Page 32 of The Beach Holiday

I felt a warm feeling wash over me, and then the same feeling I’d had when Avril had prepped the dinner with me and praised me for my culinary skills. Just like Ula, he was an outcast of sorts. Maybe I could be the one to help him? I would definitely be on the lookout for him again.

I carried on walking down to the front beach and looked at the risen sun and wondered what the day would bring. Each one here seemed to offer something new, yet the framework was the same. Get up, eat breakfast, do chores, eat lunch, rest, or play, prepare dinner, eat dinner, sometimes sing and dance, then bed. It was a very basic existence when you broke it down to that.

I got back to camp just as breakfast was being served. A sweet coconut rice pudding with cinnamon and slices of papaya. I took a seat and began to eat as a few more women meandered into the main camp area.

I saw Avril rise from her hut. She saw me and made a beeline for me.

‘I wanted to see you before breakfast.’

I was holding my bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. I had taken one mouthful. She crouched down next to me, and I felt her arm brush against mine. She smelled sweaty from the night before. I could hear her breathing.

‘I wanted to let you know that Clara passed away in the night.’

My body suddenly felt weightless, and my arms went limp. The bowl and spoon almost slipped from my grip.

‘Dead?’ I said to clarify that passing away did mean the same thing here.

‘Yes, dead.’

I looked down at my lap at the breakfast that had been so enticing a few moments ago, which was now unappetising.

‘But. She got harpooned in the foot, I ... I don’t understand why she would die?’ My voice was shaky and high. I wanted to cry but no one seemed to show any emotion like that here. I already knew that a death was not something that would devastate anyone.

‘I know this is hard to digest this early in the morning. We didn’t think she would make the end of day yesterday, but I didn’t want to spoil your evening as you were in your element cooking.’

I glanced at Avril. There it was again, that nonchalant approach to something so serious.

‘No, Avril, you should have told me.’ I saw a flicker in Avril’s eyes as my firm voice seemed to penetrate.

‘A spear in her foot, how did she die from a spear in her foot?’ I said. My voice was beginning to get louder and I felt the stares of some of the other campmates. Did they know she had died?

‘I’m afraid Clara refused her antibiotics and became very ill very quickly.’

‘But you said she was fine and doing well.’ I knew I was crying now and I couldn’t stop my tears and nor should I, because Clara was my friend. I tried to take a few deep breaths.

‘I didn’t want to worry you. We all hoped she would pull through without the aid of medicine.’

I sat for a moment, trying to take it all in. Suddenly an image of Clara and Avril outside my hut that first day here resurfaced. She had been distraught. Avril had comforted her. I thought about the moment I had walked in on her in the hut, where she had tried to conceal something and also her emotions, but it was clear she had been crying. Now she was dead.

My mind was reeling. Avril crouched next to me, patiently waiting for me to speak again or to answer another question. But I remained quiet until she finally got up, touched my shoulder briefly and walked away. As I sat, unable to find the words to say how I felt, I saw a cup of kava that had been left out from last night. I picked it up and drank. Images of Adi, the little mute boy, and Ula, the faceless woman from the shack, were now fresh in my mind, where before they had been hiding in the shadows. And now I could add the face of Clara, and I felt their silences echo my own.

22

NOW

I know my name is Sadie. That I am very sure of. Yet everyone keeps trying to remind me. I have been told repeatedly that I speak often of Avril and I together in Fiji and came home without her. I had dreams about her, Avril. But her face in the dream was not one I recognised nor remembered. I felt the dreams came from the sessions I had with Dr Bhaduri. I felt he had imprinted those thoughts into my mind, and I had begun dreaming them. When I really think about it, I don’t remember a lot about anything. But I feel okay. I don’t feel worried or anxious. I feel fine.

I believe it is harder for everyone else to accept it. They are the ones who feel all the emotions. It’s hard even to trust or believe anything that anyone says when your own mind is telling you something completely different or even nothing at all.

They tell me I have disassociated amnesia. I’m not exactly sure what that is. But I come here and speak with Dr Bhaduri every week. He hopes he will begin to bring more information out of me.

I have been hiding the images I have been drawing in the wardrobe because I am terrified of them. But it could be time to tell. It could be time to hand them over. For a professional to look at them and tell me what they mean and tell me if I am well and truly mental and that yes, I have been a part of some terrible crimes.

23

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.

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