One Day in December(33)

I smile and shrug a little. ‘Nothing beyond floating in the sea and reading my book.’

‘A fine plan,’ he says. ‘What are you reading? Please don’t say The Beach.’

‘It’s a good book,’ I joke. Not that it isn’t, but no self-respecting traveller can admit to such an obvious choice. ‘The Great Gatsby, actually.’ I don’t elaborate and tell him that my reading matter is completely dictated by the small stack of books someone left behind in my shack. Much better that he thinks me educated enough to carry F. Scott Fitzgerald around the world in my backpack.

‘Shack find?’

I roll my eyes and laugh. ‘Busted.’

‘You could have lied and I’d have believed you.’

‘I find that lies encumber me.’

He stares at me, as well he might. I sound as if The Great Gatsby has gone straight to my head.

‘I’m Oscar,’ he says, stretching his hand out formally across the space between our tables. ‘And my plan for the day is to spend it with you.’

‘You look like a starfish.’

Oscar prods me idly with the oar of the kayak, and I let him spin me slowly on my back with my eyes half closed against the glare of the sunlight. Brilliant blue above me and below me, bath-water warm over my blissed-out skin when he ladles seawater over my belly with the paddle of the oar.

‘I feel like a starfish.’

True to his word, Oscar has spent his day with me. I wouldn’t usually warm to someone who sounded so horribly self-assured, but something in me is determined to do the opposite of what I’d normally do. He’s been in Thailand for a couple of months longer than I have, choosing to stay on in Koh Lipe for a while after his travelling companions returned home to the UK. It explains his native tan, at least.

‘Have you ever eaten one? They sell them on sticks like lollipops on Walking Street.’

I open my eyes, appalled, and find him laughing.

‘Very funny.’

He’s lounging in the boat, his chin resting on his forearm as he looks over the side at me, his fingertips trailing in the sea. I flick a little seawater at him, speckling a shimmer of droplets over the bridge of his straight nose. I’ll admit it. He’s bloody good-looking in a classic, chip-off-the-old-Greek-god kind of way. He has the confident aura of wealth about him, louche and debonair. I know, I know. Who uses words like that any more? Me, apparently, after a day spent drinking local beer and reading The Great Gatsby in a hammock. There’s something about living in a different place that allows you to be whoever you want to be.

‘Can I take you to dinner tonight?’

I lay my head back in the water and close my eyes again, floating. ‘As long as it isn’t starfish.’

‘I think I can promise that much.’

I roll on to my front and swim the few strokes to the kayak, curling my wet fingertips over the edge. His face is inches from mine.

‘Let’s not make each other promises,’ I say.

He gives me the same perplexed stare he did when we met at the beach cafe this morning, then leans in and brushes his warm, sea-salt lips over mine. ‘I like you, Starfish. You’re interesting.’





13 October


Laurie


Oscar Ogilvy-Black. It’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? I don’t think he and I would have crossed each other’s paths in the normal course of things back in London, but here in Thailand the dating rulebook has been ripped up. He tells me he’s a banker but not a wanker, and I confide my hope of gaining my first foothold in the world of magazine journalism one day soon. I have to admit that I judged him when we first met. But underneath the undeniable poshness, he’s funny and self-deprecating, and when he looks at me there’s a kindness in his eyes that warms me.

‘You’re not going to be one of those awful gossip column queens, are you?’

I gasp, mock offended, and then sigh, a little giddy because his fingers lace with mine as we walk along the cool sand after dinner. ‘Do I look like I care about worst-and best-dressed celebs?’

He takes in my denim cut-offs and black vest, then the lemon toggles of my bikini top visible around my neck.

‘Umm … maybe not,’ he laughs.

‘Cheeky, you’re hardly suited and booted.’ I raise an eyebrow as he looks comedically down at his ripped shorts and flip-flops.

Laughing, we reach my shack, and I kick my shoes off on the deck. ‘Beer?’

He nods, leaving his shoes outside beside mine before he flops down on my huge beanbag, his hands folded behind his head.

‘Make yourself at home,’ I say, and I drop beside him with the cold beers.

‘Are you sure about that?’ he asks, rolling on to his side, propped on one elbow to look at me.

‘Why? What would you do if you were at home?’

He reaches down and drags his T-shirt over his head, leaving him in just his shorts. The moonlight shades his skin coconut-shell brown. ‘I’d get more comfortable.’

I pause for a beat, considering just laughing at him – I mean, what a line – but then I follow suit and pull my vest off. Why not? Oscar is everything that my life is not: light-hearted; uncomplicated.

‘Me too.’

He holds out his arm for me to settle in beside him, and when I do his body is warm and vital. I am as free as one of the small, blush-pink birds that wheel through the sky above my shack at dawn.