on the island

I was trying to balance on the back bar of the Mini Moke in the high heels Marnie had made me wear, smile for the cameras, and shoot daggers at T, who was in the driving seat, from behind my tortoiseshell sunglasses. Bastard. How could someone be so wrong and refuse to admit it? It didn’t matter that it was a game of scrabble; it was the principle. Wanker. When we got home I was never going to speak to him again.

I was so incredibly pissed off; more pissed off than anyone could possibly imagine. Maybe if Joel had been there at the time, he could have made T see sense; he could always defuse a situation when nothing else would. I had tried reasoning with T.- he was so obviously wrong - but nothing had worked, and Joel wasn’t there to make us laugh it away. By the time he did arrive it was too late; as far as I was concerned T. could go and fuck himself.

I was just trying to force my mouth into a more convincing smile when Joel leant over and gave me a big kiss. Then I did laugh for real – it was so fierce, it nearly knocked me over, and Marnie’s camera started clicking furiously away. You really can’t tell in those photos what was going through my mind at the time.

It had been such a shame. We could have had so much fun. I’d so been looking forward to it all. I’d just split up with a boyfriend – it had been tedious for a while – he was much older and much richer and he did all sorts of interesting things – managed bands, and made films – he had been everywhere and done everything – but after the initial novelty, I knew I didn’t belong there – I had been so thrilled to get back to where I felt happiest – and then T. had gone and fucked it up.

He’d split up with his girlfriend too – the one with the dad and the yacht, and somehow there had been a muddle with the tickets and dates – that’s what Joel had said – and T and I had ended up on the island on our own for four days before anyone else was due to arrive.

We’d lasted at the little hotel for a few days, slowly beginning the process of getting ourselves as brown as we could, catching the scary little bus each morning to the beach, laughing at the dashboards all covered in rosaries and statues of the Virgin Mary, swinging wildly as we lurched around the terrifying bends, covering our eyes in mock horror at the atrocious driving.

It hadn’t been until we’d got to the villa – that lovely old farmhouse with its pale sun-bleached stone and quirky little inner courtyard. Every night you had to climb the ancient curving open-air staircase to the bedrooms, their bare walls pitted with little niches in which Marnie had put white candles and small statuettes of angels. How could you possibly look up at that beautiful starry sky and think only of picking arguments with your friends who loved you – over a word which clearly didn’t exist? I was truly stumped.

Anyway, I didn’t care. Once the others had got there, it was relatively easy to ignore T – we kept as much distance between us as possible. Joel didn’t say anything much once I’d pulled him into a corner and hissed in his ear what had happened – he hadn’t even made fun of me, as he normally did when I lost my temper, mimicking my habit of pulling my hair. Instead, he just looked serious and sad. I think he must have guessed it had gone too far for laughing about.

We still had fun – there was a big group of us – lots of Marnie’s friends had villas on the island. All the younger people would go off together in the evenings, stumbling home blind drunk along pitch-black roads, laughing as we made howling noises to wake all the dogs in the villages as we passed. Each morning we’d be dropped at beaches, where we’d spend the day lying prone on the sand or rocks, wandering down to the water from time to time to cool off.

Even on the plane back home we hadn’t sat near each other. T. had gashed open his knee on some rocks – served him right for being so horrible – and he’d been put in a part of the plane where he could stick his bandaged leg out. They’d asked me if I wanted to go next to him but I turned them down; I would rather have had my fingernails pulled out one by one. I dodged him at passport control – I was much faster because he was limping - and fled, and that was that.

Soon after that he left for America – he had been saving for it ever since he’d read On The Road. I didn’t care – Joel would always be there so why should I be bothered? We would be fine just the two of us.