‘That’s my husband you’re talking about,’ said Rachel evenly.
‘Seriously?’ gasped the girl. ‘Oh God, I didn’t know, I’m sorry.’
‘Just kidding,’ laughed Rachel. ‘However, he is my business partner, which means that for an extra fifty bucks I can make him strip down to some really tiny Speedos. What do you think?’
Just then Liam reappeared, triggering gales of laughter from the girls.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ chuckled Rachel. ‘Nothing at all.’
The boat chugged back to Sairee Beach, Ko Tao’s main landing point and the base for the diving school. As the island came into view, Rachel couldn’t help but smile. Even though she had lived there for almost three years, she was still captivated by its sun-washed beauty. Ko Tao lacked the dramatic karst scenery of Thailand’s Andaman Sea islands, but it was still Paradise, boasting long stretches of white sand, lush forest and crystal-clear waters.
Sairee Beach wasn’t even the prettiest side of the island. On days off, Rachel would jump on her battered moped and head into the Robinson Crusoe territory of the island’s quieter east coast, where palm trees stooped over the sugar-white sand and the air smelt as if you had fallen into a bottle of frangipani-scented cologne. ‘Not a bad place to have your office,’ she whispered to herself.
Slowly the smile drifted from her face. She might be in Paradise now, but there was a time when she’d thought she was in hell. In another life, and a million miles from this spot, Rachel had been a journalist, associate editor on London’s Sunday Post and not yet even thirty. She was flying: at the top of her game and feted in all the capital’s smartest watering holes. And then the sky had fallen in. The phone-hacking scandal had swept through Fleet Street like fire through dry wood; Rachel had barely had time to draw breath before she was shown the door. First she had been put on leave, and then summarily dismissed. Just as she had thought it couldn’t get any worse, she had been arrested and her flat searched.
Thanks to a good lawyer, she had escaped prison, but overnight she had become a pariah, a newspaper Icarus who had flown too near the sun then crashed and burned.
So she had come to Thailand. No, fled to Thailand was closer to the truth. At first she convinced herself that it was just a much-needed holiday, a time to lie low and regroup. She had always loved the sea and was drawn to Ko Tao by the diving. But then she met Liam, a fellow fanatic who wanted to set up a dive school. And slowly, very slowly, she had felt her life pick up.
She was snapped out of her thoughts as the boat bumped against the pier and Liam nimbly jumped out and began to tie it off.
‘Tell all your friends,’ said Rachel as she helped the divers down to the weathered planks. ‘Though July is our busiest time and I’m making no promises I can accommodate them even if they say they’re friends of yours.’
‘Bye, Liam,’ cooed the girls, waggling their fingers and their behinds as they walked off into the village.
‘We’re not that busy, are we?’ said Liam out of the corner of his mouth.
‘I like to keep an illusion of being in demand. Just like you, in fact.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do I mean?’ laughed Rachel. ‘You didn’t notice those girls coming on to you all day?’
‘No, I was too busy watching you flirting with the beefy Canadian.’
‘I don’t flirt with the custome
rs,’ said Rachel with mock-offence.
‘Rach, you always flirt with the customers.’
She put a hand on her hip.
‘If I did – and I’m not saying I do – you have to admit it’s good for business. We’re almost booked up until the end of the season.’
‘So you’re flirting for my benefit?’ he replied drily.
‘You know sometimes I think you should have stayed a lawyer.’
She liked to tease him about his life back in England, as it seemed so removed from the laid-back beach bum he so resembled now. The short scruff of stubble, the sun-bleached dirty blond hair and the dark tan that brought out the bright blue of his eyes all said ‘surf dude’, and yet in Liam’s former life he had worked for a Top Five commercial legal practice – a rising star who had given it all up on the verge of being made a partner. She had never probed too hard about what had made him swap the brogues for the Havaianas, but she had often wondered if there was any more to it. A breakdown, or a relationship gone bad, perhaps? But then maybe he had just hated it. It was so easy for the offspring of successful white-collar parents to become funnelled into ‘respectable’ professions, only finding out too late that the rat race wasn’t for them.
‘And why should I have stayed a lawyer?’ he said, his voice calm and level. He was an expert at winding her up by never getting wound up himself about anything.
‘Because confrontation is your middle name.’
‘Says she.’