Page 46 of The Beach Holiday

‘We have,’ Jane says. ‘And you know, we can carry on the chats, if you like.’ She smiles. ‘I feel as if there is a lot more you want to talk to me about. Even though they say you don’t need to be here anymore, I think you and I should carry on, see if we can work it all out between us. You’ll be right, Sadie?’ She looked down at her lap. ‘You always are.’

I began to analyse her face a little closer. There was some sadness there for sure; maybe it was the amount of time we had spent together recently, and she was the only person I had been speaking to on a regular basis beside Dr Bhaduri.

An image sliced through my mind, gone before I had time to hold on to it for long enough to properly see it, but it was an image of two young girls sitting by water, perhaps a pond, or a lake.

I looked more closely at Jane, and she looked at me and smiled.

‘You know who I am, don’t you, Sadie?’ she said softly. She delivered the line in such a way that I knew she didn’t just mean from the last few weeks.

Jane’s hand was on mine again; her face was brighter.

‘I know you and you know me. Very well.’ She was almost giggling now. I felt as if she wanted to stand up and dance around me. I could sense her excitement. ‘It’s me, Sadie. I’ve been here all this time. I’m your big sister Jane.’

34

THEN

Journal entry

We’ve arrived on the lovely Island of Kenco. It’s so quiet here. I cannot believe how quiet it is here. Maybe it’s too quiet, but then I have been used to the louder life. I like distractions. There aren’t so many here. There are a few families living here and a bit of a community. I’m not sure how long we’ll stay.

I like the kava, we’ve drunk it nearly every day. Is that bad? It makes me really relaxed. It comes out most nights. Although sometimes we have drunk homemade beer, which made a nice difference, I am craving a nice, sweet wine or a cocktail. I wonder if someone could pick up some rum from the mainland and we could make pina coladas. There are enough coconuts here to sink theTitanic. Hey, if all else fails we just live on coconuts, ha ha!

Things seem to work here, and I am really happy we came. I have wanted to travel for so long and now I am doing it. There’s this guy, Deny. He keeps eyeing us up, like he has never seen a woman before. I’ll see if he wants to join us for drinks later. Every one here does seem to be very ... what is the word I am looking for? Sedated? I don’t know if that is the word, but they seem to be very unaffected. Numbed even. Is that the right way to describe it? I guess that is a good thing but if I am being honest – and if you can’t be honest in your own journal then where can you be – I find it a bit unnerving. I know I shouldn’t and that is just the Western side of me still coming out. I just need to get used to the idea that people can live somewhere on the planet and not be affected by the stresses of the world and life.

People on Kenco Island are not living by modern standards here, it’s like I’ve stepped back in time. I know I should feel wholly comfortable with that but there’s a small part of me that doesn’t.

But island life has captured me. And I could stay here forever.

35

THEN

I was just getting into the second chapter of the journal when an ear-piercing scream rang through the camp and into the cabin. I stuffed the journal under my pillow. I didn’t know what to expect when I got outside but the scene that was unfolding in front of me was not one that I would have imagined.

Dancing around the fireplace, with just a loose piece of material wrapped around her chest that barely covered her buttocks and threatened to fall off any moment, was Ula. In her hand was a large dead fish. It looked like a baby shark, and red gunge and guts was falling out of the fish from the belly where it had been sliced through the middle.

‘Jesus,’ Avril said and began walking towards Ula. The women were standing around and it was Star, one of the mothers, who was screaming the loudest. I turned and saw Hester, who was approaching Ula with a big machete in her hand. MyGod, Hester had some pent-up frustration. Something I had only seen from Kali until now. I knew Mary and some of the others were off spearfishing and so it was Precious of all people in the end who made it to Ula first, intercepting Hester and Avril on the way. Hester looked taken back as Precious easily wrestled the machete off her. Ula must not have put up any fight because she was taller and broader than any woman. I had felt her strength from that one push in her hut earlier.

‘She needs to know who the boss is around here; she can’t keep showing up uninvited like this and trying to freak us all out with her weird ways,’ Precious said to anyone who could hear.

Ula let out a loud manic laugh and I shuddered at the noise.

Precious looked across the camp as Kali, Mary and a few others returned from spearfishing. The women walked briskly across the camp and were next to Precious. Between them, they began to try to manhandle Ula up and away from the camp. But now suddenly, she began to demonstrate her strength. She was like a sturdy Amazonian giant, and so a messy and undignified struggle ensued.

I had to turn my head away at one point as the piece of material that was tied under Ula’s shoulders rose up right around her waist and exposed the entire bottom half of her naked body.

‘Christ the Lord,’ came Hester’s voice. ‘That woman needs putting down.’

‘So much for the sisterhood,’ I shouted over to Hester, and I was sure she understood my dig as she shot me a wry smile.

I looked back over at Ula as she was carried away, kicking and screaming, but just before they made it out of the camp and onto the beach, presumably to deposit her back at her shack, Ula looked at me, her eyes brightened, and she grinned at me. Ilet out a small laugh. Was that smile aimed at me? It had to be, but why? Was she trying to tell me something? It was as though a secret coded message had just slipped between us that no one else had picked up on. I couldn’t for the life of me work out what it was that she was trying to convey in that smile. But it felt good. Reading her journal, I felt as though I was going to get to know a lot more about Ula. And I would slip it back into her hut before she had noticed it was even missing.

I glanced around self-consciously, wondering if anyone else had spotted it, or maybe they thought the smile was part of her madness. But I didn’t think that. It was something in the way she looked directly at me and the subtlety of the smile. It wasn’t the smile of a crazy woman; it also had knowledge hidden behind it. It told me that she knew something. Once the camp had gotten over her outburst maybe I would make my way over there again, see what the whole thing was about and maybe she would be a bit more coherent this time. Maybe she had been overwhelmed by my presence last time. Perhaps she was so shocked to have seen someone in her cabin that she forgot how to act.

But for now, I would go back to the cabin, hibernate for a little while and get back to reading the notebook.

Hester was perched outside her cabin as I passed. The young girl was cuddled up on her lap, the little boy next to her feet playing with the doll. A flash of the doll’s blonde hair caught my eye, and I felt a tug in my gut. I’d had an image of a woman in my mind, but reading Ula’s journal just now, could it be a coincidence that she had referred to a man called Deny? I shook the infectious thought away because it could only trigger worse thoughts. Thoughts of people dying on this island. An island where people should be thriving. Somewhere I was trying to thrive.

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