reason I keep on thinking I can do things and then it turns out I can’t.’

  ‘I’m probably not very good at giving young ladies advice on the modern man,’ Al said, patting my shoulder in an awkward dad way that was oddly reassuring. ‘I was married for a very long time and I wasn’t much of a cad before my Jane, but I can’t see what good it’s doing you walking up and down the beach at sunset crying over someone after three days.’

  ‘I know you’re right,’ I said, looking up and running a finger under each eye. Why was today the day I’d decided to experiment with eyeliner? ‘I’m just being stupid. Maybe I’m still jet-lagged or I have pineapple poisoning or something. It’s probably just that I’m stupid, though.’

  ‘Never call yourself stupid,’ he said, looking stern. Or as stern as it was possible for a man with a big white beard to look. ‘What would your dad tell you to do?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ I shrugged. ‘We don’t really talk. Haven’t seen him in years.’

  ‘I didn’t talk to my son for a long time,’ Al said with a sympathetic smile. ‘He was always much closer to his mother.’

  ‘Are you close now?’ I asked, twisting my curls into a long ponytail and fluffing the ends. ‘With your son?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say close,’ he said. ‘After his mother died, we didn’t seem to have an awful lot to say to each other.’

  ‘It can’t be easy, being a parent.’ I was trying to be diplomatic, but really I couldn’t imagine someone not loving having Al for a dad. Mine had always been more interested in his football and Star Trek than me and my sisters, but then mine was a bit shit.

  I watched as Al scooped up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers. ‘It isn’t easy. But it’s not easy being the child sometimes either, is it?’

  The powdery white sand filtered back onto the beach and I was sad for a moment that he would never be able to pick out exactly the same handful ever again. Rubbing my dry, sandy fingertips against my temples, I was starting to think I might be missing the bigger picture. My life had been so tiny and so utterly consumed by Charlie and my work that I’d let everything else slip past me without even noticing. I even used worrying about Amy as an excuse not to worry about myself. Now, sitting here on the beach with my stand-in granddad a million miles away from home, it was much easier to see that what had really changed in all of this was me.

  ‘Ahh, look at that,’ Al sighed as the sun finally tipped over the horizon, blending the pretty teal sea into the deep, dark blue sky. ‘Beautiful. How can we be sad when we’re looking at that? Now, let’s see if we can’t put a smile back on your face.’

  ‘I’m just being stupid.’ I looked up at the sky, already streaked with red and pink and dotted with stars starting to sparkle. My head was beginning to hurt from too much thinking and not enough mai tais. ‘Like you said, it’s only been a couple of days. How upset can I really be over someone I’ve known a couple of days?’

  ‘I asked Jane to marry me a week after we met,’ Al said, stroking his beard. I couldn’t say why but it really did seem to give his statement more gravitas. ‘I knew right away that she was the one for me.’

  ‘You proposed after a week?’ I blew a stray strand of hair away from my face and smiled. ‘That’s incredible. You just knew? Both of you?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t say yes right away.’ He laughed like Brian Blessed and it made me so happy. ‘It took me another three months to wear her down.’

  ‘What made her change her mind?’ I asked, trying to imagine a young Al courting his sweetheart. Nope, couldn’t do it. All I could see was Santa down on one knee in front of Mrs Claus.

  ‘She said she’d never met anyone who made her so angry and so happy at the same time,’ he said with a wistful smile. ‘And really, I didn’t give her a lot of choice. Once I set my mind to something, I don’t let it get away. Life’s too short for dilly-dallying.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bad thing when someone makes you angry?’ A memory of my mum and dad screaming at the kitchen table while I tried to eat my spaghetti hoops in peace popped into my mind. ‘I mean, aren’t you supposed to marry your best friend?’

  ‘She was my best friend,’ he replied with a firm nod. ‘Doesn’t mean we always agreed on everything. But we understood each other. She brought out the best in me, challenged me to keep going. You’ve got to have that spark, that little kick, otherwise it gets boring.’

  I wrinkled my nose and wondered whether or not he was right. Amy always said the reason she and Dave didn’t work out was because they were too alike, that she was bored; but that was what made me love Charlie so much. I loved that he could finish my sentences; I loved that he knew how I wanted my tea without having to ask. We never fought. He never made me sad. Well, not intentionally. Charlie always told me how clever I was, how he was so impressed by whatever I was doing. He knew everything about me and I knew everything about him. We were the perfect fit. But now, with Nick … I couldn’t think of anyone who made me so mad so easily. He clearly thought he was much more intelligent than I was, that he knew better than I did, that he was some sort of sexual superman. But I wanted him so badly. The idea of him and Paige together at the waterfall made my skin crawl. I could live with knowing he wasn’t mine, but the idea of him being with someone else, right now, was another thing altogether. I looked down at my hands, curled into tight little fists. All the better to punch him with.

  ‘Tell me about the photos you’ve been taking.’ Al interrupted my reverie with a cough and a question. ‘You must have got some beauties around the island?’

  ‘I have,’ I nodded. ‘This place is gorgeous. But I am not looking forward to tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah, the models.’ He pulled a thoughtful face. ‘Well, won’t that be interesting?’

  ‘It will be interesting,’ I confirmed. That was an understateme
nt. ‘The art director has this ridiculous concept planned … I don’t know. It feels weird to me. But what do I know?’

  ‘You are the photographer,’ Al reminded me. ‘So I should imagine you know quite a bit?’

  ‘This is true,’ I said, taking a breath. ‘I am Vanessa the photographer. Good point.’

  ‘I do like you, Vanessa,’ he said, giving me another blast of his booming laugh. ‘You’re a little bit odd, like all the best people.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I laughed back and felt myself relax just a fraction. ‘Let’s hope the models feel the same. I’m starting to panic a bit. Pre-shoot nerves, I suppose.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. You know you will. You’re definitely someone who doesn’t walk away from something until it’s right, I can tell,’ he said. ‘Takes a perfectionist to know one.’

  ‘I guess.’ He would definitely have been right about me once upon a time. I bit my lip and looked him right in the sparkly old eye. ‘I just … I don’t know. I’ve had so much stuff go wrong lately. I really, really need this to go well. It’s like, if I can get this right, maybe everything else will be all right as well. If I can just make one thing perfect, I can get the rest of my life back on track.’

  ‘That’s a lot of pressure to put on one photograph,’ Al said. ‘I don’t want to worry you, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the way life goes.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ I said, breathing in through gritted teeth, ‘let’s just hope the models don’t tear me to tiny little pieces.’

  ‘Models.’ He made a noise that sounded a bit like a cat throwing up. ‘I’ll never understand it. Such a funny thing. Women are odd creatures.’

  ‘Models?’ I asked. ‘I don’t think they actually count as women. They’re a different species. I honestly think it must say so on their passports.’

  ‘It just never made sense to me,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Male models aren’t as rich as female models because men don’t want to look at a better version of themselves in a jumper they’re about to buy. And yet women insist on putting these perfect-looking creatures in clothes that have been pulled and pinched and altered beyond all recognition and then spend six months out of the year starving and crying because they don’t look like the model in the dress when they buy it. Of course they don’t look like the model! No one looks like a model. You’re all mad.’

  ‘No, I’m with you.’ I couldn’t really argue with the man ? he was perfectly correct. ‘Fashion magazines are not my friends.’

  ‘Really?’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘I’d keep that to myself tomorrow if I were you.’

  I blushed and nodded. I wished there was a Wisdom of Al app for my iPhone. If nothing else, maybe I could just record his laugh and play it whenever I got a bit down.

  ‘Now, I’ve got to go and see a man about a dog,’ he said, jumping up and yanking his surfboard out of the sand. I made a mental note to enroll in yoga classes when I got home and hoped he hadn’t heard my knees crack as I staggered to my feet. ‘And I imagine you have to go and do some fabulous fashiony photography things.’

  ‘Not really, but I could pretend I have if that would help?’

  With a surfboard under one arm, he gave me a scouting salute with the other. ‘Have a lovely evening, Vanessa. I do believe this chat has given us both quite a lot to think about.’

  He was not wrong.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Starving, emotionally exhausted and without a drop of booze in the entire cottage, I called the main house in search of something to eat and lots of things to drink, but instead of sending down dinner, they sent down my fairy gayfather. Fifteen minutes later, Kekipi had selected me an outfit from the clothes Paige had left, brushed my hair out into loose waves and waited patiently while I cack-handedly applied as much make-up as I knew how. If I was going to hag it up in Hawaii, I was going to do it properly. I knew I’d achieved the look we were going for when I emerged from the bedroom to a double thumbs-up from Kekipi.

  ‘You look like a princess,’ he confirmed, hurrying me out of the door before I could look in a full-length mirror. I did not look like a princess. I looked like someone wearing a too-tight-in-the-boobs black lace dress that was so short I was fairly certain you could see where babies came from, and enough make-up to make the average Real Housewife gasp in horror.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked, pressing my nose against the glass of the black town car he bundled me into as we cruised out of Bennett’s giant gates and onto the open road.

  ‘Waikiki,’ Kekipi replied. ‘My job is to keep you entertained, and I can’t think of anything more entertaining than filling you up with cocktails and seeing what happens. Especially since your fellow fashion compadres are all either AWOL or knocked out on Night Nurse.’

  I made myself laugh. I didn’t care what Paige and Nick got up to. I just wished Paige had better taste in men. And I wished Nick’s penis would shrivel up and fall off.

  ‘So if we’re going to Waikiki, where are we now?’ I was not very clear on my Hawaiian geography and was becoming increasingly upset about leaving the beach behind for what looked suspiciously like Doncaster town centre. In the fifteen minutes we’d been in the car, we’d already passed three McDonald’s drive-thrus.

  ‘Hawaii 101.’ Kekipi brushed some imaginary dust from the shoulder of his impeccable navy blue polo shirt and then fanned out his hands. ‘The state is made up of hundreds of islands, but there are eight main islands. Of those, the most densely populated is Oahu, which is where you are now.’

  ‘You hate giving this lecture, don’t you?’ I asked, brushing some very real dust off my shoulder and fanning my hands out to check for grubby fingernails. I shouldn’t have bothered.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘The Bennett estate is in Kailua, a small town on the windward side of the island, and around twelve miles to the south of Kailua is the city of Honolulu. Waikiki is a neighbourhood in Honolulu. With me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Waikiki is famous for its beach. It’s where the majority of Hawaii’s tourists visit and where most of the nightlife is on the island.’

  ‘So it’s a good place?’ I asked, shaking out my long, loose waves. ‘It’s cool?’

  ‘That I did not say.’ Kekipi slapped my hands away from my hair and pulled it all over one shoulder. ‘But it’s better than going to play half-price games at Dave & Busters in the mall. Just barely. There. Now don’t touch your hair again or I will have to slap you.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ I placed my hands in my lap and pressed my lips together, gnawing nervously on the bottom one. And then remembered I was wearing lipstick for the first time in eleven years and stopped. Then immediately did it again. Being a girl was hard.

  ‘Now, tell me everything that’s happening with Mr Miller.’ Kekipi leaned across the small, glass-topped table and opened his wide brown eyes. ‘Should I be picking my maid-of-honour dress yet?’

  ‘Before I start lying, can I ask whether or not there are security cameras in the cottages?’ I groaned. His big, beautiful eyes lit up and his fluffy eyelashes fluttered.

  ‘Two mai tais, please?’ Kekipi ordered before our waiter could even open his mouth. Instead he gave us an unconcerned shrug and headed right back to the bar. ‘They’re both for you. Now, tell me everything.’

  ‘I don’t really know where to start.’ I drummed my fingers against the table and looked to the heavens for an answer. They presented me with a clear, blue-black sky bedazzled with the brightest stars I’d ever seen, but they did not provide an answer. Bastards. ‘It’s all such a great big pile of bollocks.’

  We were sitting at some swanky hotel pool bar by a beautiful marina in the center of Waikiki, as if Bertie Bennett, his Barbie dream house, Nick, Paige, the waterfalls, the models, all of it, didn’t exist. When you couldn’t see the mountains, the flowers and the fruit and the endless miles of beach, you could be anywhere in the world. Well, anywhere with a marina full of beautiful sailing boats and dozens of so-hip-it-hurt Am
erican tourists. I’d spent so much time with Nick and Paige that it was easy to forget I was technically in America and not on the set of a very special episode of Made in Chelsea.

  Kekipi took my silence with good humour for all of seventeen seconds, letting me soak in the ambience of the bar and the marina, before he could be quiet no longer.

  ‘Vanessa, have you had sex with him or not?’ The words literally exploded out of him, attracting the attention of at least four neighbouring tables. ‘Because, yes, we do have security videos, but do not make me look at them. I don’t want to see anything I don’t have myself.’

  ‘Good news, everyone,’ I announced to my new friends at the other tables. ‘I have had sex with him.’

  ‘Is he hot?’ an Australian girl with short blonde hair sitting two tables away asked loudly.

  ‘He’s so hot,’ Kekipi replied before I could, ‘that I’ve thought about drugging his coffee, just so I can sneak in and take a peek. If you know what I mean.’

  ‘Everyone knows what you mean,’ I hissed before turning to offer the Australian girl an awkward, all-teeth smile. ‘He is quite hot.’

  ‘Good on you, girly.’ She held up her drink in a toast. ‘Give him one for me.’

  Where were my mai tais? I really wanted a drink.

  ‘OK, so you’ve hit that.’ Kekipi slapped the table to regain my attention. ‘And while I will be needing each and every dirty detail, it seems as though you’re conflicted, young grasshopper. For what reason I cannot even possibly begin to imagine. What’s going on?’

  Even though Kekipi was a thirty-something gay Hawaiian man sitting here waiting for cocktails and sharing boy banter, it almost felt as though I was back on the sofa at home with Amy. He had an amazing ability to make me feel comfortable, despite the fact that half the bar was still discussing my recent shag action, and so, for no good reason, I told him everything. Everything about Nick, anyway.