Page 73 of All Summer Long

She downed her first shot of tequila in one and he refilled her glass, sensing a fellow pro drinker.

‘Good news is we’re going home tomorrow morning. You can have Pollyanna back.’

Brad processed the information as she downed her second drink as if it were water. The tequila had hit his system already and he could feel the effects numbing the pain in his face and loosening ill-advised words from his mouth.

‘She’s not all sugar and spice, our Alice,’ he said, pitching the conversation poorly, as if Lena were one of the lads rather than an attractive and pissed-off woman. ‘She can be quite the little wild cat, on the quiet.’ He made a claws motion in the air and threw in a halfhearted ‘raarrgh’ for good measure.

Lena looked at him speculatively. ‘Then she sure will have had a good time with Robinson.’ She draped her hand over Brad’s forearm and leaned in. ‘That man issucha tiger in the bedroom.’ She nodded knowingly and tipped him a subtle wink as she spoke. ‘More roar than raargh, if you catch my drift.’

Perturbed and suitably goaded, Brad swallowed another measure of tequila and poured them both another round.

Caught up in their bizarre game of my ex is better than yours, he said, ‘Alice likes to take control.’

‘Maybe,’ Lena shrugged one shoulder. ‘Or maybe she just hadn’t been with a guy who knew how to control her.’ She drew her shot glass towards her. ‘Until now. I wonder if he brought his handcuffs with him …’

The idea of Alice in handcuffs had him reaching for his shot glass again.

‘She has her own,’ he said, even though she didn’t, not as far as he knew anyway. ‘Among other things. I bet he was surprised to see her toy collection.’ In reality, the only toy Alice actually owned was a threadbare teddy she’d kept since she was five years old. ‘And sometimes she doesn’t wear any knickers on a Sunday.’

‘Go Pollyanna,’ Lena scoffed openly. ‘They call Robinson captain commando for a reason, honey.’ She downed her latest shot of tequila and waved the empty glass at him. ‘Anyhow. They don’t do jockey shorts in his size.’

Brad was having trouble bringing Lena’s face into focus. ‘Yet you shagged his best mate,’ he slurred. He’d googled. He knew the gist of it.

‘And you still screwed your leading lady,’ she said, cattily. She’d googled too, as soon as Marsh had called her to fill her in and tell her he’d booked her on the next flight. Funny how he’d ignored all of her emails trying to get to Robinson until he deemed her useful.

‘And right now they’re probably boffing each other’s brains out in my house,’ he said, wondering if he could stand up.

‘While we drink tequila in an empty hellhole of a … pub?’ she said the word as if it were another language, and one she had no interest in learning.

A thought occurred to Brad.

‘I have a room upstairs. I don’t suppose you fancy …’ He attempted a seductive look that actually looked more like someone in the advanced stages of a stroke.

Lena squinted at him, and then laughed so hard that tears streaked her mascara. ‘You’re joking, right?’

Brad scowled, and she laughed even harder and refilled their glasses.

‘Honey, there ain’t enough tequila in this whole wide world to convince me to go upstairs with you. For one, I can’t feel my legs, for three, you and your big split nose are definitely not my type, and for …’ she paused, confused. ‘For two, and this is the important one so listen the hell up,’ she said, jabbing him hard in the chest with her finger. ‘For two, I’m taking my husband back home tomorrow and I’m gonna make life so sweet for him that he forgets all about this damn place and every last person in it, Pollyanna included.’

She lost her moral high ground when she attempted to slither haughtily off her stool and crumpled into a heap on the floor at his feet.

Offended, Brad rubbed his chest where her nail had gouged into him. Bloody ungrateful woman couldn’t even count. Did she not know who he was?

‘Is it too late to run away?’

Alice curled into Robinson’s chest in the sanctuary of the Airstream, or as she would forever more refer to the caravan in the soon-to-be-put-together glampsite brochure, the love bubble. They were in bed, as they had so often been, and she was somewhere between euphoric and catastrophic because she’d just had the best sex ever with a man who was soon going to leave her forever.

‘I’ve tried running,’ he said, pressing his lips against her forehead. ‘Life has a way of following you and setting up camp on your doorstep until you go home again.’

She nodded and sighed. Knowing he was right didn’t make it any easier to stomach.

‘How will you get out of the manor without being seen?’

He shrugged his shoulder beneath her head.

‘I could borrow one of Stewie’s wigs?’

Alice considered the various options and couldn’t see Robinson as a convincing Elvis, Rod Stewart or one of the Bay City Rollers.

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