One Minute to Midnight

CHAPTER Six



New Year’s Eve, 1996

Cape Town



Resolutions:

1. Get a first in Prelims



2. Lose half a stone



3. Apply for internship with production house



4. Plan Julian’s twenty-first. It has to be major!

5. Go rowing. Or hunt-sabbing.

ALEX MET ME at the airport. Typically, effortlessly gorgeous in denim cut-offs and a white vest, Ray-Bans and flip-flops, her skin was already tanned a deep golden brown after ten days in South Africa en famille. I, on the other hand, looked like hell: dressed in black jeans and a grey polo neck, sweltering in thirty-degree heat, I was sweaty, smelly and bedraggled after a marathon, three-leg journey from London. Eight and a half hours to Nairobi, a three hour stop-over at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, a four-hour flight to Johannesburg, another two hour stop-over, and finally, two hours to Cape Town – for a girl whose previous longest flight was a couple of hours to Rome, it felt like I’d travelled halfway to the moon.

And as Alex drove me through the outskirts and then the heart of Cape Town towards her parents’ home in Camps Bay, the moon might just as well have been where I’d landed, so alien did all this seem to me. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this: the traffic-choked city, the high rises, the tangle of highways; and then, all of a sudden, a glimpse of the ocean, or a view of Table Mountain rising above us. I felt disoriented, almost panicky, my nerves not helped by Alex’s erratic, high-speed driving. I clutched the door handle and ghost-braked all the way from the airport through the grimy, poverty-stricken district of Athlone, as we headed towards Camps Bay.

‘Lock your door!’ Alex yelled at me over the music as we screeched to a halt at a set of traffic lights.

‘What?’

‘Your door! Lock it!’ I did as I was told. ‘Car jackers!’ Alex yelled cheerfully.

At the next set of lights I almost jumped out of my skin when a child appeared at my window, seemingly from nowhere, in the middle of four lanes of traffic. A little boy, no more than seven or eight, clad in shorts and a filthy T-shirt urging me to enjoy Coca-Cola. He grinned at me and held up a bucket.

‘He wants to wash the windscreen,’ Alex explained, giving a little shrug of exasperation. ‘You get them at every bloody light.’

The child gazed soulfully at her through the window, his head cocked to one side. ‘Oh, all right then!’ she yelled at him, nodding her head. ‘The water’s so bloody filthy it makes things worse rather than better,’ she said to me, but continued to smile sweetly at the child, who could barely reach the top of the windscreen with his cloth. The traffic lights changed to green, behind us, drivers lent on their horns. Alex rolled down the window and handed the child a ten Rand note. He thanked her, waving cheerfully at us as we pulled away, a tiny, raggedy figure standing in the middle of the road, apparently unconcerned by the cars and lorries trundling past just inches away.

I took a deep breath and leaned back in my seat.

‘You okay?’ Alex asked me. ‘Glad you came?’

‘Of course I am!’ I replied, although I still couldn’t quite believe I’d done it. Coming all this way for a one-week holiday – and spending half my student loan on the airfare – was probably the most daring, irresponsible thing I’d ever done. It was a ridiculous idea, one I’d be paying for all year – literally. But that was the effect Alex had on me. She made me reckless. And once Alex had decided that something was a good idea, she could convince just about anyone. I found her totally irresistible.

I hadn’t been able to say no to her since the first day I met her, during freshers’ week. She turned up at my door at two o’clock in the morning, an obscenely short, red silk robe wrapped around her statuesque frame, asking if I had any vodka.

‘I’m making cocktails,’ she announced.

‘I think I have some wine,’ I said, pulling my own robe (floor-length terry cloth), a little tighter around me.

‘That’ll do!’ she said happily, ‘I’ll get you a bottle tomorrow!’

She never did, of course, but she did show up a couple of days later armed with an enormous box of chocolates and a stack of books, suggesting we study together. We did no studying at all, but stayed up half the night comparing life stories. Since then, we’d become virtually inseparable.

‘How’s our favourite boy?’ she asked me, turning down the radio so that we could have a conversation. Julian.

‘He’s very good. He’s fine. He’s incredibly jealous. But he sends his love.’

‘He should have come.’

‘He’s flat broke, Alex, he just couldn’t afford it.’

‘I know. But it would have been so cool for all three of us to be here together.’ (This was one of the many, many things I loved about Alex: she loved Julian, too.)

‘So what’s he up to tonight? Raging in London?’ Alex, who had only lived in England for a few years, spoke accented English littered with South Africanisms. Raging = partying, lekker = good, frot = rotten, that sort of thing. For some inexplicable reason she called traffic lights ‘robots’. (Her directions to the Social Studies library had left me utterly mystified – turn right at the robots? What on earth was she talking about?)

‘He’s going to a party at Heaven, I think, as well as various others. You know what Julian’s like. Likes to keep his options open. Much more importantly, what are we up to for New Year’s Eve?’

‘Well, we’re starting off with the obligatory cocktail party at my parents’ place.’ She glanced over at me, caught my stricken expression and grinned. ‘It’ll be okay, not massively exciting, just some friends, some family – it’s not a big deal. And we don’t need to stay long. But we may as well have a few drinks on the olds before we have to start paying for our own.’

‘Good plan.’

‘After that, we’re invited to a party at La Med, which is a cool bar down by the beachfront. Alternatively, there’s a beach party at Clifton, which is likely to be very hectic, but also a lot of fun. We can always do both. We’ll just have to get someone to give us a lift from the bar to Clifton Beach, because there’s no way I’m driving tonight. I’m sure we’ll be able to talk someone into giving us a ride.’

I had no doubt. Alex, tall, dark and beautiful with huge blue eyes, Brooke Shields’ eyebrows and the widest smile you’ve ever seen, could talk anyone into anything. She was the kind of girl who on first sight I’d expected to be a total bitch (girls that beautiful usually are, aren’t they?) but turned out to be utterly charming and unaffected. Which was all the more amazing given her exotic family background.

Alex’s father came from Zambia where he’d been part-owner of a copper mine. She and her three older sisters had spent their childhood running wild in the grounds of some enormous rambling pile in the lush suburbs of Ndola, they rode horses, they spent their summers on safari in Kafue and Bangweulu, they went rafting on the Zambezi, they danced the night away in dodgy nightspots to which they were far too young to gain admittance. Alex’s father, having made plenty of money, retired in the early nineties and moved the family to Cape Town. The Roses, Alex’s family, had it seemed lived their lives in glorious Technicolor. I, on the other hand, felt distinctly black and white.

Arriving at the Roses’ home hardly put me at my ease. We entered the property through high gates and wound our way up the driveway to the crest of a hill. Alex parked the car, hopped out, rushed around the car and opened the door for me with a flourish.

‘Welcome!’ she said, taking my hand and pulling me out of the car. ‘Casa Rose!’

Once again, my expectations were shattered: this was not the grand old Cape Dutch house I’d secretly dreamed about, it was something else entirely. Large, sprawling, low, stark and modern, the villa was all glass and chrome, a magnificent contrast to the lush vegetation surrounding it. It clung precariously to the hillside, high up on the slope where Table Mountain rises out of the sea.

We grabbed my luggage (dirty and tatty-looking, I noticed all of a sudden) out of the boot of the car when the front door flung open. A woman dressed in a brightly printed kaftan swept through the door, her arms opened wide in greeting.

‘There you are at last!’ she called out. She had exactly the same wide smile that Alex did, ‘I’m Karen, Alex’s mum.’ She kissed me on both cheeks. ‘You look exhausted, you poor thing. Was your flight awful?’ She took the suitcase from my hand and put it down on the ground. ‘Here, leave that,’ she said. ‘Solomon will get it.’

‘Oh that’s okay—’ I started to say, but she cut me off.

‘No, leave it,’ she insisted, and led me into the house.

If my first impression of the Roses’ home amazed me, the second struck me dumb. From the entrance hall you could see all the way through the house, across a balcony to the ocean, shimmering under a low sun. It was jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring. High Wycombe, it was not.

Alex and Karen, standing a little to my left, were both smiling at me.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Karen asked. ‘I never get tired of that view.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I breathed. ‘You feel as though you could jump off the balcony and dive right in, right into the Indian Ocean!’

‘Atlantic, actually,’ a voice boomed out from somewhere deeper into the house.

‘Hey, Dad!’ Alex called out, and her father emerged from behind the bar to the left of the living room, a glass in hand. Scotch on the rocks, it looked like. Easily six foot three, Alex’s father had white hair, a deep mahogany tan and thick, beetling eyebrows. He looked like a tall, scary Giorgio Armani. He held out an enormous hand for me to shake, his expression stern.

‘If you want the Indian Ocean, you’ll need to go about fifty kilometres east,’ he told me. ‘Our views are better, our restaurants are better and our beaches are better, but the water is a hell of a lot warmer over there, I can tell you.’ He smiled. ‘I’m Robert,’ he said, his enormous hand engulfing mine and squeezing like a vice. ‘We’re very pleased to have you here with us, Nicole.’ He took my arm and steered me towards a drinks cabinet in the corner of the room.

‘What’s your pleasure?’ he asked. ‘Gin and tonic? I understand you’ve been reading Marx? I used to be a communist. A long, long time ago. Only for about five minutes, though. Then I started making money and I realised it was all bullshit.’ Realised, pronounced ree-lahzed. His accent was much heavier than Alex’s. ‘Gin and tonic, ja?’

Two gin and tonics and one frankly terrifying discussion of the Communist Manifesto later, Alex escorted me down to the guest room, a palatial suite on the lower ground floor with French windows opening out onto the pool area. My grubby suitcase had been placed, presumably by the as-yet unseen Solomon, beside the bed.

‘Is this all right?’ Alex asked with a grin. Seeing the look on my face, she said, ‘Don’t look so worried,’ and gave me a hug. ‘Have a shower, get dressed and then you come up and meet my sisters. They’re at the beach right now, but they’ll be back any minute.’

The prospect of meeting the Rose girls, the infamous Rose girls, sent the butterflies in my stomach into overdrive. I had heard the stories, I’d seen the photographs: to say that these women were going to be intimidating was an understatement. First, there was Kate. The eldest at twenty-nine, Kate ran her own graphic design company and drove a Mercedes. Jo, twenty-five, was doing a masters in psychology. Lisa, twenty-two, was just back from Milan where she’d just got her first spread in Vogue Italia.

So, I muttered to myself, flinging open my suitcase and inspecting its contents with disdain, what does one wear to impress a supermodel? The ideal outfit, given the climate and the company, would be some sort of strappy sundress with high heels and just a smattering of jewellery. I, however, was not the sundress sort, strappy or otherwise. Never had been, and most likely never would be. Despairingly I rifled through my poorly packed and by now incredibly crumpled clothes. Oh god oh god oh god. I had imagined, before I’d arrived here, that New Year’s Eve in South Africa would be a casual, jeans and T-shirt type of affair. Having seen the house, it was clear that jeans and a T-shirt were not going to cut it. With a mounting sense of panic, I scrabbled through the untidy pile of clothes, looking for something suitable.

I ended up settling on an elegant (I hoped) but rather dull combination of white trousers, dark green chiffon top and wedge heels. Not particularly practical, but I could always take off the shoes when we went to the beach. I showered, washed my hair and took a despondent look at myself in the mirror (I looked exactly like what I was: an English girl who hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours). I slapped on as much make-up as my pale complexion could take, summoned up my courage, and tried not to fall over as I walked up the stairs.

At that moment, I felt a sudden pang of longing for Julian. With Jules at my side, I always felt invincible. He was almost always the best-looking man in any room he entered, so he was the perfect person to have on your arm. Perhaps I should just pop back downstairs and give him a call? After all, I didn’t want to miss him. I had to speak to him on New Year’s Eve. It was tradition.

I turned and was just about to skulk back below stairs when I was accosted by yet another incredibly tall person: a woman with cropped dark hair, wearing the perfect strappy sundress for the occasion.

‘And where do you think you’re going?’ she asked. ‘You saw us all and decided to make a run for it, did you?’ She laughed. ‘Seriously, it’s not going to be that terrible. Just get a couple of beers down you and you’ll be fine. I’m Kate, by the way. You must be Nicole.’

‘I must be,’ I murmured, following the Amazonian girl out onto the terrace, where the beautiful people were gathering.

Alex was standing on the far side of the terrace, drinking champagne with two other girls, both of whom were slender and long-limbed and appeared to have wandered out of the pages of a fashion magazine. One of them, of course, had.

‘This is Lisa,’ Alex said, indicating the taller of the two, ‘and Jo.’

They beamed at me and said hello, but they were sizing me up, too. I could feel their eyes run ever so quickly and almost, almost imperceptibly, from my head to my toes and back again. I felt like a midget. A rather pale, slightly overweight midget.

‘You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen,’ Lisa said to me, immediately making me feel better. ‘Is that colour real or out of a bottle?’

A man appeared at my elbow, a black man. He was serving drinks. ‘This is Solomon,’ Alex said.

‘Hello!’ I said, a little too brightly, holding out my hand for him to shake, but since he was carrying a tray of drinks he clearly couldn’t shake my hand, so he just grinned toothsomely and nodded.

‘Pleasure to meet you, madam,’ he said. ‘Would you like champagne or perhaps a beer?’

I took a glass of champagne and thanked him and thought about the child on the road, and looked around and noticed that the only black people at this party were the ones carrying trays, and I felt uncomfortable. Alex caught the look on my face and smiled.

‘Plus ça change,’ she said in a terrible French accent. ‘It’ll be better later, on the beach. It won’t be so … monochromatic. Promise.’

We hung around for a couple of hours making polite conversation with Alex’s parents and their guests, and were just inching towards the front, about to ditch the cocktail party and head for the real action, when we spotted Robert heading purposefully in our direction.

‘Oh crap, he’s going to try and make us stay …’ Alex muttered, but in fact he wasn’t.

‘There’s a telephone call for you, Nicole,’ he boomed at me, brandishing a cordless phone in my direction. ‘An English bloke. Charles, I think he said his name was.’

Alex grinned. ‘Jules.’

I grabbed the phone with unseemly haste from Robert’s hand.

‘Julian!’ I squealed excitedly, ignoring the sideways glances of the assembled guests. ‘Just … say … new year …’ he said. I could barely hear him over the crackle on the line.

‘What?’

‘… wanted … say … Happy New Year!’

I scuttled inside in search of better reception.

‘How are you?’ I shouted.

‘I’m still pissed off with you for leaving me here, all alone in London. What’s it like there?’

‘Hot,’ I said. ‘Scary. Exotic. Did I say hot?’

‘Yeah, you did, and you can shut the f*ck up about it too, because it’s minus two and raining here.’

‘I wish you were here, Julian.’

‘God, me too, but I’ve barely got enough cash to keep me in beer and poppers.’

‘Behave yourself tonight.’

‘Don’t I always? Have an amazing time, take lots of pictures and give Alex a big kiss for me. I’ll be thinking of you at midnight.’

‘You too.’

‘Happy anniversary, Nic.’

‘Oh shit, Jules, we haven’t done resolutions …’

‘Quickly, I’ll go first—’

But then the phone cut out, there was some beeping and some crackling and I just stood there saying, ‘Hello? Hello?’, and for just a second or two, I felt bereft, but then I looked up and saw Alex out on the terrace, grinning at me, gesturing for me to join her, and behind her the sun was just starting to dip into the ocean, lighting it on fire, and my heart leapt. I realised that for the first time ever I was doing something exciting and extraordinary, and I had to hang onto every moment, I had to remember what everything looked like and sounded like, I needed to remember the smells and the textures and tastes, because this – new, exotic, terrifying – this is what I wanted my life to be like.

A few minutes later I found myself squashed into the back seat of Kate’s Mercedes, with Lisa on one side and Jo on the other, long legs folded up so that their knees almost reached their chins. Alex sat in front with Kate, because she had to have control of the stereo.

‘Seriously,’ she told me, ‘if it were up to Lisa, we’d be listening to the Spice Girls. She has the worst taste.’

I wasn’t overly concerned about the music. I found myself gripping my seatbelt in terror as the car careened along a windy coastal road cut into the side of the mountain. Out of the window to my left I could see sheer cliffs dropping away to the sea. My stomach lurched.

‘Just don’t look down,’ Jo said with a grin.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lisa reassured me. ‘Kate’s never had an accident in this car. She wrote off the last one, but she’s never crashed the Merc.’

‘Don’t tell her that!’ Kate protested from the front seat. ‘Honestly, I’m a great driver. The other accidents were always the other guy’s fault.’

‘Let’s talk about something else, shall we?’ Alex suggested.

‘Of course. What are you guys going to get up to for the next few days?’ Jo asked.

‘We haven’t really made any firm plans …’ I said.

‘Typical Alex,’ Lisa said. ‘So disorganised.’

‘Spontaneous,’ Alex corrected her.

‘Well, you have to climb the mountain,’ Jo said. ‘It’s an amazing hike.’

‘I’m not really much of a climber …’

‘There’s an easy route,’ Lisa reassured me. ‘Only takes a couple of hours. I’ve done it with my grandparents. Anyone can do it.’

‘Oh, and you must go and see the penguins at Boulders Beach …’

‘And you should go to Robben Island …’

‘Go shopping in Green Market Square …’

‘Take a drive out to Stellenbosch to do some wine tasting …’

‘Actually,’ Alex interjected, ‘We’d quite like to spend some time just lying on the beach doing bugger all.’

‘Don’t let her drag you into her pit of apathy Nicole,’ Kate warned me. ‘If it’s left to Alex, you’ll go back to England in a week’s time having seen nothing but the abs on the lifeguards on Clifton Beach.’

Kate dropped us off in the packed car park at Clifton at around ten. As far as the eye could see, the beach was lit by bonfires, around which hundreds of (mostly scantily clad) young things were dancing. Others thronged at one of the makeshift bars that had been set up at various intervals, emerging from heaving crowds with cans of beer or plastic glasses. From an enormous sound stage a little way down the beach, boomed the unmistakeable hook to Faithless’s ‘Insomnia’.

Alex grabbed my arm and we made our way down some rickety wooden steps to the beach. With each barefoot, bikini-clad girl we passed, I regretted my outfit choice more keenly.

‘Right,’ Alex said, surveying the scene as we got to the bottom of the stairs, ‘let’s head for the sound stage. Anton’s DJing tonight and there’s bound to be a good crowd there.’

‘Who’s Anton?’ I asked her, stumbling along at her side, shouting to make myself heard over the noise of the crowd and the music.

‘Met him on Christmas Eve,’ she yelled back. ‘Very nice guy,’ she added with a wink.

Anton, it turned out, was not the only guy Alex knew at the party. She also knew Steve and Michael, Danny and Graham, Wayne and Tod … a seemingly endless parade of good-looking young men. They greeted her enthusiastically, shook my hand politely and then ignored me. I clung to Alex’s side, feeling awkward and intimidated. Eventually, I volunteered to go and get us drinks. Copious alcohol consumption, I reasoned, might be the only way to get through this party alive.

Abandoning my wedge heels, I trekked back across the dunes towards a bar. Walking barefoot was not a great deal easier, since I was now stumbling over the hems of my trousers. The crowd at the bar was ten deep. For a moment I considered giving up before I started. After all, Alex would almost certainly be able to suggest that one of the boys fetch drinks for us. Not wanting to seem defeatist, though, I pushed myself into the fray.

What seemed like hours, but was probably more like fifteen minutes, later, I emerged victorious with four gin and tonics balanced on a plastic tray. Two for Alex, two for me. There was no way I was going to go back to the bar again any time soon. Gripping the tray as though my life depended on it, I started to make my way back towards the sound stage. I had got about three yards when I managed to put my left foot on my right hem, stumbled, righted myself, and was breathing a sigh of heartfelt relief that I hadn’t gone arse over tit when a teenage boy, chasing after a Frisbee, came flying out of nowhere and charged straight into me. The drinks, and I, went flying. The teenage boy didn’t even break stride. A roar of laughter went up from the nearest gaggle of people, although one kind soul grabbed my arm and helped me to my feet. I dusted myself down and grinned ruefully at the laughing crowd. I may have been hoping fervently for the ground to swallow me up, but I wasn’t going to show it. I picked up my tray and went back to the bar.

I was just steeling myself for another assault on the bar crowd when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘That was unlucky.’ I turned around and found myself looking into the sleepy green eyes of a lithe, dark-skinned man with a mop of unruly black hair. He was wearing baggy, boarding shorts and a dirty white T-shirt. A cigarette hung from his bottom lip. I inhaled sharply, my mouth opened, but I was actually speechless.

‘Of all the beach parties in all the world …’ he said with a lazy smile.

‘Aidan?’ I said, eventually finding my voice. ‘Aidan? Is that really you? What are you doing here? I thought you were in India. Or Pakistan. Somewhere in Asia.’

‘I was, for a while. Now I’m here.’ He spread out his arms and gave me a hug. I was still struggling to get to grips with the fact that I had just bumped into someone I know roughly six thousand miles from home, but Aidan didn’t seem in the slightest bit fazed by the coincidence.

‘Shall we have another go at getting you a drink?’ he asked.

Inwardly I cringed. You don’t see someone for years and the first time you do, you’re falling over and throwing drinks everywhere. Typical. That would never happen to Alex. It would never happen to Julian. Only to me.

‘What can I get you?’ Aidan asked me.

‘Gin and tonic,’ I replied, ‘but I’m not just buying for me …’

‘Oi, Joe!’ Aidan yelled, incredibly loudly, over the heads of the crowd.

One of the barmen looked over at us. ‘Yes, chief!’ he yelled back.

‘Gin and tonic and a Castle!’

‘Yes, chief!’

‘Make it two Castles!’

‘Yes, chief!’

He turned to me and grinned. ‘You are old enough to drink, aren’t you?’

A second or two later, I had a gin and tonic in my hand.

‘Easy when you know how,’ I said to him.

‘Yeah, Joe tends bar at the hotel I’m staying at. He’s moonlighting tonight. Twenty-three with three kids and a fourth on the way. Needs the money. Come on, let’s find somewhere to sit.’ He placed his hand between my shoulder blades, guiding me towards a quieter section of beach.

‘Alex – the friend I’m with – will be waiting,’ I said, not quite resisting.

‘But I’ve bought you a drink now! You have to talk to me. You’re obliged to talk to me. For five minutes at least. It’s the law.’

We found ourselves a spot next to one of the less crowded bonfires and sat down.

‘So,’ he said, looking me up and down, ‘Nicole Blake. Look at you, all grown up.’

He was running his eyes all over me. I could feel the colour rising to my cheeks. He grinned, that annoying, I-know-what-you’re-thinking kind of grin, and asked, ‘Didn’t you know you were coming to a beach party?’

‘I was at a cocktail party before,’ I said, a little stiffly, ‘and I didn’t have time to change.’

‘Oh, a cocktail party,’ he said, putting on a posh English accent. ‘Rather.’ He lit himself a cigarette and offered me one. I declined.

‘Good girl,’ he said, patting my arm.

Patronising git. What was it about this man? Why was I simultaneously seized by the impulse to slap him across the face and rip his clothes off? Well, it was clear why I wanted to slap him, but the attraction was less obvious. Yes, fine, he was good-looking, yes, okay, he looked exactly like Julian, but there was something else, something underneath all that which made me want to get to know him. He had an air of dissolution, a raggedness around the edges that was somehow irresistible to me. I had an overwhelming urge to kiss him.

‘I should go,’ I said, swigging down as much of my gin and tonic as I could in one gulp, because if I stayed there any longer I wasn’t going to be able to resist that urge. ‘Alex will be waiting.’

‘Oh, come on!’ he protested. ‘I haven’t seen you in … how long’s it been? Five years?’

‘It was much more recent than that,’ I said, a little disappointed that he couldn’t remember the exact moment he’d seen me last, because I could. ‘It was Julian’s eighteenth.’

‘Oh, that’s right,’ he said, starting to laugh. ‘You and Jules took a couple of Es and you just about chewed a hole through your lip. Remember?’

I looked away, embarrassed. ‘I remember.’

‘And you told me I was quite good-looking for an old guy.’

‘I did not,’ I protested, feeling the blush rise to my roots.

‘Yes you did,’ he replied, laughing at the memory. ‘You were off your face, though.’

Why was it that he made me feel like an idiot whenever I saw him? And why was it that he seemed to enjoy it so much? And why in god’s name did I let it get to me?

‘So tell me about this Alex, then,’ Aidan said, thankfully changing the subject. ‘Who’s he? Captain of the rowing crew?’ Ever so casually, he draped an arm around my shoulders, leaning in to whisper, ‘I hope he’s not the jealous type.’ My stomach flipped, a shiver ran through me. He pulled me closer.

‘You’re not cold are you? I’ve got a jacket somewhere …’ he looked around. ‘… not sure where I left it though …’

‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘I’m not cold.’

‘Sure?’ He turned to look at me, his face was just inches from mine, he reached across and pushed my hair away from my face. My heart was pounding.

‘You look good, you know?’ he said. ‘You look really good …’ He leaned in closer, slipping his arm all the way around my waist – this was happening, this was really happening …

‘Aidan Symonds!’ And then it wasn’t happening. A loud, harsh voice rang out, tearing through my perfect moment.

‘Hey, hello!’ Aidan called out, letting go of me and getting to his feet. He was immediately enveloped in the arms of an incredibly tanned blond girl with beads in her hair and a bright orange kikoi tied around her slender waist. She knew how to dress for a beach party. She was whispering something in Aidan’s ear, he was laughing. I turned away and got to my feet.

‘I really ought to go, Aidan,’ I called out to him. ‘It was nice seeing you.’

‘Yeah, yeah, we should meet up again, you can introduce me to Alex,’ he replied, half-heartedly attempting to disentangle himself from the clutches of the blonde. I just smiled, and waved, and walked away, furious with myself for feeling so disappointed.

Back in the shadow of the sound stage, I found Alex dancing up a storm.

‘Thank god!’ she yelled when she saw me, flinging her arms around me. ‘I thought I’d lost you. It’s almost midnight! Where the hell are our drinks?’

‘Long story!’ I yelled back as she dragged me onto the decking which served as dance floor.

‘Never mind! I’ll have one of the guys get us some champagne!’

By midnight, I’d forgotten all about my sartorial failure, the embarrassing fall on the beach, even Aidan and his annoying blonde. Intoxicated with champagne, dance-induced adrenalin and the simple joy of being with my second-best friend in the whole world, the only thing that could have improved my night would have been if Julian had been there too. At the stroke of midnight itself, Alex and I were jumping up and down, hugging each other tightly, a huddle of boys behind her waiting patiently for their New Year’s kiss. As I let her go, I found myself spun around and, before I could protest, Aidan had planted a kiss on my lips.

For a moment or two, everything slowed down. That’s how it felt, as though the rest of the world went into slow motion, the music was turned down, the noise of the crowd abated and the colours faded to black and white. There was nothing except for me and him, standing together on the beach, his arms around my waist, his lips on my mouth. And then he pulled away and the world came back, bright and loud.

‘Happy New Year, Nicole Blake,’ Aidan said.

‘Happy New Year,’ I replied.

He brandished an unopened bottle of champagne at me. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go and drink this somewhere quiet.’

‘What about your friend?’

He shrugged and laughed. ‘I don’t see her anywhere around, do you? What about your friend?’

I looked over my shoulder at Alex who was standing there, grinning at us.

Aidan laughed again. ‘So that’s Alex, is it? Prettier than I’d expected. Less butch.’

Alex waved me away. ‘I’ll be fine!’ she called out. ‘Go and have fun. I’ll be hanging out around the DJ booth, like a groupie.’

We walked along the beach, heading away from the party, into the darkness. I felt reckless, as through I were teetering on the brink of something, possibly something dangerous, I wasn’t quite sure what. I felt dizzy, I felt high. It felt amazing. Here I was, on New Year’s Eve, on a beach in South Africa, drinking champagne with a dangerously handsome older man! This was an adventure! This was what I wanted. Also, if he tried anything untoward I could always brain him with the champagne bottle.

We walked in silence for a while, eventually turning to climb halfway up a sand dune, where we sat down and he opened the champagne. We took turns to drink from the bottle. We had walked far enough from the party so that we could no longer hear the music or the shouts of the crowd. There was no one else on the beach. I felt as though we could be the last two people on earth.

The moon, a sliver away from a perfect circle, hung low in an endless sky filled with more stars than I’d ever seen in my entire life.

‘Don’t get skies like that back home, do you?’ Aidan asked me.

‘You certainly don’t.’

‘How are things at home, by the way? Your mum all right?’

‘She’s fine. She’s good. She’s getting married next year.’

‘Nice bloke?’

‘He’s lovely.’ I was a bit confused. What were we doing here? Why were we talking about nothing in particular? Surely he didn’t bring me all the way down the beach with a bottle of champagne so that he could ask me about my mother? I was suddenly aware that he hadn’t actually told me what he was doing here in Cape Town. Nor, come to think of it, had he asked me what I was doing here. The weirdness of the whole situation just didn’t seem to bother him at all. It bothered me, though.

‘What is it that you’re doing here, Aidan?’ I asked him. ‘I can’t believe that Julian didn’t even tell me that you were in South Africa …’

‘He probably doesn’t trust me with you,’ Aidan replied with a grin. ‘His precious Nicole.’ His arm was around my shoulders again. I closed my eyes and leaned into him inhaling his scent. Citrus and cigarettes. Intoxicating, although not quite intoxicating enough to make me forget that he still hadn’t answered my question.

‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ I said.

‘I’m working,’ he told me. ‘I’m with the BBC now.’

‘Reporting?’

‘I’m a cameraman. We’re doing a documentary on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. You heard of that?’

‘I do read the papers,’ I said, stiffening up again, pulling away from him.

He smiled at me. ‘You’re so spiky,’ he said. ‘I love how spiky you are. You’re the easiest person in the world to wind up.’

‘And how would you know that?’ I asked. ‘You barely know me.’

‘Ah, but I’ve heard the stories,’ he said. ‘Plus, I remember the first time I ever saw you. I came to your house to pick up Jules, after he was in that fight, you remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘And you got all pissed off and hot under the collar because I asked you if it was past your bedtime.’ He started laughing again.

I ignored him. ‘So, that sounds interesting. The Truth Commission thing I mean.’

He chuckled. ‘The Truth Will Out! That’s what they’re calling it. F*cking ridiculous.’

‘What do you mean? You don’t think it’s a good thing? I think it’s incredible, so optimistic, you know? To try, in a really constructive way, to deal with the problems of the past.’

He laughed more loudly this time. ‘You think it’s a good thing to let murderers go free? To say sorry to the victims’ families and simply walk away?’

‘That’s not the point, though …’

‘I know it isn’t. I know. I’ve just been to enough places with dark pasts to know that this country’s problems aren’t going to go away because someone’s convened a commission.’

‘That’s a bit cynical,’ I said, and he smiled at me, that knowing smile. ‘I’m not naïve,’ I started to say, but he shut me up with a kiss.

Later, I asked him what he meant when he said he’d been to enough places with dark pasts.

‘You name it.’

‘Well? Where?’

‘I’ve travelled all over the place. Spent a long time trying to get into print journalism, but there were a couple of problems. One, I didn’t have a university degree and two, I can’t write for shit. Anyway, eventually I decided to get behind the camera instead. I did some work in South-East Asia – mostly just filming stupid hippies on holiday. That was f*cking dull, and I wanted to do something real, so when I read the first reports about the civil war in Liberia, I decided to go there.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah, charming place.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. ‘You wouldn’t believe what people were doing to each other.’ He was looking out over the ocean, his eyes fixed on some point in the distance. I touched his arm, and he shook his head, as though shaking off some unbidden memory. ‘I got some great footage there. Liberia. I went to a few places where there weren’t many other hacks hanging around, so some of my stuff got picked up by the BBC, CNN, people like that, and since then I’ve not been short of work. I was in Rwanda in 1994, Croatia in 1995, Chechnya this year. Last year, I suppose it is now …’

I was in awe. ‘My god, that must be so amazing. So incredible to see all this stuff up close, to be right there, telling the story …’

He laughed. ‘It is, if your idea of excitement is getting a couple of teeth smashed out with a rifle butt wielded by a crazed Interahamwe militiaman.’ He bared his teeth at me and tapped the front two. ‘Replacements. Or if you like the idea of crawling out of a burning vehicle because some Serb has sprayed your car with bullets and shot off your driver’s head. It’s all very exciting.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not for everyone. But I can’t really imagine myself doing anything else. I don’t think there’s anything else I’d be any good at.’ And when he talked about it, I thought that it was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to be good at, too.

For a while, we sat there, watching as a hint of grey appeared at the horizon, a precursor of dawn. The champagne was finished.

Aidan turned to me at last and said, ‘I think you should come home with me. To my hotel.’ My heart was thudding so loudly in my chest I felt sure he could hear it. ‘Will you come?’

I wanted to, I wanted to be with him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t just run off and leave Alex. I couldn’t just go to a hotel room with some guy I hardly knew. Could I?

‘Aidan, I can’t … Alex is waiting for me …’

‘That’s okay,’ he said, ruffling my hair. ‘I guess I never thought of you as the type to put out on a first date anyway.’ He got to his feet and pulled me to mine.

‘Oh, but you did think about it?’ I asked him with a smile.

‘Of course I did.’ He put his arm around my shoulders and we walked down the dune together. ‘After that party, Julian’s eighteenth, when I drove you home and dropped you off … the night you told me I was good-looking for an old guy. God, I thought you were so incredibly cute.’

‘Cute?’

‘Well, cute, sexy, beautiful in this completely unassuming way …’

‘Yeah, yeah, keep going …’

‘Well. I told Jules all this, and he flipped out.’

‘He never told me this.’

‘Oh yeah, he had a right go at me: you stay the f*ck away from her, don’t you go anywhere near her … blah blah.’ I laughed at his fairly accurate Jules imitation. ‘I didn’t know you were only sixteen. I thought you were Julian’s age.’

‘Still too young for you.’

‘What can I say, I’m a dirty old man.’

‘How old are you, actually?’ I asked him, as we walked hand in hand towards the ocean.

‘Thirty-five,’ he replied.

‘You are not!’ I said, dropping his hand as though it were scalding.

‘Of course I’m not,’ he said, laughing and grabbing me round the waist. ‘Jesus, do I look thirty-five? I’m twenty-eight.’

‘That’s still pretty ancient.’

‘I’ll show you ancient,’ he said, raising me up into the air and over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Ignoring my helpless pleas and flailing limbs, he carried me to the water and dropped me into it, diving in after me, wrapping his arms around me, covering my face and neck in salty kisses.

We found Alex sitting at one of the bonfires with a large group of people, a haze of smoke surrounding them and – from the smell of it – not just from the bonfire. Alex erupted in fits of giggles when she saw us.

‘Hey there, lovebirds,’ she said. ‘Or should I say drowned rats?’ Embarrassed, I dropped Aidan’s hand. He reached for it again. My heartbeat sped up a few dozen beats per minute. ‘What on earth have you been up to?’

We lay back on the beach as the sun rose, getting gently stoned as we waited for our clothes to dry off. Someone had come prepared, they’d rustled up orange juice and were cooking boerewors, a kind of spicy sausage, for breakfast.

When the sun was fully up, Aidan propped himself up on one elbow, stretched and said, ‘I guess I ought to get going.’

‘Oh, don’t go,’ Alex protested. ‘Come back to the house. We’ll go for a swim, have a braai, something like that. Just chill out.’

‘That’s kind, Alex, but I really can’t. I’ve been on the lash since Christmas and I have to work tomorrow. At some point I really ought to get some sleep.’ He leaned forward and kissed me on the neck. ‘You got a number I can ring you on while you’re here?’

I gave him Alex’s parents’ number and walked with him up to the car park to say goodbye. We had one last, intoxicating kiss before I watched him climb, slightly unsteadily, onto a motorbike and roar off into the distance. Without a helmet.

When he was gone, I returned to the bonfire on the beach, aware that I was grinning like the Cheshire Cat and unable to stop myself.

‘Nice going, Nic,’ she said, as I approached. ‘He is delicious. Lekker like a cracker. Although kind of old, no?’

‘Twenty-eight!’ I said.

‘No way!’

‘But so, so sexy.’

‘Definitely’ she agreed. ‘He looks just like Julian.’

‘I think,’ I said, sitting down next to her and draping my arm around her shoulders, ‘that this has been the best New Year ever.’

‘Not better than the Julian one?’

‘Well, that was great and awful. This one was just great. God, this is such an amazing place.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘I think we should come back here. When we’ve finished our degrees. We could travel, teach, do something important, you know?’

‘Gets under your skin, doesn’t it?’ Alex asked me with a smile.

‘What does?’

‘Africa.’

We sat there until the rising sun became too hot, and it was time to head back. Alex managed somehow to find someone sober enough to drive us home, where we snuck quietly into the house and went to bed. I didn’t fall asleep straight away, though. I just lay there, hugging myself, going over every detail of the previous night, thinking of Aidan’s laugh and his green eyes.