‘Miss Kittler?’
‘Hi, yes,’ I croaked, my first words since immigration, and eventually reached out to take his hand. I was an idiot. ‘I’m here for the photo thing? For Gloss?’
I was also at my most eloquent when straight off a plane. Eloquent and stinky.
‘Yes, of course,’ my host replied, very politely and in perfect English, leaning in to place a lei around my neck without so much as wrinkling his nose, even though I knew for a fact I was rank rotten. Long-haul flights were the worst. Was this Bertie Bennett? I was so confused. ‘I’m Kekipi. You must be very tired from your trip. Let me show you to your cottage.’
To my mind, a cottage was something small and thatched with roses round the door and either a talking hedgehog wearing an apron or a witch inside. The house I was taken to was not a cottage. It was beautiful, with sparkling white-washed walls and a sloping slate roof – an immaculately decorated piece of heaven. And from where I was standing, I could see another four of them dotted along the beach, each one a perfect miniature of the main house complete with tiny veranda, huge windows and matching white wooden lawn furniture. Child Tess had watched too much Wish You Were Here …? and adult Tess enjoyed an awful lot of Location, Location, Location. If Kirstie and Phil could see this, they would die. Everything was so beautiful, I could hardly bear it. It looked as though someone had turned up the contrast on the TV. The blue sky was more vivid than I’d ever seen it and dotted with cotton-wool clouds that flew fast overhead, even though the breeze by the shore was perfect and light. The sea was clear, the sand was white, the trees were a bright, lush green and punctuated with pretty hot-pink and purple flowers. If ever there was an argument for intelligent design, this was it. It was paintbox perfect, every colour bright and bold but beautifully balancing out the next. All I wanted to do was pull out my camera and capture every single sight right away. Surely that had to be a good sign?
‘I manage the estate for Mr Bennett,’ said the man in black, interrupting my house porn moment and carefully resting a hand on my shoulder as he gently sheepdogged me through the front door of my new home. ‘The cottage is fully stocked for you, but please call me if there is anything at all you should need. Just press 1 on any of the phones and someone will come down right away. Mr Bennett would like to invite you up to the house for dinner this evening – he usually dines at eight. Until then, please do make use of all our facilities. I’m happy to give you a tour if you’re not too tired?’
There were facilities? If I were to take Kekipi to my house, my tour would take in the extra-fast kettle that boiled in under a minute, the coffee stain on the living-room carpet that I could not for the life of me get out, and the magical airing cupboard that, despite its name, always smelled damp.
‘I am a bit tired, to be honest.’ I gave him a very grateful smile and tried not to be too aware of the fact that even in my Converse I towered over the man. I was an ashen-faced, tongue-tied, stinky giant. ‘But I’d love to get the tour later? The place is beautiful.’
I waved my arms around like an over-impressed Big Bird, eyes wild and red. The real Vanessa would have been mortified by my public display of enthusiasm.
‘Of course, Ms Kittler,’ Kekipi nodded. ‘Just press 1 on your phone whenever you like.’
‘Oh, call me Tess,’ I said automatically and felt my eyes widen like saucers. ‘Ness! I mean Ness. Or Vanessa. Because that is my name.’
‘Of course, Vanessa.’ Kekipi didn’t even blink. What a total pro. ‘Mahalo.’
‘Um, mahalo?’ I repeated with a very stunted bow, not entirely sure what I should be doing.
‘It means “thank you”,’ Kekipi said with a small wink that I might have imagined. ‘In case you were worried that I was swearing at you in a foreign language.’
After he had rolled my suitcase into the cottage, Kekipi aloha’d me again and then left me alone to relax. I stared out of the window in disbelief. How could I possibly be here? And what was I supposed to do now? Chuck on my swimsuit and head out to the beach? Dig out my shorts and hike up that beautiful mountain we’d passed on the way in? Bash my head against the closest brick wall until I knocked some sense into it? These were all good options. However, another option was to storm the kitchen, root through each and every cupboard, then rifle through the fridge until I found a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts and a huge bag of Cheetos. And so, right there in the kitchen, in the middle of paradise, I stood in all my post-flight skanky glory and troughed every last nut and every last Cheeto. Because what else was a girl supposed to do?
‘Tess, thank God.’ Amy answered her phone on the first ring. When I’d turned mine on, it had been full of panicked messages from my best friend demanding that I call her immediately and asking which mental institution I was in. ‘Where are you? What are you doing? Why has your phone been off for an entire day? Where are you?’
‘Oh, Amy.’ I leaned against the kitchen counter, wiping Cheeto dust off my fingers onto my jeans, and stared out of the huge French doors that opened onto my own little patio just steps from the beach. ‘Remember when we were little and I didn’t want to go on Brownie camp so I ran away?’
‘Are you under the tree at the bottom of my garden again?’ she asked. ‘Because you only lasted two hours before you had to come in for a wee last time and you’ve already been out all night long. Tell me you haven’t wet yourself.’
‘I haven’t wet myself,’ I replied hesitantly, mentally checking that that was in fact true. ‘I left you a note. Didn’t you see the note? I’m in Hawaii.’
What if Amy hadn’t seen the note? What if burglars had seen the note? What if they’d broken into the flat and stolen my precious … oh. Never mind.
‘That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said,’ she said after a moment’s consideration. ‘And bear in mind I was there that time you announced to the entire pub that you were going to win the X Factor.’
‘I still think that if I had entered the year the singing binman won—’
‘Off topic, Tess,’ Amy shouted down the line. ‘Tell me you are not in Hawaii.’
‘I am, though.’ I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince her or myself. A quick peep out of the window confirmed I was not in Clerkenwell. ‘Dead sure about it. I can see the sea and everything. Deffos in Hawaii.’
‘You aren’t, though.’
‘I am, though.’
‘You can’t be.’
‘I know. But I am.’
‘But you’re not.’
‘Amy.’
‘Tess.’
Somewhere halfway around the world, my best friend made a clucking noise in a West London flatshare that echoed down a long-distance phone line all the way to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sighing in agreement, I pulled off my socks, shimmied out of my jeans and tiptoed across the floor to the patio. The AC kept the tiles cool and I left little half-footprints as I went, footprints that dissipated into thin air almost as soon as I left them behind.
Bertie Bennett’s bay curved around his property gracefully, the pretty, clear water lapping against the white sand, the white sand giving way to green grass and the green grass hugging the little cottages at the bottom of the hill, each one surrounded by huge, swaying palm trees. It looked like the kind of place Vanessa would hang out. She was last-minute getaway in Hawaii; I was a wet weekend in Brid.
‘So you’re actually in Hawaii?’ Amy asked. ‘Why? How? Have you been watching too many romcoms? Because people don’t actually