The Girls Who Disappeared(64)

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she lied, pulling The Great Gatsby from her bag so she could hide her smile.

They made a habit of meeting up at night when everyone else was asleep and talked about everything, their childhoods, their dreams and ambitions. She felt like she knew more about Derreck than she did about her own boyfriend and she already knew she’d miss him when she returned to England in four days’ time. This, she realized, was her favourite part of the holiday, sitting beside him over a drink, with the musky scent of exotic flowers she didn’t know the names of, the dying embers of the barbecue and the sound of the crickets. They’d stay up until the sun started to rise and turned the sky a patchwork of pink and yellow.

‘I always thought I was happy,’ she told him that night, after her talk with Maggie. They were lying, as always, on adjacent sun-loungers but, unlike that first night, they were close together, so close that she could feel the heat from Derreck’s body. ‘I thought I was a homebody, not particularly ambitious, but now it feels like everything’s changed.’ Including my feelings for John-Paul, although she didn’t say that. If she was honest with herself, her relationship with John-Paul had been going downhill for months, even before he lost his job. She’d been taken in with the romance of him, a handsome stranger to their town, but he was miserable. And it had taken this holiday to make her see that so was she.

‘I hardly know anything about him,’ she said now. ‘He refuses to tell me what happened in Goa.’

Derreck sighed softly. ‘I don’t want to cross any line. JP is my mate. But on the other hand …’ Their bodies were turned in to each other, their faces inches apart. God, he was beautiful. ‘… I’ve come to feel …’ he placed his hand over his linen shirt, lowering his eyes ‘… well, you know.’

She swallowed as her heart burst with emotions. Did she know it the first time she clapped eyes on him standing, like Gatsby, in front of his villa? Their instant attraction? She probably did.

Derreck moved his hand and touched her fingers lightly sending shock waves of desire through her. His voice was low and husky. ‘The thing you need to know about JP is that he has a lot of sides to his character. He’s been in trouble with the police, back in Spain. Stupid things. Burglary. Stealing cars. And then when we went travelling he got in with some dodgy people.’ Why had John-Paul never told her any of this? She’d believed he was a gentle, innocent soul. How na?ve she’d been. Derreck continued softly, ‘I took him under my wing a bit. He was just … misguided, I suppose. He had a terrible relationship with his father, who I think was a bit of a brute.’ This was all news to Stace. ‘We travelled around together for a while and then … then Goa happened. I was his alibi but it freaked him out and that was why he ran off to Britain.’

A cold sensation swept over Stace and she drew her knees up to her chest so that she was in a foetal position, her hand still in Derreck’s. Waiting, knowing that at last she was about to find out what had happened.

He was whispering now and she had to inch forward to hear him. ‘He was at a beach party with a group of tourists. Young – teenagers and twenty-somethings. JP said he just gave one of them something – a pill. I’m not even sure what.’

‘You mean … like drugs?’ she whispered back.

Derreck nodded and held her hand firmer as though to comfort her, his thumb stroking her skin. ‘So he’s never told you any of this?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘The first I knew about it was when I heard you both talking about Goa on our first night here. I asked John-Paul about it, but he tried to palm me off.’

‘He should have told you. I can’t bear that he’s lying to you.’

‘And what happened after that?’

‘The guy overdosed. He was only eighteen. The drugs had been cut with something dodgy … Like I say, I don’t know all the details. Except JP came to the hostel where I was staying, panicked, crying. He made me promise that if anyone asked I’d say he was with me the whole time. And …’ he dipped his head ‘… to my shame I did. He told me he never knew the drugs were bad. It was that crowd he was in with. They weren’t a good influence on him. The next thing I knew, he’d left me a note to say he’d gone away. And later he wrote to me to tell me he had settled in England, had met a nice local girl and …’

She retracted her hand. She didn’t know what to think. John-Paul wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. But, then, hadn’t she always suspected that deep down? He’d presented to her a version of himself he knew she’d like. A romantic lead in a movie. The exotic hero who swept into a young woman’s boring life and made it temporarily exciting until real life encroached upon them, turning their fantasy to dust.

She groaned. ‘I feel so stupid. John-Paul was always so cagey about his travelling days but I thought it was because he wanted them back. I didn’t realize he was hiding out with me, running away.’ She turned back to him. ‘Do you think that’s why he’s so miserable now? Because being back here has reminded him of that time?’

‘Nobody ever came looking for JP. He was being paranoid, fleeing like that,’ said Derreck. ‘He told me he was broke and had lost his job. I paid for your tickets to fly out here.’