Swell by Lauren Davies Read Free Book Online

human security fence to see Jason. He was hunched over his knees while the lifeguards busied themselves touchingvarious parts of his battered body. His Lycra rash vest was shredded as if he had been thrown to the lions. Blood seeped through the holes, diluted by the water.
    ‘Jason,’ I breathed in a funereal volume, ‘are you OK?’
    Jason looked up at me as a broken man. His usually lustrous eyes were as red as his sanguineous skin. He smiled weakly and when he opened his mouth to try and speak, Rock O’Rafferty’s inappropriately jovial voice sang out over the P.A system.
    ‘A perfect ten for Cain Ohana there on his final wave, ladies and gentlemen. Two perfect tens for the local boy. I have news that Jason Cross is fine so we can all relax. What a final, what a showdown and what a result. We have a new world champion, people. His name is Cain Ohana.’
    ‘Not really,’ said Jason in response to my question.
    ‘Outta my way, whore!’ I heard Portia scream.
    She dragged me away from Jason by my hair.
    ‘Baby, baby, are you OK? Jason, oh my God, what happened?’
    ‘If you had been watching you might have seen it,’ I seethed, rubbing the roots of my ponytail.
    Portia rounded on me, her devil eyes inches from mine. She reacted like a rattled wasp in a jam jar when her temper took hold.
    ‘Step back you English bitch, this world champion is mine.’
    ‘He’s not world champion anymore,’ Chuck said, pulling Portia away from my face.
    I wiped her spittle from my cheek.
    ‘If you were concentrating on the surfing instead of your make-up you would have known that. So, do you still want him,
babe
?’
    Portia looked from Chuck to me and down at Jason. If a photographer had not appeared at that moment to take a shot of the scene I swear she would have walked away. World champion or not, Jason had become my friend and I made a note to myself to sort out this mess. A devastatingly gorgeous millionaire and dozen-times world champion surfer he might have been, but his choice in girlfriends really sucked.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    I did not see Jason for the next few days. Finding the Press intrusion and the boisterous, seemingly unending sound of partying coming from the nearby Tiger Sharks’ house unbearable, Jason took a Hawaiian Airlines shuttle to the Big Island of Kona and vanished from the radar. Portia also vanished at precisely the same time, which in some ways was a relief but also made me concerned that she had her claws in Jason when he was at his most vulnerable. Chuck was busy drowning his sorrows in Hawaiian cocktails as the competitive year drew to a close and the surfing community celebrated or commiserated in an end of term manner. Knowing as I did very few people, I spent much of my time alone. Over the first two days I soaked for so long in the hot tub I sweated off a dress size, which would have been great had my skin not resembled used clingfilm. I then decided to follow the example of the locals and power walk on the beach but I was not in the same league as the Hawaiian surfer girls who had tanned, lean legs rippling with toned muscle. The day I was overtaken by a heavily pregnant girl in a bikini who resembled a supermodel with a Kinder egg attached to her six-pack, I realised I had a lot of work to do.
    Oahu was both breathtakingly beautiful and rugged. The North Shore was the rural part of the island and had remained largely unspoilt while Honolulu grew as the city on the South Shore. Quirky wooden beach houses sat comfortably among the more recent millionaire dwellings that were still in keeping with the modest character of the Sunset Beach area. One of our neighbours had a tree growing through the centre of her house because she had not wanted to fell the tree to make room for her development.Sustainability of the environment was respected and protected because, as Jason had pointed out, many of the jobs relied on it for their future.
    I explored the local village of Haleiwa, which had a charming