The water in Majorca

Chapter 6

 Morning broke with rays of sunshine piercing through the curtains.
Before Charity rose enough to open her eyes, she could hear the excitable giggles of her children from the other room. It was clear that Moses was jumping up and down on one of the beds, being completely egged on by Noah whose deep laughter was still jarring for Charity to hear.

Noah was becoming a man and both his voice and height were unwavering evidence of that.
It was strange, thinking of her little boy as a man. Sure, there was Ryan back home, but he was already a man when she met him, someone else had raised him. Noah's upbringing had been of her own doing, and despite being a self admittedly 'less than average' mum at times, she felt Noah had turned out pretty decent.
"Give it here, you little monkey" Sarah groaned, but there was a playfulness mixed in with her words.
"You have to catch it" Moses squealed, followed by a thud as whatever had been launched across the room had made contact with the floor. Then the usual fighting resumed.

Charity yawned and propped herself up onto her elbow and fished for her phone from under her pillow. She had meant to glance at the clock, to decide if it was worth turning over for a few more minutes, but as her home screen lit up she was surprised to find two texts from Vanessa. She quickly thought of Johnny's blow to the head and raced to thumb in her passcode to reveal the messages that had been delivered over an hour ago, fearing the boy had been unwell through the night.

The first text read 'How to get away with murder', with the second replying with, 'sorry, thought this was google. Apparently there won't be any cell service or Wi-Fi once we get to the orchard, so I'm going to kill Tracy. (That's if the tour guide doesn't get to us all first.) No signs of the gorgeous Luis, instead we have Pedro who is 900 years old and doesn't speak a word of English. He has that dead behind the eyes look about him. I'm sure he's done time. Pray for me.

Charity was taken aback by the erratic information overload but found herself snickering at Vanessa's expense. There was truly nothing worse that she could think of doing than going on a six hour trip to look at a bunch of oranges on a bush.
She was about to come up with a witty-flirtatious reply when she suddenly remembered what had gone down in the toilets of the cocktail bar.
A jolt of adrenaline surged through her veins as she replayed the memory of pinning Vanessa to the wall.
How could she have forgotten about that?
She wondered if Vanessa had thought about it.
Had she replayed the memory, felt the same butterflies that Charity nursed now?
Or was she that drunk that she'd had no memory of it whatsoever?
The texts didn't read like they had been sent by someone who had crossed the boundaries of friendship mere hours ago. If anything, Vanessa's words gave no hint that anything had happened between them at all. But it definitely had, she'd not dreamt it. She was sure of it.
Her head was pretty clear. She felt far from hungover, maybe a slight headache was starting to come on her but other than that she felt pretty sharp. Maybe Vanessa had been worse for wear the previous night. She may have woken up without an iota of what had happened.
Charity's butterflies dissolved at the thought.
If Vanessa couldn't remember the kiss then there was no way she was going to remind her of it. That was out of the question and would only cause peak embarrassment for them both. So, she decided not to reply to the text and instead gulped down two paracetamols and half a bottle of water from the mini fridge.

The sun was blistering by midday and the beach was packed with bodies of all shapes and sizes. Moses had built an entire housing estate worth of sandcastles around Charity's sun lounger, to the point that she had had to come up with a strategy of how to get up without trampling over half a dozen of them.
Noah and Sarah lay stretched out on towels beside her, showing off about not having a deckchair of their own.
"What about us?" Sarah had asked as Charity handed over a handful of euros to the 'beach inspector' who had informed her of the charge to rent the loungers and was in a rush to take her money no sooner than she had sat down.
"You've got your own money" Charity'd replied, shrugging her shoulders as she zipped her purse back inside her bag.
"You already made us buy our own crisps and Coke this morning" Noah groaned, with his eyebrows furrowed in annoyance as he sat up and rattled his half empty warm can.