The sky was drenched a russet orange. Streaks of pink sliced their way through, fighting for space amongst the tangerine canvas. I could only see the sun, only the array of colours sitting behind as it made its way to the other side of the world. It was such a beautiful display that I didn’t want to turn away; I didn’t want to miss one second. There were guitars and a ukulele being played in the bar by three local men. They sang out harmoniously. I heard the music and I watched the colours in the sky; this felt like the closest to God I would ever get.
I could hear my name being called over and over until I turned. It was Dana, my friend. She was Polish and I had met her three weeks ago when I arrived and now it felt that we had known one another all our lives. She worked on the market too here, in Nadi in Fiji. She sold flowers; I sold chocolate. The pay was dismal, but it was all I needed. I had given up everything to be here. I didn’t need anything. Possessions controlled you and I had been close to being in that position, becoming that person, staying where it was safe. Before, it ate me up like the disease, affluenza, the way it had so many of the people I knew back in England. Bruno, the man I had thought I was in love with, was very like them and, little by little, like someone chipping away at a piece of wood to carve it into something, I felt myself becoming someone I did not like or even recognise.
I would be sitting at a dining room table or in a restaurant, and someone would start a conversation about their kitchen, telling me all about how they’d just had theirs fitted or were getting it refurbished. They would talk about the cost of a radiator, the only one that could do for that particular kitchen . . . That kitchen that would fulfil their every desire once it was complete was the impression I got. It was going to be the fucking kitchen. But how long would it keep them happy? I’d been given tours of people’s kitchens after they’d had them fitted, after months of hellish endurance of finding the right person, sourcing the correct handles and knobs that would make every bit of difference to their incomplete life. That knobs’ sole purpose was to complete them. Then there was the anecdotes of the incompetent joiner and other tradespeople who had been involved in the saga. The agonising wait for the material, only for the wrong ones to show up. But it was here now, in all its shining glory. The hub of the home was complete. The kitchen of dreams had landed.
‘We’re getting a disco ball for the ceiling. For our kitchen discos!’
Subtext, because we are so cool but we really try not to be, at least not so that anyone would guess.
‘So what’s next?’ I would ask partly out of curiosity about what mundane and banal way they would be spending the next three months of their lives and partly to be polite, to keep the conversation going somehow, whilst I finished my wine.
‘We’re going to transform the basement into a games room. And a gym.’
I want to see the world, I thought but did not say. I had mentioned it to Bruno a few times. Each time he pretended he hadn’t heard me or changed the subject.
Bruno would smile and squeeze my hand, his way of reinforcing what they were saying so that I might get on board and feel all the feels over a pot of Farrow and Ball. I would always smile at him, put him at ease and hope that I never had to have a conversation about moving in together so we became one of them and told the same decorating anecdotes on a loop at various social gatherings. I guess I always knew then that he wasn’t the one for me, even before he did what he did.
So there they were, the people I once knew, putting up floor-to-ceiling mirrors inside a twelve-foot-square windowless box room whilst I listened to what could only be described as heavenly music, whilst feeling as though I was on the brink of touching actual heaven.
The bar I hung out in most evenings was three hundred metres from my tiny flat, which I rented for $37 Fijian dollars a week. It was a basic room with a bed, a portable electric hob – which I occasionally think aligns next to ‘the kitchen of dreams’ – a table in the corner, and an adjoining toilet and shower where I washed my dishes, clothes and myself, though not all at the same time. It’s small but it’s where I have come to call home. Fiji is now my home.
Why am I here? Why have I not bought a home, and stuffed it to the gills, so it resembles that interior design Instagram post I saw? Because it never felt right. I always felt like I was acting in a play, as though all the lines were set out for me to say; I just had to add some spirit to them to make them sound believable. We were still kids, playing at being adults, it felt. Pretending that this was what we all wanted. What we needed to fulfil ourselves. I questioned it daily and often at these soirees I had attended with Bruno. I would regularly veer too off-piste for anyone to get on board, which would warrant hushed tones referring to me as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ and then as time went on, and we attended more dinner parties, I would start to feel him watching me, and then he developed a look, one just for me it seemed. It was telling to stop being me, to fit in and say what they all wanted to hear.
He had tried to mould me, to make me like them. But I would not yield.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried. I watched Love Island and Married at First Sight. I walked around IKEA and did Tough Mudder and Park Run at the weekend. I ate out at the sushi restaurants and went to kids’ birthday parties even though we had no kids. I did it all; I made sacrifices so I could please Bruno. Because I thought I had to do those things to be considered a proper grown-up, accepted and liked. Ultimately, I was doing it for him, to save us, even when I could see the end. But where was the room he made for me? My wishes, my dreams and hopes? Well, there was no room for them in his cluttered life of rugby trophies and chrome and mirrors. The mirrored wardrobe where he could watch us as we made love, next to the crack in the wall where his fist had landed inches from my face that first time. That last time.
‘We should get a glitter ball, babe.’ He had suggested after that dinner party. I had laughed so loud, but the shock of his skin hitting plaster had knocked all the laughter out of me.
He started telling me he had tried so hard with me, but I wasn’t going to budge. And then I made the fatal mistake of turning my back on him. The second blow, at me this time, was unexpected and harder to accept than any narcissistic trait he had suffocated our relationship with.
I found Dana among a crowd around a small table where the three men merrily played their instruments, and they smiled and smiled as though they couldn’t stop if they tried. I recognised the song because I had been here in Fiji long enough. Dana was high. She took something – I don’t know what. She pulled me closer to where I had stopped and perched at the edge of the wooden cabin.
‘Come and dance. Come and dance.’ We weaved our way back to the table. I still felt awkward knowing that people were looking at us. That Westernised conscious effect was somehow still ingrained in me, as much as I had tried to resist. But I would rid myself of it, one day at a time, until I could be my most authentic self without a care. Dana was different; she danced like she didn’t notice anyone around her. How did she do that? How did she always manage to be so unaffected by life? I knew I had spent far too long in the company of Bruno’s friends who were so desperate to be someone else that they had forgotten they needed to live first. Well, no more of that for me. I was here and I was going to live, and I wasn’t going to care anymore.
I took Dana in my arms and swung her around. She threw her head back and laughed, and the people at the table looked up and smiled. There was a woman in the corner of the bar, her mahogany hair tied up in a bun with a large headband covering her forehead. She was grinning, smiling at us – at me. I held her gaze for a few seconds longer and then looked at Dana again as we spun. When I looked back up, the woman was gone.
That night, when I went to bed, I dreamt heavily. A faceless woman and I in a clinch. I presumed it was Dana, but it could have been someone from my past. She pulled herself away from me and began to walk away. Quickly at first, then slowly. She turned just before she stepped onto the sand and looked down at her feet. They were bleeding. Then she started running towards the sea and was out of sight quickly. I ran after her but she was gone. But I could still hear her. Her voice whispering my name.
Sadie, Sadie, over and over until I woke up.
2
THEN
I woke up sweating. This was normal now as I lived so close to the equator. I thought about the dream immediately. It would sit with me until midday as most of these dreams did. I dreamt heavily because of the heat. The air was so dense I sometimes wondered if I was even getting enough oxygen, but here I was, thriving it seemed.
I was just about to head into my fourth week here in Nadi, marking almost a month since my arrival, since I left England. I received emails from my older sister each week, filling me in on what was happening back home. Mum and Dad were both too busy to email, but they called, and I called them. There had never been a plan in place; I had considered possibly visiting Australia and New Zealand for a few weeks, asking if the chocolate company would hold my job at the market until I returned. I liked it here. But I feared I would stay and never see any of the surrounding countries.
I took a cold shower, dressed, and headed to the café on the corner where I took my coffee and pastry each morning. The café assistant greeted me with the usual ‘Bula’ and I sat by the window watching the street come to life: vendors setting up stalls, cars and taxis beeping and narrowly missing one another. A fan whirred on the counter; guitar music played softly through a speaker.
‘Hey.’
That voice. I had become accustomed to it. My body froze because he had already asserted power over me, just by having that tone in his voice that I found threatening. He was here intermittently throughout the week. I hadn’t seen him for four or five days and I’d presumed he had left the country. He came next to my table. He stood too close to me.
‘Tony.’ I barely turned to speak to him and regretted even using his name; it probably gave him a sense of entitlement. Something he didn’t need. Something I tried not to give, but I was only human, and sometimes I slipped up, too.
‘Hey.’ Somehow he had moved even closer to me. He had never been this close to me before. I could smell the spirits on his breath and seeping through his skin, and not just from one day of drinking either; this was a constant stench that oozed from within him. Tony was a bum. A drunk. How he ended up here, in this part of Nadi, was a mystery. I had never seen anyone like him here yet; no one else had that fragmented look about them, as though they might split open any moment.
‘You not working today then?’ He sat in the seat opposite me and my head jerked slightly to acknowledge his presence. He had once gotten riled at me when I tried to ignore him, so I figured this was the better way. He was about five foot seven, not much taller than me. I wasn’t sure about his accent. Was he Aussie, or Kiwi? There was a British twang there too.
‘No. I work in the mornings,’ I said carefully, trying not to reveal any more information than was necessary. Something I had learned from a friend who had been attacked by a man out of nowhere. She’d had counselling for months and was still heavily affected by PTSD but one of the things she took away from the experience was that nugget: never keep the conversation going longer than you want it to continue.
‘Ah, so you’re free in the afternoons?’ Tony leaned in closer, his dirty hands pressed on the table between us. I could feel his breath on my face. ‘You know you should come with me, on my boat. I can get a boat. Me and you should go island hopping.’
I stiffened at the prospect of being alone in the Pacific Ocean on a boat with Tony; this was the most forward he had ever been and I hadn’t ever given him the idea that I would like to spend time with him. I wasn’t about to tell him that today was my day off either. I paused to consider the right words. The ones that could offend him or encourage him had to be eliminated. And I was back there again with Bruno, in the weeks leading up to the day I left, choosing the right way to say what I needed to say, wondering which words would provoke a reaction. Walking on eggshells to prevent him from getting riled up. How was it that because I was female, I had to keep making these amendments? Why did I have to think carefully before I spoke for fear of upsetting a man?
‘Thanks, Tony, but I have a boyfriend, and I don’t think it would be honourable to go out on a boat with you.’ I felt ashamed of myself that I couldn’t just say: ‘No, Tony. I do not want to go out on a boat with you.’ To hope instead that he would read between the lines. But men like him either couldn’t or chose to ignore them.
‘I didn’t ask if you had a boyfriend, did I?’ I felt Tony’s spit land on my arm. Despite the searing heat, my skin prickled with cold.
‘Hey.’ Another voice, a female, this time.
I turned to my left to get a proper look at who had called out, and at first glance, I recognised her. Had she been the woman from the bar last night with her mad mahogany hair? She had an air of supreme confidence. Her hair, which had been tied up last night, was now loose and wild.
‘What’s good to drink around here?’ She was talking to me. She was engaging me in conversation. She was trying to block out Tony and make him feel invisible. It was working. He stood up and went to the bar, looked out of the window, pretending that he was unfazed by this interception.
‘Rum and Coke is always a safe bet,’ I said.
‘And who said I’m looking for a safe bet?’ She stood close to my table.
‘Well, it’s probably too early for that. Or kava. You can usually get it here.’ I rambled, looking at Tony. He was getting up. He stumbled over to the bar, pulled out a stool, and fell into it.
‘I usually have a coffee. The coffee is good,’ I said just as the café assistant set down a cup in front of me.
The woman smiled and for the first time I noticed a tiny gap between her two front teeth. I thought about a friend she looked like back home. But it was a friend I knew when I was with Bruno and then his face was suddenly there in front of me. Even though I had fought not to bring him with me to Fiji. I faltered for a moment as I shook the image away.
‘And you? Can I get you anything?’
I pointed to my coffee. ‘I’m good.’
‘Enjoy.’ She winked at me, then walked to the bar.
It was almost midday and she had been in the bar for over an hour, sitting by herself, scrolling through her phone. Occasionally her face would screw up as though she were reading something with real intention. I had brought a book and read a little, but I was struggling to concentrate on the words. A shadow cast over the pages. I looked up to see her standing over me. She leaned in and lifted the book to reveal the title page.
‘The Great Alone? A book set in Alaska seems a highly appropriate novel to read in thirty-degree heat.’ Her voice was softly tinted with an American accent, worn down by years of travel noting by the way she was dressed in faded harems and by the way her hair was beginning to form into dreadlocks at the sides, which I could now see as she was closer.
Her confidence and her ability to start a conversation impressed me. She also talked about books, which were my weakness. I was rarely without one these days in Fiji.
‘I’m rereading it. It’s not so much the setting, but the atmosphere, the constant threat that the family faces. I have never been one for a beach read. I like something I can get my teeth into.’
The woman nodded enthusiastically. ‘I like this in a woman.’
I wasn’t sure if she was hitting on me. I wasn’t particularly au fait with same-sex flirting, although I had attracted both sexes in my life.
I held my hand on the book, not sure if the time was right to close it. Was this conversation going anywhere or was she simply passing by and was an avid reader herself? She had just acknowledged my favourite Kristin Hannah book.
‘The world has a shortage of strong women. Leni is a prime example of the sort of woman we are missing. We need more like her.’ She pulled out a chair and sat down this time. I took this as my cue to shut the book, marking the page with a small fold.
‘Have you visited any of the neighbouring islands? I know your man there was an enticing travel buddy.’ She laughed. We glanced at Tony who was slumped in his chair, looking as though he might pass out at the bar.
‘Not yet. I was waiting for some time off. I’ve only been here for a few weeks. I have a job.’
The woman raised her eyes. ‘A job. How very responsible.’
I didn’t have a response. I was not feeling particularly quick-witted; the heat of the day had taken its toll on me. I should have gone home an hour ago, but for some reason, I kept on reading, glancing intermittently over at the woman who was now next to me. Perhaps I had been half expecting her to approach me.
‘Well, that’s interesting that you haven’t been to any islands yet. I mean, I don’t think you can say you’ve actually been to Fiji unless you’ve left Nadi.’
I nodded. ‘I agree. I have put making money ahead of sightseeing. I was thinking of heading off to Australia and New Zealand for a couple of—’
‘Why?’ The woman cut me off and leaned forward. ‘You’ve just said you haven’t seen any of the islands and you want to go to another country? The islands are the very essence of Fiji. You think this is nice? You haven’t yet arrived in paradise.’
Again I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say.
‘I’m travelling to one of the islands tomorrow. You could be my guest.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, I can’t just leave my job and let my boss down.’
The woman turned her whole body towards me. ‘I saw you when I arrived, and you did not strike me as someone who was a conformist.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘No, you look to me like someone who is trying to escape the past and maybe looking for a little adventure.’
Didn’t everyone come here to escape the past or was she just really good at reading people? I pulled my mouth into a semi-smirk. The woman smiled. Her green eyes sparkled. Strands of her long red hair blew in the gentle breeze that was coming through the gap in the window that I had opened when the morning hit midday.
‘Are you? Looking for an adventure?’
I briefly thought back to why I was here. I had run from Bruno who had tried to make me into someone I was not supposed to be. If I had put up with the comments, if I had just accepted that was all I was to amount to, then I would still be there now, going to dinner parties, saying what everyone wanted to hear. Being the woman that Bruno needed me to be.
Yet here I was, putting invisible boundaries in front of me, telling myself I had to stay when I really didn’t need to. I had escaped Bruno and his boundaries; I had nothing to stay for. I could get another job or flat just as easily. I thought back to a conversation I’d had with Bruno in the early stages of our relationship. I had listed the countries I wanted to visit. He had laughed it off and in a mock-southern American accent told me: ‘No woman of mine will be galivanting off around the world.’
I had told him we could go together. He had told me he had a job and responsibilities. ‘God, Sadie, it’s time to grow up.’
Bruno’s voice was replaced by the woman’s in front of me.
‘This island, it’s called Totini. It’s a boat ride away. It leaves at 1 p.m.’ She grinned, then turned and walked out of the bar. Just before she reach. . .
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