Despite herself, Kim laughed. ‘You said you do hair, right? Maybe you could offer her some of your expertise.’
Colette announced that breakfast was ready a few minutes later and both Kim and Annie made their way back to the kitchen and the waiting meal.
Kim picked at her scrambled eggs, even though they were really good. The entire meal was. She was impressed. She couldn’t boil water without starting a fire. It was fortunate that Colette would be around while she was here; might save her on some of the eating-out expenses.
She remembered now that the English girl had also reacted with considerable enthusiasm last night to her suggestion about the cookery class. Maybe she should just let Colette go along instead, and Kim and Annie could reap the benefits.
‘So what are we doing later?’ Annie asked eagerly.
Kim looked at her, realising that, like it or not, she seemed to have made some new friends. She hadn’t really considered what she would do while here, she just needed to get away. But maybe some companionship would be a good thing?
As long as they didn’t spend all their time partying.
‘Dunno,’ she replied non-committally. ‘Did you have something in mind?’
‘There’s this brilliant place downtown I went to the other night. A late-night bar actually cut into a cave,’ she enthused,eyes shining. ‘Great crowd and the music is the biz. We could do our own thing today and maybe meet up later for a bite to eat and head there after?’ She turned to Colette for a response.
‘Great,’ the English girl replied with a smile. ‘Sounds like fun.’
Kim nodded in assent. She was happy to check out the town, but she’d already decided that she wasn’t going to drink asingledrop of alcohol.
Time to put her partying days well and truly behind her.
Chapter 18
The trio ventured down to the centre of Positano later that evening.
Annie was right, Music on the Rocks was awesome, but Kim got the feeling that Annie’s desire to be there had less to do with showing them a good time, and more with her trying to find someone else, judging by the way she spent most of the night looking around.
Interesting …
Still, they had fun. Over dinner they’d exchanged further snippets of each other’s lives, delving deeper into the reasons they were all here in the first place. It was fascinating stuff, especially Annie’s upbringing – which was so utterly different from her own, yet they’d both been let down and rejected by their parents.
Kim was kind of embarrassed to admit that hers had basically wanted to marry her off to some guy in England; it seemed frivolous and stupid in comparison to the stuff they’d been dealing with, so instead she’d told them she just wanted to get out from beneath her folks’ thumbs for a while.
Later, Annie and Colette confessed to being wiped (particularly after that long trek up the hill) when they got back to the villa, but Kim was still a little wired.
She checked the time and calculated the equivalent East Coast time back in New York.
Realising that it was the middle of the night there and Natasha would be fast asleep, she decided to upload a couple of photos to the new social media account she’d set up so she and her friend could keep in touch without Kim’s parents being privy to where she was.
Her chosen handle was ‘The Sweet Life’, the English translation of the villa’s name.
She picked a gorgeous sunset photo she’d taken from the pizzeria they’d eaten in earlier – a golden orb over the water, framed by vibrant bougainvillea trailing the ornate railing at their window table.
It was a pretty good shot if she did say so herself, she thought, as she tagged her friend’s account, though her iPhone was brand new so the camera was top-of-the-range.
‘Food with a View’ was the rather uninspiring caption Kim chose, but that wasn’t the point. She just wanted to let Tash know that she was here, safe, and having a good time.
She still felt guilty about diverting the trip without her folks knowing, though she had sent a message to Spencer Andrews – enough to let him know that there was a slight change of plan and that she wouldn’t be coming over this week but his family shouldn’t worry.
No doubt Peter and Gloria were already aware she’d gone AWOL, and she’d have to confront them, too, at some point, but she’d wait till she was better settled here first.
She got a glass of water from the kitchen and ventured around the common areas of the house she hadn’t yet had a chance to explore properly.
According to Annie, there were four bedrooms in the villa, three of which were currently occupied by herself and Colette,with Annie in the single room and the older German couple they’d met briefly last night (though Kim couldn’t remember much of their conversation) in another.
That parlour-type room off the kitchen in the back which had been her haven that morning, was so dark and dreary that it really should be knocked through so as to open out the tiny kitchen and let in some more natural light.
