stare at her in bewilderment. Seven years, Daisy and I have been best friends, and this is the first time she’s said anything about me being a drama queen. Leanne’s been trying to drive a wedge between us for years, ever since we met at uni. “The three amigos”, that’s how Leanne referred to herself, Daisy and Al when they stayed up in Newcastle for the first Christmas holidays because none of them wanted to go back to their families. I wanted to stay up with them too, but Mum pulled a guilt trip on me. She told me Granny wasn’t very well and how would I feel if I missed her last Christmas because I chose to get drunk with my friends instead (Granny’s still alive and well). Leanne went out of her way to exclude me when I came back in the New Year. She invited Al and Daisy to the cinema, to club nights and to dinner parties at their halls of residence, all the while telling Daisy that she’d invited me but I’d made excuses about revision and said no. I know Leanne and Daisy have been spending more time together in London than usual because they both work flexible hours, Daisy in the pub and Leanne in the salon, and consequently they’ve been “babysitting” Al in the run-up to the holiday, but I never once thought they’d spend their time slagging me off.
“Thanks, Daisy.” I stand up. “I try and talk to you about you taking the piss out of me and you use it as an excuse to have a dig at me.”
“Stop being so bloody sensitive.” She stands up too. “And anyway, that story wasn’t about you. It was about that tosser you pulled. That’s who I was taking the piss out of. It was funny.”
“It wasn’t funny. Elliot could have been run over.”
“Elliot, was it? And there was me thinking he was some random guy who was just after a shag. He was rude and he deserved to be kicked out of the taxi. I did you a favour, Emma.”
“No, you didn’t. You kicked him out because he called you a drunken bitch. Daisy, you threatened to find out where he worked and hunt him down if he shagged me and didn’t call afterwards.”
“And?”
Her eyes glitter. There’s no reasoning with her, not when she’s like this. The evening can only go one of two ways now – she’ll either have a raging argument, or she’ll pass out. And, if I keep quiet, hopefully it’ll be the latter.
No such luck. Daisy’s on a roll now and won’t shut up. “Because he tried to snog me, you know, Emma – lovely Elliot, who you’re so keen on defending. He was all over me while you were in the toilet at Love Lies. That’s the real reason I kicked him out of the taxi, not because he called me a drunken bitch but because he was a shit and he didn’t deserve you.”
I’m just about to respond when – “Surprise!” – Al leaps from the top step and lands next to Daisy. Still soaking from the pool, she wraps Daisy in a wet bear hug, and clamps a hand to her mouth. Daisy puts up a half-hearted fight to free herself, but she and Al both know it’s in jest. Al looks across at me, and smiles. “No arguing, you two. We’re on holiday, remember? Oh! Look at that gecko.”
“What gecko?” Leanne makes her way gingerly down the steps. She pulls the grey cardigan tighter around her shoulders but it doesn’t stop her shivering. “What are you two doing? We could hear you shouting from the pool.”
“Here.” Al crouches down on the ground and reaches out a hand to the creature. The gecko speeds away and zips under the bench.
“Leave it.” Daisy tugs at the black strap of Al’s swimsuit. “Let’s get some more wine and go back in the pool.”
“I’ve never seen one of those before.” Al peers intently under the bench.
“Al!” Daisy yanks her swimsuit again, but this time she’s swatted away.
“Not now, Dais.”
The playful expression on Daisy’s face vanishes, and she twists away, wrapping her arms around herself as she turns her back to us and looks out towards the lake.
“I’m going to get my camera. Come with me and grab a blanket.” Al stands up and gestures at Leanne, who’s still standing on the bottom step, staring at us through the darkness. “You look cold.”
“Yeah.” Leanne hesitates. She can sense tension between us and she’s torn between going after Al and staying to find out what’s happened.
“Come on,” Al urges, grabbing Leanne by the elbow and angling her up the stairs, “we’ll grab some more wine, too. I think the hotel manager’s still awake.”
Daisy doesn’t acknowledge Al and Leanne’s departure as they stumble up the steps and crash through the undergrowth. Instead she continues to stare out at the lake. I head for the steps too. Staying and arguing isn’t going to solve anything. We’re drunk, we’re tired and we need to sleep.
“Is this how it’s going to be?”
“Sorry?” I turn back.
“This. Is this how it’s going to be? You and Al making excuses not to spend time with me?”
It’s at times like this that I wonder how much more I can take. Daisy pushes and pushes and pushes, almost as though she’s deliberately stretching the boundaries of our friendship to see how much I’ll put up with. If I stay, she’ll berate me for being a walkover, for not standing up for myself; if I go, I prove her theory that everyone will eventually abandon her. It’s a catch-22 situation.
“Don’t look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking about, Emma. First you wander off when we’re all having fun round the fire, then Al shrugs me off when I ask her to go in the pool with me. And then there was our first night in Kathmandu when you and Al pretended to be jetlagged instead of carrying on drinking with me.”
“We were jetlagged.”
“You were laughing and drinking beer in your room. Why couldn’t you have done that in a bar with me?”
“Daisy, it was one can each, hardly a party. Come on.” I take a step towards her and put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to go to bed.”
“No.” She shrugs off my attempt to drape the blanket over her, swiping it away, knocking it to the ground. “I don’t want to go to sleep. I want another drink and I want to go back in the pool. Where’s my wine?”
She glances towards the bench. The bottle of wine is on the ground where I left it. The gecko has moved back out from under the bench and is a couple of centimetres from the wine bottle.
“I don’t think you need any more wine, Daisy.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.”
She pushes me out of the way and totters towards the bench. The gecko scuttles towards the wine bottle. Daisy slows her pace, inching forward on the toes of her cork wedges as though she’s taking care not to startle the creature. I keep expecting the gecko to zoom off as she approaches, but it doesn’t move. It grips the ground by the wine bottle with its suction-like feet, the only movement the back and forth motion of its eyes.
Daisy stops walking. She bends at the waist and reaches her right hand towards the wine bottle. Her left leg twitches, she steps forward, and she stamps the gecko into the ground with the sole of her wedged sandal. At the same time, she grasps the neck of the wine bottle and whips it into the air. She glances round at me, her expression victorious. “Got it!”
I stare at her in disbelief. She just stamped on the gecko. Deliberately. The pause, the leg twitch, the step. She didn’t need to do any of that to get the wine bottle. She was close enough just to grab it.
“What are you staring at me like that for?” She raises the bottle to her lips and takes a swig.
“You just stamped on the gecko.”
“Did I?” She hops on one leg and grabs her left ankle with her right hand. She hoiks it up for a closer look, squinting into the gloom, then promptly unbalances and has to grab the bench to stay upright. “Fuck.”
“Didn’t