Revelry. Lucy Lord

      Chapter 2

      ‘Wow Bella, that smells fantastic. What’s cooking?’ asks Charlie, dipping a slightly podgy finger into the rouille I’ve just prepared. I slap his hand away and smile at him. Thick, sandy blond hair frames his good-natured, ruddy-cheeked face. He’ll have a double chin in ten years’ time, you mark my words.

      ‘Bouillabaisse.’

      After boozing all day yesterday, an early(ish) night was in order, so I got up at the supremely civilized hour of 10.30 to go to the market. There I had a lovely time trading banter with the stallholders and getting their recommendations on what was freshest in. I spent most of my childhood holidays in Mallorca (where Dad still lives in a thirteenth-century hermitage) so my Spanish is passable. I stocked my pretty wicker basket high with prawns, mussels, clams, scallops, red mullet and the scraps of small fish that are so essential for depth of flavour in a good fishy broth. I’m not actually making bouillabaisse, which is of course indigenous to the south of France, but a kind of generic Mediterranean fish stew.

      I love cooking. I’ve chopped onions, garlic and fennel, skinned and seeded some overblown, sun-infused old tarts of the tomato world, and glugged in some Pernod, saffron and thyme. Now the fish is simmering away and I stop for a fag break.

      The insistent chirruping of crickets vies for attention with my friends’ laughing voices wafting through the balmy air from the terrace outside. The old stone floor is cool against my bare feet as I pad about the enormous room, wishing my tiny kitchen in London could compare. There is a huge scrubbed oak table in the middle, piled high with the usual holiday detritus of suntan lotion, shades, hats, wet towels, cameras and unwritten postcards. All the cupboards are finished in the same oak, the walls are whitewashed and the white enamel double sink has elegantly curved stainless steel tap fittings. A fireplace vast enough to roast several ten-year-olds is stacked with currently redundant logs, giving the room an almost cosy feel, despite its size.

      I’m feeling wonderfully wafty in my new multicoloured maxidress, fondly imagining I’m channelling a Seventies socialite, Talitha Getty/Bianca Jagger vibe as I float through the French windows – only to trip over the hem and fall flat on my face at Ben’s feet. Everyone creases up laughing.

      ‘Ow, that bloody hurt. Shut up, you buggers, it’s not funny.’ I sit up and rub my knee, where the skin has split and a purply bruise is starting to form. I pretend to laugh but am actually feeling a bit stupid and in genuine pain.

      ‘Shit, that looks nasty,’ says Ben, crouching down beside me. ‘You need to clean it up. Does anyone have any antiseptic?’

      ‘There’s some Savlon in my sponge bag. Poor love.’ Poppy bends over to kiss the top of my head as she makes her way inside the villa.

      Ben helps me to my feet and I go hot all over. I can’t help it: his proximity is overwhelming, even after all these years.

      ‘Have a drink, darling,’ says my father, pouring me a glass of wine as I sit down at the table. ‘Best anaesthetic there is.’

      It turns out that Dad heard from my mother that we were on the island, so he thought he’d pop over to surprise us. It’s only a short ferry ride from Palma, after all. Feeling mean not to have mentioned it to him, I immediately asked the others if they’d mind if he stayed on the sofa for a couple of nights. Everyone seemed to be cool with it, though I thought I detected some sniffiness in the Alisons’ corner. No surprise there then. As it happened, Dad didn’t need the sofa as he was travelling, as he often does, with his trusty hammock and sleeping bag – ‘I much prefer to sleep under the stars, angel face.’

      ‘Here you go,’ says Poppy, handing me the tube of Savlon, a roll of lint and a packet of plasters. Trust her to come prepared. It just wouldn’t occur to me to bring first aid stuff on holiday.

      ‘Let me do that,’ says Ben, crouching down again, gently pulling my skirt up over my knees. I can barely breathe as I glance over at Kim, but she seems entirely unperturbed, twinkling and laughing at something my father’s just said. She and Dad have been all over each other all day, and while it’s pretty obvious what he sees in her, it’s also, sadly, all too obvious what she sees in him. My father’s a photographer, you see, and a pretty influential one at that. In the Seventies he ran amok with Bailey, Donovan et al., and was never without several pretty girls on either arm. It’s amazing his marriage to my mother lasted as long as it did.

      He’s shot everyone from the Stones to Iggy Pop, Gwyneth Paltrow to George Clooney – and got pissed with them all afterwards too (except for Gwynnie, whom he called ‘lovely to look at, but probably the most boring woman in the world’). He’s stayed for nothing in the best hotels in the best locations, and is endearingly blasé about high-end glamour, preferring to rhapsodize over waterfalls or deserts. When he occasionally emerges from semi-retirement in Mallorca, the glossies fall over themselves trying to persuade him to shoot for them. Kimberly’s in the process of proving herself to be nothing more than a nasty little opportunist, and while part of me is delighted she’s showing her true colours, I’m mortified that my father should be the cause of it.

      I’m also pretty sure this is why Ben is being so unusually solicitous, but am not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Now he tenderly cleans my wound, looking up at me with those delicious blue eyes, and it’s all I can do not to grab him right here and shove my tongue down his throat.

      I am distracted from my lascivious reverie by the sound of Kim squawking, ‘Oh my God, Justin, you crack me up. You’re just sooooo witty,’ and laughing as if my dad were Peter Cook and Dorothy Parker reincarnated and rolled into one. When she smiles, her pink pointy tongue peeps through her teeth, in a cutesy manner she clearly imagines is both endearing and provocative. It might just provoke me into a spot of GBH. Dad smiles smugly and relights his spliff.

      Dad and Kim are both sitting with their legs propped up on the table we’ve laid this side of the luminously turquoise pool, just to the left of the French windows. This is Dad’s default position so it doesn’t bug me too much. For Kimbo it is another excuse to show off the length of her horrible legs. She is wearing a cream backless jersey minidress, cut away at the sides and held together with a large gold ring that showcases her pierced belly button and matches her gladiator sandals. She’s piled her copper curls up in a faintly Grecian style that emphasizes both her height and the swanlike quality of her neck. Her skirt is so short that the legs-on-table pose is a blatant invitation to look at her knickers. Oh well – at least she’s not going commando. One must be thankful for small mercies.

      Poppy’s perched on one of the sun loungers, a very contented-looking Damian sitting on a fat cushion on the ground between her legs. He occasionally turns his head to kiss her slender fingers, which are massaging his shoulders. In denim hot pants and a little white broderie-anglaise camisole, her surfer girl hair streaked white by the sun, Poppy is the picture of butter-wouldn’t-melt gorgeousness (if you discount the fag in her hand and enormous margarita at her feet). Damian is his usual understated cool in long shorts and a close-fitting Superdry T-shirt.

      To the other side of my father leers Neanderthal Mark, resplendent in crotch-hugging Daniel Craig-as-Bond shorts and a grey marl racer-back vest with ‘sit on my face’ emblazoned in neon pink lettering across his