‘Excuse me, madam! Pot calling the kettle black. Weren’t you having sex with Sam on your first day here?’
Lucy’s face turned bright red. ‘Could you say that a little louder? I don’t think they heard you in Switzerland.’
‘Sorry. Forgot where I was for a moment. But it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Sam’s hot. You’re gorgeous. And we’re all under thirty. Sex is not only natural, it’s a foregone conclusion at our age.’
‘At any age, love, if I have my way,’ a woman who looked close to seventy said. I think she might’ve been on her way to the loo or somewhere as she had walked past, but she’d turned back and come to say her piece, before laughing like a drain and retracing her steps.
‘Good for you,’ I said, giving her a thumbs up, and she threw me a wink in return.
‘I can’t take you anywhere.’ Lucy frowned at me but I could see she was trying hard not to laugh.
‘No. But he could.’ I nodded at the waiter who was returning with our wine. ‘Sorry. I’ll behave.’
‘Hmm,’ was all Lucy added.
‘Would you like to try it?’ he asked.
‘Don’t say it,’ Lucy warned me before smiling at the waiter. ‘No thanks. And we’ll pour.’
His smile told me he probably knew what I was going to say, and I think he was a little disappointed Lucy had stopped me. He was rapidly growing on me. I liked a man who could take my banter and my sarcasm.
‘Sam could teach you how to sail,’ Lucy suddenly suggested as she poured me a large glass of wine.
‘What? Where did that come from?’
I held my glass in the air while she filled hers and then we clinked glasses, just like we always did when we opened a bottle of wine. We might now live miles apart but some things would never change. At least I hoped they wouldn’t.
‘I was just thinking, you might be safer at sea. Fewer people.’
I burst out laughing. ‘I’d probably drown Sam. I think being on the back of that bike was excitement enough for me, thanks.’
I’d forgotten that Sam was also a sailing instructor, although not so much these days. But that was how he and Lucy had met. On the very first day of her holiday in Fairlight Bay ten years before.
‘You can just about see Fairlight Bay Sailing Club from your seat,’ she informed me. ‘If you lean forward a little. It’s the one in the middle of the long expanse of the paved promenade. The only three-storey building. There’s a shop front on the promenade level, an upper storey with the clubhouse and a wide balcony where members can sit, and a lower storey where the boats and sails and all the ancillary equipment is stored. There’re large metal doors that open onto a long concrete boat ramp that sits on top of the pebbled beach and leads right down to the sea. But you can’t see the doors from here.’
I craned my neck and leant forward.
‘Oh yeah! Wow. That looks posh. Is Sam still a member? Wait. Are you?’
She grinned at me and nodded. ‘I joined last month. There’s a Sailing Regatta in August, and Sam wants us to enter. Just for fun, not to win.’
‘Yeah right. Said no man. Ever.’
Her grin grew wider. ‘I told him that if winning was important, he’d better pick someone else. He said it wasn’t about winning. This was about us sharing the experience. Oh, and I’d forgotten how weird, yet rather wonderful it feels to have sex in a sailboat.’
‘Lucy!’ I roared with laughter. ‘And you have the nerve to tell me to behave. But, tell me. What does it feel like?’
She leant forward and sipped her wine. ‘Join the sailing club and find out. Oh! But when I suggested Sam could teach you how to sail, I wasn’t offering his services for anything else.’
I almost choked on the sip of wine I’d taken myself as I couldn’t help but laugh.
‘I don’t think there was any need for you to tell me that. And besides, Sam’s not the type, is he?’
‘To cheat?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe so. No.’
‘He adores you, Lucy. Every other woman might as well be a pebble on the beach for all he cares. You can see it in the way he looks at you. And the way you look at him.’
That was the one thing I did envy her for. I’d never had a man look at me the way Sam looked at her. It was enough to send tingles up and down your spine – forever.
