by Tina Seskis
61
Jemma
Chrissy repositioned Jamie’s empty chair and sat down across from Jemma.
‘You all right?’ she asked.
Jemma decided to be honest for a change and shook her head. Bobbi glided past, proffering coffee, and when Chrissy accepted, he scurried off to fetch a clean cup.
‘It’s OK, babe, rows happen to us all. On me and Kenny’s first holiday together, I threw a hairdryer at him.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘Well, only in the hotel room, and it was attached to the wall, but even so. Men can be so sodding annoying at times.’
‘Hmm,’ Jemma said. She felt numb, yet cut free at the same time. Since Jamie had stalked off, the terrible pressure she’d felt since she’d stood at the entrance to the church had disappeared, as if a boil had been lanced. Jamie, her husband, her future. What a joke.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. Her voice sounded low and strangled, and she barely recognized it.
‘What d’you mean?’
Jemma looked at this near-stranger, who was built like Jessica Rabbit. Her hair flowed over her shoulders in a river of gold. Her eyes were wide and her lips were sensuous, smeared with shine. No wonder Jamie couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
‘It’s a disaster,’ Jemma said. She spoke in barely a whisper. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Oh, love,’ Chrissy said. She took Jemma’s hand across the table, and her fingers were soft and her nails were long and red. ‘It’s all right. Come on, d’you want to go for a walk along the beach? I’ll just tell Kenny.’
Chrissy got up and slunk across the terrace, past the other diners, and the throw over her bikini was so transparent she might as well have not been wearing it. When she returned, Jemma stood up, and the two women walked all of ten yards down onto the beach – and as their feet pressed virgin shapes into the sand, Jemma tried to work out what she should say to Chrissy, and just how much of the story it was safe to share.
62
Jemma
Jemma came up spluttering as the sea stung the back of her throat in its brazen, briny way. It was later that afternoon, and she and Kenny were making their attempt to snorkel around the island, but it wasn’t going well. Her mask kept filling up, and no matter how much she adjusted it, it didn’t seem to fit properly, although it had been fine yesterday, when Pascal had tightened it for her. Jemma took care to keep her feet up, not trample on the coral, but her legs were hard to coordinate in their flippers and she felt anxious. She wished snorkelling came more naturally to her, especially as she was such a strong swimmer – maybe the row with Jamie at breakfast had upset her more than she’d thought.
Jemma tried to quell her nerves, remind herself that what she and Kenny were doing was perfectly safe. They were never more than a hundred feet or so from the island in their circumnavigation of it, and if the worst came to the worst she could always abandon snorkelling to lie on her back and kick her flippers, until she beached herself on the soft sieved sand. And as long as they stayed this side of the reef’s edge she was sure there was virtually no chance of either of them drifting off or drowning.
Kenny seemed to be suffering none of these practical problems, and he was patient and attentive whenever Jemma needed to stop and sort out her mask. When he spotted a giant turtle, he even came back for her and took her hand, so she could swim alongside him as the creature swooped and skimmed below them, seemingly happy to share his magical home with these gawky landlubbers, for a few minutes at least. Gradually, Jemma felt her breath beginning to ease, the loud, hollow sound of her heartbeat becoming more rhythmic as she found herself focusing on the simple wonders of this secret city under the sea. And as she gazed in awe at the collage of coral, the lounge lizard turtle, the bright flashes of the fishes, at last her worries about her mask and going home and her marriage to Jamie slipped away with the cool slipstream of the tide, and she was a mermaid, an enchantress, and she was happy.
Jemma’s watery reverie was ripped apart by Kenny first yowling, and then splashing and flipping so violently that Jemma thought he might be having a heart attack. Her mask flooded again, and she yanked it off. She was coughing and choking as she looked around in panic, trying to work out their location. They were on the island’s wild side, nowhere near either safety pier, and suddenly the land mass didn’t seem nearly so small any more. Kenny was a few feet away from her, flailing and screaming still. She started shrieking for someone to come, but there were no bungalows here and no-one could hear her. She swam over to Kenny and tried to grab his arm, but he beat her off, and the terror in his eyes was bottomless. He was still howling with agony and thrashing about in the water, and all Jemma could think of were sharks, and fins, and mutilation. Her mind was flipping over, and her mouth was full of sea and salt, and her stomach had dropped through itself, like a broken lift. She needed to stay calm.
Suddenly Kenny grunted, and stopped kicking and screaming. But when Jemma looked behind him, the sea was tinged with pink, and the stain swirled and turned as it grew bigger. She screeched in terror as she looked again for a fin, but the water was smooth now, unbroken. She took Kenny’s arm, and he let her this time, and somehow she towed him all the way to the shore, where he managed to drag himself up the sand and collapse amongst the driftwood, spent. There was an angry red chunk hacked out of his lower left leg. She’d expected worse.
‘Little fucker wouldn’t let go,’ Kenny was saying now.
‘What on earth happened?’
‘A fish bit me. It wouldn’t let go.’
A sudden desire to giggle hit Jemma, at the absurdity of it, and then she remembered Chrissy on the boat, refusing to go in the water. How there was anxious talk amongst the locals of fish with teeth. Jemma wondered if that was what had happened. She was just so thankful Kenny still had both legs, was conscious, wasn’t dead, that she wanted to lie on her back and howl with laughter – but there was no time; he was bleeding. She took off her lifejacket and rash vest, wrung out the vest and wrapped it around Kenny’s leg to try to stem the flow. His face was white beneath the sunburn. She glanced around. It looked like there was a rough path through the bush a little way along the beach.
‘Will you be OK?’ she asked. ‘I’m going to go and get help.’
‘Ugh,’ was all Kenny managed, but she was relieved to see some colour beginning to return to his cheeks.
‘I won’t be long,’ she said. She put her lifejacket back on to cover herself up and ran through the thick, unkempt jungle. In normal circumstances the lack of path-sweeping here would have been unbearable for her feet, but she ignored the pain. The track came out at the back of a block that she’d never seen before. It was built of corrugated iron, and there was a row of plastic bins, and instead of being neat and pristine and perfect, it was a bit depressing.
‘Hello,’ she yelled. ‘Help!’
Soon enough, a man appeared from around the side of the building, looking as though he’d just woken up.
‘My friend has been bitten. Is there a doctor?’
‘I’ll ring, ma’am. Where is he?’
‘On the beach, through there.’
‘OK. Give me a minute, ma’am.’
All Jemma could think was that he’d called her ma’am, even in a crisis. How polite. Another man appeared, and it was the one she’d run over on her bike a couple of days previously, and she blushed that here she was again, compromised. When the three of them got to the beach, Kenny was sitting up, and he seemed much better now – in fact, more than a little embarrassed. The two men helped Kenny stand up and hop through to the clearing, where Moosa was already waiting with the buggy – and Jemma had never been so relieved to see her butler, nor to be sped along the sandy paths through the jungly trees, back to the safety of the resort.
63
Chrissy
Poor, poor Kenny, Chrissy thought. She didn’t like to say she told him so, but now it was clear that he was fine, she was tempted. She knew she�
��d heard right that day on the boat, about bad-tempered fish with teeth like rats, and it seemed her refusal to enter the water hadn’t been as irrational as everyone made out. They certainly didn’t tell you about triggerfish in the brochures, that was for sure.
Kenny had just been discharged from the sanatorium and was propped up on the daybed, a bright white bandage wrapped around his injured leg. The sky streaked and striped as they watched it, and the wind blew softly and warmly, like a lover’s breath. The atmosphere between them was a little more serene than usual, as Kenny was obliged to sit still for a change, and Chrissy was glad of it.
‘The little bastard just wouldn’t let go,’ Kenny was saying now. He couldn’t hide the tinge of humiliation in his voice.
‘How big was it?’
‘Oh, you know …’ He stretched his arms outwards, to the width of his shoulders.
‘Nooo?’ said Chrissy.
‘Honest, babe. I saw it eyeballing us, and it looked evil, but I didn’t think it would bloody attack me. How did I know we’d intruded into its nesting area? It should have put fucking signs up.’
Chrissy giggled and sipped her beer. She was drinking it out of the can, and it was ice-cold and fizzy, and it made a nice change from cocktails.
‘Well, just thank Christ you’re all right,’ she said. ‘Apparently if they get hold of your face they can rip it off.’ Kenny looked a little queasy, so she changed the subject. ‘Anyway, what d’you want to do for dinner tonight?’ she said. ‘Shall we get room service?’
‘No, let’s go out. We can get Hassan to bring the buggy. What about the restaurant on the water? I’m not bloody walking up and down to the buffet tonight.’
‘That’ll be nice,’ she said.
‘Shall we ask Jemma and Jamie?’ Kenny said. ‘I think I should buy them dinner, after me putting her through that.’
Chrissy felt faintly cross, and she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the fact that Kenny and Jemma seemed to have hit it off so well – and now they had this additional bond between them. Jemma had been there for Kenny in a crisis, had acted heroically, had rescued him, when Chrissy wouldn’t even set foot in the ocean. In fact, Jemma had rescued both of them now, and it peeved Chrissy a little, although she knew that it shouldn’t. She told herself not to be so insecure.
‘Sure,’ she said.
‘Great, I’ll give them a ring,’ said Kenny. He heaved himself up from the daybed and hopped into the bungalow to use the resort phone. Chrissy remained on the terrace, watching the last of the pink disappear from the sky, as if it was being painted away by a giant invisible brush dipped in deep indigo. A huge bat swooped over silently, and the world grew slow, and the waves lapped speechlessly, and she was at the end of the earth, and it was heavenly.
64
Jemma
I love Chrissy and Kenny, Jemma thought as she came off the phone. They were turning out to be her absolute saviours on this honeymoon from hell. Chrissy might look like someone off a reality TV show, but she was smart and sassy and fun, and Kenny was a giant teddy bear, albeit one with a nasty chunk out of his leg right now. It was so nice of them to have invited her and Jamie for dinner, and it was a relief not to be spending the evening with just her husband again – assuming she could persuade him, of course. It was quite a turnaround in their social fortunes, seeing as she hadn’t been able to face even speaking to anyone before yesterday, let alone have dinner with them – but what had there been to say? Hi, I’m Jemma, I’m here for my honeymoon, and I wish I wasn’t. I think I’ve made an enormous mistake. I haven’t a clue what I’m doing here. None of those statements would have hit the mark as polite introductory chat. But Jemma had felt sorry for Chrissy on the boat, and she’d known her fear hadn’t been just attention seeking, no matter what Jamie had said. And as for the belly flop incident, that must have really hurt – and at least Chrissy was able to laugh at herself. Kenny was great, too, Jemma thought, having dealt with his own aquatic disaster with equal good humour. She admired people like Kenny – he seemed to have such a simple way of thinking, a willingness to just go for it, and a raw courage that Jamie didn’t have and never would. Perhaps that was why Kenny was a successful trader – he was obviously a born gambler at heart. He’d even taken a gamble on marriage from what Chrissy had said, and Jemma respected Kenny’s ability to make up his mind, know what he wanted. He was so unlike Jamie in that respect, and Jemma couldn’t help but wonder whether she would have become so fixated on marriage if it hadn’t been something Jamie so clearly hadn’t wanted? Was that why she’d wanted to marry him? Was she really that ornery? The questions, of course, were academic. She’d done it.
And so. And so. Jemma only had herself to blame. She had faced her feelings too late, at the threshold of a beautiful church, and since that moment all she’d been doing was harbouring the germs of her discontent, inside her heart, to breed and incubate and multiply. She had no idea how she and Jamie would spend the remainder of their time here, how they would get through it. The minutes were passing so slowly, as if the world was winding down, the earth turning ever slower, and their lives were gradually stultifying. Here they were, trapped together on a tiny island, stranded with a handful of strangers, and they were so far away from real life they might as well be on the moon. There was no poverty, no crime, no old or sick people, no children to make a racket – only charming, ever-pleasing resort staff in brown-and-gold shirts. There was nothing here but serenity and beauty. Or so they tried to tell you.
It seemed that meeting Chrissy and Kenny had released Jemma from her faux-romantic stupor. It was all a sham. Everyone here was pretending in a way – and perhaps real romance was found elsewhere. That inaugural kiss. A walk in the park. The very first twenty-four-hour date. By the time anyone got to the commitment levels required to fork out for a holiday like this, all spontaneity had vanished, and it became a challenge to be romantic enough. She could see it in the faces of her fellow holidaymakers, that they too were exhausted by it. It was like a never-ending Valentine’s Day meal, and Jemma hated those at the best of times. But now that she and Jamie had an outlet, and other people to talk to, maybe they could reach an uneasy, unspoken ceasefire for a bit.
The sun was edging towards the horizon as Jemma walked across the sand to the sea. She had time for one last quick snorkel before dinner, and she’d be sure to stay in the shallows right by the shore, where she knew it was safe. She was pretty certain there were no triggerfish here – or maybe she just didn’t want to acknowledge that there might be, wasn’t prepared to forego the pleasure. As she sank into the water, she thought again how extraordinary the sea was in the Maldives, how it literally teemed with colour and life. It was like another world under the surface, one free of stress and tension, where the fish undulated and darted and shimmered past, and the coral bloomed bulbously. The noise of the Earth was muffled in her ears, and her physical focus was on her echoey breath, the miracle of her body, this magical other world. Jamie had gone to the dive centre, yet again, and without him around Jemma felt better. She was happy in her own bit of sea, with just the fish for company. And at least for now it seemed that she and her husband had reached some kind of unspoken compromise. They’d just take each day as it came, here on their island of disintegrating dreams, and they would not talk about the future. The future, and whatever it would bring them, would have to wait.
65
Jemma
When Jemma and Jamie first joined Chrissy and Kenny at the white-clothed table, Jemma could tell immediately that Chrissy wasn’t happy. Jamie sat down and glowered, as if he too were jealous of her and Kenny’s earlier adventure. And although Jemma couldn’t help how Jamie felt, it wasn’t fair to be spoiling Kenny and Chrissy’s honeymoon too, and she wondered whether they should make their excuses and leave. It was awkward.
The four of them were sitting outside, at a table over the water. The dark had descended oppressively tonight, and the air felt thick and chocolatey. The restaurant’s pontoon w
as lit with sparkly lights which twinkled against the flat black of the sea. The waves lapped calmly beneath them. Chrissy had her hair piled on top of her head, and her eyes were made up like a cat’s, and she was wearing a soft grey top that covered her up for a change. She looked stunning. She suited a more pared-back look, Jemma thought – until she noticed that the bottom half of Chrissy’s outfit was tight silver hot pants and stilettos, which in Jemma’s opinion rather ruined it.
Jamie was sitting next to Chrissy, across from Jemma, and he seemed to be finding it hard not to take a sideways look at her. His neck appeared stiff and his mouth was a thin straight line. What was even more surprising was that he’d shaved off his stubble, for the first time in months, and he looked so much better without it. Jemma couldn’t believe she’d once loved his facial hair, especially now it was gone.
‘Shall we have some champagne?’ said Kenny now. ‘Celebrate the fact I’m still alive?’
‘Ha,’ Jemma said. She paused. ‘I must admit you had me worried, though. But you were certainly going to go down fighting!’ Jemma winked at Chrissy, tried to show her that she meant well.
Chrissy smiled back and seemed to get it. But on the other hand, Jemma thought, she also knew that Jemma wasn’t getting on with her own husband. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that Jemma would try to steal someone else’s. Chrissy didn’t know her, after all, didn’t know what she was capable of. Jemma should never have confided in Chrissy, of course, but it had felt like such a relief after her and Jamie’s row over breakfast, to get the words out, rescue her sanity. And although Kenny was attractive, in that all-male way, he wasn’t her type at all. He was too well-built. He wore too much gold. Chrissy didn’t have anything to worry about.