by Rosie Blake
Snorkellers paddled about and a couple walked hand in hand along the shoreline just ahead of me. The beach was littered with overturned rowing boats, fraying straw ropes attached to their helms, a spattering of sand along the bottoms where the paint had worn away completely. I found a path that wound its way behind the beach and through a pop-up street of wooden huts and cafes and then noticed a small shop with an ancient chest freezer plugged into a socket outside, a buzzing emanating from a generator screwed into the wall above it. An empty stool and a dustpan and brush were stowed next to it.
Pushing open the door, warm air circled, a tilted single fan, trying to cool down the shop floor. I opened the fridge door and felt an overwhelming temptation to climb inside, sit on the bottom rack and stay there. Instead I grabbed a bottle of water and a Diet Coke and went to pay, realising as
I caught my face in the mirror behind the counter, that
I wasn’t looking my most elegant. My hair had dried into waves, my face was red from the efforts of the afternoon and I had large rings under both arms. However, I had just crossed an entire ISLAND and taking the crumpled photocopy of Andrew’s face from the Internet I slid it across the
counter to the man serving me. No time to waste. I was totally
seizing this day.
‘Excuse me, but do you recognise him?’
The man, middle-aged, patted at a mop of dark-brown hair flecked with grey, then took the picture from me. Lifting a pair of glasses from next to the till and hovering them over the image, he squinted at it.
‘Don’t think so, no,’ he said, looking back at me. ‘Is it important?’ he asked as my shoulders slumped and that familiar wash of impossibility flooded over me.
‘Someone thought perhaps they’d seen him on this side of the island.’
‘Not in here but you never know: Juara beach is long and there are lots of men here,’ he said with a slightly seedy wink.
My heart lifted a little, although many men still sounded like a lot and Andrew was definitely becoming the needle in the haystack. Thanking him, I pushed out of his shop. Twisting the bottle of water and drinking half of it just outside the doorway, I felt a sliver of possibility. There was something in the air: hope, I thought. Or maybe grilled fish. Either way, I had come this far and I had to search this beach and try to get back to the hotel tonight. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I walked right along the path.
Three beach bars and a restaurant later and I was sitting miserably on a sun lounger staring at the lapping sea in front of me and trying to coax myself into happier thoughts. This was useless. I lay back, shielding the sun from my face with one hand and closed my eyes. Andrew’s Internet picture fluttered out of my hand onto the beach. A voice from nearby started talking and I felt a light spray of sand across my arm as someone walked over to me, their shadow blocking the sun from my face. I squinted up at the silhouette.
‘You dropped this,’ the silhouette said, bending to retrieve the piece of paper from the sand.
The silhouette was a woman about my age, wearing a floppy sunhat and a baby-pink bikini top.
‘Hey, that’s Andy,’ she said, the surprise lifting her voice at the end.
I opened the other eye as the words filtered into my consciousness. Then I sat up so abruptly that she jumped back.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I spluttered, lifting myself right off the lounger now. ‘What did you just say?’
‘Your picture.’ She gestured with her hand. ‘It’s Andy.’
‘Andy. Do you know him?’ I asked, feeling all my breath suspended in my body as I waited for her response.
Her eyes narrowed a little and she put one hand on her hip. ‘Why?’ she challenged. ‘Has he done something?’
I supposed the photo did look a little foreboding; I had seen many stills like this on America’s Most Wanted.
‘No, no, he hasn’t,’ I assured her. ‘I just know him, well, I’ve been looking for him. Is he here?’ I said, looking around and behind me in case Andrew suddenly walked over, a voiceover saying, ‘ISOBEL – THIS IS YOUR LIFE!’
He wasn’t walking over, no one was, and the girl nervously licked her lips. She had a nose ring which glinted in the sunlight as she asked her next question. ‘Well, who are you and then maybe I can tell you where he is,’ she said slowly. Man, what was she like? The Gate Keeper of Andrew?
I tried to keep the resentment out of my voice. ‘I’m just an old friend,’ I said, tempted to add, ‘AND HIS WIFE’ but figuring that might scare her a little and anyway, as his wife, perhaps she might have expected me to have a better handle on where he was.
‘Where did you meet him?’
God, what was this? Twenty questions? Why didn’t she just shine a light in my eye?
‘Southsea,’ I responded, certain she had no idea where that was.
‘Occupation?’
‘Teacher.’ I smiled. Ha, ha, I am passing your stupid test, Lady Face!
‘Country of origin?’
WHO SPEAKS LIKE THAT?
‘England,’ I sighed, trying to look weary and not rattled.
Her forehead creased as her brain ticked over and then light appeared in her eyes. She clearly had the Killer Question. I got nervous, felt my palms dampen; I mean, I didn’t know a lot. He liked milk but maybe that was Child Andrew, for all I knew he was now lactose intolerant. Oh jeez, would this woman bar me?
‘What’s his surname?’ she asked.
I paused, mostly to mess with her, before slowly leaning forward. ‘Parker.’ I finished with a triumphant, largely smug, smile.
Satisfied that I had passed her investigation – if there had been a chair and an overhead lamp she would have sat me in it. She asked me to follow her. She was now walking two paces in front of me along the dirt track. Her long strawberry-blonde hair swung side to side as she moved. She had a tiny waist and a dis-proportionally large bottom straining in tight denim shorts. Her legs were stubbornly pale and she had a light spattering of sand on her feet that were encased in flip-flops. It was like following Strawberry-Blonde Beyoncé. She looked back at me over her left shoulder.
‘He might not be there today,’ she warned.
‘Okay.’
I wasn’t sure where ‘there’ was and she didn’t seem to be giving up additional information, so I contented myself with this. It was also not ‘okay’ – I had crossed the island for him, nay THE GLOBE, and to not see him now, after all of these efforts, seemed absurd.
She pointed with one finger to a sign painted on a rock on our right. ‘’s here.’
Words spelled in Malay were written on top of an enormous picture of a turtle painted in purples and blues. There was an arrow below the turtle pointing down the path in the direction we were walking.
Did Andrew live here then? Did he have a drink regularly somewhere that this girl knew about? I pictured him holed up in his favourite bar, atop a stool, telling an amusing anecdote from his day as the bar owner smiled and dried a glass with a tea towel. Or perhaps he would be sitting outside a small house on a chair, feet up on the balcony, writing in a travel diary and looking out across the blue sea beyond.
I could feel my palms becoming clammy as the minutes passed and we diverted off the main path on to a dusty, narrow footpath made up of rutted sand and pebbles. Sporadic weeds trailed lifelessly under our feet and bicycle tracks could clearly be made out in the sand. Perhaps we weren’t going to find Andrew at all, I panicked. I looked at the large bottom sashaying in front of me, so confident; perhaps she had sized up the competition and was taking me to a far-off cave to confront me in some kind of Creepy Psycho Girl show-down and then brain me with a large shell? I was being so trusting trooping after her and I didn’t know anything about her.
‘So…’ I said, swallowing, ‘how do you know Andrew?’
She didn’t look back at me. ‘We’ve spent some time toget
her…on the island.’
She made it sound very The Beach – at any moment I was expecting to stumble upon a commune of free-thinking Westerners, breaking out of their consumerist lives in the West, probably naked and covered in dolphin tattoos.
‘So only just recently,’ I confirmed, assuming it might rile her a bit to point out that, unlike me who had known Andrew for YEARS, she had in fact known him for days. Ha, ha.
‘It feels like we’ve known each other for ever.’
Ah. Touché.
I started scuffing my feet along the ground, and when she asked me things, I repeated her questions silently to myself miming them at her back with a mocking expression on my face. It made me feel marginally better.
The track had widened again and we were now at the other end of the beach. On the right, the jungle climbed beyond us, the sumptuous greens of the trees merging with each other. As we rounded the next bend, the beach opened up in front of us, stark white in the light, and I saw some areas, no bigger than boxing rings, netted off in the corner, a jumble of plastic boxes and water butts to the side. There were six or so huts just beyond them and a semi-circle of people gathered round something on the shoreline.
Strawberry Blonde Girl breathed out as she said, ‘He is here,’ and when she turned she had a dreamy expression on her face and a sparkle in her eyes that only emphasised her perfect English Rose complexion. Still, I hadn’t time to fester on the image as her words sunk in.
He was here.
As in here.
Here.
Now.
I had travelled across half the world, I had taken two long-haul flights, one tiny rickety flight, a bus, a car, some taxis, and I’d even scoured the jungle on foot for him. And he was here. I could feel my heart drumming a beat in my chest, as if, at any second, it could burst right out of there and judder about on the sand crying, ‘He is here, he is here, he is here.’
I swallowed, licked my lips, attempted to de-tangle my hair with my fingers, pinched my cheeks like I’d seen girls do in period dramas and then I asked, ‘Can you…?’ My voice came out as a strangled whisper. ‘Can you point him out to me?’
Strawberry Blonde Girl smirked at me and pointed in the direction of the group on the shoreline. ‘Well, obviously, he’s right there,’ she said.
I took a step forward, scanning the group.
Strawberry Blonde Girl put a hand on my arm. ‘You do know him?’ she said, her voice lower, laden with suspicion now.
‘Oh yes, it’s just, my eyes, the light, I was momentarily blinded by the sun.’ Shaking her off, I walked towards the group, eyes flicking back and forth, a blur of shorts, T-shirts, white teeth, dark hair, blonde hair, bikinis, towels. Most of them were centred around one man – my throat stopped working – he had sandy hair, slight curls, wide bare shoulders, and he was kneeling in the shallows. They were all staring at his lap. It was quite bizarre actually. Some of them were making cooing noises at it.
I took another step forward, drawn to the scene, unable to look anywhere else. His head was still bent over his lap and, as I moved closer, I realised it was a tiny turtle in his arms, its minuscule shell and short, stumpy legs sitting in his hands as he stroked it with one thumb.
As I drew nearer, mesmerised, he looked up at me, mid-stroke, and smiled, one eyebrow fractionally raised as if he had a question. I stared straight at him holding the baby turtle and grinned. ‘Andrew,’ I said, ‘Andrew Parker.’
And then his smile faded and his eyebrows knitted together. He handed the turtle to one of the group and stood up, arms crossed in front of him.
‘Er. Sorry, do I know you?’
I could practically feel Strawberry Blonde’s triumph from behind me.
Chapter 22
Andrew had taken me off to a hut with a tiny fridge on the terrace and two deckchairs that were so low you spent most of the time fighting gravity. Sitting became quite a stressful experience and, clutching my pineapple juice in a rather warm glass, I found myself toppling backwards and spilling some down my top in the first minute.
‘Here you go,’ he said, almost about to dab my chest with a filthy cloth and then handing it to me at the last moment.
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, hoping he might pass my red cheeks off as an onset of spontaneous sunburn.
He sat forward in his deckchair, legs bent and sipped at his juice. He looked to his left, rubbed his leg and then fiddled with the lip of his glass, picking away at some imaginary spot until I was forced to start talking.
‘So, Andrew,’ I said in my poshest voice. ‘It has taken me a while to find you,’ I admitted with a small bark of laughter. Very scary.
‘Yes,’ he commented, back to picking at the glass again, ‘So you were…looking for me,’ he checked. ‘Liz said you had a photo of me.’
‘Well, I…’
Realising it would sound somewhat eccentric slash STALKER SCARY to admit I had, in fact, travelled the globe in search of him – a man who on first sight had not recognised me – I tried to think of another reason that I was on an obscure beach on Tioman Island, in the middle of the South China Sea off the coast of Malaysia. So I played the search down, not wanting to alarm him and ruin our reunion.
‘Well, I was on the island on holiday and I heard you were here, this side, and I thought, I’ll print off a photo and go and look for him.’
He scratched his head. That news had clearly thrown him, so I thought it was better not to add anything more. He need never know.
‘Oh right, so you were on holiday,’ he repeated.
‘Yes, I was just having a bit of “Me” time,’ I smiled, encouraged that he seemed to look more relaxed, was drinking, eyes weren’t too wide, breathing patterns were normal.
‘Oh right.’
I pursed my lips, did a smile without teeth and nodded a few times. Right, so, what to do now? Down on the beach less than a hundred yards away Strawberry Blonde Girl, aka Liz, was glancing back at us through slanted eyes. She was currently tending to a sick turtle and looked like Turtle Nurse, all long, wavy hair and concern. Andrew half-raised a hand at her and I instantly said, ‘Liz seems nice,’ in a voice that suggested I thought she was anything but.
Fortunately, Andrew didn’t appear to notice and just nodded once and sipped his drink. ‘Yeah she’s cool.’
This wasn’t going very well; this was not the warm, gushy reunion I had envisaged. I imagined me saying his name, his light-brown eyes opening in surprise, a hundred memories flashing across his face as he drank me in, in the flesh, there, with him, after all these years. I had imagined him smiling widely, opening his arms so that I could run (slo-mo) into them and we could embrace like we should never have been torn apart, like he should never have left me. Then, slowly, we would drop into the sand, probably holding hands, to swap news, gush at each other, laugh over long-forgotten memories sparked by seeing each other again, reminisce over old names and faces. Maybe the recreation of our secret handshake?
Not this. This awkward silence with Andrew avoiding my eyes and stilted conversation as we tried to find common ground. I hadn’t even told him my name yet. I’d assumed it would have instantly tripped off his tongue.
‘So how long have you been out here?’ I asked, trying not to stare too much at his bare chest. It was practically hairless, amazing. I wonder if he waxed? Lucky colouring, I mused. FOCUS, ISOBEL. HE IS TALKING.
‘Just over a week, you know,’ he said, leaning forward, his eyes intent on me. ‘You do look really familiar.’
Not really hearing the last part, I jumped on his sentence. ‘Yes, you’re a Geography teacher,’ I announced.
‘Er yes, I am,’ he said, brow wrinkling. ‘How did you know?’
And, without thinking, I said, ‘Your headmistress told me!’
‘You know Joan?’ he asked.
‘Jo…Mrs Henderson, um, well not exactl
y but I was, um, sort of at your school and I bumped into her with her dogs Koalemos, and, you know, well they were sweet things – and well, she…’ I trailed off as Andrew had lost a lot of colour in his cheeks. ‘Nice woman,’ I mumbled. Then I looked up, coming to a decision. ‘Have you got anything to go with this?’ I asked, indicating the glass.
‘I think so,’ he said slowly. ‘Let me go and look.’ And he practically dived into the hut in search of spirits as I fretted and wrung my hands and spoke to myself, which was just what I was doing when his head popped back around the door. ‘Gin or vodka?’
I stopped muttering and turned to him. ‘Vodka,’ I said in a voice that made me sound like I had trailed a desert and this was the first prospect of a drink on the horizon.
He returned, downing half of his drink and asked, ‘So you were at my school?’
‘Yes,’ I laughed, reciting what I had just rehearsed in my head. ‘I was there researching English schools for a new TV show I might present. They like real English places in LA and well I have visited loads and…’
‘Which ones?’
‘Oh, too many to mention,’ I waved a hand, swallowing. ‘Look, Liz has stood up!’ I said loudly.
‘Er so she has.’
Drinks full again, blessed ice found, I tried to be more relaxed. Andrew had found a T-shirt from somewhere which I think also helped me to focus. He had obviously had a little talking-to himself too, as we both clashed on our next question,
‘So, how can I help?’
‘So, Andrew, you must be wondering why I am here.’
Then we laughed, short, quickly. Liz looked up from the beach again at us. I raised my glass at her. Childish.
How can I help? His last sentence tore through me: how could he help? Why was I here? What did he think? Should I just come out with it?
I half-opened my mouth to explain and then shut it again. I couldn’t just tell him. He didn’t appear to really be able to place us yet, needed more time to remember all the times we had spent together in our childhood. And it would sound a bit odd to just come out and say it. So I swirled my glass around, hearing the ice knock against the side whilst I played for time.