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‘I don’t have a great-aunt Mildred!’ he replies.
‘Oh yes you do,’ I tell him as I climb onto the bed and cover myself with the towel. ‘She’s old, and fat, and she has a hairy wart on the end of her nose. She smells of cats, and not in a good way, and you can feel the hairs from her wart tickling you as she presses you into her enormous bosom. Picture it, and breathe in the strange cat smell.’
‘OK, thank you. Crisis averted.’ He climbs onto his bed and covers himself.
After a little while there’s a knock on the door. ‘Are you ready?’ asks Barbara’s voice from the other side.
‘Yes,’ we reply and they come in. Soft music starts playing.
‘We’re going to use black pepper oil,’ Barbara explains. ‘It’s warming, and really good for tired, stiff muscles. Now, as I explained to you earlier, this is a bit more intense than the aromatherapy massage, and it might even hurt a bit, but you’ll really feel the difference afterwards.’
The first part of the massage is fairly gentle, but then as the hour progresses it ramps up in intensity until we’re being kneaded and pounded. It gets to the point where I’m sure it’s actually more painful than the original stiff muscles were and, if I were capable of speech beyond the occasional exclamation of ‘Oof’ and ‘Bloody hell’, I’d make a wisecrack about the cure being worse than the disease. At one point, Ed turns his face to me and says, ‘This is extra, you know. We’re actually paying these very kind ladies to hurt us. Is that a bit weird?’ before crying out as Ruby digs her elbow into his shoulder and pulls back on his arm.
Afterwards, they leave us to get dressed, and then guide us to two very comfortable-looking reclining chairs, each with a bottle of water in a holder in the armrest.
‘Stay here for as long as you like,’ Barbara tells us. ‘Make sure you drink plenty of water today, and take it easy. By tomorrow you’ll be feeling like new people.’
We stay for a while and finish the bottles of water they’ve provided, and then wander back to Ed’s room. I’m still sore, but I can feel my muscles have relaxed a bit and I’m able to walk fairly normally. Ed also seems much improved.
When we get back, we fill up the head-to-toe baths in his suite and peel off our clothes. I climb into one of them and lie back, closing my eyes and letting the hot water continue the good work the therapist did earlier. After a while, I open them and look at Ed in the other bath. ‘You know what we’re missing here?’ I ask him.
‘Champagne?’ he replies. ‘I’ve got a tiny bottle in the minibar. Probably enough for a glass each.’
‘Perfect,’ I tell him.
He gets out of the bath and dries himself off a bit before heading into the sitting room to fetch the drinks. After a minute or so, he returns and places two glasses on the shelf between the baths.
I top up my bath with some more hot water and then take a sip of cold champagne. ‘That’s much better,’ I say to Ed, and we chink glasses.
Once the champagne is gone and the heat has started to go out of the water, we dry ourselves off and get dressed. Ed orders lunch from room service, and we sit out on the balcony to eat it. We then spend a lazy afternoon on the beach, until it’s time to get ready to meet Mum and Dad at the bar.
‘Charlotte tells me you two have been putting each other through the mill,’ my dad remarks to Ed over dinner. ‘She was quite sore this morning.’
Ed nearly spits out his drink and I hastily intervene. ‘I think water-skiing and windsurfing on consecutive days was probably a bit much, but we had a sports massage earlier, and it’s really helped.’
‘Were you massaged together?’ my mum asks, fixing me with a beady stare.
‘Yes, but Ed was a perfect gentleman and turned his back when I got changed,’ I lie. I’m not sure she’s buying it, but she doesn’t say any more and the conversation moves on to safer ground.
After dinner, Mum and Dad announce that they’re going to head back to the bar for a nightcap. Ed and I plead tiredness and retreat to his room, where we climb into bed and make love before curling up and falling fast asleep.
The next morning we’re up early for our jeep tour. The sports massage has worked miracles and most of the aches and pains have gone. I dash back to my room to have a quick shower and get changed before meeting Ed back at reception where our driver, Steve, is waiting for us.
The tour is fascinating. Steve turns out to be a mine of information about Antigua and its politics. He tells us how the island’s economy used to be based entirely on sugar, and about the life of slaves on the sugar plantations. We visit Betty’s Hope, where the windmill that was used to crush the sugar cane to extract the juice has been restored. He takes us on to the Devil’s Bridge, a natural rock arch formed by years of the Atlantic Ocean crashing against it, and explains how slaves used to cross the bridge and drown themselves to escape their captors. Ed and I are a bit quiet after that; there’s something disconcerting about being on this paradise island and coming face to face with its dark past. As we trundle along the roads, I look out of the window at the people going about their business and reflect on the fact that most of their ancestors were brought here against their will and treated with appalling cruelty. I’m still thinking about it when we stop at a roadside shack and taste a variety of fruit. We continue on to English Harbour for a tour of Nelson’s dockyard and take photos of ourselves with the red phone box, which lightens the mood.
After lunch, Steve takes us up to Shirley Heights for a different view of the dockyard, before driving us back to the hotel. A rain shower passes over as we drive back, and Steve has to slow right down as it’s difficult to see. Ed and I hold hands in the back of the jeep, and I lean across and rest my head on his shoulder.
By the time we get back to the hotel, the rain has cleared and the paths are steaming as the water evaporates under the sunlight. We get changed and head for the beach.
‘You seem a little subdued this afternoon. Are you still thinking about what Steve told us about the slave trade here?’ I ask Ed once we’ve settled ourselves on the reserved sunloungers.
‘A little, but mainly I’m just thinking about going home tomorrow. I’m going to miss you,’ he replies.
‘I’m going to miss you too,’ I tell him. ‘But your flight isn’t until the evening, so we’ve got the rest of today and most of tomorrow. Let’s try to make the most of them. Come on, I’ll race you into the sea.’
We charge into the sea together and, once the water is getting too deep for me to stand, I wrap my arms around Ed’s shoulders, my legs around his waist and kiss him. ‘I feel so lucky to have met you,’ I tell him.
‘Me too,’ he replies.
