Page 52 of The Beach Holiday

THEN

When I sat down to eat dinner with the camp that evening, the atmosphere had an edge that I could almost taste in the food.

James and his friend, whose name I still didn’t know, were seated and seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as they were last night. I even began to doubt that anything was going to happen and maybe they might just be put back on a boat tomorrow and taken back to the mainland.

But Avril couldn’t just let men arrive here and then leave and not be sure they wouldn’t tell others who could then arrive uninvited. I was sure that these men would never leave Totini.

Avril prepared and cooked all the dinner this evening and that was interesting. She had never cooked and served before.

When the kava came around I passed and when I looked up Avril was watching me.

I was curious as to why we were drinking it so often now.

There was usually a break between evenings; it gave everyone a chance to recover if they’d had too much the previous night.

But there was a lot of deviation just recently.

I was itching to get back to the diary – Ula deserved for me to get to the end of the book to discover what had happened to her.

I forced myself to make polite conversation with Star, the mother who was more relaxed than Hester.

But right now I didn’t trust any of them.

All it would take would be for me to have a drink of kava and my true thoughts would surface and I might say them out loud.

When my bowl of food arrived my mouth was filled with saliva and not in a good way.

I was worried I was going to be sick, as the thoughts began to spiral through my mind.

Then I began to worry that I wouldn’t be able to eat the food, and everyone would be looking at me and wondering why I wasn’t eating.

I looked down at the bowl in my lap and tried to keep my face bright and the conversation flowing.

The kava came around and I refused again.

Avril was up and still speaking to the group, but I had stopped hearing her words; I was suddenly thinking of home and what I would be doing if I was hanging out for a whole evening with my parents, which I did once a month.

I wanted to speak to them more than ever.

I felt a small lump form in my throat and I swallowed it down with a mouthful of food.

Avril’s words eventually faded to nothing, and I was grateful that she had finally ceased speaking but no sooner had I found myself grateful for that than a low murmuring began.

I couldn’t work out what it was at first. I thought it was thunder and then I looked around the camp circle and I could see everyone’s lips moving, and the murmuring became louder until it was obvious they were repeating sounds over and over, turning into a chant, some sort of mantra.

It seemed foreign to me, but it became louder and more primal until I realised everyone was making this sound, everyone except me and the two men.

Were they mad? Had they drunk too much kava?

‘I’m feeling really tired so I’m going to get an early night.

’ I had to shout for Star to hear me because the chanting had got really loud and I wasn’t sure if she was listening, but by now Avril was on her feet and stamping her foot into the dry dusty ground and suddenly everyone was up and dancing on the spot.

I slipped away from the crowd and retreated towards the cabins.

I walked past all of them, only looking back once before I reached the pathway that would lead me to the beach, and as I did I saw the whole camp up and dancing around the campfire.

From where I stood I had never felt more like an outsider.

Memories of Clara and the men in the prison.

No matter how much Avril tried to make out that this was a haven, I just couldn’t get it out of my head that this is where she and the rest of the camp had incarcerated many men.

I ran up the first part of the pathway and the moon guided me all the way to the beach.

I turned left and headed towards Ula’s hut.

Out of everyone, she was the one I needed to be with.

Despite how everyone called her mad, I felt drawn to her in a way that I couldn’t explain.

Avril had brought me here to show me my strengths, and now I needed to use those strengths to my own advantage.

At the foot of the hill that led to the hut I looked upwards; and there stood Ula, illuminated by the torch she was holding.