Page 29 of The Beach Holiday

THEN

Everything changed. The doubts I had in my mind, instead of pushing them away in favour of the tranquillity and beauty of Totini, I let them fester, toying with each conversation and contradiction.

I began to look at the camp differently.

It was no longer just a place of sanctuary and escape where people came to be their most authentic selves without the constraints of everyday society amongst a paradise backdrop.

It was now a place where people died. It was a place where people were alive one minute and then dead the next.

It could have happened to any one of us.

It could happen to me. It could happen to Avril.

None of us were immune from death, and with the lack of laws and protection and access to proper medical help, any of us could be next.

The campmates went on about their days, and as I moved into my second and then third week on the island, I felt a hardening develop.

Where I had been affected so much by things like Ula living alone and then Clara being carried away in the woods – to die alone – I now felt as though I had lost a fraction of empathy, and in its place, I had grown a thicker piece of skin.

Was that the piece of myself that I had to lose to enjoy the paradise that Avril had talked of?

It didn’t feel wrong; that was for sure.

I understood that was how people had to be here to have some existence.

If they were constantly pent up with daily frustrations, emotions and worries, what was the point?

Life wasn’t perfect anywhere, I had now come to understand; it was how you chose to live it regardless of whatever else was going on around you.

Surrender a piece of yourself for paradise. That was the mantra. I could do that.

The hardening was also showing on the outside too.

My hair was dry and was beginning to mat at the ends.

I hadn’t brought any conditioner with me and I was considering not washing it for a few weeks and allowing the natural oils to seep through.

My fingernails were dirty, my skin a little burnt and crispy; my feet were hardening where I was walking barefoot every day.

But still within me, a softness lay for the things I missed, like my family and the few friends I cared enough about.

And I missed Clara. I had longed for her company when she had been convalescing.

Now I understood that Avril and the others all knew the wound was eventually going to kill her and they took her away somewhere quietly to do so.

But I was haunted by images of Clara in her last days and hours.

How had she been feeling? What had she been thinking?

She had no one there with her in the end and I felt a weight of responsibility for that.

I should have pushed harder to see her, to be with her, even if it was only to hold her hand.

But somehow the very act of death felt less apparent here.

It went hand in hand with the way of life because there was so very little else to worry or care about; it seemed less significant.

It was as though, in the UK, we were so consumed with so many other irrelevant things from food to shopping to work to clothes, and fashion and celebrity, that when a death occurred it became amplified, as though we were glad of the distraction from all the other bullshit.

We relished it; we absorbed ourselves within it.

Here on Totini, we were animals. A member of our pack had died, and we were all carrying on.

I was trying to carry on, and I knew I would have to hide my sadness because there was little room for it here.

Because apparently my cooking had been such a hit I had been allocated the role of camp cook three times a week.

But I knew this was Avril’s way of distracting me from Clara.

It fulfilled my need to produce something for the camp, but not so much that I became frustrated by having to do it all the time.

Others liked to cook too and especially when meat was involved.

There wasn’t a lot of meat to eat on the island, but also adopting a more plant-based lifestyle seemed appropriate for somewhere like Totini, and there was a lack of cold areas to contain the slaughtered meat.

But when we did eat it, it felt like a special occasion.

Everyone seemed to revel in eating it as though it were something sacred.

Which I appreciated as that was how it should be.

Mass meat farming and consumption disgusted me now.

I had almost begun to lose track of the days, and time was also not something I thought about often.

Mealtimes were not taken on the hour but whenever food was ready or when people began to gather around the camp or the gong was sounded.

If I just continued the way I was, memories of Clara might eventually fade.

I wanted to talk about Clara eventually, but even thinking her name brought tears to my eyes.

However, I wasn’t going to just give up and ask to return home.

I felt I had so much to prove to Avril, Kali, the rest of the camp and myself.

Avril found me after breakfast one morning, a few weeks after Clara’s death.

I had been spending a lot of time on my own and admittedly kept my distance from her.

Words kept coming at me, half-formed sentences, fuelled by an anger I didn’t want to feel here.

The two were incompatible: utopia and this rage that was bubbling up within me.

I didn’t want it to become something more, something so fierce that it erupted.

That kind of anger was the worst, the hardest to clear up and to make excuses for.

I knew, I had been the recipient once. I wondered if Avril was about to become the recipient because I was so frustrated with her, yet she had already done so much for me.

Gave me this opportunity, which I knew wasn’t given to just anyone.

I was struggling with the emotions I was feeling.

One minute I longed for the attention that Avril gave me, the way she made me think that I was strong and capable and reminded me that the reason I was here was to grow.

The next minute that rage was there, simmering.

I knew it could only be because of Clara’s death.

But maybe it was all the other little things, like the way Avril had lied to me about how far away the island was.

Exactly how remote it was and cut-off from civilisation I was going to be.

Although I had formed bonds with most of the women here, it was Clara I had gelled with the most. I just couldn’t let it go the way the rest of the women had. I wasn’t there yet.

‘Are you okay?’ Avril asked. She had been asking me this often and I appreciated her checking in with me.

I nodded. I didn’t want to be the only one who showed any signs of distress over Clara.

‘Why don’t you and I have a picnic tonight? On our own. On the beach.’

I felt my spirit lift. I had been feeling the familiarity of each day and with the nagging thoughts of Clara, I would do anything to forget for a while.

We left the camp just before sunset with a basket of food plus a small amount of kava.

I had taken to drinking it more often since the morning that Avril broke the news about Clara’s death.

It helped to tone down any sudden emotions.

There seemed to be an abundance of it anyway, so why not use it to my advantage?

It helped me sleep during the very hot nights as well.

The sun was lowering and we would need to hurry if we were going to make the sun setting.

‘You look lovely,’ I said as we walked. I wanted to appease Avril, to make up for my absence in mind and negative vibes of the last few weeks.

‘Thanks.’ She smiled.

Avril had pinned her hair to one side and had put a pink flower in it. She was wearing her green sarong and a turquoise bikini top. I was wearing shorts and a bikini top. ‘I should have made more of an effort,’ I said looking down at my attire.

‘I hope you understand I’ve been in shock these last few weeks.’

‘Over Clara – of course, Sadie. Why wouldn’t you be? Clara was your room buddy and I know you two got on well.’

‘I just didn’t expect anything like that to happen here.’

‘We’re not immortals, Sadie,’ Avril said. ‘We’ve lost people in the time we’ve been here.’

I immediately wanted to ask who and I thought of Ula alone on the cliff. Had she lost someone?

We began the walk to the beach.

‘And I need to apologise too, Sadie. I’ve been a little absent in mind and body since you got here. A lot has been going on. Things have been... evolving. And the women, they look to me to resolve everything, and sometimes, I can’t, you know.’

‘Things are a little different to how I imagined them to be.’ I had an image of Clara in my mind, her smiling face already a blur and fading.

‘I can see that,’ Avril responded.

‘I mean it’s beautiful. I’m just intrigued.

..’ I spoke slowly, trying to choose the right words ‘...how differently people react, like to Clara for example. I was horrified; I won’t lie.

But everyone took it in their stride.’ I looked at Avril.

‘As though it happened every day.’ I laughed uncomfortably.

I thought it was almost as though they were desensitised to it.

But I didn’t say those words, because I was scared to even think them.

Because how could I truly exist somewhere where death was ignored?

‘It is a very different way of life here and most women have seen a lot in their lives, which is why they have chosen this existence, something pure, no dramas. You know. They just want to live in the moment, most of the time.’

I nodded, but I was thinking about how things might evolve from here.

Would I stop being my complete self? Would I stop feeling sorrow, horror and anger because I was now an inhabitant of this island?

They were all valid emotions. To suppress them would be to stop being who I was.

Or to be human. I know I wanted to change and grow, become stronger away from Bruno, but I didn’t want this as well.

We didn’t speak then for the rest of the journey except to comment on the excursion, dimming light, or how we were both hungry and ready to eat.

We reached the beach as the sky turned a brilliant orange and pink.

‘I don’t think I will ever get used to this,’ I said but I wasn’t expecting a response because of course it was too spectacular for words and I had already said too much when no words needed to be spoken at all.

I laid all the food out on the blanket, and we began picking and talking about the camp life, and Avril asked if I had intentions to go back out spearfishing again.

I stopped swallowing. A tomato sat in my throat as I felt it swelling up.

No one had expected me to start spearfishing again, since Clara.

Avril was talking about me getting back out there as though the incident had never happened.

I swallowed hard and the tomato began making its way down my oesophagus.

I went to answer her question the best way I could, then stopped myself.

But a scream, loud and piercing, carried across the beach towards us.

Avril was on her feet and looking up and down the beach.

‘Was that an animal?’ I asked. ‘It sounded like an animal.’

‘It wasn’t an animal.’ Avril sounded adamant.

‘Human then?’

‘The child.’

‘Adi?’ I asked.

Avril looked at me.

‘You’ve seen him too?’ I asked, for I knew it couldn’t have been the other boy who never strayed too far from his mothers’ sides.

Avril sat back down on the sand, but she seemed agitated. The sound had obviously bothered her.

‘Should we try and see if he is okay?’ I asked.

Then when it came again, louder this time, Avril was up and running along the beach. I found I was following her instinctively. She was right to run. What if the child was hurt or in trouble?

The moon provided us with enough light if we needed it, but we relied on our ears to work out where the sound came from and where it would lead us.

We ran up the beach for what felt like a long time before we came across the remains of a fire.

Someone had poured water over it. There was no smoke but there was the scent in the air.

Avril stood with her hands on her hips, looking up and down the beach.

Eventually, we heard a rustle from the bushes in front of us.

I tentatively took a step forward and Avril grabbed my hand.

‘Sadie, wait.’

I looked at her. ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I said.

I knew it would probably be Adi, the little boy I had met walking to the beach, and he had been perfectly sweet.

I hadn’t seen him since, which was a bit strange.

You could walk around the entire island in two hours, but the shrubbery and trees in the middle of the island were dense and it would be perfectly easy to live or get lost amongst those and not be seen for a long time.

I took another step forward, reaching out with my hands to part the foliage.

‘Sadie, I really think you should be careful. You don’t know—’

Before she could finish what she was saying a pair of hands shot out of the bushes and grabbed both of mine.

I screeched loudly and went to step back, trying to pull away as I did, but the hands were latched on tight.

I looked down at them, long bony fingers, which looked as if they belonged to a female, and even with only the soft lighting I could tell the hands were covered with blood.

Horrified, I pulled harder, writhing both my arms until the grip was finally loosed and my arms were free.

I looked down at my hands and from the little light that was left I could see dark shades in streaks.

‘Oh God, oh God.’ And then I looked up. The hands had gone and in their place was the face of a woman.

A young woman, blood smeared across both of her cheeks, but it was her eyes that spoke to me first, intensely staring into mine.

Then her mouth opened. It was barely a whisper, but the one-syllable word was easy for me to hear and understand.

‘Run.’