Once upon a time Jess accidently stole a superyacht from Cannes marina, but we’ll get to that . . .
Jess was awoken by her best friend punching her in the back of the head.
‘Get off me please, I have a knife and I will kill you to death!’ she shrieked, rolling over and remembering in the nick of time that she was three bunks up. In the opposite bed, Bryony lay face-down, fast asleep, a long arm stretched across the gap between them like a rope bridge with her clenched fist on Jess’s pillow. Jess exhaled in relief and pushed her friend’s hand off her bed.
Bryony lifted her head, her face painted the colour ‘grump’. ‘Jess, I love how bubbly you are at any God-given hour, but could you keep it down a bit? I just got to sleep.’
‘If you’re going to sleep-punch me I’ll fight back, you know.’
‘You’re a lover, not a fighter,’ Bryony yawned.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ Jess rubbed the back of her head and peered over the side of the bunk at the empty beds below.
‘The Scot with the earrings declared at two a.m. that he couldn’t sleep, and that they should all go to the bar instead. I haven’t seen them since. Did you say you have a knife?’
‘I thought you were a robber. I was just warning you that I’d kill the hell out of you if you tried anything.’
Bryony raised an eyebrow. ‘You couldn’t kill a robber.’
‘I could, I’m feisty. I do boxercise. And Zumba, if that’s relevant.’
‘You said “please”.’
‘Huh?’
‘You definitely said, “Get off me please”. Even when you think you’re being attacked your manners are impeccable. Anyway, you don’t have a knife with you. Did you mean your plastic spork?”
‘If you’d been a robber you wouldn’t have known that.’ Jess sat up as best she could when the ceiling was less than two feet above her bunk, pulled on her glasses and cracked open the curtain, letting bright Riviera sunshine flood into their compartment of the sleeper train. ‘Wow!’
‘Urrrrgggghhhh, what time is it?’ Bryony pulled the covers over her head, exposing her feet, which dangled off the end of the bunk anyway.
‘Nearly seven.’ Outside the window, glittery turquoise sea whizzed past. White sails shook like elegant swans waking up, while yachts the size of houses gleamed lazily in the early-morning sun.
A beam of happiness and hope pushed its way across Jess’s face. It was happening, and this was exactly what she needed: two weeks of fun somewhere different, somewhere out of her comfort zone. She reached over and yanked the blanket off Bryony. ‘Look.’
Bryony scrunched her eyes closed. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Bryony, look! We’re in the South of France, the Côte d’Azur.’ She pulled down the window as far as it would go and pushed her face up to the gap, breathing in the Mediterranean air. ‘Bonjour la France!’ she yelped into the breeze.
Chuckling, Bryony pulled her back inside. ‘Okay, Édith Piaf, I’m awake. Let’s go and get you a croissant and me some strong coffee before we arrive.’
Jess couldn’t drag her gaze away from the window as she and Bryony sat in the restaurant car munching their way through a basket of flaketastic croissants. The sea was a never-ending turquoise ribbon, and every thirty seconds Jess would point out yet another beachside eatery she wanted to try.
‘We’re still half an hour from Cannes,’ said Bryony. ‘I’m sure there will be plenty to eat there. Now answer the question; I need to know the protocol should this happen.’
‘It’ll happen, I can feel it. So if Mr DiCaprio makes eyes at me across the marina and says, “My love, come to my yacht,” I will warble, “I’LL NEVER LET GO” and you’ll know I want you to skedaddle.’
‘And you’ll do the same if Zac Efron invites me for a Cannes-Cannes-Cannes? Only my code word will be “Cougar Town”.’ Bryony stuffed in another croissant.
‘Sounds perfect. But George is off limits – he’s a married man now. I shall be content to be just friends with him, and perhaps be the recipient of a good-natured Clooney prank.’ Jess’s phone buzzed with a text message. ‘It’s Mrs Evans. She says “Havv a NICE tIME swetie” – she’s just learnt texting.’
‘From you?’
‘Yep.’ Mrs Evans was one of her regulars at the café, ninety years young and obsessed with gadgets.
‘How will those villagers cope without you for the next fortnight?’ Bryony smirked.
Excitement fizzed like popping candy in Jess’s chest. ‘They’ll be fine. I can’t wait to be in Cannes. Sunshine, red carpets, rosé wine, celebs everywhere . . . Thanks again for letting me tag along.’
‘My pleasure. Any time you want to muscle your way on to one of my trips suits me fine – this would be my idea of hell without my short-stack. Besides, when we spoke about it you were a right grump. You were practically me.’
The unlikely friendship of Jess and Bryony had begun the day after Bryony moved to Cornwall and joined Jess’s secondary school in year nine. The personality and height differences back then were even more pronounced than they were now: Jess was the tiniest girl in their year, while Bryony towered above most of the boys, her chunky canvas high heels adding to the effect. Bryony didn’t speak to anyone on her first day, just stared straight ahead among a sea of whispering teenagers. Jess had felt for this serious new girl, so made her a welcome pack of Rimmel Heather Shimmer lipstick, some Impulse O2 body spray, a copy of Bliss magazine and a homemade map of the school that showed which toilets to avoid and the best places to sit in certain classrooms. Bryony, who’d felt trapped in a lonely, awkward body, painfully and angrily aware that – at the time – she was the only black girl in the year, that hers was one of the only black families in the village, instantly felt a fondness for this funny, petite ray of sunshine.
They were as different then as they were now, with Bryony honing her sharp mind on crime and mystery books as she grew up to become a fiercely intelligent journalist – though not the type she yearned to be, yet – whose heroines were Scandal’s Olivia Pope and C. J. Cregg from The West Wing. Meanwhile, Jess had clung on to her Sweet Valley novels until the bitter end, before moving on to feel-good fiction and travel writing, all the best of which now lined the bookshelves of her very own café; she ran a homely, happy place that was like having everyone in the village come into her living room for a cuppa.
They bonded that first school lunchtime, over the pages of that Bliss magazine, and although life took them along different paths after school, they still got together as often as possible.
One rain-soaked Saturday evening back in April, Bryony had been visiting for the first time in weeks, and she dropped the following over a bottle of their favourite wine . . .
‘Guess what? I’m being sent to the Cannes Film Festival.’ Bryony reluctantly worked for Sleb, a highly disrespected gossip magazine with a readership of close to zero and morals at about the same level.
Jess, uncharacteristically not in the best of moods, had dragged herself back to the present, forcing herself to engage in the conversation. She had to make the most of Bryony while she was here, feeling low and lost wasn’t an option. She knocked back some more wine. ‘Shut the fridge up – really?’
Bryony shrugged. ‘Apparently Sleb needs me there. To see, in the words of the ever-eloquent, never-misogynistic Mitch, “Which stars are shagging each other and get the skinny on who’s actually a fat chick.”’
‘Urgh, he makes my skin crawl and I’ve never even met him. What a penis.’
‘There’s literally no point in me even going; he’ll Photoshop fat onto everyone anyway, regardless of what I say . . . I know, I know, I shouldn’t complain: a magazine job is bloody hard to come by and a free trip to the South of France isn’t exactly the crappest thing in the world. But one day, Meems, one day, Sleb will magically turn into Marie Claire and he’ll actually take me up on one of the current affairs features I keep begging him to publish.’
‘Exactly.’ Jess swirled her wine, racking her brain for something more insightful to say, but she was all over the place.
‘So how’s everything with y—’
‘Maybe I could come?’ Jess said, desperately interrupting Bryony. But as soon as the words were out of her mouth it was as if a pinprick of light had formed behind her eyes. Maybe I could go to Cannes.
‘What?’
‘Can I come?’ The pinprick grew larger, the light seeping in like a sunrise. She sat up straighter. Jess’s one true love had always been Marilyn Monroe, to the point that Bryony even started calling her ‘Meems’ years ago. From the safety of her little seaside village, through reality TV and old films, Jess dreamed of what it would be like to go to golden Hollywood and live like a movie star.
‘Can you come? To Cannes? You?’
Jess nodded and gulped some more wine, colour coming to her cheeks and a non-faked hint of happiness coming back through. Hello again, old friend. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the tail end of the shittiest week she’d ever had, or maybe it was that this was the live-a-little-more chance she’d been looking for, but she really wanted to go with Bryony. Jess didn’t hate a lot of things, but people who moped and moaned without doing anything about it was one of them, and she realised she was being exactly that sort of person. Her words tumbled out: ‘I won’t get in the way, and I’ll pay for my half, of course. Yes, it’s time for me to get out there and explore the world. Starting with the country closest to us.’
‘Are you okay?’ Bryony looked at her carefully, the transformation of her friend from hunched, wine-gulping misery-guts back to her bouncy, excitable self not going unnoticed.
‘I’m fine, I’m really fine. This is good; we’re still youngish and should take advantage of not having any responsibilities, right?’
‘Um, right?’
‘Besides, Bry, I’m a bit worried you’ll throw yourself under a yacht out of sheer career frustration if you go by yourself.’
‘This’ll be pretty different from a relaxing package holiday—’
‘I know, but that’s what I like about it. It’ll be completely different. It’ll be busy and glitzy, and all over the place there’ll be people richer and fancier than us. But you have to experience how the other half lives when you can, huh?’
Bryony nodded and went to pour herself another glass of wine but the bottle dripped out nothing more than a few crimson dregs. She peered at Jess, who waited with bated breath.
‘Pleeeeease.’
‘You’ll keep me sane?’ Bryony asked.
‘Trust me, you’ll be keeping me sane. Now let’s get you some more wine, you’ve drunk the lot,’ Jess countered with a real smile.
