Make or Break

‘Aw, man!’ Jimmy’s voice reverberated off the inside of the freezer where he was immersed almost to his armpits trying to locate some ‘epic’ frozen yoghurt.

He’d started talking about it as soon as we’d woken and by the time Trust dropped us off outside Ian and Diego’s he was salivating like one of Pavlov’s particularly hungry dogs. He’d bidden Trust a hasty but genuine thanks, burst through the front door, dumped his backpack on the floor and made a sweaty beeline past Diego and Pamela, prepping a meal at the kitchen island, to the freezer.

‘That bastard!’ Jimmy said, brandishing the open container in Diego’s face.

Diego smirked. ‘He was pissed about the grapes.’

‘What’s going on?’ I said, handing Diego a box of fresh raspberries I’d bought from a man at the side of the road and walking around to look at the cause of Jimmy’s distress.

In the bottom of the empty organic frozen Madagascan vanilla yoghurt container was a crude drawing of a hand with an extended middle finger.

‘Jimmy ate half of Ian’s grapes and Ian was not happy,’ Diego said to me, his hands in a glass bowl, massaging kale.

‘He said to leave him half,’ Jimmy said, looking anguished. He brandished the yogurt container at Pamela, who was chopping up mountains of basil, and she smiled and shook her head.

‘You know what you did,’ Diego said to Jimmy with a look of reprimand. He turned to me again. ‘He ate half, all right. Of each grape.’

Jimmy dumped the frozen yoghurt container in the recycling bin while Diego, Pamela and I shared a covert chuckle.

‘So, sweet girl, if I make you sangria will you stay and tell me all about your trip?’

I grinned.

‘I’m going to unpack,’ Jimmy said, defeated. He grabbed his backpack by the straps and scuffed his feet across the room, his bag banging against the backs of his tanned calves.

‘I’d give your room a once-over,’ Diego said to his receding back.

Jimmy turned in the doorway. ‘Why?’

‘After Ian found the grapes he spent quite a bit of time down there. He had glue, food colouring and glitter with him.’

Jimmy groaned and trundled, heavy-footed, out of the room.

Around 6 p.m., Ian came home and we all partook of Diego’s chilled sangria while sitting in the early-evening sun on the balcony. Jimmy, who’d spent an hour scouring his room for booby traps and had ended up throwing out all of his bathroom products for fear of glue/food colouring contamination and raging upon discovering his drawers and the pockets of his hanging clothes filled with pink and orange glitter, sat beside me, the sinking sun making him squint attractively and turning his skin a deep golden colour. Although he was usually in possession of a graze of accidentally stylish stubble, it had grown thicker over the past two days on safari and as he rested back on the outdoor sofa, his arm stretched out across the backrest towards me, he looked roguish and striking.

‘Oh, what a princess!’ Diego said, looking at a photo of Katie dressed as Elsa on my phone. He showed it to Ian.

‘Princess,’ Ian confirmed with a smile.

Jimmy wriggled in his seat, his face showing discomfort.

‘How are you going there, squirmy?’ Ian said, a knowing glint in his eyes.

Jimmy, who’d showered and changed into fresh clothes, stood and shook his shorts, sending a flurry of orange glitter over the balcony floor.

‘It’s itchy,’ he said, frustrated.

Ian looked extremely pleased with himself.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Diego said, turning the phone to face me. ‘Is that Annabelle?’

I nodded.

Jimmy sat back down next to me and rested his hand on my knee. It was a familiar, intimate gesture that he wasn’t even aware he was making. I liked the warm weight of it.

I watched Jimmy’s smiling profile as he told Ian and Diego about the safari and how I’d wanted to take every animal (except the gazelles) home with me. Ian noticed Jimmy’s hand and gave me a twinkly smile, making me blush.

Diego and Ian asked lots of questions about my family, my job, my childhood. I could tell they were being careful not to enquire about Pete, which was something I appreciated. As the two of them moved on to pictures of the safari, their heads touching as they scrolled through the phone, Jimmy turned to me.

‘Do you want to come to a festival on Thursday?’ he said, removing his hand from my knee to pull at his shorts, releasing more glitter. ‘We’ve got a spare ticket because my mate dislocated his shoulder sandboarding.’

‘Sandboarding?’

‘Like snowboarding but on massive sand dunes.’

‘Doesn’t anyone just stay still in South Africa?’

‘Not really,’ Jimmy said, grinning, and then he told me about the festival and how it was in the countryside about three hours’ drive away and was on, actually on, a river. ‘So, you keen?’

‘It sounds amazing but I can’t,’ I said. ‘Pete’s due back tomorrow.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Jimmy said. ‘Forgot.’

Across the table Ian was watching our exchange. He smiled when he caught my eye.

‘They had babies!’ Diego said as he came across a photo of the elephants. He continued to scroll through, asking questions and showing the screen to Ian. When he came across a couple of the hut we’d stayed in he raised his eyebrows. ‘Only one bed . . .?’

Jimmy grinned and shook his head.

Pamela and Diego served prawns and salad for dinner and we sat outside on the balcony exchanging stories. Through the calm contentedness I felt a sadness. With Pete coming back I realised it would mean not seeing much, if anything, of Diego, Ian and Jimmy.

After dinner had been cleared away and we’d had our aperitif we all started yawning. Diego stood and said he needed to get to bed as he had an early class.

‘Will we see you again, sweet girl?’ he said, his thick eyebrows sloping.

‘I don’t know . . .’ I said, feeling sad. It seemed unlikely. ‘Maybe not . . .’

‘Well then, come here!’ He held out his arms and told me to keep in touch, to be sure to update him with any more music industry gossip and to remember to email him the link for the podcasts of my mother’s radio show. ‘And we shall skype and text and you absolutely must come back!’ He gave me one last extra-firm squeeze, then Ian took his place.

‘I’m sure this won’t be the last time we see you,’ he said, glancing at his younger brother. ‘Make sure you keep in contact.’

I nodded and hugged him while Jimmy looked on with a strange smile. I had to hold back tears, which was weird and a bit unexpected after knowing people for only a week, but Jimmy, Ian and Diego had been so open and welcoming it seemed like I’d known them much longer.

Amid a flurry of blown kisses Diego and Ian left for bed. Jimmy and I sat side by side on the balcony sofa, finishing off the last of the sangria and watching the lights from the container ships move across the horizon. After half an hour Jimmy could barely contain his yawning. I gave Lucy an extra-big scratch on her tummy, gave Flora a curt nod, jumped in Jimmy’s car and, fifteen minutes later, we drove through the security gates to the apartment. Jimmy pulled into a space and put on the handbrake instead of stopping at the doors, keeping the car in gear, like he usually did.

‘I guess I won’t see so much of you now that your boyfriend is getting back,’ he said, looking across at me. It seemed significant that he hadn’t used Pete’s name.

‘Guess not.’ I looked at my hands.

‘That’s sad,’ he said, and the simplicity of the statement nearly undid me.

We sat for a moment in the dark.

‘I like you,’ he said, looking across at me. ‘A lot.’

I didn’t say anything back. I couldn’t. My feelings were all mixed up. Instead of telling him how I felt, that I liked him too, that I’d had the happiest week I’d ever had, that I’d been so relaxed in his company and had slotted in to Ian, Diego and Jimmy’s life so effortlessly I felt like I’d known them for years, I took his hand.

‘We can still keep in touch,’ I said.

Jimmy gave me a look. We all know how that goes. If you haven’t forged a strong enough friendship, people you meet on holiday just fall out of your lives.

‘I’d better go,’ I said.

Jimmy nodded.

‘But I’ll call. And text. And Facebook-message.’ I said, forcing a smile.

Jimmy smiled back. Then lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it.

‘Bye Jess,’ he said.

I leant across, kissed his cheek and jumped out of the car. I waved and watched his shitty Mitsubishi with one working tail light drive through the security gates and down the street.