Freya shook her head, embarrassed by Drew’s lack of subtly. Aaron was talking to Bohdi and probably hadn’t heard, but even if he had, why should that worry her? She liked him a lot. She hadn’t been interested in anyone since Owen had broken her heart, despite good intentioned friends doing their best to set her up with single friends of theirs. She just hadn’t been interested. But Aaron...
They were an easy-going bunch from all over the world. She and Drew were the only two from the UK, with a couple of Maldivians, an Aussie, a Spaniard, Lin from Thailand and Bohdi from South Africa. They chatted about life and work on the island and what had brought them all there in the first place. It was a sociable but low-key evening, and a refreshing one with no one out to get drunk, in fact not everyone was drinking, and although Aaron had a beer he soon switched to a soft drink. The evening was filled with laughter and friendship and Freya couldn’t think of a better way to see in her next decade. It was a birthday she’d been dreading so much back home, yet here it didn’t feel stressful or sad like she’d imagined, and the evening raced away.
‘I’m going to say goodnight.’ Drew hugged Freya. ‘Early start tomorrow. Happy birthday, lovely. See you in the morning.’ She raised an eyebrow and scrambled to her feet. ‘Night, all.’
Freya smiled back and watched Drew disappear round the side of the bushes lining the edge of the beach. Deep down she knew she’d been waiting all evening to be alone with Aaron; she wasn’t certain if Aaron felt the same, but it felt like torture as one by one the others drifted off back to the accommodation.
‘So, thirty, huh,’ Aaron said, breaking the silence. ‘A milestone age.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I say that from the point of view of having already turned thirty. Did you ever imagine you’d be somewhere like this for your birthday?’
‘No. I was in a very different place at the beginning of this year. Physically and emotionally.’
‘I thought maybe you’d had your heart broken?’
The fire had petered down to embers but it glowed enough to highlight his full lips and cheekbones and the dusting of stubble across his jaw. Somehow, despite having chatted together on numerous occasions since they’d met back on Freya’s first full day, their relationship status – or lack of it – had never really come up.
‘I’ve been single for a while. And yes, my heart got broken by someone who proved to not care about me enough when things got tough. And I take it it’s the same for you, I presume no girlfriend out here either?’
‘No, not any longer.’
She understood his tone, it was one she was familiar with, not really wanting to divulge any more information or talk about a time in her life she’d rather forget.
‘It seems like there are very few couples. I guess it’s hard for people to sustain a relationship here?’ Oh God, Freya thought, realising that it might sound like she was suggesting they should be in a relationship.
Aaron picked up his bottle of Coke and joined her on the other side of the smouldering fire pit.
‘There aren’t many couples here. There are lots of people in a relationship but their other halves are back home, in the Maldives or India, Sri Lanka. It’s also a conservative country,’ he said, wedging the bottle in the sand between them. ‘It’s why the male and female accommodation is separate. There are some family rooms for married couples or staff working out here with their partners, but most staff stay here for a few weeks and then go back to their families – if they live close enough. Some only get to go home once a year.’
‘Do you get to go home often?’
‘Every few weeks. Back to an island with no restrictions unlike here.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘I know we’re lucky that we have this beach, some space to relax in, but even so, I love the freedom of the island my family are from.’
Freya wrapped her arms round her knees and gazed out to the dark ocean. The moonlight caught its gentle swell. Aaron’s life was so far removed from her own; an island lifestyle, while she’d spent most of her adult life in the smog of a big city. She was beginning to realise just how much she didn’t want to go back to that kind of existence. And it had felt that way, at least recently. She was existing rather than living.
‘You should come with me sometime – see what the real Maldives is like.’
Freya was lost for words for a moment. Their friendship was easy and they flirted almost without meaning to; it would be a major step to visit his home with him.
‘I’d like to see where you live. Is it as beautiful as here?’
Aaron nodded. ‘In a more rustic way. Nothing’s polished like here. It’s rough around the edges. People live and work on the island. Fishing was the main source of income for most people; now there’s the opportunity for tourism – but not like here. My mum runs a guest house, but it’s for travellers wanting to taste the real Maldives without paying the prices that people like Zander charge.’
There was a hardness to his voice. Freya hadn’t really seen things from the perspective of the locals, their islands being taken over by rich foreigners who turned them into places that other wealthy foreigners wanted
