by Karen Swan
Dev was dumbstruck.
‘Now, just explain to me again, why we’ve been friends for over a decade and I’ve not been on this before?’ Holly asked slowly, turning a full 360.
‘Because I hardly ever use it myself . . . Sit wherever you like, Dev,’ Tara said, patting his shoulder comfortingly. ‘There are no set places. It’s very relaxed.’
‘Yeah?’
Tara dropped into the nearest seat and checked her phone for messages. Rory was three minutes away. She closed her eyes as Holly, giddy with choice, immediately began fussing about which seats they should have. She dropped her head back, trying to summon her fantasy about the feel of the sand between her toes, tropical waters lapping by her ankles. She reminded herself she could be barefoot all week; flip-flops would be her only concession to shoes, and that was only on account of the ants. Everything was going to be fine. In spite of the feelings to the contrary, she would one day sleep again and her head was not going to explode. She just needed to get away from here, a little time and space away from her everyday life—
‘Sorry, sorry! Bastard traffic through Bayswater.’
Her eyes opened to the sight of her brother coming down the aisle, looking Monaco-ready in pale buff narrow chinos rolled at the ankles, tobacco suede car shoes and a pale blue shirt, accessorized with a vintage Colombian stitched polo belt that had been their father’s – back when he wore a thirty-two-inch waist – and a pair of sleek gunmetal Porsche sunglasses.
Zac, right behind him, was no less impressive in his Brooks Brothers suit. ‘Hey Twig.’
Both of them kissed her and greeted the others; no one seemed to notice that she was fundamentally altered, the black spot on her soul seemingly leaving no trace.
‘Please tell me we’re not the last for once?’ Miles asked, looking delighted by her lack of Plus One.
‘You’re not the last,’ she replied obediently. ‘Rory got stuck in traffic too. He’s a minute away.’
‘See? What did I tell you?’ Zac said, slapping Miles once, hard, on the backside. ‘Plenty of time.’
Miles cracked a grin that was all his own – it somehow occupied only the right side of his mouth, tipping it up boyishly. He smiled a lot these days. After several years in the dating wilderness, when he’d been chased and seduced for all the wrong reasons, life had changed for the better when he’d met Zac, a corporate lawyer. Miles loved to recount how their eyes had met over the conference table . . . Tara just loved to see her little brother happy. Zac was seven years older and comfortingly protective of him, and they kept their social circle small and intimate these days. ‘Well fuck me, that’s a first.’
‘Pottymouth!’ Jimmy cried, racing back down the aisle with the hand that had been only moments before up to the wrist in chocolate eclairs outstretched in front of Miles, awaiting a fine.
‘Say what now?’ her brother asked, bewildered.
‘No swearing in front of my nine-year-old godson, please. Kindly cough up a pound.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Every time,’ Tara nodded, as the attendant came round with a tray of flutes of champagne. She flinched as she took hers. Celebrating was the last thing she felt like doing. Drinking to the point of oblivion on the other hand . . . ‘Hols has had to take out an overdraft.’
‘He’s saving up for an electric scooter,’ Dev said proudly. ‘He’s almost there, too.’
‘Well, he certainly will be by the end of this week,’ Zac laughed, loosening his tie and reaching for his glass of champagne.
‘Cheers!’ Holly said, taking one for herself and holding her glass aloft until the others clinked it too. She drank deeply, with the zeal of someone released from a fifteen-hour shift; someone who had started her day pulling a Coke bottle from a man’s rectum and was ending it seated on a stitched-diamond cream leather plane seat, heading for a tropical paradise with her best friend and family.
Tara’s own day hadn’t followed that upward trajectory and, try as she might, she couldn’t click out of this sense of isolation; she felt set apart from everyone, locked behind a glass wall and unable to reach even the people she loved most in this world. A little girl had died because of her negligence and oversight. Why couldn’t she cry or talk about it? Why couldn’t she feel anything?
She looked out of the window and saw Rory stepping out of the terminal building, half-running, half-walking across the tarmac, a copy of The Times clutched in one hand and his bag rolling behind him. His suit jacket was flying open in the wind, his tie flapping over his shoulder. He didn’t look dressed for the tropics (unlike Dev, who was already in a tropical print shirt and Jesus sandals) and she felt a rush of relief at the mere dependable sight of him. He would make her feel better. As soon as she told him, he would know what she should do.
She waited expectantly for him to come up the steps, for his face to appear in the doorway. She smiled as everyone cheered at his arrival and watched as he threw his arms in the air jubilantly in response, playing the part. Zac put a glass in his hand before he’d even taken off his jacket. There was a party feeling on board, and the engines weren’t even on yet.
‘Hey, you,’ he said, sliding into the seat beside her and kissing her lightly on the mouth. ‘Sorry I’m late. Good day?’
‘I called in sick, actually. Wasn’t feeling so great.’
He looked surprised, then frowned. ‘Another headache?’
She gave her shrug. ‘Can’t shake it off. Can’t sleep through it.’
He squeezed her knee sympathetically in reply. ‘I’ve got some heavy-duty ibuprofen if you want?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
Rory opened his bag and rifled for the little silver packet as Miles brought up his Ibiza playlist and Holly began dancing in her seat. Tara gave a wan smile. She was going to be stuck on this plane for the next twelve hours with her best friend and her brother calling the shots, neither of whom believed that less was more, or that good things come to those who wait. ‘I might be better off with a tranquillizer than headache pills,’ she said, as he handed her a couple.
The stairs were pulled up, the engines fired and she looked out of the window, watching as the tarmac began to roll by, seeing how the horizon leaned to a tilt and the houses became small, until eventually the clouds wound around the plane in tatty rags and they emerged soaring into the blue.
She felt like a ball shot from a catapult as she stared from the windows at the world below. Everything looked peaceful at this distance. She had a feeling of having escaped from something terrible down there and that she would be safe if she could just stay up here, suspended in time, as well as space—
‘Oh bugger!’ Rory startled beside her, so violently he almost sloshed his champagne over his lap.
‘What?’ she cried, alarmed.
He looked back at her with wide eyes. ‘I forgot the electric toothbrush charger adaptor plug.’
‘The—’ She stared at him, her heart beating at triple time.
Jimmy came and stood in front of him with a hand outstretched. ‘Pottymouth. One pound, please.’
A helicopter was waiting on the tarmac a short distance from the plane, its headlights shining into the darkness and ready to whisk them straight off to Talamanca. Tara stood at the top of the steps and stared out, but not even the San José Highlands were visible on this inky night, and the stars remained obscured from sight by the intense blaze of city lights. She took a lungful of the warm air instead, as if the foreignness of her new environs could be tasted, even if not seen. It seemed woody compared to the granular minerality of London, somehow heavier and more dense, and she felt her blood gently warm.
‘Chop-chop,’ Rory said, patting her on the bottom to nudge her forwards. ‘Wide load coming through.’
She glanced back and saw Dev struggling to carry a very long, sleeping Jimmy. He was as limp as a noodle. She jogged down the stairs and stepped out of the way on the tarmac to let him and Holly pass. Holly was looking fairly wild, as anyone might after a fi
fteen-hour shift and a magnum of champagne on a transatlantic flight. They’d all drunk far too much.
‘Wow, it’s actually not raining!’ Miles exclaimed, sticking his head out of the plane after them. ‘I thought they only had two settings here: rain, and more rain.’
‘Ror, it’s best to check messages here while you still can,’ she said, sounding as hungover as she felt. ‘The signal at Talamanca’s shocking.’
He frowned. ‘Really?’
‘By which I mean . . . non-existent.’ She watched the look of panic bloom across his face. ‘On the plus side, we’ll get to properly switch off and relax.’ She gave an approximation of an optimistic smile as he began to look anxious.
‘Hmm.’ He pulled his phone from his pocket and began scrolling quickly through his emails. At some point in the journey, she saw now, he had changed out of his suit and was now in chino shorts and a polo shirt. She didn’t remember exactly when. She had succeeded in drinking herself to distraction and had slept fitfully for a few hours. But at least she had slept.
Tara flicked through her emails too – the usual mix of marketing rubbish she never opened but couldn’t be bothered to unsubscribe to, and medical news. She saw she had a missed call, which was something of a novelty. Did people still use phones to actually . . . make calls?
She dialled her voicemail and listened in, watching blankly as Holly clambered inelegantly into the helicopter and reached back down to take her sleeping child from her husband’s arms. Tara turned away.
‘Tara?’ The voice was clipped, efficient. Instantly recognizable. ‘It’s Helen McPherson calling. Ring me back, would you? I understand you’re on annual leave for a week but I want to go over a few things with you with regard to the Miller case. Just a quick chat. Okay thanks.’
The Miller case. That little girl was a ‘case’ now?
Tara disconnected, feeling light-headed and like she wanted to throw up. Helen McPherson was the hospital’s clinical director, and a ruthless bureaucrat. She didn’t suffer fools or egos, and she was a slave to AI, especially when it promised to save money or lives, or both. The mortality rates under her stewardship had dropped seven per cent in eighteen months and Tara had heard whispers she was being lined up for a place on the Trust’s Board. This was no mere quick chat she wanted – the hospital’s youngest (and most newsworthy) consultant had left a blade inside the body of a four-year-old girl and that made her look bad. No, that message was the verbal equivalent of throwing a grenade across the floor – leaving Tara waiting for the bang.
Chapter Twelve
Everyone always seemed to react in the same way when they stepped into a tropical forest for the first time. First their gaze went up, looking for a star-freckled sky that could now only be glimpsed in small pieces; then their arms went out as they slowly revolved on the spot. It seemed almost a spiritual response, as though for once, the body was being driven by the soul.
Even if it hadn’t been the middle of the night, there wasn’t much to see here; only the lights of the helicopter gave them any visibility at all. There was no terminal building (or even a hut), no giant H painted on the ground. The helipad wasn’t visible from the road and was nothing more than a rogue bare patch where some old trees had once fallen. And yet Tara watched as Holly, Dev and Jimmy went through those motions of awe, an expression of wonderment on their faces beneath the giant ceibas.
Holly looked back at her with big, shining eyes. ‘I like what you’ve done with the place.’
Tara laughed. Holly could always bring a smile to her face.
Rory didn’t seem to have noticed yet; he was being useful and helping the pilot bring the bags out. Miles and Zac were on their phones, pointlessly checking for wifi in case things had changed since their last visit seven months ago. It was one in the morning, and they were all exhausted after over twelve hours of travelling.
‘For the record, I’m never going back,’ Holly said, staring up at the jagged patch of sky; it looked like a caterpillar-nibbled black leaf.
Tara smiled tiredly. ‘Tell me that when you’re a fortnight into the wet season. There isn’t enough serum in the world could make you stay here then.’
Holly looked suitably perturbed by the thought of the frizz.
Tara looked around, trying to see this place with fresh eyes too, but it was like unknowing the twist in a thriller film. It couldn’t be done. Innocence, once lost, was lost forever. She had been coming to this pocket of Costa Rican jungle since she was nine years old and Miles was seven. For eleven years, it had been her place of refuge, the holiday she looked forward to all year, a time-out from the world where boarding school was far away and the management boards couldn’t reach her father . . . They could all be themselves here in a way they couldn’t anywhere else. She felt it was the only place where she truly lived freely.
That had all stopped abruptly, of course, when the national park project had been announced. It was too tied up for her now with Alex Carter’s betrayal and the way he’d used her to get to her father. She couldn’t think of one without the other, and for almost a decade it had been easier not to think of either by simply not visiting. But she had missed coming here and it had forced her to deny a part of herself. It had been another loss on top of loss, she realized, as she stood there feeling the forest breathe around her. She could smell the sweet scent of orchids and the rich, woody earth; she could hear yellow-throated toucans yelping, thought she glimpsed a flash of bright feathers as a parakeet flew between canopies, heard the chatter of monkeys not too far away. She felt the forest vibrate and hum in her bones, staking its claim in her heart again and telling her she shouldn’t have stayed away so long; not because of him.
Two sets of headlights were bouncing along the dirt track towards them.
‘Jed!’ Miles cheered, reaching into the leading white open Jeep as it came to a stop and gripping the driver’s hand. ‘I thought we said one sharp?’
‘Sharpish. You’re on Tico Time now, buddy,’ Jed grinned. ‘Time to get out of your straitjacket.’
Miles laughed, doing exactly that as he shrugged off his unlined linen blazer and swung himself into the front seat. Zac slid into the back, doing a fancy-grip handshake with Jed that proved they had met several times over the years now. Tara felt another pang of regret over time lost. Memories wasted.
‘Tara. It has been too long,’ Jed said, kneeling on the seat and looking back at her, leaning his arms on the roll bars overhead. ‘What took you so long?’
Tara felt Miles’s stare become heavier upon her. He knew what had kept her away; he alone in their family knew what Alex had done, and had been adamant their parents should know the full scale of his betrayal. But in spite of their mother’s lingering misgivings, to this day their father still believed she and Alex had been ‘just good friends’ and that the introduction had been facilitated for the purposes of the conservation project alone. She had had to beg her brother to stay quiet. Neither she, nor he – nor Alex too, no doubt – were under any illusions that if the truth was to become known, her father would pull support immediately. And as much as she had fantasized about striking back and stripping him of his prize, she also knew the potential of this project was far more important than avenging her single shattered heart.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t dream of it. In ten years there had never been an apology and he had never made a meaningful attempt to win her back. No midnight phone calls. No pleading texts. Perhaps he thought it was to his credit that he didn’t muddy the waters any more than he already had? He had got what he’d come for and he just let her slip away. She had been collateral damage, that was all; it was unfortunate, but also inevitable. Besides, he knew what he’d done was unforgivable. Irreversible. He’d even tried warning her. ‘He has the power of conviction and if he believes in something, he backs it up, a hundred per cent.’ He’d said that to her once, lying in bed, her believing this was intimacy, never dreaming it was a confession. ‘Whenever he’s done the wrong thin
g, it’s been for the right reasons.’
The right reason was all that remained now and the memory of their relationship was just a distant twist of smoke, somewhere out of sight, over the horizon.
‘What can I say? Med school was hard, Jed,’ she shrugged. ‘And it’s not much easier now I’m qualified, either.’
‘That’s why you should have come here – to relax!’ he smiled back at her, with simple rationale. Even the way he said the word ‘relax’ made her feel relaxed.
‘Well, at least I’ve brought my friends at long last. That’s my partner, Rory,’ she said, pointing to where her boyfriend was hauling their luggage into the backs of the Jeeps; Rory waved a hand in greeting, looking more like a baggage handler than a heart surgeon. ‘And Dev, Holly and their son Jimmy.’
‘How old are you, Jimmy?’ Jed asked, looking over at the shy, sleepy boy.
‘Nine.’
‘Tall for nine!’ Jed remarked, looking impressed. ‘Do you surf?’
Jimmy shook his head.
‘Would you like to?’
Jimmy nodded.
‘Then we’ll have you surfing by the time you go back,’ Jed grinned, giving him a thumbs up.
‘Jed taught me and Miles how to surf,’ she added to her godson. ‘He’s the best.’
‘Come on, then. You must be tired. Let’s get you to your beds,’ Jed said, swinging back down into his seat.
‘You go with these guys. I’ll sit with the others,’ Rory said to her, immediately seeing how the seating arrangements were going to be restricted and Jimmy would need to sit on one of his parents’ laps.
‘Sure?’ He was always so considerate.
He winked and joined the Mothas in their Jeep.
Jed opened up a coolbox and handed out cans of beer, beads of condensation trickling down the sides. Tara opened hers and took several long, thirsty gulps; the effects of the humidity were immediate, her skin already beading with sweat even at this time of night.