I grabbed Alex by the arm and we marched inside the salon.
Of course, little did Alex and I know at that stage how much we would regret this terrible decision in the morning.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The next morning
The strange knock woke me.Where the hell was I?Everything was so unfamiliar, and hard! What the hell was I lying on? Where was I lying and why was there a policeman staring at me through a window . . . wait,what window was this?
It was small. Not like a hotel window. It was dirty, also not like the hotel window. I rubbed my eyes, trying to remove the sleep from them, trying to make sense of what the hell was going on. I sat up and banged my head against something hard. I grabbed it and rubbed it. I looked up. A roof. A material-covered roof. I looked around. I was in the car. The seats had all been pushed down and I was in the back of the car.
Another loud knock on the window. “All right! All right!” I waved my hand at them, indicating I was coming. I tried to move, but something heavy was draped over my leg. I looked down. Another leg. A big, muscular, hairy man’s leg . . . this wasnotmy leg! I followed the leg from the calf, to the thigh and higher still. Up and up and,mmmm, it was attached to a really nice-looking lower back,and wow, great, big broad shoulders. Alex had such a nice back, I’d never really noticed it until now. The back went up to a head . . .a blond head!
Oh my God!?Whose head was this! I threw the big leg off and crawled to the door. I opened the window and stuck my head out. The two police officers were looking at me now, as if I was in trouble.Was I in trouble?My nose itched and I scratched it, a familiar smell filled my nostrils and I quickly put my hand behind my back. My fingers smelt like marijuana, as if I had been . . .!!!! A moment of clarity! Multiple exclamation marks flying into my mind. Flashing lights. An alarm.I’d been smoking pot!
“Hello, officers,” I said as sweetly as I could. I was trying to radiate innocence.
“You cannot sleep here,” one officer said, looking over my shoulder into the car.
“We can’t?” I asked, unsure of where the hell we were. I stuck my head out of the window even further, and that’s when I became aware of the fact that we were parked on the side of the road.
“Shit!” I hissed under my breath.
“Can you step out the car, please,” the policeman said, opening the door for me.
“Sure thing, sir.” I smiled up at him, forcing myself to exude all the sugarcoated goodness of the word. I was dew on a spring morning, freshly picked blossoms and your grandmother’s homemade cinnamon biscuits! But when I climbed out, a loud din rang out around me. I jumped as I saw things falling,nay, cascading out of the car and onto the ground. The stuff pooled around my feet.
I looked down. A junk food graveyard lay scattered at my feet. Empty cans of fizzy drinks, polystyrene hamburger boxes, chocolate wrappers, a half-eaten rather tasty-looking pastry, more wrappers, a bottle, crisp packets.
“Sorry,” I said, completely embarrassed, and bent down to grab the stuff, shoving it straight back into the car.
“Can you move the car, please, you cannot park here.” The policeman sounded a little firmer this time and my heart began to pound in my chest.
“Yes! Yes, of course!” I said quickly.
“Can I ask what you’re doing here?” the other one asked me. He was looking into the window suspiciously, possibly at the strange blond-haired man who was stretched out in it.
And then it came to me in a whoosh. “We were looking for the campsite, we couldn’t find it,” I said with confidence, because that memory had suddenly come back to me. Alex and I had been looking for a campsite last night,why. . . I do not know though.
Both the policeman stared at each other and then turned and pointed. I followed their arms and looked at where their fingers were pointed.
“Aaaah.” I nodded solemnly when I saw the sign only twenty meters away. A large,you cannot bloody miss itsign with a big tent on it and an arrow pointing down a road. “Must have missed it,” I said sheepishly this time.
“Have you been drinking?” the other policeman asked.
“No!”Had we been drinking?I wasn’t so sure.
“And what about your friend there?” he asked, pointing at the man behind me.
“Oh no!” I gushed. “He hasn’t drunk. No!”Who was that man?
I had a cold, sinking feeling this wasn’t going well and suddenly I had images of being hauled into a police station and thrown into jail.
“Look,” I said really calmly. “I’m here on holiday from South Africa, my friend and I(no name yet)were looking for the campground and we couldn’t find it. It was getting late and we didn’t know what to do, so we parked the car here and slept. That’s all. I’m really, really sorry, sir. I mean, sirs.”
The policeman glanced at each other once more and another look passed between them. Shit! This was not going well.
“It was really dark,” I suddenly said. “No street lights here, we must have stopped just before seeing the sign, but we’d driven so long and far and we were really tired and it wasn’t safe to keep driving like that. I’m really sorry.” I was trying to reason with them. I didn’t want to go to jail.
