Page 19 of The Beach Holiday

THEN

I arrived back at the camp with Clara, euphoric from the swim, glowing from the water and sun.

I spotted Avril straight away; she was walking through to the camp from the huts looking a little more than perturbed.

‘Hey,’ I said when I reached her.

‘Morning.’ She tried to shift the frown from her face.

I fixed her with an intent look. ‘Okay?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ She breathed out. ‘Let’s go to my hut.’

Avril’s hut was larger than mine and Clara’s. All the curtains were closed bar an inch, inviting in a soft hazy stream of light.

I fell into a beanbag.

Avril walked around the dimly lit hut, which smelt strongly of incense, until eventually she reached the beanbag I was getting swallowed by and flopped down next to me on a similar-sized one.

‘These are great. Where did you get them from?’

‘Picked them up from Nadi.’

‘Awesome.’

‘Can you get me one next time you’re there?’ I asked.

She nodded. She seemed indifferent today. Not the enigmatic woman who had seduced me to coming to the island a few days ago.

‘Do you think you’ll be happy here?’ Avril asked, not looking at me.

She brushed the sand from her feet. I looked towards the window, feeling the presence of the water and its expanse all around me.

I thought about the question and what I had seen and felt so far.

There were lots of things I still wanted to find out, but I was beginning to feel the pull of the island.

Whatever it was that had made all these women stay so far had begun to embed itself in me.

Yet I still wondered why Avril would ask me this so soon after arriving.

Was she that confident that I would fall under the spell of Totini?

‘I could certainly be happy here,’ I said, not wanting to give all of my feelings away at once. I looked at Avril. ‘Are you happy?’ I dared to ask when I knew so little about her.

‘I’m happiest where others are happy, where there is justice,’ she replied bluntly. Then she looked at me and smiled. ‘You know what I mean though, don’t you, Sadie? That guy at the bar in Nadi.’ I shuddered at the mention of Tony. ‘He triggered something in you. A man has hurt you. Am I right?’

It was my turn to look down at my feet and wipe away the sand.

But I managed a nod that I hoped Avril would see.

‘That is why we must all stick together, us women. That’s why we’re here, to protect one another, to build one another up, to thrive, without the constraints of modern society but also, without the fear of men.

There are no wolf whistles, no derogatory comments, no sexism, no inequality.

No fear,’ she added finally and with condemnation.

‘And do you think the happiness on this island is down to the lack of men?’ I asked.

Avril looked at me with wide eyes. ‘What do you think?’ she asked candidly.

I sniffed a laugh. ‘I mean, you could be expected to think that. I look around, I see women helping women, building, cooking ... protecting.’ I cast my mind back to the sheer level of bravery I’d witnessed in those women yesterday.

Despite the fact it was only one man. His face came to me again, that look of hopelessness.

Avril touched her arm and I noticed for the first time that she had a long cut along it.

‘Avril, is that blood? Are you cut?’

She looked down at her arm and began rubbing at it furiously. ‘My foot hit a sharp rock and I went straight over into a bush of thorns.’

I thought about the combat situation; had they been chasing the man for very long?

Avril was so clear about why there were just women on this island. But I was still curious as to what Avril had experienced to want to start an all-female commune. She had seen the damage in me, and now sitting so close to her, I could sense that she too had been hurt.

‘Women are warriors, and while we have survived alongside men for many years, we also thrive when we are a tribe of females.’ Avril stood up and went to the other window, which overlooked the camp, and pulled back the curtain an inch.

‘Have you seen us, Sadie? Have you seen what we have achieved, what we can do?’

‘I have seen. It’s wonderful.’

Avril walked over to me and bent down so her eyes met mine. ‘You will achieve great things here, Sadie. That’s why I chose you to come here. You presented great strength the way you handled that drunk at the bar in Nadi.’

I thought back to the day I met Avril, and Tony at the bar. I had been terrified. But she had seen something in me that I hadn’t ever seen.

‘I was scared,’ I said. ‘Tony, and other men like him, they frighten me.’ The anger was ripe in my voice.

‘But you still stood your ground. You didn’t give him what he wanted or try to appease him,’ Avril encouraged.

‘I suppose I didn’t.’

‘Can you see then, what we are capable of? And there is so much more to come. I want you here, Sadie. I like you very much.’ Her eyes were locked on mine.

‘I can see you have had troubles, that you are in recovery from some kind of trauma. It is palpable; I can literally taste it. Here you will recover. Here you will grow. Here you will change; in many ways, you won’t recognise yourself.

You are a chrysalis about to evolve into a beautiful butterfly.

’ Avril was holding my hands now. I looked down at them and on her wrist where I clocked the charm bracelet again.

I looked at all the little pendants. I saw a dog, an umbrella, the letter A, a butterfly, and a Christmas tree, and that cupcake again.

I wondered who had given each one to her and for what occasion.

I felt a slight fizzle in my tummy because no one had impacted me with their words in that way before.

Not a teacher, not my parents and never a boyfriend.

Yet this life was all I had ever wanted.

But I had allowed myself to be held back.

Bruno had held me back; he had tried to prevent me from evolving into a butterfly.

This was what life was all about, lifting one another up.

Yet despite all the uplifting words and this feeling of sisterhood, in the back of my mind I thought of Ula and why she was excluded from it all.

All I could see was an image of a faceless woman I had never met.

That night in camp there was music. This time it was guitars, and there were some small conga drums being played. I was pulled to my feet by a tall black woman, who had been introduced to me as Paula. She was French and danced me into a frenzy as if her life depended on it.

When she spun me around for the final time and I thought I was going to fall over from dizziness, Avril was at my side.

‘Hey.’ She smiled.

‘Hey,’ I said back to her.

‘It is customary for the new residents to dance with everyone,’ she said.

Before I had chance to speak, she had pulled me into her, so our hips and chests were touching.

I let her lead.

‘That way, no one will feel jealous, as if they have been left out.’

She moved well and there was a real strength in her arms around me as we made our way about the camp.

Every now and then I caught the flicker of the flames from the fire out of the corner of my eye and I could feel the beat of the drums in my chest. There was a seriousness in her face that I had not seen since we had arrived.

Her grip was on my hip yet every now and again I felt her move her hand or a finger just an inch.

Then, she looked down at me and smiled, more with her eyes than her lips, and I felt airy and light as though she might lift me off my feet any moment.

I tried to remind myself that this was a moment, another core memory in the making.

Feel the beat, and feel the moment, Sadie, I reminded myself. These were the things that I would store away for eternity. Being here with these women, no restraints, no rules.

It all suddenly seemed so raw and primal. Here we were, just a handful of people existing together, with no technology and nothing but each other for company, my body pressed against that of a stranger.

Despite feeling as though I was enjoying myself on the outside, on the inside there was a fizzing in my gut, of nervous energy that just wouldn’t dissolve.

There was so much yet that I didn’t know about everyone here.

I imagined each person and the years’ worth of life stories they had to say about themselves.

I wanted it all now; I wanted them all to know me already, to trust me.

I wanted them to like me. But other thoughts conflicted with the wants and the needs.

The ifs. What if they didn’t like me? What if I didn’t fit in or meet their expectations?

What if I too went mad like the elusive Ula? What if I were cast out?

But somehow, I knew that wasn’t to be my biggest worry. I could already feel the power of Totini, the deep pull of the island, as though it already had me in its grip, and no matter what happened next, I knew it would not want to let me go easily.