Not that she wanted to live in a shack. She didn’t.
But there was a lesson to be learned here for sure.
Driving downhill in the golf cart, just before she reached the village, Isla stopped outside a fenced-off area containing an outbuilding and a wooden structure. This was something new.
There was a driftwood sign above the porch saying: Pearl Island Pearl Farm.
There hadn’t been a pearl farm here ten years ago. How interesting.
As a jewellery designer, these days she considered herself something of a pearl expert and also a bit of a pearl snob. She’d often worked with colourful gems and precious stones but had lately made a name for herself back in the UK with her designs using pearls. In fact, she had just recently returned from a short business trip to the Kingdom of Bahrain, where she had attended an auction of the finest quality natural pearls in the hope of sourcing several for an exclusive new commission.
Bahraini pearls, with their superior lustre, are reputedly the finest in the world, but being both natural and scarce they are also the most expensive. Too expensive, as it turned out, even for this commission. To her disappointment, she’d been outbid every time at the auction and had returned home empty handed. Not that farmed or ‘cultured pearls’ aren’t natural too – they are – it’s just that, in her expert opinion, they usually lack that special iridescent lustre of the natural pearls that she coveted.
She walked up the three steps and through the front door. Inside, a pretty young woman behind a desk stood and welcomed her.
‘Hello and welcome. I’m Anya.’
She knew that name. Ten years ago, one of her island friends had had a little sister called Anya. She quickly calculated that would make Anya around twenty years old.
‘Do you have a sister called Mia?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I do. She lives in Cayman now with her husband.’
Isla smiled. ‘We were good friends a long time ago.’
Anya smiled too. ‘Yes, I remember you, Miss Isla.’
‘When you speak to her, please tell her that I was asking about her.’
‘I will indeed. Are you here for a tour?’
Isla guessed she was.
‘We normally charge visitors to the pearl farm five dollars for the full tour but today you are our honoured guest,’ Anya told her.
Isla was shown to a door off the reception area.
‘This is our screening room,’ Anya said. ‘Please go inside and make yourself comfortable and I’ll get you an iced water. There’ll be a short film that briefly explains the process of farming pearls.’
Isla sat on a chair in the centre of the first row and faced a white projector screen.
This was all very impressive.
Anya brought her a glass of cold water.
‘The film was made quite recently. If you have any questions, you’ll have the opportunity to chat to our pearl farming expert later in the tour. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Enjoy.’
The screen came to life showing how natural pearls are formed.
‘When a single grain of sand enters an oyster shell, the oyster’s reaction to the tiny irritation is not to try to remove it,’ the film’s narrator informed, ‘but to secrete layer upon layer of a hard and smooth pearlescent coating over the grain so it can live more comfortably with the gritty nuisance. This process is what, over a period of time, will produce a naturally occurring pearl.’
Isla already knew very well how pearls were formed and she felt an affinity with the poor oyster. For such a long time now, ten years to be precise, she too had been wrapping up something painful inside her with layer upon layer of hard shell, so that she too could live with its gritty nuisance.
‘A pearl farm, however, seeks to recreate this natural process through artificially grafting the irritant that will eventually produce a cultured pearl,’ the narrator continued.
When it came to showing the delicate operation of this grafting, Isla reeled in her seat because the ‘expert’ doing this work was none other than Leo.
Her breath quickened as she stared up at him from the side-angle view from the camera. Her eyes traced the familiar curve of his face, his long straight nose, the strong angular feature of his jaw. He no longer had dreadlocks. His golden hair was shorter now and fell into soft curls at the nape of his neck. He’d also lost the moustache and the shaggy goatee that he’d always been trying to cultivate as a younger man. The clean-shaven look suited him. He was wearing a white lab coat, but it couldn’t disguise the still familiar lean body shape beneath.
Her hand rose instinctively to her throat. Her fingers fluttered over the fine white gold chain at her neck where three pearls sat in a finely twisted white gold setting. She stared up at him without blinking, and when he turned to the camera and gazed out from the screen her mouth went dry. A heat rose up through her body, her neck, her face, and her heart began palpitating alarmingly. She gulped back her cold water. When she looked back up to the screen he was addressing the camera directly and it was as if he were looking right at her. She stared boldly back into those pale green eyes of his and had to grip the sides of her chair in case she slithered to the floor.
When he began to speak, she was mesmerized by the movement of his lips. Hearing his voice again after all these years was totally disturbing.
Here were the eyes that had once gazed upon her with love and devotion.
Here were the same lips that had once kissed her so passionately.
Yet both those eyes and those lips had gone on to lie to her so convincingly.
She took a deep breath and tried to pull herself together. Dissolving into a simpering wreck at the mere sight of him simply wouldn’t do. He might be even better looking after all this time – going to prison certainly hadn’t spoiled his looks – but that didn’t mean she should be fazed by him now or lose focus of her plans.
As Leo continued to look down at her from the screen, she practised the look of indifference that she planned to use on him when they actually met face to face. She tightened her jaw, tilted her nose into the air and raised her eyebrows slightly.
‘Hello. It’s good to see you again, Leo,’ she imagined herself saying to him in a voice that sounded cold and dismissive.
Yes, that’s how she’d handle it. She’d play it cool and detached.
When the film ended, Anya came back into the room. ‘If you’d like to follow me, I’ll take you through to the workshop where you’ll be able to see the pearl farming process in action.’
Walking with her legs feeling weak and heavy, Isla followed her through a doorway at the back of the building. And then she saw him. He was attending to one of the filtration tanks and he hadn’t yet seen her.
‘Leo!’ Anya shouted to him. ‘We have a visitor.’
He waved a hand without looking up and closed the metal grating that covered the tank.
Isla walked towards him, watching as he took his time wiping his hands on a towel. He was wearing green cotton shorts that hung low on his waist and a white vest that emphasised the tone of his skin, his powerful arms, and his tattoos. She saw there were a few more tattoos on his arms than she recalled. She prepared herself mentally and physically for the moment of impact.
When he finally looked up, she was standing right in front of him.
He looked physically knocked by her presence, taking a small step back as if unbalanced. Clearly, he had not been expecting to see her here today, although he would certainly have known she was on the island; Grace had said that everyone knew. He stared at her for a long moment and then he smiled slowly and reached out, not his hand for shaking, but his arms for embracing.
Did he actually expect her to fall straight into them?
She fought a strong urge to slap his handsome face but instead took some satisfaction from the cooler look in his eyes as she gave him the benefit of her indifference.
‘Hello. It’s good to see you again, Leo.’
‘Hello, Isla. Welcome back.’
>
‘I didn’t know about the pearl farm,’ she told him. ‘It’s quite impressive.’
His green eyes shone like flares in the filtered light coming through the palm leaves above them.
‘Yes, it’s been up and running for two years now. We are looking forward to our first harvest very soon. It’s been a long-term investment. Your aunt was very supportive of the project and I do hope you will continue to be so generous now that you are here and she is gone.’
‘Who is we?’ she asked.
He looked confused. ‘Sorry?’
‘You said we, as in “we are looking forward to our first harvest”. So who else is part of this?’
Leo rubbed his chin and smiled. ‘Myself and Anya.’
Isla felt like she’d been hit in the stomach by the force of a hurricane. She struggled to breathe and not to waver. She hadn’t expected him to be with anyone. While he was in prison he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet another woman. How long had it been since his release? He’d said the pearl farm had been up and running for two years. Had he been here and with Anya for those two years?
An intimate image of Leo and Anya together flashed into her mind and she felt immediately sick.
‘Let me show you around and I’ll explain what we do here?’ he offered.
Isla managed to find her voice only by resolve. ‘I’d love to, but actually I have to be somewhere. Maybe another time?’
He stopped and gave her a look of disappointment. ‘Okay. I understand. Come back anytime.’
This felt so surreal. It was as if she was dreaming about standing here with him. She studied his face for a moment and thought about all that had happened since the last time they had been together. Her initial shock over hearing what he had done. Her denial about how he could have even been involved in such a terrible crime. The resulting craziness and mental breakdown she had suffered upon realising he’d lied to her and thrown everything away. The emotional rollercoaster she had endured over having to leave her island home. The searching for the answers to the questions that to this very day remained unanswered. Then, slowly and painfully, the acceptance and the letting go, before she could finally move on with her life.
Her therapist had called it the seven stages of grief. And just when she’d finally made it through them all, Leo was right here. Standing in front of her and smiling like nothing had happened.
She forced herself to contain her anger towards him and then to walk quickly away.
Chapter Seven
At noon, Isla was waiting at the airstrip to greet her late aunt’s lawyers. She stood under the shade of a large, leafy mountain grape tree with the overly familiar attendant from yesterday. He looked far less emboldened today, even a little embarrassed. She offered him her hand.
‘Sorry, we didn’t get properly introduced yesterday, but I’m Isla.’
He shook her hand eagerly. ‘Hola, Isla. I’m Carlos. I’m Grace’s friend.’
‘Yes, I realise you two know each other quite well.’
‘Really?’ His eyes widened with expectation. ‘Did she mention me?’
Isla smiled and was just about to ask him if he’d ever been a gardener up at the main house, when they heard the sound of a plane’s engine just before it came into view. Then they watched it fly a low circle before making its final approach. The faces of the two male passengers could be clearly seen, staring open-mouthed through the windows at the exquisite sight of beaches and palm trees on the tropical island below them.
They landed with only a slight bump due to the light winds and the plane taxied towards the building that acted as both the departures and the arrivals hall. The two lawyers climbed out looking hot and inappropriately dressed in their dark suits.
One was an older man, portly in stature and with a very red face. The other was much younger, with a whiter than white face and terrified eyes. A mentor and his demented, mused Isla, suspecting that the younger man, like her, might not have ever flown in a Cessna before.
She greeted them, introduced herself, and shook their sweaty hands.
‘I’m Gregory Smith and this is my associate Peter Powell,’ said the older man.
‘It’s good to meet you, Miss Ashton. We are both sorry for your loss,’ Mr Powell said as he mopped his brow with a handkerchief.
She gestured toward the golf cart, where she had brought along a small cooler with ice and bottled water, which they fell upon like parched souls before she drove them back to the house.
Isla had suggested to Grace that lunch be taken on the porch and Grace had produced a wonderful spread, which was served with great Caribbean hospitality. They drank iced lime tea with their shrimp and avocado salads. Isla insisted on opening a chilled Chablis from her aunt’s wine cellar to complement their main course of mango chicken rice and beans. The conversation at the table soon turned away from the deliciousness of the food and the incredible views to probate laws and executors and beneficiaries.
Isla suddenly felt nervous.
‘I understand that both Grace and Minister John are also beneficiaries?’ she said to Mr Smith.
‘Yes. They too have been invited along to attend the reading this afternoon.’
Isla couldn’t help but to worry, because if it was property they inherited, it might make it infinitely harder for her to sell the island as a whole. Not a nice way to think about things, but right now her mind was full of not so nice thoughts. After seeing Leo again and finding he was in a relationship with a girl some eight years younger than he was and who was so very pretty and, well, so nice, she was consumed with getting all of this executory business over and done with as quickly as possible and getting the hell off this island.
She was taken out of her mercenary thoughts by Mr Smith who was now talking about duties.
‘The duties of an executor include not only informing beneficiaries of the nature and extent of their entitlement but also of their liabilities, commitments, costs, and any clauses that may accompany any inheritance.’
‘Excuse me, but are you talking about terms and conditions?’ Isla enquired.
He nodded. ‘Yes. There are often terms and conditions applied to an inheritance.’
Realising she was holding her wine glass in an overly tight grip, she put it down on the table and attempted to look relaxed by leaning back in her chair. Back in Edinburgh, Mark King certainly hadn’t mentioned any obstacles in her way or any strings attached.
‘Then should I be bracing myself for any surprises?’ she asked.
‘We are not aware of anything particularly unusual in your late aunt’s Will,’ Mr Smith told her onerously.
After lunch, they took a short comfort break, during which time Isla anxiously paced the floor in her aunt’s bedroom. During her long flight over here, she had distracted herself from the monotony of the journey, and too many errant thoughts about Leo and her odds of seeing him again, by planning the further expansion of her business. Her office in Edinburgh was doing very well and she was now selling her jewellery through all the prestigious department stores throughout Scotland. She had plans already in place to expand her distribution network into London, with both Harrods and Harvey Nicks interested in stocking her designs. Now, with this unexpected inheritance, she’d realised that the world was very literally her oyster. By selling Pearl Island she would not only be able to finally sever the ties to her past once and for all, but also have access to the capital she needed to invest heavily in her company, and to open her very own stores in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Paris, and New York.
She pondered its worth. One, two… five million, perhaps?
With that kind of an investment Passion Designs could one day rival the likes of Pandora or Swarovski. She was sure there were plenty of people in the world - business moguls and even pop stars or famous actors - who would jump at the chance to own their own Caribbean island and take it off her hands.
But only today did it concern her that there might be conditions from beyond the grave to
either prevent her from selling or to try to keep her here against her will.
She steeled herself to finding out one way or another and went back downstairs.
She was the first to enter what her Aunt Kate had always called the drawing room – a room that in Isla’s experience had only ever been used at Christmas and, of course, on that unforgettable occasion of her sixteenth birthday. The drawing room was furnished with fine watered-silk upholstered sofas with overstuffed cushions, sturdy wine tables and coffee tables, and a polished dining table that could seat many people. Along one entire length of the room were glass panelled doors that opened out to the shaded porch and when they were all open, as they were today, the room was comfortably cool and airy.
Isla remembered how Grace had often reminisced about when Mr Ernest Rocha had been alive, when there had always been important people coming and going and staying over at the house. Kate and Ernest had held grand dinner parties in the drawing room back then and there had been much raucous conversation and laughter and drinking, and that only the finest whiskies and champagnes had been good enough for the exclusive company Kate and Ernest had kept.
Isla had rarely seen lots of people in the house. In her lifetime, her aunt had been a staunchly private woman with a somewhat bizarre lifestyle. She had strange habits that made her an eccentric too. Each day, after spending most of the afternoon in meditation on Minister John’s porch, she would retire to her bedroom and then, at around six pm, just as the sun was going down, she would appear on her porch in her finest clothes and adorned in her jewellery, where she would stare out to sea with a cocktail in her hand.
Isla had always assumed that the death of her aunt’s husband, Ernest, who had died five years before Isla had been born, had brought about this great sadness in her and that Kate must have loved him very much indeed to keep such a romantic vigil going for all these years. She would have dearly loved to have known the whole story but the subject was off limits and so she had never summoned up the nerve to ask. She had tentatively broached the subject with Grace once or twice, when she’d been happily reminiscing about the good old days, but as soon as Isla had mentioned Ernest’s death, she’d immediately clammed up, shaken her head and changed the whole taboo subject.
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