Prologue: Kings of the World

Early evening, 15th June

"Here's to being the kings of the motherfucking world!" Tom yelled as we cheered and shoved our flimsy plastic shot cups into each other's, splashing some of the colourless drink out of the top and over our hands. Tom looked over in my direction. "Oh, sorry Mark. Kings and queens." He sniggered and we all downed our drinks, cringing as the vile sambuca washed down our throats. We turned up the music as far as it could go, completely downing out our voices. That didn't matter, we were too pissed to care. The sun was setting, the night had just begun, and we'd already been drinking for four hours. Tom clambered up the chrome ladder to the roof and, with his arms outstretched, shouted, "I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing and I'm fucking loving it!" as we all watched in hysterics.

This wasn't exactly what my parents had in mind when I suggested taking their yacht out for a month with my mates. It had taken the better part of a year of convincing to get to a point where we could break their trust like this. It was hard to care though; we were all twenty-years-old and having the time of our lives. The yacht wasn't huge, containing only a few decks and a relatively small engine; I didn't think it was anything too fancy but it more than suited our purposes. In reality, we were incredibly lucky people, I just didn't appreciate my lifestyle nearly as much as I should have.

"You look like you need another drink, mate!" I shouted up at Tom, barely above the music's volume, while walking towards the door to the interior of the boat.

"Too bloody right I do!" He shouted back.

I returned a couple of minutes later, four bottles of cheap lager in hand, to find Sam turning the music down and David using his phone to film Tom above me. He'd whipped his shirt off and, without a moment's notice, was charging towards the portside edge shouting 'cannonball' at the top of his voice. He leapt off the side of the pure white roof and curled himself into a ball in mid-air. After a few surprisingly graceful seconds of plummeting, he narrowly missed the metal railing on the wooden lower deck and hit the sea, showering the rest of us in seawater. I quickly had to turn my back to the torrent to save the open beers in my hands. In hindsight, what Tom did was incredibly dumb, but we found it absolutely hilarious at the time.

Despite being plastered, Tom swam over to the ladder at the back and climbed up no problem. He sauntered over, took a bottle from my hand, took a swig and said, "Who's next then? David?"

"No fucking way, that looks dangerous. Do you have any idea how many chicks would give up on life if something happened to me?" David semi-sarcastically responded,

"Your mum?" Tom quickly replied, met with laughter from everyone but a frowning David. "Alright, his Royal-Fucking-Highness here is pussying out. How about it, Mark?"

"Sorry mate, David's mum would miss me too much," I joked as I gave a bottle to Sam, "I'm sure Sam will have a go though. You did high jumping or something, right?"

"How about just a plain no?" He said before taking a drink. "Because I'm not a moron."

"I'll drink to that!" David shouted, swiping his beer from my hand and raising it to the sky. "To not being fucking twats!" We all cheered and raised our bottles high.

It was with these three people that I shared the month-long ocean-going piss-up. I'd known Tom and David since primary school. When we all went to separate universities, we vowed to stay in touch and get smashed together at least once every time we were all back home. Other friends from our school years joined for most of them as well but us three went every single time. We'd managed to stick to this for two years so far.

Tom was the loud one, that one friend who goes ballistic every time they touch a drop of alcohol. He was a good laugh though and always up for whatever we had planned. My parents were friends with his parents so we had gotten pretty close over the years and I would argue that he was my closest friend.

David was something of a poser, he fancied himself to be pretty suave and was generally not willing to upset his image at all, even on a boat in the middle of the bloody ocean. He was good fun once you got him out of his shell though. He had been putting the whole trip up on every social media imaginable every time we got a hint of Wi-Fi. Thankfully, this wasn't often and we generally tried to ruin his pictures in one way or another; somewhere on his phone is a picture of him with the sun setting over the beautiful Spanish coast in the background and just in front of it is me giving the camera the middle finger while surfing a hunched over Tom shortly before collapsing into a heap on the deck. David wasn't nearly as happy with that picture as we were.

Lastly, there was Sam; I met him at university when we were put in the same first year flat. We really got along and so stuck together afterwards. Turned out he came from a similar part of London to the rest of us so he started to come along to our holiday bashes and became a part of the group. He still wasn't hugely comfortable with everyone and so tended to be more reserved, but he was still a lot of fun and certainly had let himself go a bit crazier over this trip.

I had also tried to convince the others to let me bring my girlfriend, Lucy, but Tom insisted this was going to be a 'lads' holiday' and that she would therefore upset the balance. I was pretty sure that the real reason was that none of the others had girlfriends, David's explanation being that he 'didn't want to be tied down to one girl.'

Lucy and I had been going out for nearly two years by this point and I missed her a lot, despite knowing that I'd see her in a few weeks anyway. Whenever David was Instragramming, I was usually either texting or calling Lucy over Wi-Fi to get a sense of comfort.

We had been anchored up fairly far off the coast of Ibiza for a few days now doing very little but spending alternate days drinking and recovering. It was a painful cycle but a fun one nevertheless. All we could remember was generally just the odd game of beer pong or Ring of Fire and every horrible morning of recovery. Except for Sam; we had no idea how, but he always remembered everything that happened and rarely had more than a mild headache from a hangover. Despite being the smallest, he seemed to be a serious heavyweight when it came to drinking; it was very frustrating for the rest of us.

This was going to be the last night that we were staying offshore before moving to Ibiza itself – to join the rest of our generation and get pissed in the island's clubs instead – so we thought we'd best make it a big one.