Stranded (7 page)

Everyone seems friendly. I do not particularly talk to any of them. I eat my food and walk slowly up the small hill to my hut. Then I read for a bit longer, crawl under the mosquito net and go to sleep.

The days slip by. People leave the beach, and new people arrive. An Australian couple who are noticeable because they are older than everyone else turn up. Unfortunately for them, their names are Jean and Gene, and they seem to spend all their time fighting. I stay away from them, which is easy since they have booked one of the premium huts, at the other end of the beach, so I do not have to listen to them shouting obscenities at one another very often. Someone else’s unhappy marriage is not a place I want to visit. I slip into a dream world, one in which I get to lie on the beach all day, eat my way through the menu, and drink fruit juice. The Americans stay there, still cavorting loudly on the sand and in the sea and enjoying their audience.

On the fourth day, I begin to think I should be doing something. I ought to be making the most of this time. People keep going out on snorkelling trips, and when they come back, they prattle on (if I can understand them, which I only can if they are native English speakers) about the Nemo fish and the turtles and the coral and the little friendly sharks, which sound like puppies the way they describe them. It is exactly what Ally said at the gallery. The trouble is, these snorkelling trips seem to last all day. I simply cannot force myself to spend a day away from my beach.

On day six, Edward, Jonah and Piet arrive. I recognise them at once from the boat trip. They wave to me as they jump on to the sand.

‘Hi,’ I say, barely bothering to raise my head from its comfy place on the towel.

‘All right?’ calls Edward, with a little wave and a lovely smile.

‘Hi there, Esther,’ says handsome Jonah, and I try not to simper.

I start to sit with the three of them sometimes, if I turn up in the café at the same time as them. They are easy company, and we while away the hottest part of the day playing cards or Scrabble.

A day or two later Katy turns up too and moves into the hut next to mine, though she keeps out of everyone’s way even more than I do. I start to look at my life at home, and realise how screwed up it is. I suppose I need to go back and start getting it in order. This probably means I ought to start yoga and forgive myself for Daisy’s messy childhood. She is, after all, fine. I text her and ring her, and I can hear from her voice that she is genuinely happy.

When I was pregnant, I used to imagine the baby being a girl. I have discovered since that most women assume they’re having a girl, because it makes sense for a female body to grow a female infant: plenty of people I met on the baby circuit had been taken by surprise by the realisation that they had, internally, managed to grow a penis.

All the same, I happened to be right. Throughout the pregnancy, I had a very precise picture of what my daughter would be like. She would, I was certain, be a waif-like, sensitive creature who would be happy if she was curled up reading a book, or painstakingly practising her ballet. My imaginary daughter had fine blonde hair, and was tiny for her age, with pale skin and a button nose. I decided she had to be ‘Daisy’ because it was an appropriately pretty, translucent name for a fairy child: she would be my flower baby.

Chris said, ‘Yeah, OK,’ when I told him that I had been communicating with the baby from the inside, and that her name was non-negotiable. I think I would have had to announce a very outlandish name indeed for him to have bothered to object.

The moment she was born, before I even saw her, I knew that I had been entirely wrong. As soon as she was breathing air, I felt her presence on earth, her Daisy-like essence, and I knew exactly who she was. The fey fairy child melted into the corners of the room and evaporated.

Real Daisy shouted to me as soon as she was unleashed upon the world. She was solid and dark, and the moment she was in my arms she fixed me with a piercing stare, her brow furrowed into a frown. The real Daisy was, and is, a formidable creature. She hates all things pink and glittery, dismisses society’s plans for her, rejecting ballet and Barbies and toy kitchens with barely a contemptuous glance. She holds on to the things she loves with a determined passion. She loves swimming, rap music and walking other people’s dogs. She wears trousers and jumpers and anoraks, and if I didn’t force her to let me brush her hair and tie it back, it would straggle across her face, the occasional tucking-behind-the-ears its only grooming.

The thought of her walking along the seafront from Hove into Brighton with a dog lead in each hand, struggling to speak authoritatively to her charges while her hair blows into her eyes (because her father will certainly not have bothered to brush it), makes me miss her intensely. She loves dogs. She doesn’t mind picking up dog poo in plastic bags and disposing of it.

‘I quite enjoy it, Mum,’ she told me, laughing at my horror. ‘Because it’s the only time you ever get to pick up a poo.’

I long for her. I wrestle my longing under control, because apart from the thousands of miles between me and my daughter, the worst thing about my life at the moment is the fact that I am, before long, going to have to leave this island.

One night I am sitting alone in the café, drinking a rare beer which Jonah produced from a carrier bag after a trip to Coral Bay and handed to me. I am going over things in my head, wallowing in self-absorption.

‘Mind if I join you?’

I look up and see that it is Katy.

‘Of course not.’ I push the other chair out with my foot, and she sits down.

‘Sorry,’ she says, with a warm smile like the one she gave me when we were waiting for the boat. ‘You looked deep in thought, but all the other tables are taken. It was either ask you, or butt in on the honeymooning lovebirds.’

We both look over at the Americans’ table. They are caressing one another’s thighs.

‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘Better for you to sit here, I think.’

‘So what brings you here on your own, Esther?’ she says, declining half my can of beer. ‘There aren’t many of us lone women about. We should find some solidarity.’

I smile at her. ‘Divorce,’ I say. ‘I spent my whole marriage imagining escaping like this. Then I realised I could actually do it. My daughter’s with my ex, so there was nothing stopping me.’

‘Good for you,’ she says. ‘And are you feeling nice and relaxed? You look it. I envy you, you know. Every day, just chilling with your book. You should be on an advert for this place.’

I grin. ‘I love it here. It’s put quite a few things in perspective.’

She looks at me with interest. ‘Such as?’

I take a deep breath. I like Katy, and she is a safe stranger. I have not had a proper conversation with anyone since I have been away. It will be good to talk about this. She seems interested; and if I tell her my story, perhaps she will tell me hers. I would like that.

‘When I was married to Chris – that’s my ex-husband,’ I say, taking a sip of beer, ‘I was not at all happy. Nor was he. For some reason, though, we stuck together.’

‘Because of your daughter?’

‘If it wasn’t for Daisy, we wouldn’t even have stayed together more than a couple of weeks, I don’t think.’

I remember Chris, pretty and carefree back then, without a care in the world. I remember myself the same way, dancing through the clubs of London in a short skirt. I was infatuated with him when we met, but I never even properly liked him, let alone loved him.

‘But even with Daisy,’ I continue, ‘I have no idea why we limped on beyond her first birthday. She’s ten. We split up when she was nine. We could have saved ourselves a huge amount of trouble. I know I never wanted to be divorced. It wasn’t what I’d foreseen for myself – who does foresee it, I suppose? And Chris was from a very conventional background, and his parents would have been horrified. So we took the cowardly option, sank into a resentful misery and wasted our entire thirties on each other. I’m quite sure that he had affairs, but I never cared enough to find out. I should have had some myself, but I could barely get off the sofa most days. I suppose I was waiting for it to peter out.’

‘And it did peter out,’ Katy says, ‘in the end.’

‘It ended with a surprising bang, actually,’ I say, draining the beer. ‘A last flash of passion. I’d been drinking too much, and he’d been staying at work late, whatever that meant. One Friday night, he rolled in drunk at midnight, and I was passed out on the sofa, and something about the scene, even though it was one we had lived so many times before, set him off. We’d both had too much to drink. We hadn’t spoken to each other properly for years. He looked at me and, he said afterwards, something snapped. He says now that it was because he could see the person I could have been, and instead there was this miserable person I’d become, and he felt responsible. I’m not sure he was really feeling quite so noble at the time, however. He started yelling at me. I woke up, and I started yelling back. Everything came pouring out, all the misery and the resentment; every single thing we hated about our life together. I can’t remember the detail of it, but I remember feeling that a dam had been broken, and it was an enormous relief. My memories are hazy, but I must have got myself off the sofa. I don’t know how long we were at it for. I do know that we were wrestling, pulling each other’s hair, physically attacking one another and yelling abuse. And then I looked up and Daisy was standing in the doorway. Watching us. Utterly horrified and bewildered. It was the worst thing that has ever happened, the worst thing I’ve ever done by a million miles. I saw her there, and it was as if someone had injected ice straight into my veins. Our eyes met, and I was sober. I couldn’t get Chris off me until I said “Daisy”. Then he stopped all right.’

I have to stop speaking. I cannot confront this memory for a moment longer. I want to look at Katy, to see how shocked she is, but I am too ashamed even to raise my eyes from the table. There is a little beetle walking around the circumference of my glass. I watch it for a while. It goes all the way round. I wonder whether it thinks it’s walking in a straight line.

‘But Daisy,’ she says. ‘She’s OK, isn’t she? Children are resilient.’

At that I manage to look up at her, briefly, and smile.

‘No one in the world is as resilient as my Daisy,’ I tell her. ‘And I’m not just saying that to make myself feel better. She has her feet on the ground. She was massively upset, obviously. But she’s the kind of girl who confronts things head on, thankfully, rather than bottling them up. Unlike both her parents. Who knows where she picked that trait up from? But I’m glad she did. So we had to talk her through it again and again. Chris moved out straight away. Both of us had had the wake-up call. We apologised to her, together and separately. And in the end, she forgave us. She announced it: “Mum, I’ve decided that I forgive you now. Just don’t ever behave like that again, because you really let yourself down.”’

Katy is laughing. ‘She sounds wonderful!’

‘She is. She was so relieved when Chris moved out and she got to spend time with each of us separately. Loads of her friends have divorced parents and apparently it’s much cooler. She’s been fine since then. I wasn’t so great, I must admit. I’ve found it hard to pull myself into shape and be happy as a single woman at the end of her thirties. That’s why I’m here, I suppose. To get myself together and look forward to the future, and be the mother Daisy deserves.’

Katy fiddles with the menu. ‘Which sounds like a highly worthy project.’

‘It is. And it’s working. I hope.’

She strokes my arm. ‘Of course it’s working. Shall I tell you why I’m here? Just to remind you that no one has a straightforward life?’

I smile. ‘Yes please!’

We order some food first, and wait until it arrives. The air is warm and I can smell the bougainvillea. I watch the Americans get up from their table and hustle each other, giggling, on to the beach.

When we each have a plate of fish and rice and salad in front of us, and a glass of water, Katy looks to me, a lock of hair sticking to her cheek, and I nod.

‘So,’ she says. ‘I recently split up with someone too. It’s been incredibly difficult. We haven’t got any children, so things are easier in that respect. Also my partner was a woman, so the dynamic was probably different. But we’d been together so long. And now we’re not any more.’ I see her make an effort to keep her equilibrium, and succeed. ‘And that is quite hard, isn’t it? When you suddenly have to see yourself as a lone person in the world again. Not part of a unit. At least you have Daisy. I suppose that means you’ll always be part of a unit of some sort. Not me.’

I lean forward and touch her arm. She flinches slightly, but does not withdraw.

‘It is hard,’ I agree. ‘Making that adjustment. I’ve found it almost impossible. Is it helping you, being here?’

She shrugs. ‘Not as much as I’d hoped. No. You see, I still love her. That’s probably the difference between my situation and yours.’

‘So why did it end?’

Katy blinks hard, and I wish I had phrased my question more tactfully.

‘She’d had enough. Essentially. I’m . . . well, I had a conventional upbringing, and I’ve always found it hard to reconcile the fact that I’d always been told homosexuality is unspeakable and horrible with my very pure feelings of love, and, indeed, lust. She hated the conflict I suffered over it, the fact that I couldn’t tell my family to get stuffed. I adored her. I still do. I just couldn’t quite be publicly proud of who I was. She felt that I was ashamed of her, that she was my guilty secret. It wasn’t the case at all. In the end she’d had enough. She walked out on me and never came back.’

‘Did you ask her to come back?’

Katy looks at me and laughs. ‘Oh, I lost all dignity, believe me. I cried and begged and stalked. She’d made her mind up. Then she started seeing someone new. That was when I decided to get away.’

I sigh, and smile at her. She smiles back.

‘I’m glad I met you,’ I tell her.

‘Me too,’ she agrees, spearing a piece of fish and a red pepper with her fork. ‘Solidarity in heartbreak.’ Then something occurs to her. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Have you done one of those snorkelling trips yet?’