Page 6

I nodded. I could handle that. I glanced at the man next to me and the three Fijian women opposite me. I wondered what they would all be doing when we reached the island. Perhaps they’d be visiting relatives.
‘Thanks...’ My voice broke from the dryness of my throat. Avril handed me a fresh bottle of water from her backpack. As she did so, I homed in on a small woven blue material braceleton her wrist. It was the sort I made when I was a young girl and exchanged them as friendship bracelets, only this one had embellishments: tiny little silver charms. My eyes focused on a small cake with a cherry on top.
I gulped back the water.
‘Thanks.’ I had become aware of the Fijian women opposite me, who stared at me quite openly and without a care. Did Avril know them? I wondered what business they might have on the island we were going to.
The rest of the questions fizzed away on my tongue, and I let them evaporate. There was too much to say and I would have to wait, be patient and see what was in store for me at the other end.
I took out my phone, saw there was some reception and bashed out a text to my mum’s phone then copied and pasted it to my dad’s phone.
Hey! I’m leaving the mainland for a while, heading to an island. Not sure what to expect, but met a cool girl. I’ll be in touch soon. Love you x
Eventually, the motion of the journey sent me to sleep. Working so early at the market meant I usually napped mid-afternoon, anyway, let alone if I was being lulled to sleep in the middle of the ocean.
Like all the dreams I’d had since I arrived here, they were vivid and enigmatic. I ended up back at that night, where I had sworn I would stop taking myself. When I arrived home from work, I listened to the message from Bruno I had been saving, thinking it would be an invitation for dinner or him telling me he was coming over with a bottle of wine. There was an edgeto his words that I had never heard from him before. And when he finally came over it was not to give me a meal or take me out for a drink. It was no wonder I felt as though I needed to heal because the end of the relationship broke me, so I was not sure how I was supposed to recover. I knew I had made him angry. But I also knew that I hadn’t. I also knew I would be walking away that night for the final time. The only resolution I could accept was that you never really knew someone the way you think you did.
You’re such a disappointment.
The thrust of the boat penetrated my body, jolting me awake. My arms shuddered as I gripped the handrest. Avril looked over at me then she stood up and edged her way into a small gap so the man next to me was forced to move. Then she placed her hand over mine. She didn’t say anything and neither did I. I just felt the powerful grasp of her hand on mine – and everything in that grip said, it’s okay, I’ve got this. I’m in control.
The boat shuddered to a halt. The Fijian women got up and hitched up their skirts, ready to step off the boat. Avril was pulling her backpack on and then looking at me eagerly. I couldn’t believe we had barely spoken since we left the mainland. I grabbed my massive backpack, which was almost the size of me, and Avril began laughing.
‘Good job you’re wearing shorts, hey?’ Avril said as she pulled up her trousers and stepped out of the boat into the shallows. I followed suit, my backpack grazing my backside.
‘Wow!’ I looked around. This was truly paradise. So very different from the mainland. The water was turquoise and clear, the sand whiter than white. The sounds were different here, nothing like the noise on the mainland. Here it felt sovery calm. Once we were on the shore, I dropped the bag on the sand and sat down. There were a few huts set back from the beach. Children swam in the shallows. The women greeted other women and talked loudly in Fijian or Hindi. There was a gentle buzz about the island that I liked. It felt like it could be somewhere I could settle for a while, somewhere I could feel safe and protected.
‘Don’t get too comfy,’ Avril said. ‘The next boat leaves in a few minutes.’
I looked up at her, where she was standing over me. ‘What?’
She laughed. ‘We’re getting another boat. This isn’t Totini.’
I looked around again. ‘It isn’t?’
‘No. This is the first island. We need to get another boat. On the other side of the island. It’s a short walk.’
‘Oh.’ I quickly stood and then hurried to keep up with Avril. It seemed like a pretty innocent comment, but my mind reverted back to yesterday when she had said it was a boat ride away. I was sure Avril hadn’t purposely tried to trick me, but either way, she had lied and already I began to wonder whether there were any other lies to come.
5
THEN
The second small, simple boat hurtled across the waves towards a tiny spec of an island in the distance. We had been aboard for thirty minutes and there was another thirty to go from what I could gather from the snippets of English I had heard the driver and his skipper speaking. We were the only four aboard, and I had my mobile phone pressed tightly in my bra against my chest, as I had felt the unease with which these strangers helped us onto the boat. With the language barrier came stalled social skills, and so grew the intensity of their stares. I prayed this was their attempt to interact and not the prelude to a long and grizzly murder.
I tried to catch Avril’s eye a few times, but she was leaning on the edge of the boat staring at the horizon again. Mesmerised. She seemed far more relaxed than I felt but maybe I should step up to the post and be the confident travelling buddy sheprobably needed me to be. Especially once we hit the ground again.
I focused on the spec of land up ahead and I began to feel a flutter of relief that we would indeed have our feet on solid ground again very soon. To distract me from how fast the boat was travelling, I thought again about Avril and how I knew very little about her, yet I did sense that she was seeking a deeper connection with something or someone. That was her mission, which was the journey she was on. And now I was on that journey with her.
I wanted to do something different, to prove to myself that I was worth something more. More than a handful of poorly constructed insults spat at me in anger.
The island was becoming bigger and bigger as we descended upon it, and I grappled with swaying emotions of dread and excitement as I looked at the lush greenery, rustic beach, and sparkling white sand.
Eventually, the boat powered down almost to the shore, and the driver and skipper began saying something to us in Fijian whilst pointing their hands at us and then at the shore.
Avril was up and alert, looking at me.
‘Paddling to the shore again from here; they will carry our luggage.’ She began to throw one leg over the edge of the boat and then the other until she was submerged up to her thighs.