‘I thought it would be busier.’
She shakes her head. ‘Christmas is a time for family.’ And I find that I don’t care if her smile is one of pity or disapproval.
‘I saw a sign for Morgan’s Head back at the bridge. How far is it?’
‘Not far,’ she says. ‘You can walk there. It is very beautiful.’
I smile, glance back down at the menu. ‘Can I have your special rum punch, please?’
After she leaves, a group of tourists arrive, loud and celebratory. A second waitress herds them quickly towards the other, darker side of the deck, and I’m glad. My own sense of well-being still feels too fragile, as if it’s held together only by the promised magic of this place. Captain Henry Morgan’s place.
I turn my face towards the wind, breathe in the smell of the Caribbean. I’m here. We’re here. Inside El’s painting. Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to blues and yellows and greens. A far better resting place than a windy graveyard of lairs or a dark prison of make-believe. This is the place where I will finally be able to let her go.
*
I see the cocktail long before the waiter carrying it. The thing is huge: a tall glass that is more of a jug, silver straws and umbrellas, and worst of all, fizzing sparklers. I know it has to be my special rum punch; my heart sinks as it gets closer and louder. The tourists cheer its passage, tapering off only when they clock its solitary recipient.
The waiter is grinning when he sets it down. Sparks bounce off the table.
‘Thank you,’ I mutter. ‘It’s a bit …’
‘It’s our special,’ he says, with an apologetic laugh, as finally the sparklers dim and grow silent. I blink in the sudden return to darkness, realise he hasn’t moved. Am I supposed to tip him? I surreptitiously root around in my jeans pocket for change. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t …’
He smiles again. He’s incredibly good-looking, the sort of good-looking that always makes me feel nervous, inadequate. His teeth are very white. I start to wonder if I have some airline food in my own.
‘You are very beautiful.’
‘Oh.’ My face gets hot again. I laugh, take a big sip of the rum punch, and it’s strong enough to make my eyes water. ‘Thank you.’
‘You are only visiting?’
I nod.
‘I came here from Cameroon five years ago,’ he says, with another grin. ‘Also only to visit.’
I’ve never been to Africa. I’ve never truly been anywhere. Now, if I wanted to, I could fly across the world to the Kakadu Jungle. ‘I’ve come from Edinburgh.’ I smile. ‘I’m definitely only here for a week.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘it is very good to meet you. You are very welcome.’
He turns away from my table, and I watch him walk towards the other, busier side of the deck. I’m still smiling, the rum warming my belly, tingling down the length of my legs, as he approaches the loud tourist table, claps one of them on the back. His laugh is deep, booming. I watch the second waitress’s dark swinging rope of hair as she picks up an empty cocktail glass, and when he comes up alongside her, his hand going around her waist, I allow myself one last look back, one last fantasy. If I could, I’d take your place, El, and you could have mine. You could have hers. You could have everything you never thought you deserved.
But then I see the waitress stiffen. And his grip on her waist tighten. Something dark and cold extinguishes the rum’s glow, my new sense of hope. I peer into the shadows between us, but I can’t see her expression, only her stillness, the rigid set of her spine, her shoulders. Is she afraid of him? Does she long to escape? But then she turns towards him, and in the light from that low swinging line of golden lanterns, her smile is wide and dazzling.
I stand up. I feel dizzy, drunk. I start walking across the thick creaking boards of the bar, so much like the deck of a boat that it feels as if I’m on the ocean, riding the swells of a North Atlantic storm. Shouting into the wind, Come about! Heave to! All hands hoay!, even though I know I’m not saying anything at all.
When I start to fall, she doesn’t try to catch me. Instead, she runs forwards and falls with me, wraps her arms around my back as our knees smack loudly against the wood. She squeezes me hard enough that I cry out, though I’m crying already: great paralysing sobs that steal my voice, my sense. She kisses me, strokes my hair, whispers ‘Shhh’ to me as if I’m a child, one who has just woken up from a nightmare.
I remember how much I used to hate always looking into my own eyes, seeing my own smile, my own frown, my own imperfections. Like a mirror I always carried, sharp and heavy under my arm. To always be a reflection; half of a whole. Fused together like sand and limestone into glass.
Now my fingers shake as they touch her face. And my eyes blur with tears.
‘I knew you’d come,’ El says.
CHAPTER 34
I sleep like the dead.
I wake up to bright light and birdsong. Despite a hangover, jet lag, and more emotions than I can process, I know immediately where I am, what has happened, who I’m with. I’m in El’s bedroom. Above me, the ceiling fan turns and hums through slow rotations. I sit up when I realise I’m alone. Last night we slept together, just like we used to in the Kakadu Jungle, on our sides and holding hands.
I get dressed, go into the narrow hallway. The apartment is basic, bright, small. Nothing at all like 36 Westeryk Road. El is in the tiny kitchen, her new dark hair gathered into a loose bun.
‘Samuel bought some food,’ she says. ‘Coconut bread and mangoes.’
‘The
