She’d loved the gift and she loved the boy but didn’t fully understand what he expected of her.
When he’d explained it involved kissing, she’d been both horrified and embarrassed.
A year or so later, however, her interest in him had shifted considerably.
She didn’t see him every day anymore because he worked for his uncle on his fishing boat but she thought about him all the time. At school she daydreamed about him and after class, when she was supposed to be doing her homework, she would stare out to sea from her bedroom window and wonder what he was doing right at that moment.
When she did see him, she couldn’t help but to notice how he was looking so much taller and that his previously skinny body and long thin arms had filled out with hard-toned muscle. He’d had both his arms tattooed with symbols of the sea. A portrait of Neptune, the mighty god of the seas, could be seen carrying his trident and riding his mythical half-horse half-fish creature across Leo’s biceps. He had facial hair now too – a neatly shaped moustache above his top lip and a small goatee beard on his chin – the same naturally golden tone as his dreadlocked hair.
Like Isla, with her paler skin and her blonde hair, Leo looked very different to all the other boys and girls on the island. Grace, her aunt’s housekeeper, had said that Leo had been abandoned on the beach as a baby by sea-gypsies, the nomadic people of the sea, and had been taken in by Jack Fernandez, who had raised him as his own.
Sea-gypsies are generally feared by islanders, as they are thought to be thieves, raiders, and pirates. Some even think sea-gypsies have mystical powers and are able to conjure up curses and even hurricanes. Of course, no one really knew the circumstances under which Leo’s mother had chosen to give him up, but Isla could only imagine that she must have been quite desperate in leaving her flotilla to abandon her baby on a beach, in the hope he would be adopted by someone who might give him a better life than she could.
As Isla had been orphaned, she sympathised with Leo’s past, and it had cemented their special friendship. At that time on the island there had been lots of children growing up there, and Isla knew she wasn’t the only girl to have noticed how Leo had grown from a beautiful boy into a handsome young man.
Other girls, whose bodies were curvier than hers, would openly flirt with him while they kicked a ball around with him at the beach. When she’d overheard one of these girls, saying to another, what she’d like to do with Leo given half a chance, Isla had felt sick with jealousy.
Leo belonged to her. Didn’t he?
Finally, unable to bear the agony of her secret crush on him any longer, while reel-fishing off the end of a narrow wooden dock jutting out into the bay with Leo one sultry evening, she finally plucked up the courage to tell him how she felt.
He’d stopped baiting his hook to look at her while she’d stood in front of him and stammered something about being ready to be his girlfriend and how she would quite like to kiss him, that is of course, if he would still like to kiss her?
In one swift move he’d swept her into his arms and he was kissing her for what seemed to Isla like forever. His lips were warm and soft and tasted slightly salty, and she could feel the heat of his body and the beat of his heart right next to hers.
When they eventually stopped kissing, Leo continued to hold her in his arms as the sun went down on Pearl Island. They sat together and closely entwined on the old boards of the dock and watched the world around them change from blue to pink to red and then to gold and he stroked her hair with his fingers and told her she was the only girl for him in the whole world.
She had never been so happy.
It was a small island, however, and soon someone reported seeing Isla, the island’s princess kissing Leo the sea-gypsy, and they were in trouble because of the stupid feud that existed between his Uncle Jack and her Aunt Kate.
Isla had always wondered what it was that had sparked the hostility between these two battling adults but she’d never been brave enough to broach the subject. Leo said he didn’t understand it either. All he knew, he said, was that the mere mention of Miss Kate’s name sent his uncle into a rage of cussing and cursing and slamming things around.
So, having been warned off seeing each other, they soon began meeting in secret. Isla would watch out for a small seashell left on the porch railing outside her bedroom window, a signal that he was waiting for her at the hidden patch of sand between the huge boulders at the end of the beach. Then checking carefully that the coast was clear, she’d sneak out of the window and across the porch to scale the railing and drop down into the tropical fauna that would help to disguise her escape.
On the night of her sixteenth birthday, at their secret place, he’d given her a ring that he’d fashioned himself out of fine fishing twine into which he’d set one single large white pearl.
Slipping it onto her finger, he had asked her to marry him.
But he was a bad boy. Her aunt had always said so. Her aunt had been proved right.
She wondered if Leo would have served his time by now?
Chapter Three
Unlike the last time that she had made this arduous journey, flying across to Pearl Island from the Caymans was now an option because sometime between then and now Pearl Island had acquired an airstrip. But after meeting her tanned and smiling pilot, who’d escorted her and her bags over to what looked like the smallest and most beaten-up looking charter plane in the airport, possibly the world, she had pretty much decided she was taking the boat.
She’d noticed this tiny old plane from the window of the big new jetliner she had arrived in and had thought: ‘pity the poor soul who has to fly in that old thing,’ not realising that the poor soul might actually be her.
‘The boat takes four hours and the flight takes half an hour,’ she was told by the pilot, as if such a time-saving was reason enough to risk your life in an air crash. Then, noting her pale and exhausted looking face, he had smiled at her in a way that suggested he’d had to deal with many poor souls before her. ‘You don’t need to be scared. It’s a sturdy little plane and I’m a very good pilot. You can trust me to get you there safely and I promise there’ll be a bird’s-eye view of the island to make it all worth it when we get there.’
She decided she liked his smile and that she would trust him. He was right about the view because when they approached the island, she caught her breath and saw that Pearl Island was even more beautiful from the sky. It looked like a tear-shaped pearl as it shimmered below her in the sunshine. As they got closer, she pressed her forehead against the small window to look down and make out the familiar landmarks beneath.
They were flying over the narrower part of the island, over shimmering dense mangrove swamp, until the gradient of the land swept gently upward to the highest point, with its white church and tall spire. Then suddenly below them was the rocky peninsula of Mango Cay, where Leo had lived with his Uncle Jack, in a house accessed via a natural bridge that had been carved out by the sea over many thousands of years.
She remembered Leo telling her that when the sea had finally worn away the last part of the bridge, then he too would own his own island, referring of course to the day when Pearl Island might become hers. She had replied quoting John Donne, one of the English poets that her aunt had had a passion for reading aloud. ‘No man is an island,’ she’d told him and he had laughed.
The peninsular led to the grassy headland and down to a sandy path to the village and the harbour with its plethora of shacks on stilts and boatsheds built out over the water.
As the plane dipped and made a sharp turn, Isla’s heart missed a beat when she spotted the long stretch of white sand along the western coastline with its huge worn-smooth limestone boulders that dominated the end of the beach. Tears pricked her eyes and she quickly blinked them away.
They flew low over tin-roofed houses and lots of swaying palm trees until there it was – her aunt’s beautiful colonial-style house with its wrap-around porch and manicured tropical g
rounds that stood in direct contrast to the untamed beauty of the island surrounding it. Trembling a little, she pulled her seat belt tighter over her lap and composed herself for the moment when the wheels of the plane touched down onto what looked like a precariously short landing strip some way ahead of them.
The Cessna taxied over to a wooden hut, where a smartly dressed airport attendant, in khaki shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt bearing the logo of Pearl Island Air, acknowledged the pilot and glanced over the weary looking female passenger.
Isla climbed out of the hot cramped space where she’d been wedged between her suitcase and her hand luggage. Then with both feet on the ground, she shaded her eyes with her hand and peered through dazzling sunlight to see the silhouetted shape of someone wearing a large brimmed hat standing next to a golf cart at the edge of the airstrip.
‘Grace!’ she squealed and rushed towards her long-lost friend.
‘Welcome home, Miss Isla!’ Grace waved a small bouquet of pink bougainvillea in the air.
Isla threw herself into the arms of the woman who had been such a support to her while she’d been growing up. Her Aunt Kate might have been her legal guardian, a rather too-strict one in Isla’s opinion, but Grace had always been the mother-figure. Loyal and kind, she never took sides, but when Isla had been angry or upset she had always gently intervened in an attempt to help Isla see her aunt’s often turgid point of view.
During Isla’s difficult last year on the island, she’d called her ‘Saving Grace’.
Together, they climbed aboard the golf cart while the airport attendant loaded Isla’s luggage onto the back seat. Isla noticed the smartly dressed man cast a lustful eye over the older woman.
‘Eso es un sombrero muy bonito, señorita,’ he said, remarking on Grace’s pretty hat.
Isla giggled but Grace was incensed and immediately reprimanded her ardent admirer.
‘I’ll take none of that flirtin’ from you, Carlos. How dare you go embarrassin’ me like that in front of Miss Isla. Now I suggest you get out of my way before I run you down with my cart!’
The poor man looked squashed on both counts and as he slunk away, Isla wondered if she knew him. He looked vaguely familiar, so she tried to imagine him ten years younger but still struggled to place him.
Soon they were off, hurtling downhill from the airstrip at quite a pace. Isla gripped the rattling framework of the cart with both hands as they sped along the bumpy sandy track road. There had been no motorised vehicles on the island at all when she’d left; people got around by either bicycle or pony, with or without a buggy or, as the island was comparatively small, by walking everywhere.
‘Gosh, when did you learn to drive, Grace?’ she asked, holding on tightly.
Grace replied that she hadn’t and the sound of their combined laughter rang through the swaying palm trees as though ten long years hadn’t ever gone by.
When they reached the gates of the big house though, their mood became sombre and the pace up the driveway had reduced to a gentle roll. The old place looked just as Isla remembered it: a clapboard house in traditional Creole style, raised up off the ground on stilts and painted white with yellow accents around the window frames.
She could hardly believe she was here again. It all felt so surreal.
As she approached the first step up to the porch, she stopped for a moment and, for the first time since she’d heard of her Aunt Kate’s passing, she felt a tinge of sadness in her heart rather than the usual aching bitterness.
Grace saw her hesitate and went ahead of her up the steps. ‘I’m going to make us an afternoon tea while you settle into your room, Miss Isla.’
A warm fragrance blew across Isla’s face and she turned towards the garden and tilted her face up to the sun. Closing her eyes against the sharp yellow light, she inhaled the musky sweetness of the tropical garden around her where palm trees with ripening coconuts under their fronds swayed and bananas and star-fruits hung heavy and ripe on the trees. She saw that the lime trees she had helped to plant were now big and full of green limes ready for picking. It was the time of year for limeade and, for her Aunt Kate, who’d liked to sip cocktails on the porch at sundown, a time for Margaritas.
Isla smiled at the memory.
She entered the house tentatively and immediately appreciated a welcome coolness to the air and to her skin. In the reception hall there was a dresser upon which sat a bowl full of floating frangipani flowers. The bowl was surrounded by an arrangement of handmade condolence cards.
Isla inhaled the plumeria scent of the flowers and browsed each card in turn.
Some had been carefully cross-stitched in silk threads and some were decorated with pressed flowers. One had a picture of the church made from tiny seashells. Another featured a holy cross made from a palm frond. All expressed words of sympathy and were signed off with family names she recognised. One card featured a boat with a sail made entirely from tiny slithers of mother-of- pearl. Isla opened it to read the message written inside.
It read Rest in Peace Miss Kate and it was signed Leo.
Isla had to hold onto the dresser to steady herself.
Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Leo is here.
Chapter Four
Isla took her luggage up the stairs and headed along the second-floor hallway to what had once been her bedroom. She flung the door open, stepped inside the much smaller than remembered room and immediately felt that she had stepped through a portal in time.
It was eerie seeing her things exactly as if she’d only walked out of this room ten minutes ago and not ten years. She took cautious steps over to her dressing table where her eyes rested on a coconut shell dish containing dozens of tiny seashells. Swallowing hard, she then gazed at the faded Polaroid photographs around the mirror of her teenage self and her island friends at the beach or at various island events and birthday parties. She stared at one photo in particular.
When it was all too much she groaned under her breath.
‘Oh my God, this is way too creepy.’
Then she turned away to see Grace standing in the doorway.
Grace shrugged on overhearing Isla’s blasphemy. ‘It was your aunt’s instruction to leave the room just as you left it,’ she explained. ‘I was told to clean but do no more. It wasn’t my place to ask why.’
Isla couldn’t understand it. She had been erased from her aunt’s life and her address book, so why keep her room intact? It was confusing and weird. She picked up her suitcase.
‘Well, I can’t sleep here. I’ll take my aunt’s room.’
‘Sure, but it’s only fair to warn you that your aunt died in her bed,’ Grace imparted.
Grace had always been a great believer in the afterlife and ghosts and spirits.
‘But you have changed the sheets, right?’ Isla quipped.
Grace practically choked on her own intake of air. ‘Well, of course, Miss Isla!’
Her aunt’s room was far more spacious as it took up almost the entire length of the back of the house. There were two sets of French windows along one wall that opened out onto the wooden deck of the first-floor porch. The room faced west towards the afternoon sun and inside it was oppressively hot and stuffy. Grace immediately threw open both windows to let in a cooling sea breeze. She pulled back the heavy silk curtains but drew together the long light calico drapes that were now billowing out like ship’s sails and shading the room from the heat and brightness flooding into it.
Isla drank in the boudoir scene around her. Her aunt’s oversized double bed covered with silk sheets and with a mosquito net hanging above it that made it look something like an elaborate Arabian tent. Two bedside tables each displayed faded photographs in mother of pearl frames and ornate lamps shaped like rearing seahorses with pale green silk shades. A row of sliding wardrobe doors along the opposite wall were broken up by the presence of a huge bookcase housing some of her aunt’s favourite classic novels, her collections of poetry, as we
ll as an enormous leather-bound Holy Bible; her aunt had been almost manically religious.
On the far wall, nearest to the door, hung her aunt’s incredibly life like portrait.
The painting, by the famous artist Ranaldini Salva, had captured her in her finest years.
Katherine Rocha had been a classically beautiful woman and in her portrait she wore an amused expression and her golden hair scooped up into a neat chignon. But when Isla’s eyes connected to the unblinking eyes of her late Aunt, she experienced a wave of emotion that she hadn’t actually expected or prepared herself to feel. A rush of love and hate and anger and regret swept over her and, despite her best intentions to stay composed and business-like throughout her obligatory time back on the island, seeing her aunt’s face again had released so many thoughts and echoes from her past, that she felt almost overwhelmed.
All the anger and trauma and stress that she’d worked so hard over the past ten years to dispel, now felt far too close for comfort again and were rising unstoppably to the surface of her mind like effervescent bubbles through deep dark waters.
Isla realised she was shaking.
‘Shall we have our tea here where we can sit out on the porch?’ Grace said gently, taking note of Isla’s trembling lips and how her pale face appeared even paler. ‘After which I’m quite sure you’d like to take an afternoon nap, Miss Isla.’
Isla offered her thanks as Grace went off to fetch their tea and after giving herself a good virtual shake, she immediately set about finding the key to the jewellery box that she had hauled all the way back here in her hand luggage. How very clever and manipulative of her aunt, she considered, to send her the only bait that could have absolutely guaranteed to lure her back here – the jewellery box without the key.
Her aunt would have known she would remember how to slide open the concealed section of the box, because she’d been allowed to do it so many times as a girl, and that she would never have risked damaging it by forcing it open when she realised that the key was missing.
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