Cabin Fever: The sizzling secrets of a Virgin air hostess… (13 page)

It was midday when Jonathan woke me, planting feathery kisses over my face. “Happy Valentine’s Day, gorgeous,” he whispered. I blinked a few times until his face came into focus. He was lying beside me on top of the covers, his head propped in his hand, a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Happy Valentine’s, babe,” I croaked.

“Look what I’ve got,” he said, pulling a tube and a paintbrush out from under his pillow. “Strawberry flavoured body paint.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said, “I’ve brought some too … raspberry sorbet.”

Jonathan threw back the duvet and rolled on top of me. “How do you fancy breakfast in bed? Chase away the hangover.”

Hangover? I was still drunk. “Oh yeah,” I moaned, sliding my hands beneath his towel, “colour me in.”

He unscrewed the tube and squeezed the red paint onto the brush. He then painted “I” on my left breast, “love” on my right and “Mandy” across my midriff, adding a kiss below my belly button. He took a moment to admire his work, smiling proudly, as if he’d just created a masterpiece. I looked down at my graffitied skin and laughed. “Now you’re going to have to eat those words.”

“I intend to,” Jonathan said, already lowering his head to my breasts. He rolled back on top of me and, very slowly, kissed a
path from my boobs to my navel, devouring the paint. I looked like a murder victim by the time he’d finished, my torso smeared red. And Jonathan looked like Hannibal Lecter after a three-course meal with his strawberry-stained lips and face.

We stayed in our room all afternoon playing with our Valentine’s toys. Jonathan was thrilled I’d bought him a copy of the
Kama Sutra
. We mastered the Erotic V position – which involved me sitting on the edge of the dressing table with my feet hooked around Jonathan’s neck – the Catherine Wheel and the Splitting Bamboo, which gave me the most intense orgasm. But I nearly broke my neck attempting the Suspended Scissors position. This was the trickiest and involved me suspending my body with one hand on the floor, lying sideways with my feet resting on the edge of the bed. Jonathan’s job was to step over my left leg, hold up my right leg, then, with his other hand supporting my waist, enter me from behind. It was impossible – each time Jonathan tried to step over my leg my arm gave way and my head crashed to the floor. “I don’t think this is happening, babe,” I said, collapsing again after our fourth attempt. “Maybe we should move on to the Ship … or the Landslide?”

We worked up huge appetites – I was so hungry I ate my edible knickers. They weren’t exactly sexy: white, plastic and surgical-looking. After our Suspended Scissor disaster we were both too exhausted to try any more positions, so we ticked off the ones we had conquered and made a note of the ones we’d try next time. As we lay in our paint-stained sheets, flicking through the book, the phone rang. I answered it. It was Suzy.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, hon – I hope you’ve been naughty like me.”

“Why, what have you done?” I asked in a voice that really said, “I know what you’ve been up to.”

“Adam has only just left my room,” she said in a loud whisper, as if he was still in earshot.

“Why are you whispering?”

“He came back after the room party – I haven’t been to sleep yet. Fuck me he’s a goer: huge cock, very … girthy.”

“Worth going back for more?”

“Maybe. Unless someone better comes along to test drive. Anyway, enough about him, what are you up to?”

“Oh, you know, nothing much. Sitting in bed, covered in strawberry and raspberry body paint, reading the
Kama Sutra
.”

Suzy giggled. “Well, get yourselves ready – we’re all meeting in the bar in an hour.”

She hung up before I could reply.

Another night in Joburg turned into another debauched night in Joburg, ending with another room party interrupted by security. This time Nathan was wearing a Fred Flintstone costume when the guard arrived. “I’m terribly sorry,” he explained again. “Would you care for tequila?” It’s a good job the security guards had a sense of humour.

The days all seemed to blend into one in Joburg. We hardly slept and the amount of drink we got through was criminal. On our final day – our only sober day – a few of us went on a safari tour at Pilanesberg National Park, near Sun City. Set in the crater of an extinct alkaline volcano, and fringed by concentric ridges, the park is home to every South African mammal, including the “big five”: lion, leopard, black-and-white rhino, elephant and buffalo. We were told this by our tour guide, Ryan, who looked as though he too should’ve been roaming among the wildlife. He was so hairy: a mop of curly black hair, furry arms, woolly neck and hands. There were even hairs sprouting from the bridge of his nose, but strangely he suited it and was actually quite handsome – in a Neanderthal kind of way.

The Jeep crawled a long rugged paths, past forested ravines and rolling tawny grasslands where rhinos lay on their sides, lazy and heavy against the trees, and zebras pranced along the plain. Every time we thought we’d spotted a lion it turned out to be nothing more than a mound of moving dry grass. Ryan got us into a little spot of difficulty en route to the Main Lodge house for lunch. We were driving along a tree-lined road – he was singing along to that annoying song “The Bad Touch” by the Bloodhound Gang, which was blaring from the radio, and trying to get us all to join in – when a baby elephant emerged from the trees and trotted alongside the Jeep, swinging its little trunk with a cute smile on its face. Ryan continued along the path, singing, oblivious to the calf, driving us almost head-on into the calf’s mother, who charged out from the trees, flaring her ears, screaming and trumpeting. We all screamed. Ryan shouted, “Holy fuck,” slammed on the brakes and reversed the Jeep at top speed. Fortunately the three-tonne elephant didn’t give serious chase – she just wanted to put herself between us and her baby – but it was still terrifying how close she had come to ramming us.

We couldn’t even go on safari without a drama occurring. And there was a further drama on the flight home. No one had seen Sindy or Katie since our first room party. We hadn’t thought much of it at the time; it was perfectly normal for some crew to do their own thing on trips and Sindy and Katie went everywhere together, anyway. But they reappeared in the hotel lobby when the crew bus arrived, looking a little drained and stiff. I noticed Sindy struggling to lift her flight bag, flinching and clutching her chest every time she tried to hook it onto her arm. “Shall I take that for you?” I offered.

“I’ll be okay,” she said with a grimace. “I want to look normal.”

“Have you injured yourself? You don’t look very well, babe.”

“No, I’m fine,” she said. “I think I overdid it in the gym yesterday, that’s all. I’m perfectly fine.”

But halfway through the flight Sindy was forced to admit to our flight service manager, “I’ve had my boobs done,” after her new implants had exploded mid flight. During our trip to Joburg, Sindy and Katie had been under the knife, which explained why they’d gone AWOL. After Sindy’s trauma mid flight, Katie also confessed she’d had a boob job and they were both taken off duty. They thought they’d saved themselves a fortune getting top surgery at a snip of a price in Joburg, but their new inflatables ended up costing them dearly. When they got home they were sacked. Honestly, the lengths some girls will go to … all for a pair of fake boobs.

CHAPTER 8

THE FLOWER GIRLS

I blame my naked antics in Barbados entirely on Felicity. She’s always had a bizarre fascination with skinny dipping, taking her clothes off and running around in the buff. But who can blame her for showing off her size-eight figure and gigantic GGs? Now it seemed Felicity’s love for streaking had rubbed off on Laura and me. It was late evening – approaching midnight – and the three of us were completely starkers, standing by a pool at the lavish Tamarind Cove resort, giggling hysterically with the local tall Heliconia Wagneriana flowers sandwiched between our butt cheeks.

We’d just been skinny dipping in the waters of the Platinum Coast – where a cast of mischievous crabs had moved our clothes along the beach – and we were running back to our hotel, ducking behind plant pots and palm trees, when Felicity suggested a further prank.

“Let’s do a dare,” Felicity said, reaching into the plant pot and yanking three of the long-stemmed flowers from the beautiful tropical display. “I say we stick these flowers in our bum cheeks and swim across every pool in the resort. Anyone who drops the flower has to perform a forfeit.”

“You’re fucking mad, you,” Laura said, snatching one of the flowers. “How am I supposed to fit this in me crack? My bum’s virtually non-existent.”

“Easy, I’ll show you.” Felicity turned around, poked her slender bum in our faces and slid the flower between her cheeks, snorting with laughter as she did so. Laura and I were clutching on to each other, giggling.

“You have to clench,” Felicity added, squeezing her bum and waddling forwards. “Just like this – squeeze and clench, squeeze and clench.”

“Oh fuck it, I’m game if you are, Mands,” Laura said.

“Honestly, the stuff that girl gets us doing,” I said, having no trouble positioning my flower between my ample butt cheeks. “Let’s just pray no one sees us.”

Leaving our clothes in a pile behind the floral display, we climbed into the amber-lit pool and tried to swim to the other end. It was an impossible task – the only way to keep the flowers in place was to keep our legs together and use only our arms to swim – and we couldn’t do that for laughing. We made it across the pool, despite losing our flowers several times, and then repeated the process in the second and third pools before dashing back for our clothes, our flowers now soggy and droopy in our backsides.

“I think we’ve all earned forfeits,” Felicity said, scooping up her clothes.

“Bugger that,” I said. “That was a forfeit in itself.”

We then ran, dripping wet, clothes clutched to our chests, past the bar terrace and guests’ rooms, through the hotel lobby, where we were greeted by a red-faced receptionist.

“Morning,” chirped Felicity as we jiggled and slipped through the lobby, our feet making wet slapping noises on the marble flooring.

“Don’t mind us,” I sang.

The receptionist didn’t know where to look. She just nodded and turned her eyes to some paperwork. We pattered up the stairs, still giggling and pulling on items of clothing, and returned to the room party we’d nipped away from … all dressed in each other’s clothes.

It was late July in 2001, and Felicity, Laura, Jonathan and I had used one of our two monthly requests to jet off to Barbados together, along with Laura’s then BA pilot boyfriend, Dan.

Barbados is a beautiful teardrop of an island with dramatic cliffs, ocean views and exotic wildlife: turtles bobbing in crystal waters and monkeys lolloping by the roadside. The Tamarind Cove resort was a blissful oasis of calm, with red tiled buildings, fountains and tropical gardens opening out to a glorious Bounty advert crescent beach where the waves ruffled at the shore like can-can girls’ knickers. It was such a quiet, tranquil resort … until us lot tarnished it with our Club 18–30 style behaviour. The local night-life left a lot to be desired in those days (although it’s a lot livelier now), there wasn’t much else to do in hurricane season, when there was more hotel staff than guests. So we amused ourselves.

It was good to let our hair down and enjoy some light relief. The flight out to Barbados had been rather solemn. The day prior to our departure, a Concorde had crashed just minutes after taking off from Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground. One of our crew, a steward called Spencer, lost one of his best friends in the disaster. She was an air hostess on board the Air France aircraft, who had just found out she was expecting a baby and hadn’t told her manager yet, as she was due to be grounded for the rest of her pregnancy following that fateful flight. Spencer cried all the way to Barbados. He was heartbroken. “I only spoke to her two days ago,” he explained to
me in the galley, tears trickling down his cheeks. “Why did it have to happen, Mandy … why?”

I couldn’t answer his question, but I could offer a shoulder to cry on. “You know, you didn’t have to come to work today; you shouldn’t be working – you’re grieving, it’s natural,” I told him.

He looked at me with his red-rimmed eyes and, with a sad half-laugh, said, “I need the money, Mandy.”

We were all worried about Spencer. He didn’t leave his room on our first day in Barbados. He said he wanted to be alone so we respected his wish … but called his room from time to time to check in with him.

Meanwhile, back in the Mandy and Jonathan love bubble, there was cause for celebration in Barbados. On our second morning, after my naked flower-in-the-bum escapade, Jonathan asked me to marry him. It took me completely by surprise. We’d now been together for two years and although our relationship was strong, he’d never brought up the subject of marriage prior to this. It was bizarre how it happened. We’d just had sex – the
Kama Sutra
position of the day for us being the Lotus Flower – and I’d asked Jonathan to hold my feet while I did some sit-ups on the floor. It was a routine I performed prior to hitting the beach: 250 sit-ups to flatten the tummy.

“You really don’t need to do all these sit-ups,” Jonathan said, kneeling between my knees as he held my ankles. “You’ve got a beautiful body.”

“I don’t think the receptionist would agree with you after last night’s episode,” I joked.

“I’m still gutted I missed that.”

“Serves you right for not coming skinny dipping with us. Prude.”

I raised my upper body, kissing Jonathan’s lips as I came up. We did this 250 times – sit-up, kiss, sit-up, kiss, and after my final sit-up,
as I lay back on the floor, Jonathan popped the question. He rested his dimpled cheek on my knee and smiled. “I love you, Mandy.”

“I love you too.”

“Marry me.”

This made me sit up again. “Are you serious?” For some reason I thought Jonathan was joking.