Carol spoke up. ‘I’m not sure I agree with Jess on that one, but I do think we should have some ground rules so that any dodgy stuff gets nipped in the bum.’
My pal was gorgeous, but she was hopeless with her sayings and regularly had us in stitches when they came out wrong, back to front, or upside down. Or upside backwards, as she would say.
I nearly fell off my chair. In all the years I had known Carol, she had never demonstrated any sign of having one responsible brain cell, never mind a whole grey matter of them.
She continued, ‘I propose the rules are as follows: a. We must snog at least one new man every night; b. We must go home only when we can no longer walk due to overindulgence in the falling-down juice, and; c. No full sex, blow jobs only. How does that sound?’
I don’t think the lady at the next table needed to hear all that, because she suddenly started to choke on her cuppa.
The rest of us dissolved into hysteria.
‘I’ve got another one,’ piped Kate when she regained her power of speech. ‘No cooking, tidying up or washing dishes of any kind.’
By this time, Jess was a mild shade of puce.
It was my turn. ‘And remember, girls, if you do get swept off your platforms by an exotic lover, reinforced condoms must be used at all times.’
The woman at the next table was now requiring resuscitation.
Jess mumbled, ‘Okay, okay, but no men in the apartment, please.’
We all nodded furiously, tears rolling down our cheeks.
‘Whatever you say, Jess, we’ll do our best,’ I reassured her. And I meant it. Kind of.
We arrived at the apartment in the middle of the night. This was a blessing, as due to fatigue and too much vodka, we didn’t register the full extent of the dump. Whoever had written in the brochure that it slept six, must have presumed that the six were highly intimate and would sleep on top of each other.
The main room contained an old sofa and two camp beds. Another three camp beds were behind a curtain in what was obviously a large cupboard in a previous life. In the kitchen, there was a one-ring cooker, a mini-fridge, a cracked sink and a colony of ants. As for the bathroom, let’s just say that I was hopeful that there would be showers at the pool and public toilets nearby.
But we didn’t care. We slumped on to our beds, fully clothed, and were sleeping within thirty seconds.
We woke the next morning to the sound of trains thundering over our heads, then we realised there were no trains and the noise was our hangovers systematically crushing our brain cells. God, it hurt. Ever sensible, Jess came to the rescue with paracetamols all round and we decided the only cure was a day at the beach.
In order to deny the ants time to nest on our body parts, we were out of the door in five minutes, looking like we’d slept under a bush.
We made our way to the beach and parked ourselves in the first available clearing.
‘Who needs Glasgow?’ Kate murmured happily, as she slapped on enough oil to lubricate a Ferrari.
We spent the rest of the day in a semi-conscious state, waking only when one of us yelled ‘Pec alert, pec alert’ as a gorgeous specimen of the male variety passed by.
It was all very civilised, like an episode of Wish You Were Here. Until later that evening…
Kate and I retreated to the balcony – in Glasgow it would have been called a window ledge – with two large drinks, to give the others space to get dressed. When they were done, we told them to go on ahead. ‘We’ll meet you in the Scotsman later,’ Kate yelled through the window, naming a pub that we’d passed earlier in the day. We were rubbish tourists. Travel to a completely different country, and head for a bar that was connected to the homeland we’d left less than twenty-four hours earlier. But in our defence, it was playing Simple Minds hits at full volume, and Jim Kerr’s dulcet tones were like some kind of sci-fi mind-warp that we were unable to resist.
Kate and I took an age getting ready. By the time we were done, we’d tried on twelve different outfits each, reapplied our make-up twice and experimented with more hairstyles than Madonna. We’d also consumed half a bottle of vodka and a gallon of fresh orange. It wouldn’t have mattered what we looked like, we were seeing double anyway.
We staggered to the Scotsman, stopping at every pub on the way there for a light refreshment. By the time we finally arrived, it was almost midnight. Carol and Sarah were in deep conversation with two of a gang of six lads from Edinburgh.
I glanced around. ‘Where’s Jess?’
‘She’s here somewhere’, replied Carol, gesticulating towards the crowded bar. ‘She must have gone to the loo.’
Within minutes, Kate and I had succumbed to the general revelry and loud music that blared from the speakers. I found myself dancing with a chiselled Dutchman called Henk. I eventually got bored with the repetitiveness of hip grinding to ‘Boom Boom Boom Let’s Go Back To My Room’, made the infamous toilet excuse and staggered off to round up the others.
I had to surgically remove Kate from a perma-bronzed Frenchman, before rounding up Carol (singing ‘Hey Big Spender’ on a bar stool), and then Sarah (slumped under a sink in the toilets). Where was Jess?
Panic set in briefly before total hysteria sobered me up immediately. We searched everywhere. At one point, we even conducted a desperate rummage in the huge bins outside, but she was nowhere to be seen.
We were getting frantic and maniacally scanning every man in sight to see
