Laura Lake and the Luxury press Trip

by Wendy Holden

  Redmond’s big white triumphant smile was back. ‘Unique to Coconut Cay. And wonderful for jetlag. You must try it. I’ll arrange one for you.’

  Their host’s attention now turned to Laura, who squirmed inwardly. She had no intention of playing hard to get. Or being picked up. ‘I’ll do anything,’ she said.

  Redmond’s gaze was hypnotic. His eyes seemed to weld onto hers and do strange things to her ears. So much so that she thought he’d said ‘May I suggest the bionic suit?’

  Laura laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ The billionaire looked briefly furious.

  ‘I thought you said bionic suit.’

  The blond brows were lowered and the cold gaze unyielding. ‘I did. The bionic suit is another treatment unique to Coconut Cay. It’s loose and fitted with wires that send a tiny charge into the muscle. It’s amazingly relaxing and its anti-ageing properties have to be seen to be believed.’

  Anti-ageing! Laura felt indignant. She was a good twenty years younger than Kate, although it was difficult to tell with Candice, who could have been any age from twenty to sixty. On the other hand, she didn’t want to argue. James Redmond gave her the creeps.

  ‘Great,’ she said.

  The island’s owner now stood up and padded off bare foot like a lion on its way to hunt elsewhere in the bush. Laura noticed how all the staff backed away and how he strode through them without a word, or even a look, as if they did not exist.

  Candice and Kate looked bereft and started to outdo each other with hyperbole about the departed business guru.

  ‘Amazing personal charm!’

  ‘Such charisma!’

  ‘Those eyes – absolutely hypnotic!’

  ‘Animal magnetism!’

  Laura leant over to Georgia. ‘All back on track now!’ she murmured. But as Georgia managed only a faint smile in reply, Laura felt frustration grind within. Just what was wrong with this woman? Her skin had just dramatically been saved, and yet she was acting as if the opposite had happened.

  You just couldn’t help some people, Laura thought, as her first course arrived. She had gone for the carrots, mostly to irritate the others. They seemed unirritated, however. Perhaps they were dazed by the still-warm aura of the departed Redmond, or just stunned by the gallons of ice-cold rosé on offer. Or, in Kate’s case, occupied with an enormous piece of heirloom-tomato cheesecake with street-food custard.

  When, finally, everyone got up to go to bed, the stars were scattered like great diamonds over a sky the black velvet of a jeweller’s cloth. Even Candice looked up and said ‘Rather lovely.’

  Laura agreed, but the prospect of going back to a dark villa was less lovely. Hopefully the hotel staff she had nipped out to consult in the interval between the gin-cured carrots and the Iberian pig ice-cream had sorted the electricity out. They had struck her as a better bet than Georgia, who had enough to cope with and couldn’t cope with it anyway. No-one at the main reception seemed to know anything about her clothes or her smartphone; their theory, that a monkey might have taken them, seemed irritatingly possible. Paradise clearly had its drawbacks.

  Still, out in the velvety, frangipani-scented night, making her way back to her villa by means of a path lit with Japanese lanterns, Laura was forced to admit that Coconut Cay was, even so, a beautiful place.

  She stood on the path at the edge of the cliff, gazing down at the ocean far below. By the light of the great white moon that hung above, it looked like silver leather. Laura took a deep breath and raised her arms in a long, luxurious stretch.

  Ooof! Something now hit her hard between the shoulderblades, propelling her violently forward. The plunge yawned below her and she wheeled her arms desperately to maintain her balance. Her toes gripped the very edge of the cliff, sending small stones rattling down the rock. She was too terrified even to scream. She clawed wildly at the air, rocking back and forth on the precipice, poised between solidity and nothingness, life and death. The silver sea flashed up at her, and she tipped forward into the void.

  Then firm fingers grabbed her arm and dragged her back.

  Her saviour was the young barman from the restaurant. His white shirt and shorts glowed out of the dark. As she clung to his broad chest, hysterically gasping out her relief and thanks, he slowly peeled her off and eyed her sternly. ‘The cliff edge is dangerous, ma’am. You should stay on the path.’

  Laura pushed her hair back from her sweating face. Aware of the near miss they had had, every nerve in her body was rioting. And maybe not entirely because of the near miss either; the barman was very handsome, and he was looking deeply into her eyes.

  She realised why a second later; the section of sheet round her torso had slipped. It had been impossible to maintain her balance as well as her makeshift dress and her top half was now exposed in all its glory. With as much dignity as she could muster, Laura yanked the sheet up again and said, fiercely, ‘Someone pushed me.’

  ‘Push?’ He shook his head firmly. ‘No ma’am. That’s not possible.’

  He was wrong, Laura knew. Not only was it possible, it had happened. The slam in her back echoed, like a bell reverberating after ringing. ‘Someone pushed me,’ she insisted.

  ‘Excuse me ma’am, but that makes no sense. Why would someone do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t imagine.’

  Or could she? Laura thought about James Redmond. Her impression had been that he would be a dangerous enemy. The tycoon, or so rumour had it, was throwing his entire fortune at this new hotel. If the stakes were that high he would naturally want to rid himself of any threats to his plans.

  But she wasn’t a threat! She never had been! Candice and Kate had been, but they were converts now. Redmond had talked them round with his powerful charisma, hypnotic eyes and animal magnetism. Now they couldn’t wait to try propulsion therapy, healing bowls and the rest of it.

  So whose hands had pushed her? And why?

  Inspiration now struck Laura. Her missing clothes flashed into her mind, and her missing phone. Perhaps something altogether different was responsible. A monkey. It seemed unlikely, but what other explanation was there?

  She rubbed her face. The adrenalin had gone, leaving her slumped and defeated. ‘I think I need a drink.’

  ‘I can do that for you, ma’am,’ the barman said pleasantly.

  Laura felt guilty. He had been walking away from the hotel, after all. ‘But weren’t you just going home?’

  ‘We’re always on duty on Coconut Cay,’ the barman said. There was nothing in his broad white smile to hint that this was anything other than the ideal situation.

  But it wasn’t, Laura grew increasingly certain, as, perched on a blocky wooden high stool against the bamboo bar, her sheet gathered about her and sipping a perfect Campari soda, she quizzed the barman about James Redmond. His name was Michael and he was more of a medic than a mixologist. He was saving to study as a doctor in London and that time, it seemed, could not come soon enough.

  ‘What’s Redmond like to work for?’ Laura asked.

  She had suspected that this was the sixty-four million dollar question and as she saw Michael glance cautiously round at his colleagues, she knew that she was right.

  ‘Quite... careful,’ was Michael’s reply.

  ‘Mean?’

  Michael looked at her as if trying to work out whether he could trust her. She put her most trustworthy expression on, hoping he would remember that she had done her best to protect him from Kate and Candice.

  Her hopes seemed rewarded. ‘You could say that,’ Michael allowed. ‘I can’t really comment.’

  Laura realised he was inviting her to ask questions which he would then answer with a yes or a no. It was thus that she established that Redmond paid his workers peanuts and treated them like slaves. Female members of staff were expected to submit to humiliating rituals such as allowing Redmond’s male guests to lick ice-cream off their breasts, or eat sushi from their thighs using their navels as soy sauce containers. Li
ke his staff, his family, especially Merlin, were all terrified of him. And in turn he despised and bullied them, especially Merlin, who had had to give up the woman he loved in order to marry Willow Bailey.

  ‘Because she was famous?’ Laura guessed. ‘And that suited look-at-me Redmond much better. Lots of publicity.’ She remembered the articles she had read. Rent-a-royals. Washed-up pop stars. Thousands of white roses from France, tables and chairs from Italy, a Rolls Royce from the US and luxury portable toilets from a firm in London who transported the waste back to the UK.

  ‘You may think that, madam. I can’t really comment.’ But Michael flashed her a grin as he slid another jewel-red Campari over the wooden bar towards her, its slice of orange glowing in the light from the flickering candle-jars.

  ‘Poor Rosie.’ Laura was thinking about the blue-eyed blonde. ‘It must have been awful for her. Being in love, being engaged, and having it all snatched away.’

  ‘It must,’ Michael gently agreed. Their eyes met for a second. Laura swallowed, then recovered herself.

  ‘I’d love to talk to her. Get her side of the story. I wonder where she is now.’

  Michael had disappeared. He was stacking glasses beneath the bar. ‘I don’t know, ma’am.’ His voice floated up from the deep.

  ‘Call me Laura.’ She’d had enough of this ma’am business.

  As Michael straightened and smiled at her, Laura felt her insides dissolve for a moment. ‘I don’t know, Laura.’

  She resisted his offer to walk her back to her villa. It was tempting, but the possibility he would think her a randy old drunk like Candice and Kate was too humiliating. Woozily and sleepily, Laura picked her way along the lamp-lit path, taking great care to avoid stepping off it by as much as a toe. To her great relief the electricity in the villa was working once again and whoever had reconnected it had also found her bag of spare clothes. But her smartphone and other clothes were still missing.

  Damn those monkeys, Laura thought. Before she went to sleep, she closed every shutter.

  Even so, she slept badly. The Caribbean night seemed full of strange sounds; not just in the surrounding bush, but nearer, in the house itself. She dreamt that she was falling from a high rock. Or off a bar stool. Once or twice she started awake, certain someone was in the room. Had there been a tug at the bedclothes? Had the monkeys come back? Did they have a secret route in?

  She lay in the dark, mind cartwheeling, heart thundering. When morning came, with a pastel pink sunrise and powerfully sweet avian chorus, it was a pleasure but more of a relief. Laura sat on the veranda sofa staring at a sea like rippling milk touched with tints of strawberry. The very sea into which she had almost fallen last night. She felt drained at the memory, drained at the prospect of the day ahead. What was a bionic suit anyway? Her head thumped from all the alcohol.

  A tap on the door and Georgia, clad in a breezy white dress, stood on the other side holding a breakfast tray. In contrast to Laura’s own subdued spirits, the PR’s downbeat mien had transformed itself to a cheerful grin. ‘Here,’ she smiled, handing over a fan of mango, papaya and melon on one of the artisanal plates. She seemed to have decided to be positive after all. This change in mood, and the pretty colours revived Laura’s flagging spirits. ‘And afterwards, the bionic suit,’ Georgia beamed.

  Laura’s heart sank as she ate. What had she let herself in for?

  The sinking feeling hadn’t disappeared by the time she left her villa for the main building. On the contrary, it had got worse. But the strange churning in her insides seemed due to more than nerves.

  It felt like food poisoning, and got worse and worse. Laura felt sick and faint. She swayed along, gasping for air, stumbling and catching at the branches and stems of the pathside plants to steady her. Georgia, striding quickly ahead, seemed oblivious to her condition. The air around Laura seemed to be swimming, and with more than just the heat.

  The main building, when Laura staggered up to it, wasn’t standing steadily on the ground but shifting from side to side. She found that she was unable to talk now; the words wouldn’t come out somehow, and somewhere in her whirling mind she hoped Georgia might see how ill she felt and suggest that she sat down. Perhaps that they abandoned the treatment altogether.

  But Georgia, who appeared before her as a vague wavy blurry outline, still seemed to notice nothing unusual. ‘This way!’ she trilled, and Laura reeled after, rubbing her throbbing forehead, swallowing in her parched throat and hoping that her heaving stomach could keep its contents down. Had the fruit been off in some way? It confirmed her worst suspicions about the stuff, that it wasn’t as good for you as people said it was. She had left the papaya, in any event.

  ‘Nearly there!’ Georgia sang, and Laura followed, staring at the stone floor, pitted and scratched from its passage through a volcano million of years ago. Each mark in the stone seemed to loom at her. Her stomach felt like a volcano of its own.

  They were walking through a gym now; there were weights, mats, dumbbells and cycling machines with computer displays like a 747 Airbus. The red numbers seemed to jump right into Laura’s eyes. The running and rowing machines also looked like something you could land at Heathrow. In the corner was a punchbag, swinging on a shining chrome stand. It seemed to swing right at her.

  ‘Er... Georgia...’ Laura stumbled over the mats on the floor. She wasn’t sure whether she was about to faint or be sick. But still the PR did not seem to hear. On they went.

  She guessed they were in the actual spa now; steam swirled around, scented sharply with eucalyptus. Georgia began her PR patter. ‘We’ve got Vitamin D scented candles in here and floor to ceiling windows to make the most of the available high energy visible radiance.’

  ‘You mean daylight?’ Laura said thickly, but Georgia was talking now about coffeeberry yoga facials and limestone sinkholes that had been leveraged to wellness ends.

  They were walking past a swimming pool when something burst from the blue depths with the shattering suddenness of a zombie in a horror film. Laura yelled out in terror, not sure whether it was real or a figment of her increasingly feverish imagination. Then her wobbling vision focused on something she recognised. Someone.

  It couldn’t be, but it was. The editor of Billionaire Traveller. Candice, resplendent in a black wetsuit, was shooting upwards, clinging to some sort of pole. She waved merrily as her upward trajectory stopped, pointed downward and plunged beneath the watery surface.

  ‘Is that a pogo stick?’ Laura made a supreme effort to move her unyielding tongue.

  ‘An underwater propulsion facilitator,’ Georgia corrected. ‘But, yes, a pogo stick if you like.’

  Candice burst out again. ‘It’s absolutely marvellous!’ she yelled as she soared aloft.

  They passed a small white room on which something lay on a slab. The confused Laura registered that it was big and brown and Kate-shaped, or the shape Kate might be if covered in a thick layer of mud. She was surrounded by small metal bowls and the overall effect was of a large chocolate mousse at a buffet. ‘It’s fabulous!’ she called as Laura reeled past. ‘My intestines are positively singing!’

  Georgia had hold of Laura’s arm now, and was pulling her, quite insistently into a small room whose white walls poured with a purple down-lit glow. It had no windows and only one piece of furniture – an unpadded chair made of exposed metal. Wires were coming out of it, fixed to points in the wall with switches next to them.

  ‘Here, get into this.’ Georgia was passing her what looked like a see-through sleeping bag. It had sleeves and trousers, which Laura watched Georgia slipping over her. She was quite unable to object. And now something was being snapped over her wrists and feet. Steel manacles. She could not move. ‘Hey,’ Laura muttered. Was this really happening, or was she dreaming?

  Georgia’s smile came up close. Her glasses flashed in the violet downlighters. ‘The suit’s on. Hold tight! Here we go!’

  Laura felt little currents all over her body; the tiny wires in
the suit were carrying electricity. The sensation was strange, but not unpleasant. Rather like pins and needles.

  She could hear music, the deep throb of electric guitars, the throaty wail of a voice, some power ballad, playing softly in the background.

  Georgia was hovering over her. ‘You feeling that? Good. Let’s dial it up, shall we?’ The PR flicked one of the wall switches. The pinpricks increased in power.

  ‘That hurts!’ Laura gasped. But as the power ballad was ratcheted up, Laura was uncertain whether she was hearing the pain or feeling the music.

  ‘Ow!’ she shouted. ‘Georgia!’

  What was going on? Her legs and arms were jerking all over the place, independent of herself. It was a hideous, frightening sensation. But as the rock music roared and soared, it was obvious that her feeble bleats would be lost in the din.

  More shocks drove into Laura’s body. Her heart burned in her chest. What was happening? Was the machine malfunctioning? Why didn’t Georgia stop it? She was Coconut Cay’s PR!

  The electric shocks had at least had the effect of making her feel less sick. Indeed, Laura felt almost clear-headed. And now, along with the shafts of searing pain, a shaft of dazzling insight struck her.

  But was she right? Could it be? It was the only thing that made sense.

  Laura gathered up the little strength she had at her disposal. She steadied it, focused it, then let it loose with all her might. ‘Stop it!’ she yelled. ‘Stop it, Rosie!’

  The music was lowered instantly. Laura’s ears rang in the sudden silence. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

  Georgia hung her short-cropped, dark head. Then she raised it, and regarded Laura with the brown eyes behind her glasses. ‘How did you know? I’ve changed my hair and got brown contact lenses.’

  ‘Inspired guess,’ Laura mumbled. She tried to shift in her seat, but was held fast. ‘But why? What’s this all about, Rosie?’

  Rosie had turned away and folded her arms protectively round herself. ‘Because you were about to work out who I was. You were on my trail.’

  Laura wasn’t entirely sure this was true. She had not consciously suspected Georgia of anything apart from being hopeless at her job. Her subconscious, on the other hand, clearly had been halfway there, as had just been proved. More light dawned. ‘So that’s why you took my smartphone?’