The Salt Flats

by Rachelle Atalla

Genres: Nature & the Environment; Suspense

Synopsis

Martha and Finn's marriage is hanging by a thread. Martha, crippled by paralyzing climate anxiety, finds herself at odds with Finn, who steadfastly refuses to confront the demons of his past.

In a desperate attempt to repair their relationship, they join a group of privileged tourists on a pilgrimage to The Salt Centre, a mysterious retreat nestled deep within the Bolivian salt flats.

United by a shared quest for spiritual enlightenment, the group embark on a journey guided by an elusive shaman. As a series of salt ceremonies unfold, hallucinogenic episodes force each of them to confront their own versions of reality.

When the final ceremony descends into a nightmare, Martha and Finn are met with an ultimatum. Forced to grapple with the moral implications of their trip they must ask themselves: are some wounds too deep to heal?

Release date: August 15, 2024

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

They’ve come to Bolivia for Martha’s health, but it is Finn who is lying in the clinic’s examination room. He is biting down on a rubber stopper, while a doctor forces a rod with a camera attached through a narrow hole down his neck. Finn grips the arms of the chair he’s sitting in while the doctor tells him to relax. He’s gagging, repeatedly. He can’t help it – it’s instinctual, his body repelling the procedure. He has such an acute awareness of what is happening to him, an invasive familiarity from the past which he cannot bear. It is taking everything he has within him not to pull on the rod like a rope and force its extraction.

The doctor looks at the image of Finn’s oesophagus on display.

‘Yes, you see?’ the doctor says, pointing.

Finn widens his eyes in response, continues to gag.

On the screen, his oesophagus looks ulcerated, bloody and hostile.

The doctor, swiftly and without warning, pulls on the rod, bringing it up and out of Finn’s mouth almost instantaneously. The relief is intense, and Finn presses forward, gulping for air, his eyes bloodshot and teary. When he swallows it is still agony but no worse than before the endoscopy.

The doctor is already washing his hands. There is something about his manner that strikes Finn as unusual, a casual­ness to his movements. He is tall, his tie appearing too long against his torso, his suit sharp and pristine. He runs a still-damp hand through a head of sleek dark hair and Finn, sitting feebly now, is aware of the contrast – his unkempt dirty-blond hair, his several-days-old stubble, his outdoor clothes suggesting he has just returned from a hike or a camping trip, whereas in fact he has done very little.

‘You say you have been unable to swallow properly for days, is this correct?’ the doctor says.

Finn nods, wincing from the pain. He is already preparing to be crushed by news that feels inevitable. Oddly, he wonders how his face will behave when he’s told.

‘You take medication?’ the doctor asks.

‘Only doxycycline now . . . for anti-malaria.’

The doctor straightens. ‘You have been told to take doxy­cycline to prevent malaria . . . ?’

Finn nods again, wishes the doctor would stop deflecting. At thirty-nine years old, he still feels small and childlike when in the company of medical professionals.

Suddenly, the doctor begins to laugh. It’s deep and chortling, rising out of his throat, just as the rod and camera had risen from within Finn. ‘Who told you this?’ the doctor says, his laughter finally subsiding.

Finn swallows, the jagged sensation ever present. ‘The doctor from the travel clinic we attended before coming here,’ he replies. ‘In Scotland.’

The doctor shakes his head, a smirk still apparent on his lips. ‘This will not help you with malaria,’ he says.

Finn begins to fear that this man has no idea what he’s doing, starts to accept that he’ll have to go through the whole ordeal again with a different, more qualified doctor.

‘Look, do you know what’s happening to me?’ Finn says, the words barely a whisper.

‘You swallowed a doxycycline capsule and did not allow time for it to travel down to your stomach,’ he says. ‘You lie down, go to sleep maybe, and it dissolves in the wrong place. The acid, it burns and blisters the lining of your oesophagus.’ The doctor pauses. ‘This is why you feel the way you do.’

Finn closes his eyes for a moment, allows relief to settle in. He can visualise the incident happening – the bus journey from La Paz to Uyuni – before even setting foot on the coach they’d got scammed and were forced to pay a fee to put their own backpacks in the compartment below. The coach then travelled through the night, the toilet on board out of service, the road unpaved, making it unbearably noisy and bumpy, Finn awake for the entire duration. When, eventually, they arrived and settled into their guesthouse, he’d swallowed a capsule, brushed his teeth and immediately fallen asleep. That was two days ago.

The doctor walks to a tall metal cabinet and opens the door. Finn can see the shelves filled with different types of medicine, all bottles and boxes. The doctor begins to gather glass bottles in his hands, but as he steps back one slips from his grip and falls, almost in slow motion to the floor, smashing, shards everywhere, a white gloopy liquid spreading in all directions.

‘Shit,’ the doctor says, his English impeccable, never faltering.

There is a splatter of white on his leather shoes. He begins to shout in Spanish, his voice booming as he calls for someone to come and tidy up the mess he has made. He reaches for a replacement bottle and steps around the glass and liquid, returning to his desk. He places the medicine bottles down on the surface and settles into his chair, while an older woman shuffles into the room with cleaning supplies, unacknowledged by her superior. Finn wants to smile at her or nod his head in appreciation for what she’s come to do – he feels responsible, having indirectly caused this inconvenience, and he needs her to know that he’s sorry. But the woman isn’t looking at him, too busy inspecting the mess that’s been made, strategising a plan perhaps.

The doctor holds up one of the bottles in front of Finn and shakes it. ‘I will write the instructions down for you. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Finn repeats.

‘You will be on a liquid diet for one week. Okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Only liquid. And you take all this medicine until it is finished. Okay?’

Finn nods.

‘After one week, your oesophagus will be healed. Then you can eat again.’

The cleaner is crouching, hunkered down in a way that looks uncomfortable, picking up shards of glass with her fingers. For some reason Finn can’t stop staring at her. She’s wearing flip-flops and he can see the backs of her feet, the skin of the heels cracked and sore-looking, little trenches within.

The doctor waves a finger in Finn’s line of vision, needing to claim his attention once again. ‘You understand? Only liquids . . . ’

‘I understand.’

The doctor begins to write instructions on the labels of the bottles, while the woman continues to clean behind them. Finn tilts his head and can see her wiping a cloth across the floor, her actions only seeming to spread the thick white liquid further. Finn visualises this same liquid working its way down his own throat, each swallow jagged with glass. He feels confused; doesn’t think he should be here, believes it should be Martha. He can sense an irrational anger rising within him, knowing that she is sitting out in the waiting area, no doubt worrying about him, worrying about what all this means for their trip to the Salt Centre, her precious salt book balancing unopened on her knee. He swallows again, the pain intensifying, and instinctively he is rubbing his neck, as if somehow this will soothe it from the outside in.

The doctor slides four 500ml amber bottles towards him. ‘For you,’ he says.

Finn bends and retrieves his backpack from under his chair, unzipping it and placing the glass bottles gently inside. When he straightens, the doctor is holding a piece of letter-headed paper, his handwriting scrawled across it, while the woman behind them is finally getting to her feet.

‘The fee,’ the doctor says. ‘You pay in reception.’

Finn takes the piece of paper. He looks from the doctor to the women and back again. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

The doctor nods. ‘Doxycycline . . . ’ he says, letting another laugh circle his mouth.

2

In the empty waiting room of the doctor’s clinic, Martha has been waiting a long time. Her book rests on her knee, unopened, a train ticket poking out from the top, behaving as a bookmark. She doesn’t know where the ticket came from – never took the journey printed on it. But the book, old, its spine cracked with age and use, was gifted to her. On the cover is a picture of hands drawn together, a heap of salt balanced within, and she rubs at the image, a comfort of sorts.

Behind her, light streams in from a large window and she can hear people passing from the main street outside. The clinic sits one floor up and for some reason this feels particu­larly foreign, confirms to her that they are indeed in a place that does not resemble home. Is in fact not Aberdeen. The town, Uyuni, is small, built in a very basic grid formation, with a main street running through its heart. It has a quality that makes her think it’s not real, that instead it has been built as a prop for a film or television programme, to be dismantled quickly in post-production, or picked up and placed elsewhere. All of it an illusion.

There is still no sign of Finn. She wishes he’d let her come into the examination room with him, focuses on the door, knows that this won’t speed up the process and bring him back to her any sooner. She thinks then of the door to their room in the cheap guesthouse they’re staying in. There is a strange wooden carving of a face on the outside of it, the texture unsettling, as if someone has taken a needle and pinpricked the wood thousands of times to create the image of a person. Inside, their guest room is damp and cold, with no television and intermittent wifi, so there is little for them to do while they wait to be collected for their trip. Martha spends most of her time trying to read her salt book and prepare, while Finn listens to downloaded podcasts or practises his basic Spanish – the reality that most people they’ve encountered don’t speak English is something of a shock to her, and her ignorance is still flushing across her cheeks. In each shop or restaurant, she can’t bring herself to speak, is embarrassed, words stalling, and she pulls at Finn, needing him to do her communicating for her.

All of this, of course, was before he started to experience the pain. She shifts in her seat, the book on her knee nearly falling to the floor. The wait is unbearable. It’s the anticipation more than anything, of being teased, the imagined worst-case scenarios.

A strong smell of food is filtering into the room. She’s had little appetite since arriving in Bolivia, the metallic smell of meat overwhelming when Finn sought out a KFC in La Paz. She’s been blaming the altitude, had read this would likely happen, that her movements would slow too; even when she climbed the stairs to the clinic she was out of breath by the top. But now she is consumed by constant nausea, a peakiness that won’t shift, and she knows it has nothing to do with the altitude and everything to do with anxiety.

Finally, Finn comes out of the examination room, looking shell-shocked and a little distressed. She recognises this look; has no desire to see it ever again, is annoyed at herself for not having foreseen the likelihood, of allowing her own health to become a distraction. The almost comedic timing of it all . . . She wants to laugh as she braces for the worst.

‘What’s wrong?’ she manages.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says, visibly in pain. ‘Your man just gave me an endoscopy without any anaesthetic.’ He starts to cough. ‘Just rammed a tube down my throat as if it was nothing.’

He’s struggling to stop the cough, the irritation catching, but Martha exhales and relaxes, getting to her feet, already able to tell by his aggrieved tone that the news won’t be devastating. As she tucks her book back into her bag, she asks, ‘And what did the doctor say?’

‘A doxycycline capsule dissolved in my throat. I’ve to be on a liquid diet for a week.’

‘But we’re getting picked up tomorrow,’ she says, trying to disguise any further anxiety in her voice.

‘I’m aware,’ he says, opening his bag and removing a glass bottle, opening it and swigging a mouthful of liquid, white and chalky.

She adjusts her expression back to one of concern. ‘I’m sorry, are you okay?’

‘I will be,’ he replies.

Martha follows him to the receptionist’s desk, where he hands over a piece of paper. The space is cluttered with fliers, but none is for health or medicine; instead they are all adverts for different tour operators promoting salt flat excursions across the Salar de Uyuni. Each flier is essentially a copy of the others, all promising the exact same experience. She takes one, folding it over and placing it in her back pocket. She likes to pretend for the briefest of moments that they are here only to play tourist. Wonders what it must feel like to be light of worry; to think that the world in its current state is something still worth exploring.

Suddenly she can’t remember the name of the driver from the Salt Centre who is coming to pick them up, and this panics her, as if she will be left behind if she cannot recall the details.

When she looks up, she realises that Finn has paid the bill and is ready to go.

‘How much was it?’ she says.

‘Five hundred and fifty bolivianos . . . ’

‘What’s that in sterling?’

‘Eh . . . I don’t know, like £70 maybe . . . ’

‘Oh,’ she says, nodding. ‘That seems quite reasonable.’

She reaches up and kisses him on the mouth. He smells differ­ent, but again perhaps that’s the altitude, or more likely the medicine he has just consumed.

He attempts a smile, doesn’t particularly react to her kiss. He never does any more, which she supposes is fair.

‘I’m so glad you’re okay,’ she says. ‘But I’m sorry you can’t eat anything proper.’

‘The food here is shit anyway.’

Outside, they walk along the street and Martha tries to take Finn’s hand, but he points to a pizza sign instead. ‘This is meant to be the only decent place to eat around here,’ he says. ‘It gets good reviews on TripAdvisor. I read that an American guy started it with his wife. I think it’s part of a hotel too.’

Martha inhales, a gentle breeze against her skin. It’s a bright, moderately warm day in late November and they are 3,656 metres above sea level. She can’t really grasp the scale of the number, accepts that it is high, tries to visualise the true vastness of their height, but it’s still too abstract. Perception of space and distance has never been her strong suit. Even when using Google Maps at home, being instructed to turn right in one hundred, or three hundred yards, it means nothing to her.

She straightens, can see a small plane in the sky. They had flown from Amsterdam to La Paz through the night and she had been unable to settle for the flight’s duration, every jump of turbulence a step closer to confirming her worst fears – that crossing a large stretch of ocean in the dark was bound to end in disaster. She had once read the black-box transcript of an Air France plane that crashed into the sea at night, caused by nothing more than human error, and is convinced that the plane wouldn’t have crashed if the pilots had been flying in daylight, if they had been able to see without darkness. The guilt of flying anywhere now, as the climate collapses, her shame in needing to come here, by plane, is suffocating, and she is desperate to repent. She’s already donated money to plant more trees in an attempt to offset the carbon emissions from their flights, but she knows it’s not enough. She can’t remember a time any more when she didn’t worry, when anxiety wasn’t constantly lodged into her chest.

‘I think we should go to the pizza place for dinner,’ Finn says, interrupting her thoughts.

‘No. Not when you can’t eat anything . . . I’m not that hungry anyway.’

‘Who knows what they’ll expect us to eat when we get to this salt place tomorrow,’ he says. ‘You should have the pizza,’ he presses. ‘If I can’t, you should.’

3

It’s evening, and the pizza restaurant is busy, busier than Finn would have thought possible for a place in Uyuni. They have to wait for a table, standing in the lobby of the boutique hotel it’s attached to. Finn inspects the framed photographs hanging on the wall, each image taken on the salt flats, while Martha disappears off to the toilet. He turns and sees an older man and woman coming down the staircase, heading straight for the restaurant. They’re laughing about something, and he can hear American accents. He smirks; they have the look of Americans too. He’s envious, though, at the idea of them staying at this hotel, suspects their bed is comfortable and warm, that they have a television. He doesn’t know why Martha booked them into the place they’re staying, thinks about the weird wooden carvings on the doors, the insects that could so easily be living inside the tiny holes. It reminds him of the masonry bees that were living in the crumbling pointing of their granite stone house. He had someone come and repoint the house and seal the property, but it haunts him that there are no doubt still bees inside, stuck forever in a tomb they can no longer escape. He worries then if it’s bad luck, if there are universal repercussions for carrying out house repairs defending against nature. They were small bees, solitary, not like those you would see in a conventional hive, so maybe that counts for something. He wonders if it’s been sunny in Aberdeen today, if his solar panels have been capturing much light, if the lithium battery in his outhouse is full. He has the urge to check the app on his phone but reminds himself that there is little point, that it has only buffered since arriving in Uyuni.

Martha returns and he stops thinking about bees. She looks nice – he’s told her this already but again he finds it to be true. He hasn’t looked at her very much recently, not properly, but now he’s really trying to remember her from when they first met, eighteen years ago. He’d been studying civil engineering in Glasgow and had gone out with some friends to the student union. It had been a Friday, late afternoon, fifty-pence pints followed by fifty-pence vodkas and an ageing and inappro­priate DJ. In among it all was Martha, light brown hair and green eyes, dancing on a wooden stool, wearing a dress with purple tights and an old-lady cardigan. She’d given him her most obscure philosophical chat, which at the time he’d found interesting. And now he’s looking at her as though he can’t understand how they came to be: his leukaemia diag­nosis at twenty-one, Martha never leaving his side, his unlikely recovery, going through the motions of a life he’d thought he wouldn’t get to lead.

‘You’re staring at me funny,’ she says, smiling, relaxed. He can’t remember the last time he saw her like this.

‘I don’t mean to.’

The table is finally ready, and they take their seats. The place is nothing fancy – lots of stereotypical American memorabilia on the walls – but it is inviting, filled with relaxed chatter, and Finn believes they’re in safe hands, suspects that even the soup will be nice. They might actually be capable of having a pleasant time, and suddenly it feels as though he could cry, and he doesn’t really know why. He swallows and is once again acutely aware of the blistering pain in his throat. He reaches for his backpack, opens one of the medicine bottles and takes a mouthful, before clicking the cap back into place.

‘There’s minestrone soup,’ Martha says, ‘do you think you could manage that?’

He nods.

‘I’ll have that too,’ she says, smiling as a waitress approaches.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he replies, more forcefully than he intended. ‘Have a pizza. One of us needs to have a pizza if we’re here.’

She’s turning the menu over in her hand. ‘Do you think they do vegan cheese?’

‘Nothing about being here is vegan,’ he says. ‘No one is going to judge you for having dairy.’

‘Fine,’ she says, almost instantly. ‘I’ll have a margherita. As long as you don’t mind.’

When the food arrives, it looks delicious. Finn stares at Martha’s pizza, at the cheese bubbling on the surface. He hasn’t seen decent-looking cheese since coming to Bolivia.

‘Enjoy it,’ he says, and he means it.

His soup is too hot, burning his tongue when he attempts to take his first spoonful. Usually he loves his food hot, hates anything being lukewarm, but he knows he won’t be able to get this down him until it’s cool. A milkshake – that’s what he would like, but the milk isn’t the same here. It’s long-life, artificial stuff. He realises that they forgot to cancel their twice-weekly milk order and suspects bottles will be sitting on their front step, piling up. Surely the milkman will realise? He tallies up all the bottles over a three-week period, the time coinciding with his offshore rota. There is a familiarity and comfort to being on his North Sea platform that he misses already: the structure and order, of knowing what is expected of him. It’s the weeks at home that he struggles with now, he and Martha skirting around one another, both with nowhere else to go.

He watches Martha cut her pizza into slices – she’s very particular, the slices needing to be all identical in size. He wants to shout at her, tell her that it doesn’t matter, that it’ll all end up inside her stomach.

‘Well?’ he says. ‘What’s it like?’

‘It’s good,’ she replies, her mouth full.

‘You have your appetite back, then?’

She swallows. ‘It would seem.’

He blows on another spoonful of soup, the restaurant around them abuzz with chatter and warmth. He can hear the American couple despite being several tables away – the man is asking the waitress what she’d recommend for dessert, his voice booming over everything else. Finn catches Martha’s eye, and they smile, an unspoken understanding exchanged in their smirks. And for the briefest of moments he thinks that perhaps they could be happy again, but it passes quickly, the pain in his oesophagus taking hold. He attempts to swallow the soup, his hunched posture tight over his bowl. They’ve made plans to visit Tupiza, then cross the border into Salta and finally visit Buenos Aires. But they will visit the Salt Centre first, for Martha, and he’s already apprehensive, worries that her expectations won’t align with reality.

‘How’s the soup?’ she asks.

He nods. Despite the pain, the soup is nice. Homemade. Something to be grateful for.

4

The guesthouse is deserted on their return, the place in near darkness. Martha leads the way, aware of Finn lagging a few steps behind, quiet. She fishes out the key from her bag. It’s not hard to find; it’s attached to an enormous piece of wood masquer­ading as a keyring. The room is freezing now that the sun has gone, and she plugs in a small electric heater, a yellow glow suddenly filling the room. Finn is rooting around for his toothbrush, entering the small en suite. He closes the door, and she starts to fold and pack her clothes away into her backpack, so keen is she to be ready for their trip in the morning. She’s barely thought of home since leaving, barely thought of anything from their old life, nostalgic for nothing. Aberdeen already has the creeping sensation of a ghost town. The oil won’t last much longer and nor does she want it to. She’s riddled with guilt for how they’ve benefited from it all, how it was she who suggested they move up to Aberdeen after Finn went into remission, when he needed a job and a fresh start, her own family, and by extension herself, benefiting from the oil boom. She hadn’t always cared but she cares so deeply, so painfully now that it cripples her.

When Finn emerges, he climbs straight into the double bed, his clothes still on. Martha begins to undress, a shiver passing through her body, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. She thinks about instigating sex; she rarely initiates it now for fear of rejection, but she’s feeling unusually optimistic this evening, hopeful even. There is something so liberating about finally, nearly, being where she thinks she needs to be, inching closer to the place that will heal her of her pain.

It had started small, an awakening of sorts. A trip to London and a chance visit to the Natural History Museum where an exhibition on plastic pollution and the environment had sparked something unsettling in her. Small changes in attitude and behaviour had followed, it all trickling, a need to engage, until there was a rush of despair. Then came the Just Stop Oil protests, the damage she is allegedly responsible for causing, her suspension from the oil company where she is still employed as a document controller, her court date. She doesn’t want to be this person any more; it’s too much.

Shivering, she climbs into bed and pulls the covers over her bare skin, shifting closer to Finn. His eyes are closed but she can tell that he’s not yet asleep. She stares at his face, the skin over his eyelids. She adores him still; would do anything for him. Sometimes, as an exercise in endurance, she still imagines him dying; she is well-practised in never taking his existence for granted. Recently, she has become obsessed with reading the social media feeds of the recently bereaved. She is fascinated by their before and after timelines, constantly in awe of their vulnerability. She thinks she should be the type of person capable of endurance, but she feels nothing but weakness. She is of a generation that are now told to be more resilient. To be proud of resilience, to wear it as a badge of honour. But she is not resilient. Not at all. All her resilience has been eaten away.

She shuffles closer to Finn, can feel his breath. She kisses his earlobe.

He doesn’t respond.

Her hand creeps across his body. ‘Thank you for coming here with me.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he whispers.

She climbs on top of him, their bodies pressed together, and she can feel him getting hard. ‘It’s going to work,’ she says.

‘Good,’ he says, ‘I’m glad.’ But she can hear the sadness in his voice.

He shifts from under her, turning away.

She lies, wounded, before getting back up to brush her teeth.

5

It is after 8 a.m. and their backpacks are resting by their feet as they stand outside, having checked out from the guesthouse. Their driver is late. Martha wears a feather-and-down bodywarmer, the zip pulled up to her chin, the fabric tag of the zipper in her mouth. She sucks on it, a repetitive motion that her tongue performs almost by instinct. She had been a thumb-sucker in childhood, both thumbs, and the habit has never really left her. She stares at her thumbs now, is convinced they are shorter than they should be, imagines the sucking to have caused the same result as foot-binding. She’s still sucking the tag on her zipper, the fabric now moist and slimy. She wonders if thumb-sucking is an early indicator of anxiety, a clue to her future self, a constant need to be soothed.

There is the noise of a vehicle approaching, turning sharply at the corner and coming to a stop in front of them. It is a large, red Toyota Land Cruiser, as expected, but the promise of a modern four-by-four is, in reality, a battered and rusted old vehicle. The roof-rack is already crammed with possessions, a blue tarpaulin covering everything, clipped into place by several bungee cords. A local man is in the driver’s seat, turning off the engine, and behind him, right at the back, practically in the boot, are two young women.

The man steps out of the vehicle and approaches Martha and Finn. He is short, wearing a knitted jumper with the word lethal randomly incorporated into the patterned design. A baseball cap is drawn down over his eyes and he’s chewing on something, his right cheek protruding like that of a hamster. Martha assumes it to be coca leaves. He pulls a torn piece of paper from his pocket and looks at it for a moment, a hesitant expression on his face. ‘Patterson?’ he says, his tongue trying to make sense of the pronunciation. ‘Finn . . . Martha?’

They nod, cautious, a little hostile in their posture.

He extends his hand out towards Finn, widens his smile. ‘Hola,’ he says. ‘Me llamo Elbert.’

Finn takes Elbert’s hand, shakes it, and Martha follows.

Elbert looks down at the backpacks by their feet, makes an apologetic face and laughs as if the luggage poses some sort of conundrum. From inside the vehicle the women stare out, one with blonde hair tied up in a bun and an angular face, the other with dark brown cropped hair and a hooped ring hanging from her septum.

‘Thank you for collecting us,’ Martha says. ‘Where should we sit . . . ?’

Elbert continues to smile, and it is clear to her that h. . .