vast collection of tiny bikinis, and suddenly realize why. If her hair went anywhere near water without the aid of a hell of a lot of Frizz-Ease and an hour’s attention it would surely be a ginger afro. I’m tempted to chuck my drink over her just to check, but reconsider. It would be a waste of perfectly good gin.
‘I just had a call from my agent?’ she says. ‘And US Playboy is interested in me doing a centrefold? And although I’m perfectly happy with the human body as a sexual and sensual instrument –’ Excuse me while I puke. ‘– I’m more in touch with my inner spirituality? Y’know?’
The Aussie upward inflection is doing my head in. We may be hungover, and she may be talking utter crap, but it’s not as if we don’t understand the English language. Y’know?
‘Babe, that’s amazing,’ says Ben. ‘I can’t believe I’m knobbing a potential Playboy centrefold. You’ve got to accept.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Poppy. ‘As you’re such a spiritual person, maybe you should concentrate on less obvious things.’
‘Oh you naughty boy,’ says Kim simultaneously, tapping Ben’s nose playfully, as I suppose a Playboy centrefold might. ‘But the shoot clashes with my yoga retreat in Kerala next month – Goa’s just soooooooo touristy these days – and I need to, like, reconnect with my soul?’ She starts doing some ostentatiously arse-revealing yoga moves and Poppy catches my eye.
‘Anyone up for Sa Trinxa?’
I was hoping someone would moot this. The gin has already topped up the toxic fluid that is my blood and I want to party on. Sa Trinxa is the coolest bar on the coolest beach in Ibiza and I defy anyone not to have a good time there. Apart from the Alisons, of course, who’d rather talk weddings around the pool.
‘I’m game,’ says Damian.
‘Me too,’ says Ben.
‘I think I’ll take a rain check? I need to, like, catch up with my meditation? You guys have fun, OK? But not too much fun without me, gorgeous? Remember the Tantra?’ Kim licks Ben’s face in a frankly horrible display of intimacy and slinks off.
Sa Trinxa it is then.
I’m basking in the clear water off Las Salinas, favoured beach of Ibiza’s beautiful people. It’s a fifteen-minute walk from the car park to Sa Trinxa, at the far end of the beach, but boy is it worth it. Looking back at the beach from my watery vantage point, I’m faced with a scene right out of a soft-focus Seventies fashion shoot. Nestled into the rocks at the back of the sandy white beach, the bar is built up on a wooden platform, with bamboo and banana leaves providing shelter from the fierce Balearic sun. Exquisite semi-naked bodies of every nationality laze on the shore, tattoos and anklets much in evidence. Impossibly slender and tanned girls in tiny bikini bottoms are starting to dance on the water’s edge, swaying in time to the ambient music the bar’s sound system is pumping out. They know that everybody in the bar is looking at them; that’s the point.
I do a somersault underwater. I could swim before I could walk, as my parents had a pool when I was a baby (when they were still together), and I’m still better at swimming than walking. The former has fewer falling-over opportunities. I come back up for breath and let my mind drift back to last night. I was a little economical with the truth when I said I hadn’t shagged Randy. It seems a tad sordid to admit you’ve done it in a nightclub loo, after all. Even if the club in question is Pacha. But hey, he was fit as fuck, and seemed to think that I was too, which is always a turn-on. He was from California, and looked like a surfer, with a broad jaw, shoulder-length, sun-streaked hair, darker eyes, lashes and stubble, perfect American teeth and mid-calf, Hawaiian-printed board shorts. One of the best things about Ibiza is that you can meet so many globally gorgeous men here.
He approached me on Pacha’s absurdly jet-set terrace, complimenting me on my eyes, dress and legs. I lapped it up, then told him I had some coke if he fancied a line. I’m always so euphoric on Charlie (not least for its confidence-boosting properties) that I want to share it, for whomever I’m with to be on the same wavelength, to share the joy man. I’m a bloody idiotic hippy at times. Anyway, we made our way to the Gents, waiting until nobody was having a piss in the urinals, before sneaking into one of the two whitewashed stone cubicles, laughing as we locked the door behind us.
I felt another rush of euphoria after we’d done the lines and Randy seemed to too, as he grasped my shoulders and started kissing me, tracing the inside of my mouth with his tongue. It felt great and I responded in kind, offering little resistance when he slid my dress off my shoulders and onto the floor, leaving me standing there in my bra and knickers. He undid his board shorts, which also fell to the floor. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath and his cock was impressive. He pushed me against the wall, and tried to get my knickers down, but we were both hampered by the garments around our feet. We laughed, and kicked them aside.
Realizing that in such a confined space there was no other option, Randy sat down on the loo seat and pulled me down on top of him. He’d already managed to get a condom on (something told me he’d done this before). I felt his great American cock going deeper inside me, as I manoeuvred myself up and down on him, turned on as much by the naughtiness of it all as by his calloused thumb rubbing my clitoris. God, it was good.
But when I told Ben that I’d lost Randy in the crowds, I was lying about that too. When we eventually emerged from the loo, with me in the towel the barmaid had lent me, he kissed me, apologized and said he couldn’t be seen with me in case his friends told his girlfriend back in Santa Barbara. Bastard. It was the first time he’d mentioned a girlfriend.
You know what though? I’ve been treated worse. God, the hours I’ve spent agonizing over why some chap or other hasn’t called, what I might have done to put him off me. What it is that other women have that I don’t; something that keeps the opposite sex interested in them for more than just a few cheap shags. Endless, painful self-analysis. At least Randy had the decency to tell me to my face immediately after the event. OK, so decency is probably not quite the right word, but you know what I mean. It’s that being kept hanging on for weeks, sometimes months on end – because they don’t have the bloody courage to tell you to your face – that really hurts.
Here, in the beautiful sea that surrounds this beautiful island, Randy’s nothing more than a delicious (if somewhat seedy) memory. Ships that pass, and all that. I do a backward somersault, then swim out towards the horizon for a bit, going deep underwater like a fish before heading back to the shore. It’s time for another drink.
The jetty that sticks out into the sea in front of the bar acts as a kind of catwalk. The rocks that account for the very clean water make it difficult to get in and out of the sea without using the jetty, so every time you have a swim you know that at least someone will be observing, and quite possibly commenting on you. In the old days I’d have been horribly self-conscious hauling myself out of the water in front of such a pulchritudinous crowd. Today, emboldened by the five bottles of wine we seem to have got through with our lunch, I am the picture of insouciance. I may be nowhere near Poppy’s league of beauty, but I scrub up OK and am feeling happily confident in my fuchsia and orange halterneck bikini, my long dark hair dripping down my back. It’s great how sexy sunshine and booze can make you feel when there are no mirrors around.
Lunch was to die for. Griddle-blackened tiger prawns pulsating with garlic and parsley, fantastically crunchy chips to soak up the juices and a lovely fresh salad to make us feel virtuous. The food, wine and swim (not necessarily in that order) have certainly sorted out my hangover, I think, as I weave my way through the bodies on the sand back to our table.
‘How was the water?’ asks Poppy.
‘Absolutely gorgeous! So refreshing, I feel like a new man. What’s the wine situation?’ I pick up my empty glass.
‘Don’t panic, we’ve ordered a couple more bottles,’ says Ben, laughing.
Looking around the table I feel a moment of pure joy. I’m with three of my favourite people in probably my favourite place on earth, mellowed with sun and wine, with nothing but more pleasure