Four days of the holiday go by. A dream. A turquoise, warm-sanded dream.
Breakfasts canoed across the rippling green of the lagoon to us. Juicy ripe fruits that I don’t even know the names of. Padding barefoot across cool-tiled floors and hot decking. Slipping into clear pool water. Letting the sun soak deep into my tired English skin right down into my damp British bones.
Mark in the sunlight. Mark’s glistening body through the water. My fingers running through his wet hair, across his browning skin. Damp sex tangled up in sheets. The soft hum of air conditioning. I model a flipbook of delicate, beautiful underwear every day. Cobweb-thin black lace with glinting crystals, fuchsia blooms, brassy red, cheap white, rich cream, silk, satin. Long, easy conversations across paddleboards and bars. As we decided, I stopped taking the pill seven weeks ago. We make plans.
A helicopter tour of the surrounding islands. The thick thudding of rotor blades through cushioned headsets. Endless blue in every direction, above and below. Forests seemingly growing clean out of the ocean. A heaven on earth.
The pilot tells us that, out past the reefs, the waves tower so high that seaplanes can’t even land on the water. This is the second-most-remote island chain in the world. The waves here are the largest waves on the planet. We see them breaking, rolling, through the Perspex floor of the helicopter, through its windows. We are thousands of miles from mainland, from the nearest continent.
Desert islands crest up out of the ocean. Cartoon drawings made real. The smallest circles of sand to the craggiest peaks, all with at least one palm tree. Why do desert islands always have palm trees? Because coconuts float. They float across the ocean, they float alone for thousands of miles, until they beach and plant themselves in the hot sand. Their roots sink deep, right down into the earth until they hit the rock-filtered fresh water far under the ground. Like swimmers finally making it to shore.
A day spent snorkeling in the soft water of the lagoon. I think of the cold weather back at home as I float quietly, surrounded by great gliding manta rays, like gray ghosts made flesh, rippling muscular through the pristine silence.
Mark books out the scuba-training pool for us, just me and him. A session to ease me back in. The bad experience, the one before I met Mark, shall be forgotten, he promises. I was only twenty-one when it happened, but I remember it with crystal clarity. I panicked at eighteen meters under. I don’t know why but I suddenly became certain that I was going to die. I thought of my mum. I thought of the fear she must have felt, trapped in that car. I let my thoughts take over and I panicked. I remember people saying at the time I was lucky it worked out the way it did because it might not have. I could have easily taken a great gasping breath of seawater. But I don’t panic these days. I don’t let my thoughts take over. At least I haven’t since then.
I hardly sleep the night before the pool—it’s not fear exactly, just low-level anxiety. But I had promised Mark and, more than that, I had promised myself. Every time my mind drifts to the thought of the oxygen regulator, I feel the tension pinching deep in between my eyebrows. Who am I kidding, I’m fucking terrified.
I’m not scared of drowning or water or anything like that. I’m scared of that blind panic. The blind panic that traps rabbits in snares, pulls the noose tighter, and drowns them in their own blood. Silly things happen in blind panics. Things die.
Look, I’m not crazy. I know it’ll be fine. It’s bloody scuba diving. It’s supposed to be fun! Everyone does it. I know nothing will happen. It will be beautiful. So beautiful. Awe-inspiring out under the South Pacific Ocean. Something to always remember. But my thoughts just keep opening up like trapdoors under me. Panic, disorientation, claustrophobia. An accidental gasp of water and thrashing terror.
But no. I’m a grown woman. I can control my fears. That’s why I’m doing this, really, right? That’s why we challenge ourselves, isn’t it? To silence those fears. To wrangle them back into their box. I think of Alexa in her cell, in her cell for fourteen years. We wrangle our fears, don’t we? That’s what we do.
When Mark and I get to the pool, we slip into the water and start our pre-dive buddy check. Mark guides me slowly through. I’m glad of the cooling effect of the pool water, as the back of my neck is hot with nerves. Just breathe, I have to remind myself. Just breathe.
“You’re doing great,” Mark says reassuringly. “You remember all this bit perfectly, and this is the tricky bit, to be honest. I’ve got your back, okay? I’ve got you. But listen—” He stops and looks at me seriously now, his hands on my shoulders. “If you feel panic rising at any point underwater, just continue breathing. If you want to shoot up to the top, just keep breathing. It’ll only be your brain trying to protect you from something that isn’t really a problem. It’s no more dangerous down there than it is up here, I promise you. Do you trust me, honey? It’ll be fine.” He smiles and pats my shoulders. I nod. I will always trust him.
The thing that keeps swimmers afloat is the oxygen held in the lungs. The lungs when full are like two rugby balls inside our chests making sure we stay up. That’s why if you lie on your back in the sea you can relax your whole body and float with just your face out of the water. The trick for the diver is learning to use this buoyancy to regulate depth. That’s what the weights are for: to drag us to the bottom.
We descend together suspended in pale blue. Tiny bubbles go up and we lower smoothly as if in an invisible elevator. The silence under the pool’s surface is amniotic. I can see why Mark likes diving. I feel calm, all thoughts of panic dissipated. Mark glances back at me, beatific through a foot of dense water. It’s like we’re separated by thick glass. He smiles. I smile back. We feel closer down here than we ever could up there. We exchange the “OK” dive hand signal. You know it; it’s the hand gesture “the Fonz” would give you if you asked how his date was going. Mark and I sit cross-legged opposite each other on the scratchy tile floor of the deep end, passing the oxygen regulator back and forth to each other like a twenty-first-century peace pipe. Still I remain calm. The trapdoor thoughts are gone. They feel inconceivable now as I look into Mark’s calm face. We are safe. Just us and silence. It could just be the oxygen relaxing me, of course. It’s supposed to have a calming effect, isn’t it? I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere, something about oxygen masks on airplanes. Or maybe it’s the color of the pool that’s soothing me. Or the thick underwater silence. Or Mark. Right now all I care about is that I’m perfectly at peace. I am fixed. Mark has fixed me. We stay under like this for a long time.
The dream continues. Warm sand at sunset. Ice clinking on glass. The smell of sunscreen. Fingerprints on my paperback. There’s so much to see. So much to do. Until day five.
On day five we hear a storm is coming.
Storms here aren’t like storms back home. That much is clear. You don’t just move your patio furniture inside and cover the roses. Here, storms are serious business; the nearest hospital is an hour’s flight back to Tahiti and no one flies in a storm. Storms can last for days, so they’re handled with logistical precision. The beaches are cleared, restaurants battened, guests briefed.
After breakfast a friendly manager knocks on our bungalow door. He tells us that the storm should hit around 4 P.M. and it’ll probably last until early tomorrow morning. It’s only hours away. He reassures us that it will pass the island by; although we’ll feel it, we won’t get the full brunt of it, so we don’t need to worry about being washed away to sea or anything crazy like that, that never happens here. The manager chuckles. The bungalows are in the lagoon, protected from the waves by the atoll, so I suppose it would take a bloody strong wave to crest the atoll and the string of islands, pick us up and carry us off. The lagoon has been here for thousands of years; it’s not going anywhere today.
He tells us that the staff will be on duty all night and, in the unlikely event that the storm should change course, we will be alerted promptly and moved into the main body of the hotel. But that hasn’t been necessary in the entire time he has worked on the island, he says, and today’s storm, although certainly choppy, doesn’t look too troublesome.
After he leaves we go out onto our private deck and look out across the lagoon. The sky is sapphire blue and the sun is shining out across the water. Nothing hints at the storm to come. We look at each other; we’re both thinking the same thing, Where is it?
“Shall we go check the other beach?” Mark asks, suddenly excited. He’s read my mind; maybe we can see it coming from that direction. Perhaps the storm is coming from behind us. We grab our sneakers and set off through the carefully preened jungle of the Four Seasons toward the storm front.
On the other side of the resort, the side that’s open to the South Pacific Ocean, there’s another longer, straighter beach. It’s windy here, too windy for hotel guests. The ocean is rough, the waves noisy and powerful, not like the quiet, still lagoon that our bungalow is perched on. The wild side of the island. I want to see the storm; I want to see it coming. The sun still shines bright and warm but the wind whips through our hair and T-shirts as we paddle into the shallows. And then we see it. On the horizon.
A towering column of cloud, ocean to sky, in the far distance. I’ve never seen anything like it. A wall of rain and wind. There’s no sense of perspective here, looking out at the vastness of the sky, no way to know its size, there’s nothing to judge it against, but as we watch, it fills half of the sky. At its edges patches of blue sky appear and vanish. A single thrilling pillar of gray, approaching.
We spend most of the day in the calm waters of the lagoon, paddleboarding, snorkeling. We’re advised to stay in our bungalows from three-thirty onward; room service will be available as usual.
We hunker down around three forty-five, with snacks, beers, and a movie marathon. Enforced relaxation.
We’re halfway through Close Encounters of the Third Kind when the storm kicks up a gear. The sounds of waves beneath the bungalow and rain on the roof force us to turn up the volume on the plasma screen. Mark whips out his phone and starts filming me.
I’m tangled like a beached, snacking whale in the sheets. Burying the pistachios under a pillow, I shift myself into a more attractive position, a more camera-ready position.
“What are you watching, Erin?” he asks from behind the camera.
“Good question, Mark! I am watching a movie about aliens while we wait for the world to end outside,” I answer.
The sounds of sirens and muffled shouting from the screen.
“Day five of the honeymoon,” Mark intones, “and we’re sitting out a full-blown tropical storm. Take a look at this.” Mark spins the camera to the rain-soaked glass doors.
Gray outside. A thick opaque mist. The wind is blowing all the visible plant life sideways, the trees arching against it. And the thick rain, in sheets, so much rain. He points the phone at the floor now; rain from the deck is pooling in cold puddles around the doors.
“Ghost ship,” Mark calls to me, looking out toward the water.
I jump out of bed and trot over to the windows. And there it is. A ghost ship. A yacht anchored out on the water, its sails safely packed in, mast secured, bobbing half-obscured in the fog.
“Creepy,” I whisper.
Mark smiles. “Creepy.”
The top of Mount Otemanu is gone, swallowed in the gray, only the tree-covered base still visible. Mark zooms in on the boat. He’s wondering if there are still people on it. We both stare at the zoomed image on his phone display.
It’s then that his phone pings and a text notification flashes up over the video screen. It’s only there for a microsecond but my stomach flips. It’s from Rafie. It’s important. It’s about a potential new job. Rafie’s been trying to help him out. Mark’s been waiting for this text.
Mark fumbles the phone and strides off toward the suite’s lounge area.
“Mark?” I say, following him.
His hand goes up impatiently. Wait.
He reads, nods, then puts the phone down carefully on the table, distracted, thinking. He swallows.
“Mark?” I ask again.
The hand goes up again, harder. Wait!
He paces, paces. Stops. Goes to the bar and starts to shovel ice into a whiskey glass. Oh fuck. That’s not good.
I make my way to the table slowly and bend to pick up the phone. Gingerly, tentatively, just in case it’s not okay to read his texts. But his mind is elsewhere. I punch in his code, his birthday. Tap messages. Tap Rafie.
Bro, sad news. Just heard they’ve filled the job internally. Fucking curveball. I thought it was sewn up. I’ll let you know if I hear of anything else. R
Oh. God.
I put the phone back down softly on the glass coffee table. Mark is sipping his whiskey on the other side of the room. I flick the remote off. The sirens and commotion cease. The clunk of his ice cubes and the muffled storm raging outside are now the only sounds.
Mark finally looks up at me.
“Shit happens, Erin, what you gonna do?” He raises his glass in salute.
I think suddenly of Alexa. Sometimes you’re the dog; sometimes you’re the lamppost.
But he’s smiling. “It’s fine,” he says. “I’m fine. Seriously.” His tone is calm, reassuring. And I believe him this time; he is fine. But…this is all wrong. What’s happening to him is wrong. It isn’t fair.
“I have an idea,” I blurt out.
I cross to him, take the whiskey glass from his hand, and set it down. He looks surprised, knocked off-balance by my sudden determination. I take him by the hand.
“Trust me?” I ask, looking up into his eyes.
He grins wide, eyes creasing. He knows I’m up to something.
“Trust you,” he answers. He squeezes my hand.
I lead him to the suite’s entrance and unlock the door. But he pulls my hand back as I try to push down on the handle.
“Erin?” He stops me. The storm rages on the other side.
“Trust me,” I repeat.
He nods.
I pull down the handle and the door flies back into my hand; the wind’s more powerful than I thought it would be, much stronger than it looked through the window. We step out onto the walkway and somehow I manage to wrangle the door shut again. Mark stands staring out at the maelstrom, the rain soaking fast through his T-shirt, darkening the fabric as I close the door behind us and take his hand again. We break into a run. I lead him along the stilt walkways, over the jetty bridges, onto the mainland of the resort, and on through the puddle-gathering pathways, all the way out to the roaring Pacific coastline. We stumble on through the sand, the wind buffeting us from all sides now. Our clothes, dark and heavy with rain, cling to us as we scramble out toward the waves. We stop at the edge of the South Pacific Ocean.
“Scream!” I shout.
“What?” He stares at me. He can’t hear me over the roar of the wind and sea.
“Scream!!”
This time he hears me. He laughs.
“What?!” he shouts, incredulous.
“Scream, Mark! Fucking scream!”
I turn to the ocean, the wind, the pounding abyss beyond, and I scream. I scream with every fiber of my being. I scream for what’s happening to Mark right now, for what happened to Alexa, for her dead mother, for mine, for Mark’s future, for our future, for myself. I scream until I have no breath left. Mark looks at me silent through the storm. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. He turns, seems to be about to walk away, but then he circles back and he screams, long and hard into the lashing rain and fog. Every sinew poised, every muscle ready, a battle cry into the unknown. And the wind roars back.