“I’m Eric.”
I take his hand, still horizontal, and hold it for a second, then let go again.
“Charming to meet you. Any friend of Lily is a friend of mine. And James too, I’m sure.”
I haven’t got the first idea what’s going on, but Lily takes my hand now and pulls me down onto the couch. The other girl moves along to make space for us.
“So you’ve met Eric, and sort of met James,” she turns to him and gives him a smile. “This is Jennifer. There’s also…” she looks around. “Where’s Oscar?”
“He’s got a class,” Jennifer says, and she turns to me now. She’s one side of me, and Lily is the other, and the thing is that both of them are stunning. Jennifer is much darker than Lily, dark hair and more tanned, and she surprises me by leaning in and kissing me. She only does it on the cheek, and her lips don’t actually touch me, but it still takes me by surprise.
“So what? You know Lily or something?” It’s James who asks the question. He’s the only one sitting on his own, in one of the armchairs that completes the square of our seating, and he still sounds pissed. I’m about to answer when Lily does it for me.
“He’s from Lornea Island.”
“So?”
“So! He’s from Lornea Island, I’m from Lornea Island. That’s how I know him.”
“You’re not from Lornea Island.” James says.
“I go there. Every summer.” She turns to me. “Most summers.”
There’s a moment when no one speaks. And even though I’m sandwiched between the two most beautiful girls I’ve ever met, I’m kind of regretting coming.
“So why exactly is he here?” James presses on. The only good thing about the situation is that I don’t feel I have to reply, it’s obvious he’s talking to Lily, and her to him. It gives me a chance to study James a bit. As well as being mature, in a physical way, I can see he’s also very good looking. In the square-jawed kind of way.
“Calm down James. I told you, he’s funny. I saw him on TV last year, when he caught a gang of drug smugglers. He literally blew up their boat.”
This seems to take James by surprise. Lily keeps talking.
“I thought he could tell us about it. It’d be entertaining.” She changes her voice just a fraction, but I don’t know the significance.
“Alright,” James concedes gruffly. “Go on.”
Suddenly I feel everyone’s attention shift to me, but Eric steps in at once. “Woah there. Where’s our manners? First we have to offer the poor boy a drink, no?”
So then there’s a bit of a debate about what I’m going to drink, and for a moment I feel a tinge of disappointment. These people seem so different to my housemates, but now it seems like they’re just the same – only interested in drinking.
“Well, I’ve finished my classes for the day,” Eric announces. “So I’m going to celebrate with a frozen banana daquiri. Perhaps you’d like to join me?” Eric stands up, and I notice for the first time how he’s dressed. He’s wearing a suit and a silk waistcoat. There’s a chain coming out of it, so I think he might even have a pocket watch. But he smiles at me in a really friendly way, so I nod back.
“I’ll have one too,” Lily shouts at him, as he walks over to the counter, where he talks to the lady who’s serving as if they’re very old friends. Then he comes back and sits down. He kind of simpers, then looks at me very intently. “Frozen banana daquiris all round. They’ll be just a moment. Now Billy, you’re free to commence with your story.”
I don’t know exactly what to say, but I begin to recount the story of what happened last year, when I went to Australia with Dr Steve Rose, the famous marine biologist, to help monitor shark population off Wellington Island marine reserve, only I discovered that he’d been overstating the sizes of the sharks for several years, in order to make them sound more dangerous to the TV executives.
“Hold on,” Eric interrupts my flow at this point. “You’re talking about the Steve Rose – the TV guy, from Shark Bait!?”
“Yes, only he’s not doing Shark Bait anymore, because of what happened,” I say, then I get back to my story. “So I had to fly the drones – I have my own at home, so I’m very experienced at flying – and we used them for measuring the sharks…”
“Hang on, how does all this relate to the drugs thing? The thing Lily said?” This is Jennifer, she’s turned towards me, her hair hanging down like a shining black curtain. It distracts me a bit.
“Erm.” I take a slurp of the daquiri to refocus. They’ve arrived by this time, complete with those little paper umbrellas. Then I stare at it, wondering what it actually is. Whatever it is, it’s tasty.
“That came later. I have this friend, she’s called Amber…”
“Girlfriend?” Eric asks at once.
“No. Just a friend, but then she’d met this guy, this Italian guy who had sailed from Europe in a small yacht, and he’d met some guys somewhere in South America, and agreed to take some cocaine for them into the US. Only he got caught in a storm, and figured he could use it to pretend his boat had sunk, and make money selling the cocaine himself.”
I stop for another slurp of banana daquiri, and this time I notice how everyone is silent, just staring at me.
“So he’s hiding out, living on his boat in Holport, which is where I kept my boat, before it sank that is, and it turned out he had started seeing Amber when I was away and…”
“Hold up.” It’s Eric
