‘Oh, I’m just doing a bit of tidying up. The whole garden is too much for me these days but I can at least try stop the bougainvillea from taking over the whole house.’
Isla frowned. It was true that the garden looked neglected. The swimming pool too looked more like an eyesore than an asset. It was a shame not to have it looking it’s best when prospective buyers were viewing ‘Then why don’t we get a gardener?’ Isla enquired. ‘I do remember we had one once. Wasn’t it Carlos? Your boyfriend from the airstrip?’
From under her hat a flustered Grace let out a disgruntled grunt.
‘He can’t have much to do there. Do you think we might get him back to attend to the garden and the pool?’ Isla continued to say.
‘He’s not my boyfriend, Miss Isla. And don’t let him tell you otherwise!’
‘Otherwise? Do you mean he was your boyfriend?’ Isla laughed again.
Grace’s arms wobbled as she flexed them and went back to her hostile snipping.
‘Not since he made inappropriate gestures and I fired him,’ she answered flatly. ‘So, if you want to employ a gardener, Miss Isla, I suggest you look elsewhere!’
Isla’s jaw dropped in shock and she promptly apologised. ‘I’m sorry Grace. Yes, let’s find someone else. But if you don’t mind me asking, did you ever tell anyone about this? I mean, Carlos should not have got away unpunished for what he did to you.’
Grace nodded. ‘Yes. I spoke to Minister John at great length about it at the time but of course what is said to a Minister in the presence of God is strictly confidential.’
‘But Grace, surely Minister John gave you some practical advice too?’
‘Yes, he told me to forgive Carlos, as Jesus taught us to forgive.’
Isla shook her head. She didn’t go along with any of that religious rubbish. In her opinion, if someone has done something wrong then they should be punished accordingly.
She thought about Leo and how he had once broken the law and been punished accordingly.
So why on earth had she just agreed to stay here on the island with him one more day?
Did she still harbour some kind of misguided hope that he was incapable of doing such a terrible thing as to smuggle narcotics and that there was another explanation?
But then he’d been caught red-handed. He had pleaded guilty to all charges.
Acknowledging that Grace wasn’t going to tell her anything more about Carlos and his inappropriate gestures, she decided she would be far less pleasant to him next time she saw him and that she might even give him a piece of her mind.
‘Anyway, I must get on. Unless of course, you’d like some tea or a nice cold glass of limeade, perhaps?’
‘No. Thank you, Grace. I’m just going up to get changed into something, erm… cooler.’
When she got down to the dock where they’d agreed to meet, Leo was standing next to a boat named The Perfect Pearl which was equipped with live wells for transporting mollusc shells.
He was wearing knee-length swim shorts and a white sleeveless tank vest with the Pearl Island Pearl Farm logo on the back of it. He was gathering up a heavy rope from the dock and the sleeveless vest showed off his muscled arms, his bulging biceps, and the golden tone of his skin.
‘So this is your boat?’ she remarked, thinking that she’d now seen where all the money had been spent: a workshop, a laboratory, a visitor centre, custom apparel and a fully-equipped boat.
‘Yes, well, fifty percent of it anyway,’ he quipped.
‘How far out is the platform?’
‘I built the pontoon at the other side of the reef a few hundred feet out. The grow lines are ropes suspended from a raft. I’m using baskets and nets to hold the mollusc in place. It’s really impressive-looking right now.’
‘Why at the other side of the reef? Aren’t you risking tidal damage out there?’ she asked.
Leo laughed. ‘Ah, so who really does know something about pearl farming, then?’
‘Surely it’s just common sense,’ she replied, shaking off his comment.
Leo drove the boat out across the bay and over the part of the reef where there was an access channel. Isla inhaled the sea air and took in the beautiful sights around her. The island looked so pretty. The harbour, with its wooden shacks and boatsheds on stilts that looked a little ticky-tacky and precarious on closer inspection, took on a quaint façade from this viewpoint. The sea was calm this morning and the water so clear that looking down it was possible to see a multitude of colourful corals on the reef below. Leo pointed out a pod of dolphins and a school of flying fish across their bow and then, a short while later, a large bamboo raft on floats with a platform out on the surface of the water ahead of them. When they pulled up alongside, he secured the boat to a buoy.
‘The crop is suspended three to fifteen feet below the raft,’ he told her.
She looked down and could easily see all the rope lines and baskets in neat rows.
He handed her a mask and snorkel. ‘You asked me why I chose this particular spot. Well, it’s down to several important factors. The reef is healthy all along here and corals are thriving. The water is clean, and the current is usually pretty constant, as it benefits from the protection of the bay. But there is one very special reason why this is the best place for a pearl farm, and if you come down there with me, you’ll immediately see why.’
‘Okay, I’m intrigued,’ she said, feeling his eyes upon her as she self-consciously slipped off her white thigh-length shirt covering her swimsuit and put on her mask and snorkel.
They climbed onto the edge of the raft together and then carefully entered the water. After taking a deep breath on the surface, they flipped down into the depths. Leo led the way. Isla was determined to keep up with him. Back in Edinburgh, she swam in her health club’s pool every morning, although hadn’t done any snorkelling since last year’s week in the Mediterranean, when she’d forced herself to take a break from work because she thought she might break if she didn’t.
The water was bath-water warm and perfectly clear and curious colourful fish swam around them. Leo pointed out the ready-to-harvest oyster shells. They were all about the size of her hand and suspended in the baskets in front of her. He obviously did a good job looking after the oysters as they were all clean, free of weed or snails, or anything else that could prevent them from maturing. She swam amongst the second-year crop in the baskets and then the spat lines, ropes with young oysters attached to them, that Leo was cultivating for future grafting.
Then she felt a tickling sensation against her belly and her back and her legs and realised at once what it was that made this place so special. They were swimming in champagne.
She swam back to the surface to take a breath.
When Leo surfaced right next to her, she’d pulled off her snorkel and mask and was laughing.
‘Okay, now I get it!’ she said. ‘You are using the freshwater from the sea vents to regulate the salinity of the water. That’s brilliant!’
He pulled off his mask and snorkel too and gave her the biggest of grins.
Her heart lurched in her chest when she looked at his delighted face. His pale green eyes were sparkling with excitement and then, before she realised what was happening, he was kissing her.
His salty lips came crashing down on hers and, for several moments of out-of-this-world adrenalin-fuelled rush, she was kissing him back. When the stolen kiss ended, they treaded water for a while staring at each other. Then without a word Leo slipped back under the water.
She waited on the platform wondering what had just happened. Had she just imagined that he kissed her? Surely not, when her lips where still throbbing from the pressure of his mouth on hers.
Her head was spinning with confusion. Why would he kiss her? Why did she kiss him back?
What about Anya?
Soon he reappeared. He had a net with him containing around two dozen oyster shells.
‘Hey, Isla, can you grab a couple of towels from the boat
and soak them in sea water? We have to keep these shells damp on the raft.’
She did as he asked and then he opened the net and placed each of the shells carefully onto the wet towels. They sat in the mid-morning sunshine, facing each other on the platform in front of their potential haul, bobbing up and down to the gentle rhythm on the tide. She hardly dared to look at him with water glistening on his tanned skin and running in rivulets from his hair.
She focussed instead on the large gnarled shell in his hand.
Taking a small nylon spatula from his kit, Leo used it to work gently against the shell. When satisfied that it had yielded but he hadn’t done any damage at all, he handed the shell with the spatula to Isla so she could finish the job.
‘Go gently, open it right up and let’s see if it has a gift for us,’ he told her.
Isla was surprised how heavy the shell felt in her hand. She fixed it carefully in her palm and prised it cautiously open and marvelled at the gelatinous opaque animal inside. Then she inspected it visually but couldn’t find any pearl in its flesh.
‘Nope. Sorry, Leo, no luck this time, I’m afraid.’
‘May I…?’ he asked, holding up a small pair of tweezers from his kit.
She nodded and held out her hand and the oyster as steadily as she could, so that he could investigate the frill of mucus flesh around the outer edges of the shell for himself. Then she gasped when a perfectly rounded cream pearl of around twelve millimetres in size suddenly popped out from the oyster’s flesh and appeared before her eyes.
Her heart began pounding and she had to remind herself to concentrate on holding the shell steady while Leo detached the pearl without harming the oyster, so that this one could be grafted again. Finally, he took the shell from her and replaced it with the pearl. She studied it between her thumb and forefinger as it shimmered and reflected the morning light with an inner glow.
‘It has no surface defects that I can see and there is a highly iridescent lustre’, she said, breathless. ‘I believe this is a perfect pearl and that it must be worth at least a thousand dollars!’
Leo could hardly keep the smile off his face. ‘See, I told you. I promised you the finest pearls in the world and you didn’t believe me, but now you know that I was telling the truth.’
She had to admit that he had been telling the truth. This time anyway.
‘I’ve seen this quality before,’ she told him with some excitement. ‘The natural pearls of Bahrain are found where two seas merge – one salt water and one freshwater – it’s reputedly what gives them their lustre.’
‘And it’s the lustre that determines the quality!’ they both chanted in unison.
Then they laughed together and it felt weird.
Being here. Being with him. And laughing again.
‘But how did you know how to do all of this?’ she asked.
‘Research,’ he told her. ‘I did my research.’
She tore her eyes away from the pearl to look straight into his cool green eyes. What was happening here didn’t sit right with her. It was all too convenient somehow. It felt staged. It felt wrong.
‘Did you research me too, Leo?’
He held her gaze for a moment before starting to speak but by then she already had her answer.
She gave him back the pearl and stood up. She put her shirt back on and went to sit at the front of the boat to distance herself from him. Her mind was whirring and her inner alarm bells were ringing. For who knows how many years he had been following her life, knowing her every move?
If her instincts were right, he’d known she was looking for a supply of fine pearls and he’d set up this farm with some ulterior motive in mind. She was feeling creeped out. He’d tricked her once before and, after all those years he’d spent in prison, amongst other criminals, she really didn’t know what he was capable of doing next.
He was a stranger to her now. She didn’t want to be around him. It was too painful. It was too confusing.
To hell with Leo and his perfect pearls.
Then she heard him come up to her at the front of the boat. ‘I wasn’t stalking you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I only needed to know if you were safe and happy. I found out you were a successful jewellery designer because I read a news article about a British royal who was photographed wearing one of your designs in pearls. I do have access to the internet, you know, just like everyone else. At least, I did after I got back here two years ago.’
‘Two years ago I made the decision to work exclusively in pearls,’ she exclaimed.
‘I read that too. You made a statement about it in the press.’
‘You spied on me!’
‘Isla, for eight years, I didn’t know what had become of you. I’d begged my uncle to find out for me but he never did. I wrote to you but I never got a reply. Did you even get my letters?’
Isla closed her eyes. ‘No. I’m not aware of any letters.’
He sat down on the bow next to her and sighed. ‘Oh, Isla. What will it take for you to forgive me? I felt so badly about everything that happened. I just wanted to do something so that one day, when we eventually saw each other again, I would have something to offer you.’
She opened her eyes and forced herself to look at him. ‘Perfect pearls?’
He slowly nodded and then he rubbed his chin, the way he always did when he was nervous. He was sitting so close that she could feel the heat from his arm and see tiny beads of moisture on the curve of his top lip. Her lips could still feel the pressure of his kiss.
‘I’m having a hard time dealing with this, Leo. It’s a bit overwhelming, especially when your first harvest happens to coincide exactly with my return.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yes. Luck, I guess.’
‘What? You mean it’s lucky that my aunt died when she did?’ she retorted.
‘No, Isla. Oh, for heaven’s sake. I didn’t say that!’
‘I just think this is all a bit too much. How do I know that you haven’t killed my aunt and then planted a perfect pearl into that shell to pass it off as a lucky first find?’
His jaw dropped in disbelief and he stared incredulously at her for a few excruciating moments.
‘Is that what you think I am – a murderer and a liar?’
‘Whatever. Please take me back to the dock. I’ve decided not to stay for the harvest after all, and I want to spend some time with Grace before I leave in the morning.’
They sped back to the dock and from his stance at the wheelhouse, Isla could see that Leo was beyond furious. She heard him mutter something under his breath about her being ‘a god-damned fucking princess’ and she turned away but continued to feel his eyes burning into her back all the way across the bay. It took all of her strength not to burst into tears.
What had he done to her and why had he kissed her?
She didn’t trust herself to speak to him again, so the moment they reached dry land, she planned to jump straight into the golf cart and drive back up to the house, where she could immediately reorganise her flight off the island. But as they pulled up against the wooden dock, where she could see Anya waiting for Leo, it was clear that he wasn’t going to let her get away so easily.
‘Okay, Isla, you win! I’m tired. I’ve not slept a wink since you arrived here and if you want to leave then there is nothing I can do to stop you. There’s also nothing I can do to stop you from selling Pearl Island. But I’m damned if you are going away once again thinking that I’m some punk who messed up your life.’
He was jabbing a finger in the air now and in her direction.
‘I loved you, Isla. I still love you. But I absolutely resent that you think I’m capable of planning a murder and planting a pearl in an oyster to trick you. I lied to you just one time. Just one fucking time when I was a boy, and for that I am eternally sorry. But I’ve served my time and heaven knows I’ve tried to make it up to you in the only way I know how. So now I’m done. Goodbye, Isla.’
And this time, it
was he who walked away from her.
Chapter Fifteen
Isla stepped off the Perfect Pearl and hurried past Anya, who was staring open-mouthed at her after hearing Leo give her a piece of his mind.
‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,’ Isla muttered, on route to the golf cart. She threw the cart into drive with one hand and gripped the steering wheel tightly with the other to stop herself from shaking.
She drove quickly away from the harbour, a cloud of sand billowed in her wake as she made her way back up the hill to the house, only stopping to buy a fish from a fisherman’s wife who had enthusiastically waved her down from the side of the road.
When she got back to the house, she would insist on cooking dinner. Not only did she have to find a way to break the news to Grace that she was leaving after all but also planning to sell the island too. It was undoubtedly going to be a very difficult evening.
She decided she would cook the fish, a red snapper, on the BBQ with a squeeze of lime juice, searing it lightly over the coals until the skin was crispy, just the way Grace liked it. She would serve it up with a garden salad and fried breadfruit. It was while she was busily attending to the BBQ and getting a good fire going that Grace appeared on the terrace with a large candy-striped hat box in her arms.
‘Don’t tell me you went through all those hat boxes and only chose one?’ Isla quipped.
‘Actually, I chose plenty, but I happened across this box, which actually does not contain a hat.’
She put the box on the table and gave Isla a look that might suggest it contained something she might be interested in seeing. Isla wiped her hands on her apron and lifted the lid off the hat box.
Inside were lots of envelopes, all tightly packed together in bundles. She tentatively lifted out a bundle and her heart sank when she saw that they were all unopened and all addressed to her.
These had to be the letters that Leo said he’d written to her.
She swallowed hard and pulled out the first envelope in the bundle. The letter was dated just days after they had last seen each other in the summer of 2006, when Leo was being held in some horrible prison on the mainland, and she was already thousands of miles away from him in the UK.
Island in the Sun Page 10