The sweat that had been burning on her skin suddenly felt ice cold with her next realisation.
Kate had been her grandmother.
Her mind began to replay her childhood in reverse to try and make sense of it all. The furious expression on Kate’s face on the night she’d been sent away. Her disapproval and over-bearing attempts at parenting. Her rules and regulations and her do’s and don’ts. Her over-zealous reprimanding. Her terrible anxiety and agoraphobia. Her infernal secrets and her crazy rituals.
Then it also occurred to her, that as Kate had been such a deeply complicated and intensely private woman, no way would she have wanted these journals and all her secrets published. No, she’d sent them to her personally because she was the only person left to whom it might matter. She was her only family.
But did it matter? Her mother was dead, her grandmother was dead, her great-grandmother too, so how did this change anything?
Maybe it wasn’t meant to change anything.
Only to explain everything.
Isla picked up the next journal in the pile. In it Kate talked about her job as a reporter with her hometown newspaper. It was clearly a job she hated. In a town that she also hated, where nothing very reportable ever happened except bar brawls and dog fights.
Most of her words of anger, bitterness, and frustration, were justifiably aimed at her philandering boss, with whom Kate was obviously still having an illicit affair. Who was not only married but apparently completely clueless about all he’d put Kate through or that they’d had a child together.
She couldn’t help but to wonder whatever possessed Kate to go back to him or the job after having the baby? Obviously, she had needed to work, but was it really the only job in town?
She continued reading. It was clear that Kate had been a bright and well-educated woman. After school, at eighteen, she’d won a scholarship to go to Leeds University. What a terrible shame that after tasting freedom for three years and living in Leeds that she’d even gone back home again. In fact, what were the chances of getting a job in your hometown straight after university?
Isla found herself shaking her head and thinking that it would probably never happen these days. Most graduates she knew had to take menial jobs first, often miles from home, then work their way up a career ladder. Not that she’d had to do that herself, because she’d been lucky enough to have a trust fund.
She stopped herself. Lucky enough?
She certainly wasn’t lucky that both her parents had been killed. But following the death of her parents when she’d been aged six, and her subsequent exile from Pearl Island at the age of sixteen, she’d used her trust fund to attend a high-end boarding school and then a top-rated Scottish design college. The latter had resulted in a first-class diploma and a coveted internship with one of the UK’s most respected haute couture jewellery designers. From this she had gone on to win industry award after award for her innovative jewellery designs.
And then, by luck or by chance, when a photograph had appeared in the press two years ago of the Duchess of Cambridge wearing one of Isla’s Treasures de la Mer necklaces, fashioned from white gold and pearls, her designs had been introduced to the whole world and the rest was history.
Realising that she didn’t have the energy tonight to read further or to stomach more secrets and drama, she set aside Kate’s journals to continue reading tomorrow.
To be honest, she really wanted to know more about Kate’s life once the flamboyant ‘Uncle’ Ernest came along in the mid-1970s.
She also hoped that by reading about Kate’s life at that time she might finally have the answers to all the questions she’d lacked the courage to ask when Kate was alive or that Grace would willingly divulge. For instance, where did all the amazing jewellery and designer clothes come from? Who were all the glamorous people Grace had talked about coming to dinner and staying a while? Did the world-famous artist Ranaldini Salva, who painted the portrait of Kate wearing her rubies, stay here on the island too? Was it really Hemingway’s son that gave Kate a six-toed cat as a gift when he came to the island in the 1980’s? And ultimately, what were the details of Uncle Ernest’s mysterious death?
She was taken out of her thoughts by her phone pinging, alerting her to a message from Evie, her personal assistant, who was holding the fort while she was away and keeping her updated on the business of the day back in the UK.
Message: Hope everything went okay over there today Pash? (Evie’s affectionate name for Isla that was derived from her company’s name of Passion Designs.) Everything is fine here – nothing that can’t wait anyway. Yes, the draft contract came through re the London distribution deal – do you want me to email it to you? I informed the legal peeps that you’re away dealing with a family bereavement and that you’d be back in another twenty-four hours. I already checked you in for your flight and have emailed you the boarding pass. You have a charter coming to pick you up from the island at 4pm and your flight from Grand Cayman to Edinburgh via Miami leaves at 6pm. So plenty of time. See you soon!
Evie was a wonder woman as far as Isla was concerned. She dealt with everything so efficiently and it helped enormously that not only did she have a business degree but she also had a background in jewellery retail as well as countless other corporate skills. She didn’t know what she would do without her. Well, she could do without Evie’s constant and somewhat devious attempts at match-making, of course. Evie was a staunch romantic. She believed in soul-mates and happy-ever-after while Isla certainly did not. Isla believed that love was for fools and marriage for those who felt they needed someone else to help them get on in life. Luckily, she felt she was neither foolish or needy.
Feeling considerably cooler under the whirling fan above the bed and much calmer since she’d had all her travel plans back to civilisation confirmed, she felt herself relaxing back into the pillows and drifting away into a dream-filled sleep.
Chapter Eleven
Isla – Ten Years Earlier
Isla woke in her own bed some indiscernible time later, with Nurse Rose from the island clinic, her Aunt Kate and Grace all in attendance.
‘What happened?’ she yelped, as a searing pain wracked her brain.
In confusion and agony, she reached out to find her head wrapped in a bandage.
‘Where were you last night, Isla?’ Nurse Rose asked. ‘How did you bump your head?
‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ her Aunt Kate added, somewhat sourly.
‘Yes, I’m afraid you have some explaining to do, young lady,’ Grace retorted. ‘Your Aunt Kate has been up all night and all day worrying about you, Miss Isla.’
‘I can’t remember,’ Isla answered truthfully.
‘I suspect a concussion,’ Nurse Rose declared. ‘She’ll need watching for the next few hours.’
‘I’ll take the first shift,’ Grace offered.
‘What do you mean, all night and all day? What time is it? How long have I been here?’ Isla’s voice was high with panic.
Grace looked at her watch. ‘It’s just after five pm, Miss Isla. You’ve been out for quite a while. Let me get you a glass of water.’
The moment that her aunt had left the room with Nurse Rose, Isla grabbed hold of the housekeeper’s hand. ‘Grace, is there anything you can tell me? I can’t remember how I got back here or how I got hurt?’ Suddenly a shadowy image crossed her mind and she remembered being on the boat with Leo.
Oh my… where is Leo?
‘You are hurting my hand, Miss Isla,’ Grace squeaked.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. It’s just that I’ve a bad feeling about all of this and I want to know what happened. I need to know if Leo is okay.’
Grace’s released hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp and the glass of water hit the floor.
‘Oh, Miss Isla! Please tell me you weren’t with Leo Fernandez last night?’
Isla let out another sound that sounded like a yelp. ‘Yes. I was. Is he okay?’
&n
bsp; Just at that moment, her stony-faced aunt re-entered the room.
‘Grace, if you don’t mind I’d like to speak to my niece alone.’
Isla would have much rather Grace stayed for moral support, as her aunt’s terse tone had her quivering with dread, but Grace left the room as instructed. Her aunt walked towards the window and gazed outside for a few moments. Her silence hung between them and her demeanour was cold. Clearly, whatever she had to say was not going to be good news.
Isla was shaking so hard that her teeth were rattling in her head.
Slowly, her aunt turned to look at her. ‘Am I to understand that you were with Leo Fernandez last night on his uncle’s boat?’
‘Yes,’ Isla whispered. ‘I was there but—’
Kate immediately raised her hand as a signal for Isla to stop speaking. ‘I do not want to hear it. For my own protection, please don’t tell me any of the awful details or any of your excuses for being part of such a heinous crime.’
‘Crime? What are you talking about? What crime?’ This was all a terrible mistake! Her aunt simply didn’t understand that Leo and his uncle were salvaging treasure, not trying to steal it, and they were going to hand it over for a reward.
‘Apparently, the boy is claiming that he acted alone. But once they get the truth out of him and, believe me, they will get the truth out of him one way or another, then it really is only a matter of time before they come for you too. You have to leave Pearl Island immediately. It’s the only way.’
Isla began shrieking hysterically. She didn’t know how to process any of this.
‘What are you talking about? Who are they? And why would they come for me too?’
Her head was practically bursting with pain and her throat was choked and burning.
‘Please, just tell me what has happened to Leo?’ she screamed.
Her screaming only stopped when her aunt screamed back at her that Leo had been arrested.
Then the room rang with silence again until Isla found the capacity to speak.
‘Arrested? Why? Under what charges?’
‘For attempting to smuggle illegal drugs over to the mainland in his uncle’s boat.’
Isla was now sitting bolt upright in the bed and sobbing, shaking her head from side to side, oblivious to any pain.
‘No… that can’t be true. Leo wouldn’t do that. I know he wouldn’t do that!’
‘Then he lied to you, because he’s pleaded guilty to all the charges.’
And then it was as if the bottom had fallen out of her world.
And once again, she was falling into a black abyss.
Chapter Twelve
Leo – Present Day
He felt like he’d been slapped in the face, but what had he expected? Forgiveness? For time to have healed her? Ten years ago he had lied to her. He had put her in danger. She had been injured because of him. She had been sent away from the island because of him. He understood her pain and her anger towards him because it was where his true punishment had always lain.
Yet, he’d waited so long and planned so carefully for this day, knowing that when Miss Kate passed away then Isla would have to come home. Miss Kate had been sick for a while when he’d returned to Pearl Island. She had cancer, people said, but when he’d gone up to the house to propose creating a pearl farm business on the island, expecting to be turned away, she had allowed him inside and she had listened to him.
She’d liked the idea of bringing pearl production back to the Isla de la Perlas and hadn’t even minded when he told her that it would take two years to see the first harvest and one more before they went into any real profit. She said she was impressed with his plans and, like him, she could see how it would all be worthwhile and profitable in the long run.
Now that she was back, he had hoped Isla would be of the same opinion, especially when she discovered that she had a fifty percent stake in the pearl farm and they were now business partners. He wanted to show her around. To show her that the pearl farm had a future and maybe, when he got a chance to explain, she might understand. She might finally be able to forgive him.
He’d studied hard in prison and he had been treated comparatively well, thanks to his uncle paying off the right people, and he’d completed a diploma in business management. He’d also taught English language to the Spanish-only speaking inmates at a rate of ten dollars an hour and over the term of his ten-year sentence, of which he’d served eight, he’d amassed a small cash fortune that he’d been able to keep safely stowed away in a cavity behind a loose brick next to his bed.
Over the past ten years he’d had plenty of time to imagine the scenario of seeing Isla again and he’d always expected that he’d be well prepared, but when she’d stood in front of him this morning, nothing could have prepared him for the physical impact of being so close to her again.
He cringed at recalling their conversation. She must have thought him a babbling fool, going on about investments when she was dealing with her aunt’s estate. No wonder she’d been so cold and impersonal towards him. He swore loudly as he caught his finger in the lid of the filtration tank he was closing.
Anya, who was making her way back across the yard, heard him curse.
‘You okay, Leo?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, fine,’ he lied. ‘Look, why don’t you go home to your husband. There’s no point in us both being here. I still have more filters to clean.’
Anya didn’t need telling twice. ‘Okay, thanks. See you tomorrow, boss.’
He threw himself into his work, trying hard not to mull over the last time he had seen Isla and all the years that had been stolen from them since. Then, once the filters and gratings were back in place, he went up to his apartment above the visitor centre and took a long cool shower.
Under the cascade of water, he closed his eyes, clenched his jaw and pressed his hands onto the wall tiles in front of him as he attempted to clarify the thoughts whirring through his head.
Seeing her had brought back all the old memories as well as the new confusions about whether he’d ever done enough right in his life to outweigh the wrong. He must have gone over that fateful night on the boat a million times during those long years in prison, where every night his snatches of sleep had been filled with dreams of her, and every day his mind had been quick to torture him with thoughts of what might have been.
The night of Isla’s sixteenth birthday was his most precious memory, the one he held close to his heart, when he’d made love to her on the beach and asked her to marry him.
That was before he’d been stupid and ruined everything by lying to her.
If only he’d been able to keep quiet and say nothing about his plans for the night of the dark moon? That would have changed everything. Not for him perhaps, but for her it might have meant she could have stayed on the island. Then she might have got his letters. Then she might have waited for him. Why, when she’d put pressure on him, had he made up a stupid story about salvaging Captain Morgan’s lost treasure? If he’d only thought about that a bit more, he would have realised that it was like baiting her to come along and screw things up. Not that it was Isla’s fault he’d got caught that night.
He shook his head for the millionth time at his own stupidity.
Maybe he’d lied to her because he thought it was the only story she would believe, when he couldn’t actually bring himself to tell her how Jack had offered him a fortune in cash to help him run a large consignment of ‘duty-free’ to the mainland.
Of course, Jack had lied too, and for the same reasons – to cover up a more distasteful truth.
He remembered he hadn’t even thought twice about it. Jack had needed his help. To him, at the time, it had meant that his uncle recognised he was now a man and not a boy. Of course, he’d known then that what they were doing was wrong. He’d guessed that what his uncle did under the guise of the dark moon was illegal, as he was a known rum-runner. But Jack had a good heart – he wasn’t a bad man – it’s just what he did was
bad. And he’d saved his life. He’d taken him in when everyone else had thought that taking in a sea-gypsy kid would bring on bad luck and catastrophe. He’d fed him and clothed him and made sure he went to school and was educated. He’d taught him how to fish and, later, how to use the nets and drive his boat. So there was no way he was going to think badly of Jack because he was involved with of a bit of bootlegging.
As far as he was concerned, at that particular point in time Jack had only ever asked one thing of him and that was loyalty – and by continuing to see Isla he knew he had been disloyal. But he was in love with her. He’d loved her from the very first moment he saw her, when she’d appeared in front of him like an enchanted little mermaid who had found legs and become a fairy princess.
Hello, I’m Isla. What’s your name?
And he’d hardly been able to say a word to her because he’d never, ever, seen anyone with golden hair like his before. To him, it was as if they had been made in the same mould and put on this earth only for each other, and his uncle’s warnings made no difference to how he felt about her.
That girl is trouble. Keep away from her…
She is a spoilt little witch, just like her aunt…
And the one that had upset him the most: One day, that girl will go off and marry someone rich and important, so you might as well forget her…
Isla was a girl with wealth and privilege and when he married her he couldn’t expect her to live in his uncle’s house on the peninsula. Isla would want a house of her own so they could start a family. But all he could afford was a shack on the beach. He had foolishly thought that Jack’s lucrative offer would lead him to riches and importance when, tragically, he became a convicted felon instead.
For a long time he mourned his loss of Isla. Then, when his silent tears had finally dried up, he’d raged inwardly at his uncle, whom he refused to see, even though he came to visit him at the prison.
He wouldn’t see him, simply because he didn’t trust himself not to try to kill him.
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