‘I got a tixt!’ he bellows, and we all squeal excitedly. ‘Oislanders. It is time to git fruity. Bist mocktail and bist name wins!’ he screeches. Everyone is leaping up and down.
‘Wins what? Does it say?’ I ask.
‘Who cares?’ yells Mimi, jumping into Carlton’s arms. ‘It’s all about the winning!’
Carlton flicks his eyes my way as though to apologise.
‘Hey, Libby,’ Giovanni intercepts. He has noticed Carlton looking in my direction. ‘You look nice.’
‘So do you,’ I say out of politeness. He is wearing swimming trunks that would fit a very small child, possibly under the age of four. He has doused himself in so much oil that the first thing he picks up slips easily through his fingers, and even though I instinctively try to catch it, it crashes noisily to the floor. We have broken a glass fruit bowl and there are chunks of chopped pineapple everywhere. A voice comes crackling out through the speakers.
‘Cut! Jesus Christ, Libby. Why must everything you touch turn to shit?’
Giovanni gives me a panicked look. ‘Oh my God. I’ll tell Porscha it was me.’ He looks positively terrified. ‘She’ll probably dump me from the island on the next recoupling.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘She thinks it was me. I’ll take one for the team. I’m not a massive fan of pineapple anyway.’ Fudge. I’ve mentioned the code word. But I’ll have to worry about that later. ‘Let’s just crack on with the task. Name the mocktail first or do you want to decide the ingredients?’
Giovanni sighs with relief and gives me a look of wonder. ‘You are such a lovely person.’
I shrug. ‘All teachers are. It’s in our nature. What can I say?’
‘Your time starts now.’
We spend a riotous forty minutes coming up with all manner of names for our mocktails. Fruit is flying everywhere. I look along the row to see all the couples taking it very seriously, except us. Packets of sherbet, boiled sweets and brightly coloured sugar-coated jellies are being hurled into blenders. People are racing back and forth to the juice bar as an invisible clock ticks loudly over the speakers. The pressure is on, and I can see Giovanni getting nervous.
I put slices of kiwi on my eyes and two sticks of celery up my nose and whip my head round to ask Giovanni, ‘Is this what they mean by getting fruity?’
Taken by surprise, Giovanni bursts out laughing and accidentally leans on the button for the blender he is loading. It sends liquid flying out to splat everyone around us. I find this hilarious, and I bend over wheezing with laughter. We are drenched.
In response, he scoops up some of the mush from the bench and dumps it on my head. I then do the same but wipe it over his face. ‘At least it tastes nice,’ he says as we crease up laughing.
‘Oh, my God,’ I say, licking my fingers. ‘How much sugar did you put in this thing? It’s so sweet it makes me want to punch a wild boar in the face.’
Giovanni is snorting with laughter. ‘Yeah. I’m gonna go outside and thump a rhino right now!’
‘Wrong terrain. Wrong continent,’ I say, my mind instinctively wondering if Cam is getting my reference. ‘Try sub-Saharan Africa.’
Amidst the mayhem, Carlton catches my eye and gives me a shy smile. But he stands looking at me for too long. Mimi puts a hand to his cheek and turns his face away. She then turns back to roll her eyes at me.
I look back at Giovanni who is wiping his face clean while also being distracted by Mimi and her cavorting unnecessarily with Carlton.
‘Pay attention, Giovanni. Let’s concentrate on the task at hand. So, names for our mocktail. Which one is your favourite?’
He is chugging the rest of the sugary drink down like an addict. ‘Which ones did we have?’
‘We have narrowed it down to…’ I take a deep breath and try to swallow the embarrassment. My sister, Tyrone, my friends, my distant relatives, my work colleagues will all be watching this. ‘Bols Deep, Bend Over Shirley and Up the Bum… I mean, Rum. Up the Rum.’ I shake my head in disbelief. ‘Which do you prefer?’
I know which one I don’t prefer but it seems this joke is going to run and run.
Giovanni is obviously remembering the previous challenge and it sets him off giggling again. He takes a moment to mull the choices over before grinning suggestively.
‘Up the Rum. It has nice imagery, plus it will always remind me of you.’
And away he goes. He can barely stand up straight. He grabs on to the bench to steady himself. When his laughter subsides, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hands and looks at me with an intense expression.
‘Oh, man. No other girl has made me laugh the way you do. You’re hysterical.’
‘Why thank you. That’s just what every woman wants to hear. That she is hysterical.’
