Page 2

THEN
I woke up sweating. This was normal now as I lived so close to the equator. I thought about the dream immediately. It would sit with me until midday as most of these dreams did. I dreamt heavily because of the heat. The air was so dense I sometimes wondered if I was even getting enough oxygen, but here I was, thriving it seemed.
I was just about to head into my fourth week here in Nadi, marking almost a month since my arrival, since I left England. I received emails from my older sister each week, filling me in on what was happening back home. Mum and Dad were both too busy to email, but they called, and I called them. There had never been a plan in place; I had considered possibly visiting Australia and New Zealand for a few weeks, asking if the chocolate company would hold my job at the market until Ireturned. I liked it here. But I feared I would stay and never see any of the surrounding countries.
I took a cold shower, dressed, and headed to the café on the corner where I took my coffee and pastry each morning. The café assistant greeted me with the usual ‘Bula’ and I sat by the window watching the street come to life: vendors setting up stalls, cars and taxis beeping and narrowly missing one another. A fan whirred on the counter; guitar music played softly through a speaker.
‘Hey.’
That voice. I had become accustomed to it. My body froze because he had already asserted power over me, just by having that tone in his voice that I found threatening. He was here intermittently throughout the week. I hadn’t seen him for four or five days and I’d presumed he had left the country. He came next to my table. He stood too close to me.
‘Tony.’ I barely turned to speak to him and regretted even using his name; it probably gave him a sense of entitlement. Something he didn’t need. Something I tried not to give, but I was only human, and sometimes I slipped up, too.
‘Hey.’ Somehow he had moved even closer to me. He had never been this close to me before. I could smell the spirits on his breath and seeping through his skin, and not just from one day of drinking either; this was a constant stench that oozed from within him. Tony was a bum. A drunk. How he ended up here, in this part of Nadi, was a mystery. I had never seen anyone like him here yet; no one else had that fragmented look about them, as though they might split open any moment.
‘You not working today then?’ He sat in the seat opposite me and my head jerked slightly to acknowledge his presence.He had once gotten riled at me when I tried to ignore him, so I figured this was the better way. He was about five foot seven, not much taller than me. I wasn’t sure about his accent. Was he Aussie, or Kiwi? There was a British twang there too.
‘No. I work in the mornings,’ I said carefully, trying not to reveal any more information than was necessary. Something I had learned from a friend who had been attacked by a man out of nowhere. She’d had counselling for months and was still heavily affected by PTSD but one of the things she took away from the experience was that nugget: never keep the conversation going longer than you want it to continue.
‘Ah, so you’re free in the afternoons?’ Tony leaned in closer, his dirty hands pressed on the table between us. I could feel his breath on my face. ‘You know you should come with me, on my boat. I can get a boat. Me and you should go island hopping.’
I stiffened at the prospect of being alone in the Pacific Ocean on a boat with Tony; this was the most forward he had ever been and I hadn’t ever given him the idea that I would like to spend time with him. I wasn’t about to tell him that today was my day off either. I paused to consider the right words. The ones that could offend him or encourage him had to be eliminated. And I was back there again with Bruno, in the weeks leading up to the day I left, choosing the right way to say what I needed to say, wondering which words would provoke a reaction. Walking on eggshells to prevent him from getting riled up. How was it that because I was female, I had to keep making these amendments? Why did I have to think carefully before I spoke for fear of upsetting a man?
‘Thanks, Tony, but I have a boyfriend, and I don’t think it would be honourable to go out on a boat with you.’ I felt ashamed of myself that I couldn’t just say: ‘No, Tony. I do not want to go out on a boat with you.’ To hope instead that he would read between the lines. But men like him either couldn’t or chose to ignore them.
‘I didn’t ask if you had a boyfriend, did I?’ I felt Tony’s spit land on my arm. Despite the searing heat, my skin prickled with cold.
‘Hey.’ Another voice, a female, this time.
I turned to my left to get a proper look at who had called out, and at first glance, I recognised her. Had she been the woman from the bar last night with her mad mahogany hair? She had an air of supreme confidence. Her hair, which had been tied up last night, was now loose and wild.
‘What’s good to drink around here?’ She was talking to me. She was engaging me in conversation. She was trying to block out Tony and make him feel invisible. It was working. He stood up and went to the bar, looked out of the window, pretending that he was unfazed by this interception.
‘Rum and Coke is always a safe bet,’ I said.
‘And who said I’m looking for a safe bet?’ She stood close to my table.
‘Well, it’s probably too early for that. Or kava. You can usually get it here.’ I rambled, looking at Tony. He was getting up. He stumbled over to the bar, pulled out a stool, and fell into it.
‘I usually have a coffee. The coffee is good,’ I said just as the café assistant set down a cup in front of me.
The woman smiled and for the first time I noticed a tiny gap between her two front teeth. I thought about a friend she looked like back home. But it was a friend I knew when I was with Bruno and then his face was suddenly there in front of me. Even though I had fought not to bring him with me to Fiji. I faltered for a moment as I shook the image away.
‘And you? Can I get you anything?’
I pointed to my coffee. ‘I’m good.’
‘Enjoy.’ She winked at me, then walked to the bar.
It was almost midday and she had been in the bar for over an hour, sitting by herself, scrolling through her phone. Occasionally her face would screw up as though she were reading something with real intention. I had brought a book and read a little, but I was struggling to concentrate on the words. A shadow cast over the pages. I looked up to see her standing over me. She leaned in and lifted the book to reveal the title page.
‘The Great Alone?A book set in Alaska seems a highly appropriate novel to read in thirty-degree heat.’ Her voice was softly tinted with an American accent, worn down by years of travel noting by the way she was dressed in faded harems and by the way her hair was beginning to form into dreadlocks at the sides, which I could now see as she was closer.
Her confidence and her ability to start a conversation impressed me. She also talked about books, which were my weakness. I was rarely without one these days in Fiji.
‘I’m rereading it. It’s not so much the setting, but the atmosphere, the constant threat that the family faces. I have never been one for a beach read. I like something I can get my teeth into.’
The woman nodded enthusiastically. ‘I like this in a woman.’