‘Sure I do,’ Charlie replies. ‘I’ll start you off. Elliot.’
‘Okay, well, he was my first proper boyfriend,’ I find myself saying, before adding in a slightly dreamy voice, ‘Utterly gorgeous, totally devastated me when he moved to Australia.’
‘How old were you?’ Adam asks.
‘Sixteen.’
‘Same as me,’ Charlie reveals, and I presume he means he was sixteen when he had his first proper girlfriend.
‘Too Perfect Tisha?’ I ask, giggling when he looks perturbed. ‘Nicki’s diaries,’ I remind him.
He blanches. ‘I forgot you’ve been reading those.’ He doesn’t look too happy about it.
‘What’s this? You’ve been reading Nicki’s diaries?’ Adam looks back and forth at us in disbelief.
‘Yeah.’ I shrug. ‘You did give me access to them,’ I point out to Charlie, defensively.
‘Yeah, I know, I know.’ He brushes me off.
‘Ooh, that’s freaky,’ Adam interjects, still shaking his head.
‘Shut up,’ Charlie and I both say at the same time, but Charlie’s the one to continue. ‘She needs to understand Nicki if she’s going to do her characters justice. Nicki would’ve wanted that. And there’s stuff in there that relates to the new book.’
‘Have you really never read them?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘No, but she was pretty open about what they contained.’
I wonderhowopen.
‘Anyway.’ I move on.
‘Who’s Number Two?’ Adam asks.
‘Jorge. I used to go and stay with my mum when she was working on various cruise liners around the world. When I was seventeen, she was doing Europe and it was the first summer I’d been aboard on my own – before that my dad and aunt used to take me. Jorge worked in the casino. He was from Barcelona – a twenty-one-year-old, hot-blooded son of a matador,’ I add with a grin.
I loved that cruise. I’d been gutted about Elliot’s letters drying up, so, when Mum asked me to come and join her, I agreed. As the daughter of a staff memberanda paying customer, I had exactly the same perks as the rich kids, while also being allowed to hang out in the staff areas. I was caught between two worlds – above and below deck – but this wasn’t purgatory: it was heaven.
Most of the staff were crazy, young and fun and seemed to come from every country under the sun. Mum was busy hostessing, so I had to occupy myself, and, as she’d told her boss that I was over eighteen, I went wherever I wanted, from the casino to the pool, with nobody batting an eyelid. It was all very civilised.
Below deck was a different matter.
The staff were at it like rabbits. It was a place of rampant sex and late-night drinking games – Aunt Wendy had been right to keep me well away from it.
But Aunt Wendy wasn’t there. Aunt Wendy was in Wembley.
At first I was scandalized by what went on behind the scenes – I was only seventeen, after all – but I was a pretty fearless seventeen, and was capable of fending for myself.
I fancied Jorge the moment I saw him, but it was forbidden for staff to hook up with passengers, and I was a hybrid of the two, so he was wary of me.
My breakthrough came one night during a pool tournament when we both found ourselves playing each other in the semi-final. Dad had pool tables at the pub where he worked, so I’d already wiped the floor with several of the kitchen boys.
I shared the rest of my beer with Jorge, and, when he later won the tournament, he took me to the staff bar, claiming to owe me a drink. We ended up kissing on the deck under the stars as he walked me to my room. We were in each other’s pockets for the rest of the summer.
‘Three?’ Charlie prompts.
‘Gabriel. Another cruise-ship romance. I was nineteen,’ I explain. ‘His dad was a wealthy property developer in Brazil who’d recently remarried. Gabe was pissed off at having to spend the summer on a boat when he could have been home with his mum and his friends. I was actually at university studying journalism, but Mum had swung a job for me, working with the cruise coordinating team that summer. I helped to organise the various tours for passengers to take at the different ports. Anyway, staff members weren’t meant to have flings with passengers, so Gabe and I did a lot of sneaking around. I think he felt like he was getting back at his dad by slumming it with me.’
Charlie pulls a face.
