Live The Dream

Louise stretched her arms behind her head, pulling in her newly tucked stomach. She could feel the silky wind flow through the small gaps between her skin and her swimming costume and knew people were watching her. Her skin was perfectly tanned, marking her out as someone who had been here a long time. She let her arms drop to her sides. She was bored.

She caught the sun sparkling on the bubbles rising to the top of her champagne glass, tiny luminous explosions that came in quick succession. As she smashed the back of her hand against the glass she traced the flow of sunlit alcohol against the perfect blue sky. A man scurried over to pick up the pieces and to scoop up the sand.

'Sand's only glass, you know,' she shouted condescendingly at the man whilst looking back towards the hotel. 'The beach is full of the stuff. Tell your guests to wear flip flops.' The man probably bowed and promptly left.

Her hand hurt and she saw at once a small red thread of blood running down her finger. Instinctively she rose to call someone over to attend to her, then stopped. For the first time she remembered who she was, where she had come from. She turned so that the sun was behind her, illuminating the injury. It was a scratch but there was a tiny fragment of glass lodged in her skin. She relished the challenge of picking out the piece, her manicured nails proving effective tweezers. She flicked a spot of blood off her purple nail varnish. Then she sucked the wound and spat out the saliva just in case there was more glass. The flow of blood stopped.

Just short of three million pounds, that's what she had won. Six random numbers, no birthdays, on the only lottery game she had ever played. First time lucky? No, she had the gift. She knew that if she went through this three million (give or take a first class air ticket), she could play the lottery again and win. And it was her money, she wasn't going to share it with anyone. She had upped and left straight after the cosmetic surgery, to sit indefinitely on this Bajan beach. Paradise.

Louise sat up and focused on the ocean that was gently breaking ten metres in front of her. A small fishing boat worked from the left of her vision to the right, the same boat she saw every afternoon. The waterski platform had reopened, and three men were racing from the beach, their arms flashing wildly through the smooth peaks of the sea. The winner mounted the platform and thrust his arms in the air in victory, but she would see later that he could not waterski. Behind her the breeze shuffled the trees that lined the beach, a sound that she only rarely registered, but each time she did she was surprised it was there.

Beside her, a gentle tap signalled that someone had replaced her glass. She said nothing, but would wait a couple of minutes before calling the man back to replace the drink with something different; she only needed to decide what that drink might be. She pressed the back of her hand with her other thumb so that the wound hurt.

Louise lay back her head, and quickly drifted into a dream like state, wondering whether anything exciting would ever happen.