by Karen Swan
Alex shrugged his pack on like he was a cool uncle giving a piggyback. Tara grappled with hers, almost toppling backwards when she straightened up too quickly without planting her feet square first. Alex laughed, but didn’t offer to help.
‘Uh – what about that?’ she asked, pointing to the microlight as he went to set off.
Alex looked at it. ‘What about it?’
‘Surely we’re not just going to leave it here?’
‘What else would we do with it? I’ve got the keys. It’s locked up so the monkeys can’t get in and use it.’
He was being sarcastic. She exhaled impatiently. ‘I meant, how will you ever find it again?’
He blinked. ‘The same way I found it just now. This park is my playground, Tara. I know it pretty well.’
She glowered at him, hating his cockiness. He was always so sure of himself, he never felt any self-doubt.
They set off, Tara two steps behind again, her gaze on his heels, but unlike with Jed, they barely spoke. She wanted it to be very clear they weren’t friends, this wasn’t social. Also, Alex was a lot fitter than Jed and he walked at a pace that would have been tiring going downhill, carrying nothing at all, much less uphill with a small house on her back. Talking wasn’t really an option at this speed. But her pride meant she refused to ask him to slow down and in spite of the inclines and humidity, she kept up, the sweat pouring down her cheeks, her back, her legs, in her hair, which was now roughly tied back in a ponytail.
She didn’t know how much ground they were covering. It was hard going, having to fight back, with every step, the tangle of plants that might sting or scratch her, drop a heavy branch or be hiding something with teeth. The heavy morning rain had suffused an already saturated landscape, making their feet slide even in their big boots, and he kept stopping every so often to drink from the large, waxy leaves that had bellied out, collecting rainwater.
Without a word, she copied him. It was vital, she knew, to remain hydrated, especially as the last of the afternoon heat was making them steam like puddings. Dusk was already approaching and they would soon need to set up camp for the night before it grew dark. Sunsets were always fast here, with none of the lingering, bleeding skies of home. Within a space of minutes the sky would just ripen and bruise, and the day would die.
For the first time, she thought about the reality of sleeping out here. Everything had been so spur-of-the-moment, sitting in the hammocks with Holly that morning – had it really only been this morning? – that she’d considered only the steps they would take once the Awa’s treatments failed. She’d thought ahead to the contacts she had in central America, and whether it would be better to fly the boy to Miami instead. Not once had she given any thought to what she actually had to go through first – sleeping on a hammock, in an open space with no walls, no roof, nothing to stop the monkeys crawling down the trees, tails curled in curiosity; nothing to stop the snakes slithering and spiders skittering along the rope ties . . .
‘This is a good spot,’ Alex said finally. She looked up to find him standing ahead of her, scanning an area that looked identical to every other patch of land they had just passed through. They’d been walking for ninety minutes or so, she guessed, and the light was already fading.
‘The river’s just over there and running quickly. Hear it?’ he asked, but it wasn’t really a question. He was just thinking out loud, his gaze on the ground, in the trees. ‘No standing water nearby that I can see, so the mozzies won’t murder us.’ He turned slowly on the spot. ‘And those trees look a good distance for the hammocks.’ His eyes narrowed as he looked more closely at the leaves. ‘I don’t think it rained here earlier either, which would be a result.’ He reached out a hand and rubbed some leaves between his fingers. ‘Should hopefully mean we’ll be able to get a fire going more easily.’
Tara wanted to unbuckle her backpack. She desperately wanted to take the weight off her shoulders, lie down sprawled on some fresh soft English grass, feel a breeze on her face, listen to some cows munching nearby . . . She swatted at a mosquito instead that kept bothering her, waiting for Alex’s cue. She refused to let him see that she was struggling with this, to know that it had been a terrible idea to even think of doing this, much less to continue it when she’d had every excuse – every possible justification – to abandon the cause and go back to the beach. And her friends. And Rory.
Rory!
She realized she could have called him from the rangers’ station to explain her plan; he would be up by now (surely) and she could have promised him a picnic at the waterfalls on her return, or a day on a chartered boat, just the two of them. But he hadn’t crossed her mind. Her day had been too . . . eventful to be daydreaming about her boyfriend and she shook her head now, as though swatting away her guilt.
‘You okay?’ Alex asked. ‘Mozzies bothering you?’
‘Fine. I’m fine.’
‘I’ve got some Deet if you need it.’
‘I said I’m fine.’
He inhaled sharply at her brusque tone, looking irritated. ‘Okay, well let’s set up here then.’ And he unbuckled his backpack. Without hesitation, Tara did the same, rolling her shoulders and feeling light as air as she shed its weight. A groan escaped her and she caught his head automatically turn in her direction at the sound.
She watched as Alex unrolled his hammock, fixing it to two trees that seemed very conveniently located, only having to hack at some low-growing branches that would otherwise poke him in the back. Then he secured a nylon line higher up the trunks and draped a large mosquito net over it, so that it fell on both sides over the hammock. Finally, using another fly line on a tree set just a little further back, he draped a tarp that angled above the hammock and fell behind one side of it, creating a wall.
Tara looked on, irritated by the impressive makeshift ‘room’ he had created – a bed that was off the ground, dry, protected from insects and any rain. He looked over at her. ‘Want me to do yours?’
She scowled at him. ‘I’m sorry – do I have “helpless” written across my forehead?’
He sighed, his hands on his hips, regarding her with an exasperated look she recognized, the one that he always used to give when she would remake their bed – plumping the pillows, tucking the fitted sheet, smoothing out the wrinkles on the duvet – straight after his own best efforts. His retort had always been to throw her on the bed and proceed to make it very messy again. Now, though, he looked away. ‘My mistake.’
Swallowing hard and regretting her reflexive proud scorn, she did her best to copy what she’d seen him do – but her trees seemed further apart, stretching her bed tight like a trampoline, and the tarp tree was further away so that she was only half-covered from the dense canopy overhead. It was risky – Jed had forever warned her as a kid how monkeys liked to drop things like stones and fruit from on high – but if it was the price she had to pay for privacy, so be it; unlike Alex’s tarp, which hung behind his bed, she had deliberately draped hers in front, so that it stretched like a wall between his hammock and hers.
She could hear his sighs grow heavier and more frequent as she tested his patience but she didn’t care. What had he expected? A bonding exercise? That they were going to reminisce over old times?
He stuck his head around the tarp, watching for a moment as she grappled with the hammock ties; she couldn’t get them to loosen. ‘Do you want to dig the toilet or get the water?’
She stared back at him as if the question was a joke.
‘Yeah, thought so . . . Just watch for crocs.’ And he put a pair of collapsible rubber buckets on the ground. She looked back around the tarp to find he’d picked up a small shovel – like the type Rory had in his avalanche kit when skiing – and was pushing through the bushes, walking with the ease of a gardener making his way back to the potting shed. He disappeared from sight within a matter of seconds and she immediately, acutely, felt her sense of aloneness again. The afternoon’s events had left her more shaky than she had app
reciated and for all that she hated him, she had begrudgingly taken comfort in his company and expertise too; this had been his home for nigh-on ten years, after all.
She turned a circle on the spot, looking out for the neighbours, but she felt lumberingly conspicuous just standing there. It felt better to keep moving and she picked up the buckets and walked in the direction of the rushing river. She pushed tentatively through the bushes, startling as her eye glimpsed a tail flick through the leaves, by her feet. A pair of butterflies flitted in a dance, fluttering in a helix above the leaves of a bush with bright orange spiky flowers. The light had deepened in intensity, as it often did in the moments before sundown, and the bold, bright colours glowed almost neon, as if under ultraviolet.
There was no path to follow, just delicate animal tracks that meandered around trees, hanging vines to push back, the giant root-bed walls of upended giants to navigate. She watched where she put her feet, noticing how big the ants were, easily the size of grape pips. Bullet ants – Jed always used to point them out to her, and they were named for good reason; they had a nasty bite.
She stepped out of the jungle onto the riverside and took a breath as the world suddenly opened up again. She had a view, some breathing room; she didn’t have to push at something to see past. She stopped by the water’s edge and watched the river flow. It was a muddy torrent, the earlier rain having washed the land into the water, large branches sweeping along with pronged, leafy fingers, catching on boulders before releasing themselves again.
The river was wide here, but it didn’t seem very deep. Rocks poked through the surface like the smooth humps of hippo backs, some mossy and slippery-looking further out; but there was no sign of any man-eating reptiles as far as she could see. There wouldn’t be crocodiles this far upriver, surely? Alex had just been trying to scare her, to throw her off guard and keep her nervous, as if somehow in his debt.
He wished!
She stepped carefully into the water, grateful for the borrowed pair of walking boots; they were waterproof – possibly bulletproof too, judging by their thickness – and she was able to stand up to her ankles with her feet still remaining dry. It was a luxury she suddenly appreciated.
She stood there for several minutes, feeling the water pressure pushing against her planted feet, staring into space. Her mind kept asking her the same question, over and over: what was she doing here? It was complete madness to be out here, doing this, much less with him. She’d acted so impulsively and been so determined to save this child, as if it could make up for the one she’d failed when she knew nothing could bring Lucy back. If only she’d not been so rash, she could have taken time to think it through – Rory would have had a chance to talk her out of it, or he could have joined her too if she had just given him time to sleep off his hangover . . .
She allowed her mind to ponder, for a moment, how that would have played: her, Rory and Alex, out here together. She gave a shudder. She’d never even told Rory about him – why bother? Alex wasn’t relevant to her anymore; he had been in her life for all of four months, ten years ago, but she wouldn’t have been able to hide her contempt of him any better with Rory present than she could now when they were alone. She could only imagine how awkward it would have been with the three of them.
She stretched her neck, feeling the stiffness already gathering from the trials of supporting Jed earlier, and then carrying the pack. She wanted to sit and rest for a while – or a week. She’d been on the move all day, from the moment she’d left Jed’s village, pretty much, and she already knew she wasn’t going to be able to relax in her hammock with him on the other side of the tarp. A large boulder sat hulking in the shallows upstream and she waded over to it, setting the buckets down and bringing her heels in to her bottom, resting her chin in her hands, her elbows on her knees. Why was she here? Why was she here?
Paco.
She thought of the boy – still sick, still lying on that mattress – and how, while her landscapes had changed so much over the past twenty-four hours, he still stared at the same patch of ceiling from the same corner of the room. Just the endless monotony of it must make him despair. He had been sick and starving now for seven months, lying there all that time. It was hard to conceive – and even harder to forget.
Her resolve hardened. Why was she here? She was here for Paco. And not just him, Jed too. Like it or not, Alex had been right – she owed it to him to see through what she had promised to do. She just needed to keep a calm head. Too much time today had been lost, but all things being well from here on in, she and Alex would get to Alto Uren tomorrow evening. Then, if they made a really early start the morning after and pushed through, they could get back to the microlight and maybe even get to Jed’s village late the same night. If she pushed hard, Paco’s situation could finally change just two days from now – and she could rid Alex Carter from her life again. Just forty-eight hours, that was all she had to endure. She could get through that for a sick child.
She heard the buzz of insects start up suddenly and realized the sun was setting quickly now; the intense colours had dimmed too, and there would be only a few more minutes before dark. It would be even darker among the trees, of course, and she needed to get the water back, she needed to help Alex get a fire going for some light . . .
She got up from the rock and filled the buckets, turning back towards the trees, stopping as she regarded them afresh. She stared. Now that she looked at it from this perspective, from the river . . . she couldn’t see exactly where she’d stepped out. There wasn’t much to distinguish one tangle of branches from another.
How many steps had she taken through the water to the boulder? Fifteen? Or perhaps twenty? And they’d been big, right, as she waded through . . .? She walked upstream for a count of ten. She frowned as she turned and tried to remember the exact view garnered as she’d first emerged from the trees, but on the opposite side of the river, there was nothing especially significant about this stretch – no caves, toppled trees, rapids . . . She swallowed as she realized she had mindlessly headed in the direction of the river – following the sounds – without ever thinking to notice any distinguishing features of where they’d set up camp either.
How would she find her way back? As soon as she stepped into the trees again, even if she was only ten feet upstream from where she’d emerged, she could easily bypass their camp and take herself further with every step, heading deeper and deeper into the jungle, into the night.
She stood motionless, a bucket in each hand, as she looked back at the immensity of the jungle. She felt both frightened and stupid. How could she have been so . . . distracted? This wasn’t Hyde Park—
‘Hey.’
She turned with a start to see Alex stepping into the river, ten metres upstream of where she stood. He crouched down and washed water over his face, the droplets refracting the dying light of the day.
‘Hey,’ she mumbled back. Had he been watching her? Had he seen her dawning panic as she stared, frozen, into the treeline? She had an unwelcome feeling the answer was yes – that he’d come to check on her when she hadn’t returned immediately, that it had occurred to him that she might do something so stupid as walk blindly through the jungle without taking some stock of where she was.
‘Want me to carry those?’ he asked, straightening up again and holding a hand out for the buckets.
‘No, I’m fine,’ she said, walking back up to where he was.
‘Of course you are,’ he muttered with a careless shrug, shaking his hands off and turning back into the trees again. She followed quickly after him, not wanting to lose sight of him again and wishing she hadn’t been so stubborn. At least if she’d given him one bucket, she would have had a hand free for pushing through the bushes.
She kept him in her sights at all times, noticing after a minute or so a white stripe – like a lick of Tipp-Ex – painted on some of the leaves every few metres; she saw how his hands automatically reached for them, as if he was counting them as he
passed. Within minutes, they were back at the camp.
She stopped at the sight that greeted her. He had built a small fire that was already flickering red and orange. But not just that.
‘What did you do that for?’ she asked, seeing how he had moved her tarp to the far side of her hammock, effectively creating a little room in which they both now slept.
‘Room for the fire, for one thing,’ he pointed out. It sat between their two beds. ‘Plus your own protection. Falling branches are the number one cause of injury out here.’
‘If a branch is going to fall on me, I doubt that thing’s going to provide me much in the way of protection.’
He blinked, refusing to be baited. ‘Anything to break the fall is helpful. Besides, the monkeys will have a great time pelting you with God knows what if they see you sleeping unprotected.’
She saw now that her hammock had been adjusted too; it lay slack and inviting, something to roll into, rather than cling to. Ordinarily she would have said thank you. But nothing about this was ordinary.
‘I’ll take those,’ he murmured, and she startled as he leaned towards her and took the buckets from her hands. For a moment, she felt his skin brush hers and the unexpected silky warmth of it gave her shivers. It wasn’t personal, it wasn’t anything to do with him. The jungle was just so spiky and scratchy and tickly and hot and wet. Skin-on-skin out here felt like cashmere on a November night back home.
She watched as Alex put the gas camping stove on its feet and poured some of the water from one of the buckets into a small pan. He added a water purifying tablet and both sitting on their haunches on opposite sides of the flames, they watched in silence as it slowly came to the boil.
‘You should keep your sleeves rolled down,’ he said, glancing at her rolled-up shirt sleeves. ‘Everything will be coming out around now.’