She had been nervous of bringing the box through airport security systems, not only because it was heavy and she had no way of opening it, but because she thought it might attract attention when it went through the X-ray baggage scanners. But thankfully, despite her fraught nerves, she’d been ushered through without any problems.
She went straight to the right-hand drawer of the dressing table and pulled it out to reveal another hidden drawer beneath. Her aunt had always been one for secrets.
Luckily, Isla had been privy to many of them.
This was the drawer her aunt had used as a personal safe. Inside, she found a large bundle of cash dollars and her aunt’s British passport together with two keys. One of them was the key she had expected to find – a small silver one, beautifully made and intricately fashioned with a single pearl set into the bow. The other key wasn’t so familiar or so well-crafted and had a simple paper tag attached to it with Ask Grace written in her aunt’s swirly handwriting.
She set aside this mystery key because she was more than impatient to open the jewellery box and feast her eyes once again over the rubies and emeralds, diamonds and pearls that had meant so much to her while she had been growing up. Taking the box from her hand luggage, she paused with the key in her hand for a moment to again gaze bravely up at her aunt’s portrait on the wall.
In the portrait, she was dressed to impress in an off-the-shoulder red Oscar de la Renta dress together with her stunning ruby suite. Now, as a jewellery designer, Isla’s expert eyes knew that the necklace was a suspended series of exquisite bezel-set and cushion-cut rubies, each of them weighing approximately from two to five carats. Her aunt wore the necklace together with a matching set of earrings and an exquisite cuff bracelet.
Stunningly beautiful, as had been her aunt.
She turned back to the box. The diamond and ruby and emerald suites where probably the most valuable items, rivalling anything in Elizabeth Taylor’s famous collection, but it was the pearls that she most wanted to see and touch again. The many strings of single and double necklaces and chokers, the bracelets and rings that she had coveted over the years and had so faithfully tried to replicate from memory over the last decade.
With a steady hand she inserted the key and sprung the lock.
But just at that moment, there was a light tap of the bedroom door and Grace entered with a tray.
Isla slid the box back into her hand luggage.
Grace swept through one of the open French doors that led outside and set down the tray of tea, sandwiches and drizzle cake onto a table in a shaded part of the porch. Isla followed and sat on a chair while tea was poured, then she held out the cryptic key with the Ask Grace tag.
‘Grace, do you know what this is all about?’
Grace studied it for a moment and then handed Isla a cup and saucer. ‘Yes, I do. You remember how terribly secretive your aunt was, don’t you?’
‘Yes, and also how terribly stubborn,’ Isla added with a wry smile. ‘And the key opens what exactly?’
Grace lowered her voice, unnecessarily because there was no one around to overhear. ‘It opens a safe. Your aunt entrusted me to tell you that she wanted you and you alone to have all her jewellery.’
Isla stared at her in open-mouthed confusion. ‘Really? But what about…?’
‘The Will? Oh no, her jewellery is not mentioned in it. Not the good stuff anyway. You see, a few weeks before she died your aunt told me that when you came back here to the island, you would go looking for the hidden key to the box that she sent you, and that when you found it, you would also find the key to the safe that no one else must know about.’
Isla continued to listen to this convoluted tale while looking increasingly confused.
‘Come on, I’ll show you,’ Grace enthused.
They went back inside the bedroom where Grace paused briefly to cross herself and mutter a prayer under Kate’s portrait and then she pointed to the bookcase.
‘It’s behind the big bible.’
Isla removed the hefty tome to expose a secure metal box hidden in the wall. She opened it with the key and reached inside to remove a heavy roll of blue velvet cloth, which she carried over to the bed. Grace took a step forward as Isla unrolled the cloth and then they both gazed down at the glittering mass of diamonds, rubies and emeralds, strings of pearls, numerous bracelets and dozens of ornate rings that spilled out onto the bedspread.
Here in front of them was easily over a million dollars’ worth of jewellery.
Isla reached out to touch the ruby set that Kate was wearing in her portrait. Then she touched the emeralds that she remembered seeing her aunt wearing on the porch that last fateful night when she’d crept out of her room and escaped to the harbour to be with Leo. The very last time she saw him.
She cast her eyes over the flawless diamond suite that to her knowledge, Kate had only ever worn on the occasions of her birthdays or her wedding anniversaries. It was all here. Her love of jewellery immortalised. Her memories all laid out before her.
‘It’s all yours now, Miss Isla.’ Grace sighed, as if relieved to be unburdened of her responsibility.
Isla was both perplexed and bewildered because if all her aunt’s jewellery could be accounted for here on the bed then what could possibly be in the box that she had taken such great pains to carry all the way back here?
They rewrapped the jewellery in the velvet cloth and put it back in the safe as they’d found it for safekeeping. Isla told Grace that she was going to take a nap for an hour or two, but as soon as she was alone again, despite being truthfully exhausted, she slipped the mother-of-pearl mosaic box back out from her bag and turned the small silver and pearl key in the lock.
As she opened the lid, the scent of stale French perfume and old ink rose up to assault her nose before being dissipated around the room on nausea inducing wafts of hot air from the ceiling fan. To her astonishment, inside was a pile of old notebooks. Some of them were ancient school jotters in danger of falling apart. Others were retro-looking journalist’s pads and beneath those were reams of collated and bound manuscript papers. She flicked carefully through some of the earlier fragile pages of swirly neat handwriting, stopping to read snippets of her aunt’s childhood reflections. Aunt Kate had clearly hated those early years spent in 1950’s North Yorkshire.
Her words, some of them capitalised for emphasis, all seemed rather dark and depressing.
Isla felt her head spin. She knew she was exhausted and jet-lagged, so she put the journals back in the box and wondered what she was supposed to do with them all? Find a publisher?
She lay spread out on the bed under the whirling ceiling fan and the quivering mosquito net and felt her body pulsating to the same rhythm of the tree frogs croaking in unison outside. Perspiration ran from her every pore. Outside, she could see the light of day was already fading and the golden glow of dusk was starting to creep across the porch. She had already closed the doors and was now sorely tempted to throw them open again to bring in a breeze from the sea, but knowing that if she did so at this time of the evening, she’d also be inviting in swarms of hungry mosquitoes.
There were so many things that she remembered about this island – happiness and sadness, joy and excitement and certainly angst and frustration – but strangely, how intensely hot and unbearably humid it was here had somehow escaped her. How could she have forgotten that in August, here in the eastern Caribbean, it was surely hotter than hell itself?
She took a cooling shower and then lay on the bed again to try to think more clearly. Her mission here, she reminded herself, had already been accomplished because she now had the jewellery that had always meant so much to her. Tomorrow, she would pay her respects to her aunt by laying flowers at her grave, she would go and say hello to Minister John, her aunt’s best friend, for old time’s sake, and then after the reading of the Will, she would go and face Leo.
While she was here, on the same tiny rock as him, she knew she had to see him or she’d
never be able to put their past to rest. Having been forced to come back here by her aunt’s death, all she had to do was to say hello and then goodbye, which was something they’d been denied the last time they had parted.
It was suddenly quite dark outside and she remembered how the sun sank quickly over the horizon in this part of the world. With heavy eyes, she checked her watch and adjusted it to Eastern Caribbean time. It was now exactly six pm. The day after tomorrow she would be boarding a plane and heading back to the UK. She would be able to move on with her life at last because she would finally have what her therapist called closure. She would leave Pearl Island and be richer in every way possible.
All she had to do was to get through the next forty-eight hours.
When Isla woke, sweating and gasping for breath in the dark, for a moment she didn’t know where she was. She was reeling from a nightmare. It was one she’d had so many times before. In the terrible dream, she was trying to escape from the arms of a man, but no matter how hard she tried to kick and scream, he had her in his strong grip and she was unable to move or make a sound. All she ever saw of this man were fleeting shadows and all she ever heard was the roar of the sea.
She felt for the lamp switch. When the light came on, her aunt’s portrait was staring down at her from the opposite wall, looking bemused, and she suddenly remembered where she was.
How long had she been asleep?
She checked her watch. It was six o’clock. Really?
She had either been asleep for only a few seconds or she’d just slept for twelve hours straight. From her parched mouth, she suspected the latter. Her eyes then focussed on the photograph of her much younger self in a gilt frame next to her watch on the bedside table. It had been taken on her sixteenth birthday. She sighed and vividly remembered how desperately she’d wanted to be somewhere else while that photograph was being taken.
Chapter Five
Isla – Ten Years Earlier
It was dark outside, but inside the house it was glowing with light from the crystal chandelier in the drawing room and from the sixteen candles burning on her birthday cake. Isla blew her candles out to a raucous chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ and then cringed for a slightly wobbly rendition of ‘Sweet Sixteen’ from Minister John, the unconventional looking preacher man, whom she suspected of having too many glasses of whatever concoction the adults were drinking.
Over the last couple of hours, she’d posed for a birthday photograph and greeted each of her guests personally as they’d arrived bearing her birthday gifts. Now she was cutting her cake and gritting her teeth, because all she could think about was Leo, who would be waiting for her on the beach and perhaps thinking that she wasn’t coming after all.
She glanced around the room. Grace was offering up slices of the cake to guests who were now beginning to move into little groups in various corners of the room. She watched her Aunt Kate being sucked into a conversation with her church choir ladies. Isla checked the vintage ladies Rolex on her wrist for the hundredth time, knowing that if anyone had happened to notice they might just assume she was admiring her aunt’s generous gift.
It was just after seven pm. It was now or never.
She made a casual move towards the porch, picking up a glass of fruit juice on the way. Once out of sight, she promptly abandoned the drink on the handrail and hopped over it into the garden. She moved quickly through the shrubbery, breathing in the heavy vanilla-candy fragrance of ‘lady of the night’, a tropical plant that her aunt had planted profusely around the porches. Then she hitched her long, pale blue dress up to her knees to aid her pace and to try to prevent it from getting dirty or snagged.
A waning moon and a star-filled sky guided her down the steep path to the beach. She’d arranged to meet Leo an hour ago. He was the most important person in the world to her and yet to her frustration he was the only one of her friends not invited to her birthday party.
Despite her insistence that she didn’t want a birthday party if all her friends were not invited, her aunt had made it quite clear to her that ‘the gyspy boy’ was not permitted anywhere near her or the house.
The thought of Leo’s exclusion made her blood boil and the blatant discrimination against him left a sour taste in her mouth. All the anger and bitterness and feelings of hatred in her heart were directed wholly at her aunt, because of her stupid and pathetic rules.
When she reached the beach, she kicked off her ballet flats and ran along a line of palm trees. Running on sand, she pushed on to the sound of her own breathing, the pounding of her heart and the waves crashing against the shore until she finally reached the place they called their own, and fell straight into his arms.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late. It was so hard to get away. I can’t stay too long or I’ll be missed.’ She held onto him tightly, inhaling the smell of sea salt and coconut oil on his warm body.
He planted a trail of kisses on her hot face and then with one finger he lifted her chin until her lips met with his.
‘Oh, Leo, I love you,’ she uttered softly.
He lifted her and carried her over to the bed of soft palm fronds that he’d laid out for them on the sand. He lay her down gently and then he stretched out beside her to kiss her again. But Isla moved quickly, smiling coquettishly, as she straddled him and teased him by rolling down each of the fine shoulder straps on her silk dress in turn.
Entranced and enraptured, he watched her, his handsome face lit with starlight and lust. His hands reached out to gently stroke her face and to lovingly touch her hair. Then he bucked his hips, tipping her forward, so he could kiss her again and relieve her of the dress in one movement. He groaned from the effort of controlling himself as they tumbled together. He cupped her small pale breasts in the palms of his hands, his thumbs rubbing her nipples and making her gasp with pleasure. She kissed the top of his head as his mouth slid down her body and she smiled up at the stars that were shining above them like tiny birthday candle flames. Tonight they were not going to stop at foreplay. Now that she was sixteen, there was nothing she wanted more than for them to be together as lovers. She believed that once they had been joined together, nothing could ever come between them, not even the threats and disapproval of their guardians.
Making love with Leo was everything and more than she ever imagined, and she had fantasised about being intimate with him for a very long time. He used a condom, of course, and she tried not to giggle when he cursed it and struggled to open the small foil packet. Seeing how nervous and how careful he was assured her it wasn’t something he might have ever done before.
‘I love you, Isla. I’ve always loved you and I will always love you. Only you,’ he whispered into her ear as he lay on her, supporting his weight with his elbows so he didn’t crush her.
When he pushed himself inside her, she cried out with joy. She’d expected it to hurt, but it hadn’t. He’d been so gentle and caring and she’d been the impatient one. So excited by him, she raked her fingers down the muscles of his broad back and squeezed his taut naked buttocks in her hands as he ebbed and flowed over her, like the movement of waves on the shore.
Afterwards, as they lay together in the warmth of each other’s arms on that balmy love-filled and starry night, there was no doubt in Isla’s mind that she and Leo Fernandez were meant to be together forever and that he was the love of her life; her one and only true love.
‘I wish I didn’t have to go,’ Isla told him, feeling miserable about having to go back to her birthday party without him.
‘Not yet. You can’t leave before I’ve given you your birthday gift.’
‘Oh, Leo, us being together for my birthday is all I needed from you.’
‘It’s something I made for you. Close your eyes,’ he said, his voice a soft whisper.
She did as he asked, but then couldn’t help but to cheat and peek to find Leo searching for her gift through the pockets of his discarded shorts.
‘No peeping!’ he insisted. ‘Now hold out yo
ur hand.’
She caught her breath as she felt him slipping a ring onto her third finger.
‘You can open your eyes now.’
Her eyes sprung open and she stared down at the fishing twine ring and perfect pearl sitting on it.
‘Oh, Leo, it’s beautiful. I love it. Did you find this for me on the reef?’ She wriggled her finger and noticed how translucent the pearl looked in the starlight.
‘Yes, but one day soon I’ll have it set in gold and flanked with diamonds for you.’
‘But your love is enough for me. I don’t need gold and diamonds.’
‘I might not have much right now, Isla, but I want you to know that I won’t always be a poor man.’ His tone was serious. ‘I have plans. I have a business arrangement with my uncle and very soon I’ll be in a position to build us our own house here on the island.’
She studied the shadows of his face and the excitement in his sea green eyes.
‘You are planning to build us a house?’
‘Yes, where we can live happily together?’
Hot tears welled up in her eyes. ‘Are you proposing to me, Leo?’
‘Yes, I am. I love you. Say you’ll marry me, Isla?’
‘Yes. I love you too. But I doubt Minister John will marry us as my aunt would intervene.’
Leo was unfazed. ‘No matter. We’ll elope to the mainland and get married there. Why don’t you start making our secret wedding plans while I attend to my secret business plans?’
Isla looked at him curiously. ‘What sort of business plans are secret ones?’
He laughed and kissed her nose but chose not to answer her question. There was something about his laugh and the way he broke their eye contact that alarmed her.
‘Leo, you must tell me. I want to know what sort of business arrangement is going to pay you enough money to buy gold and diamonds and allow you to build us a house.’
Island in the Sun Page 3