Page 38 of The Beach Holiday

I looked around, took in my surroundings. All around was just trees, foliage, and nothing else. What was I doing coming here in this weather, soaked through only to stand in the middle of a clearing getting even more drenched? I scanned the area once more, and my eyes landed on the mark I had left, a large rock. Yet what was that? Before my gaze landed there, I hadseen something in my peripheral sight. I turned an inch and there it was. I had missed it because I had been looking everywhere except right under my nose. Three rocks, each the size of my palm. Not a coincidence that they had all ended up there together in a small circle. They had been placed there. Was this the final resting place of Clara? They must have burnt her up on the beach and buried any remains here. I was thankful that they had done this. I couldn’t imagine her just left somewhere or tossed into the sea.

I took two steps to my right and bent down next to the shrubbery. Three small rocks perfectly placed on top of a small mound. I leaned closer. The rain was beginning to blur my vision, and I had nothing dry left to wipe my face with. The droplets kept falling as I bent to look closer. I could see one of the rocks had marks across it. I crouched, almost touching it, and then I could see there was writing. It had been scratched on the rock with a knife or another sharp piece of rock. It spelt out one word. A name. DENY.

Deny. I said the name out loud, and then a recollection hit me hard: I had heard that name before. The little girl on the beach, her doll had been called Deny.

I had come looking for the final resting place of Clara and instead I had found some sort of memorial path. I cast my mind back to the beach and the rudimentary wooden doll with the locks of bright blonde human hair glued to the head. Someone else had died here too. I wondered how she, if it was she, Deny, had died and if she had been in another accident. I thought about the mothers telling me Adi’s mother had deserted him. Was Deny Adi’s mother? Had she gone, or was she another victim of something gone wrong? Another accident?

Leaves shook behind me, and my heart rate sped up. As I turned, I thought I saw a flash of bright colour amongst the forest’s green, but my eyesight was so blurry now that it was impossible to tell for sure.

I took one last look at the memorial spot and headed forward towards the tiny path. Not knowing where it was about to take me, but then realising that I hadn’t really known much about where anything was taking me since I got on the boats and helicopter with Avril three weeks ago. As I walked, I thought about what Deny would have looked like. Would she have been tall and fearless or scared like I was? Did she come alone? Did she die alone?

The thoughts kept moving around my head and I forgot that I was still moving forward. Did I imagine the trees and shrubbery around me becoming thicker and denser? The rain was slick, falling down my face and clinging to my skin. I thought about dipping further into the woods and finding shelter for a while. I started to breathe faster, and realised I was crying although my tears were mixed with rainwater. I felt all the anger and sadness surge through. I suddenly wanted to be back at the camp.

My ears began to tune in to a sound, a loud braying. I was approaching the area where the cows and goats were kept. I was sure of it. I understood why this area was kept so far away from the main camp, because of the level of noise, even with the storm so loud overhead. I could hear the definitive sound of cattle.

Finally, the path seemed to open up. Trees swayed on either side of me; a wind hissed, thrusting in my face. This area had less protection from the storm and so I was exposed to the elements, rain now hitting me from all sides.

As the path opened up further, I began to see something through the foliage. As I allowed my eyes to adjust through the flurry of wind and rain, I eventually worked out that they were panels of wood standing upright. The wood became more prevalent with each step I took until finally I was able to see it was a cage. I saw a breed of bird I didn’t recognise. From where it was perched it looked as though it were in the cage. Maybe this was an aviary, although I’d never heard anyone mention one. I could imagine Avril wanting something so beautiful like that here. But the bird leapt from where it was perched and flew up and over the cage. Of course it wasn’t trapped in there. Caged birds went against everything Totini stood for. So maybe this was where the animals were kept, more chickens and the goats, yet I had seen cattle grazing freely around the island.

The closer I got to the cage, the more my gut began to protest. A tightening began there and expanded right through into my chest. Fear clamped in my stomach the way it did when I was unsure. An instinct told me to turn back, yet a yearning to know forced me forward.

I eventually found myself in a clearing, with the cage now directly in front of me. It was about ten foot high. I could estimate this accurately because the wall around the flat I had in the UK was ten foot. I had looked at that wall endless times, and now I was looking at a cage that represented that exact same height. Within the cage was a small hut, almost like something I had seen on a pig farm. I stared and stared at that cage, waiting to see the pig, or something that made sense in my mind. Then as I continued to stare at the cage in front of me, I saw it, the thing that my gut had been preparing me for. I saw a pair of legs, then the torso they were connected to. A slick, sweaty,tanned body with the head of a man attached. He was lying on his side, as though he were sleeping, but the rain was dripping into the cage and onto him.

A sound took my attention from him and I swung my head to my right. Another cage, this time, another man. It was impossible to tell his age. I would have guessed anywhere in his twenties or thirties. He was wearing a thin pair of trousers soaked to his skin, and he was clinging onto the thick wooden bars of the cage.

He was mouthing something, then the sound came again, the one that had brought my attention to him in the first place. The animal sound I had heard, except now I knew that animal was human.

‘Help us,’ I heard, and I swung around again to my left, to an older man with greying hair and a skinny, tanned torso. Beyond him, in a separate cage, I glimpsed a face, and I had a flash of recognition. It was the same man that I had seen in the clearing when I had first arrived, the one who had been marched off by Precious and Kali. The look of hopelessness was still on his face as though it were permanently etched.

I looked again at the sleeping man in front of me and then again to the man who was calling out to me, then my eyes roamed beyond and as far as I could see was cage upon cage, each one containing a man.

28

THEN

I didn’t dare move in case I disturbed something or set off an alarm, or that somehow if they all saw me, they could come charging for me, despite being behind what appeared to be sturdy gates. I didn’t want to even think of the wordprison, but it was obvious to me that this was what this was. An image of the man from the first day came back to me, how efficiently he had been dealt with, as though they had done it before. These men had to have gotten here somehow, and Avril must have been instrumental in all of this. I looked again at the man I had presumed to be a pirate. She never did tell me that he wasn’t.

‘I’ve not seen you help us?’ the man to my left shouted across the noise of his storm. ‘You’re new,’ he called. His voice was husky as though he had talked or shouted a lot. I looked around and beyond at the other cages, at a rough quick count I made it fifteen cages. Fifteen cages, each with one man inside. The menwere in various positions of sitting and lying. Most displayed a demeanour that suggested they had given up somehow. That they were just letting the rain do its thing as though surrendering to the elements. A few of them were half in half out of the small hut, which was just big enough to take a full body.

‘Come over here.’ The man had a South African accent; I could hear that clearly enough. He was the only one who was standing up.

‘I’ve seen them all. You are new,’ he called again. ‘Come here.’

I took a tentative step forward. He was behind bars. He couldn’t get to me.

I was a few feet away from him when he spoke again.

‘Come closer. I’m not dangerous.’

‘Stand back, Sadie!’ I jumped at the sound of Avril’s voice, loud and shrill behind me. It made some of the other men stir, a muscle reflex to the sound of her voice. A few even dragged themselves inside their huts as though her voice elicited a dreaded fear in them.

‘Don’t listen to him, Sadie. Move back.’ I turned to my side and saw that Avril was right there.

‘Get behind me.’

I did as she said. She was carrying a rifle again, something I had only ever seen her carry when a man was around. ‘These men are dangerous. Just like all men. That’s why they need to be here. That’s why you are on this side and they are on that side, Sadie. Don’t you forget it. Don’t you forget Bruno, Sadie, what he did to you.’

My body tensed at the way Avril had brought Bruno back to life, as though he were suddenly here on the island.

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