The Secret Path

by Karen Swan

  ‘Mean rip out there yesterday,’ Jed said warningly.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s better now but be careful if you’re going in.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I remember – swim perpendicular to the current. You taught me well.’

  He nodded, pleased. ‘We’ll need to keep an eye on little Jimmy, though.’

  ‘For sure. He’s my godson.’

  ‘He’s fast. Does he like football?’

  ‘Do you know a boy who doesn’t?’ she quipped.

  They watched as the surfers tipped backwards into the water, their run already over, the waves closing over their heads.

  ‘How long ago did they all leave?’

  ‘An hour and a half ago. ’Bout that.’

  ‘Gosh. An early start, then.’ Jet lag, she supposed. Plus kids. Poor Holly. There was no rest at all, ever, for her. It wasn’t a problem Tara suffered from.

  The surfers were walking out of the water now, their boards tucked under their arms, exhilaration infusing their strides. She could see the droplets of water falling off their bodies like crystals, hear the cadence of their laughter over the waves. That was what it was to be happy. To be rooted. To be here.

  Pura Vida, the locals called it.

  She watched on with emotions she couldn’t quite describe, an ache deep inside her she couldn’t understand. She had a nagging feeling she was doing this Life thing all wrong.

  ‘You’re awake!’

  Holly ran over the sand towards her, already touched by the first kisses of a tan. Her freckles were blooming, her hairline damp. Brightly coloured net shopping bags bulged in her hands. It had clearly been a morning well spent, in every sense.

  ‘Only just.’ Tara watched her lazily from the old striped hammock, one leg dangling idly over the side. She’d been trying to read a book for the best part of an hour now but she’d yet to turn the page. Lying about made her an easy target for her thoughts, it seemed.

  ‘Right?’ Holly laughed. ‘We kept going in and checking on you. I actually checked your pulse at one point.’

  ‘Told you I was tired.’ She nodded towards the shopping. ‘Find any treasures?’

  Holly’s smile widened. Twelve hours in and she was already a different animal from the pale, exhausted medic living off sugar in the hospital canteen. ‘Sure did. Got me some—’ She reached into the bag and pulled out a long string and shell necklace; it was all bleached colours and intricate knots, and would jangle when she walked.

  ‘Nice,’ Tara smiled. She had bought an almost identical one when she was fifteen. It was an intrinsic part of the boho beach look, the Blue Lagoon fantasy everyone ended up chasing out here.

  ‘Plus, some of these babies,’ Holly said, presenting a pair of faded red leather thong sandals.

  ‘Love those,’ Tara nodded, knowing she would get blisters from them. ‘Let me guess, did you get a basket?’

  ‘Not yet, but I’m gonna! How did I not know that I needed baskets? They’ve got so many!’

  ‘So many baskets,’ Tara concurred. ‘My mother bought one once that was just big enough to carry a single egg.’

  ‘A single egg?’ Holly’s jaw dropped open.

  ‘A single egg. It was beautiful, don’t get me wrong. Exquisitely crafted. But a single egg.’

  ‘Wow.’ Holly said wistfully, lapsing into silence for a moment and musing on the whimsy of a basket woven by hand for such a singular task. She seemed to be tapping into the Tremains’ obscure definitions of luxury – ramshackle huts on a pristine beach, fresh coconut water, single-egg baskets.

  ‘Did Jimmy like watching the surfers?’ Tara asked, watching as he and Dev, silhouetted, ran straight down to the water’s edge, the hot sand burning their feet.

  ‘We had to drag him away. Somehow he’s managed to come back with a new Liverpool kit, I mean, how . . .?’ She shook her head wearily.

  ‘Have you seen the others? What’s their route?’

  ‘Dunno, they said they were going to go inland.’

  ‘Oh dear. That means mountains. Did anyone tell Rory that?’

  Holly shrugged. ‘They said they’d be back sometime after lunch.’

  ‘Right.’ Tara felt a twitch of irritation. Okay, so she’d slept late – but did he really have to take himself off for a half day?

  ‘Don’t look like that!’ Holly warned her, knowing the nuances of her tone only too well. ‘You’re the one who overslept. Anyway, he’s bonding with your brother. You should be pleased.’

  Bonding. How she hated that word.

  ‘Well, we should do something too, make the most of our time while we can,’ Tara said, kicking her leg and beginning to rock. ‘I’m keen to get over to the clinic today and give them the supplies we brought over.’

  Holly gave a sigh that suggested she wasn’t quite so keen to return to a medical setting so soon. ‘Sure, whatever you want.’

  ‘But I can go on my own if you want to hang out here, it’s really no problem.’

  ‘Listen, you’re the expert on this place; we’ll do whatever you want, but don’t feel you need an itinerary. We’re cool just hanging out here.’ Holly sighed happily, looking out over the water and watching her family frolic in the shallows. ‘Jed’s so amazing. He’s going to teach Jimmy to surf.’

  ‘I know. He taught me. He’s the best.’ She watched the look of contentment on her best friend’s face. A family beach holiday. Simple pleasures. She felt an unexpected stab of pain again and looked away. ‘And your hut’s okay?’

  ‘I want to live there forever. What more do we need? Beds, beach. Outdoor shower. And there’s just something so . . . romantic about a mosquito net, isn’t there?’

  Tara smiled, hearing her falling for the illusion of the simple life. She had followed the same curve herself over the years. It was easy to fall for the paradise sell, but this stripped-back aesthetic was an illusion. What was charming on day one could be wearying by day thirty. Not to mention the realities of the wet season, when the rain fell like glass spears and the humidity meant nothing – not clothes, hair nor skin – could ever quite dry . . . And the second Holly ran out of anti-mozzie spray, shit would get real, real quick.

  For the first time, Tara noticed a large coconut poised among the palm fronds above her head. She tried to remember the statistic for the number of people killed by falling coconuts each year. Was it a hundred and fifty? Something like that.

  She sank into her thoughts. One hundred and fifty people killed every year by a falling coconut. It was such a . . . random way to die. Ridiculous, really. Like the two killed per annum by vending machines falling on top of them. Or the two and a half thousand left-handers who died from using right-handed products. The medical world was littered with anecdotes about inane deaths and oversights. They were taught in med school that more than seven hundred patients every year (an average of two per week) were sewn back up after surgery with some part of surgical waste left inside them – a swab, a forceps; one time she’d heard of a pair of pliers. Maybe even that would have been better than a teeny-tiny samurai-sharp scalpel blade. Less lethal.

  ‘. . . waterfall!’

  Tara was torn from her thoughts. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Jed mentioned a waterfall yesterday. We could go there, after the clinic?’

  ‘Yes, that sounds fun.’ She swung her leg out of the hammock and struggled up to standing, feeling a sudden urge to move and escape her thoughts. ‘I’ll go and speak to him about it if you want to tell the boys?’

  Holly looked surprised. ‘Okay. I hadn’t meant right this second, but sure.’ She got up – her bottom all sandy – and ran down to the water’s edge.

  Tara turned towards the bar, towards Jed’s comforting shape in the shadows, when she heard a heavy thud behind her that vibrated through the ground. She turned and looked back. The hammock was now twisted on its strings so that it bellied out upside down, a coconut in the sand beside it. It was the coconut that had been right above her head a moment earlier.
>
  She stared at it in shock. One hundred and fifty people in a global population of seven billion.

  Suddenly she wasn’t sure she liked those odds.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The open-top Jeep rumbled through town, the shadows of trees casting lacy patterns on their faces. Jimmy was strapped into the boot and waving at all the stallholders and street vendors as they passed. Most waved back at him with fleshy palms and gappy grins, encouraging him further.

  Tara had forgotten the sheer vibrancy of the place, the weather-boarded buildings painted in nursery colours of yellow and blue, hot pink and turquoise. People sat in pairs and small groups along the sides of the buildings, perched on stools, leaning on countertops, sprawled over car bonnets. There were no pavements; pedestrians and drivers shared the tarmac in a way that would be impossible in London; telephone wires were looped slackly overhead. People parked where they liked – sometimes it wasn’t clear if they were parked or in fact just stopped – driving around in open-sided fruit trucks, Vespas, bikes, Jeeps, no one in a hurry, brown arms stretched casually along open windows.

  Some children were playing around a yellow fire hydrant, running through the spray, the water droplets catching the lunchtime light. Sides of buildings were painted with Coca-Cola signs and hand-decorated hoardings were layered in piles on signposts, pointing the way to surf hire shops, cabanas, hostels . . .

  Tara kept an eye out for three out-of-breath cyclists, but saw no sign of them. She hoped Miles and Zac weren’t showing off and taking Rory on some ridiculous overly long ride, though she wouldn’t put it past them. Rory was in decent shape but his long hours meant he couldn’t – and didn’t – give the same dedication to the gym as her brother and his husband.

  ‘Nice work if you can get it, Jed!’ Holly called from her seat in the back as they sat at the rudimentary traffic lights, people calling Jed’s name and hailing him from the streets. ‘What are you? Mayor?’

  ‘I wish!’ Jed laughed, nodding his head in amusement, but Tara noticed the way people’s eyes slid from him over to her in the next instant, as though they knew who she was too. It was an easy enough calculation to make – everyone knew he and his father worked for her family – but she realized now that the relative anonymity her family had enjoyed on her childhood trips over here had been superseded by their profile as the largest single private landowner in the country. The new national park was big news, and her father’s face probably had the same recognition factor as the President’s now. But hers too? She had made a point of keeping herself out of this project.

  She kept her gaze as light and flitting as a moth, not hovering anywhere too long, not making eye contact. She admired the stalls selling baskets of every size and shape, all intricately woven from grass; she smiled at the sight of brightly coloured ceramics displays, pineapple stalls, tourist shops flogging lilos and postcards, beach shacks pegged with tie-dye t-shirts and cotton pareos.

  The sea was to their left, a high tide covering the dark gold beach, and she watched as some surfers caught the barrels, scudding in on white waters and silhouetted against a clear sky. Jed turned a sharp right, waiting for a banana truck to come past before heading down one of the long, straight back roads that led inland and towards the distant hills. The sky looked turbulent over there, dark clouds twisting and bumping into one another, a mist falling to the ground like a privacy screen.

  The buildings became steadily more spread out and lower to the ground, high, dense hedges marking the start of the residential district. The houses were mainly single-storey, some topped with sheets of corrugated metal. They passed the elementary school, beside it a large unmanicured, unmarked playing field, a group of boys playing football, their rucksacks in a forgotten heap.

  The treelines started to became more dense as they rolled further on, the road no longer tarmacked as they headed for the hills. They stopped at lights again and she swept her gaze over the only house on the opposite corner. It was largely hidden behind a concrete-panelled wall which had been defaced with graffiti and it was several moments before her gaze focused to read what it said in Spanish: Foreigners out! Costa Rica for Costa Ricans!

  The meaning was clear. She immediately looked at Jed and one glance at his terse expression told her he had already seen it, that he had hoped she wouldn’t. He had wanted that light to be green and not red. He had wanted to shoot through it before she could read it.

  The lights changed and Jed pulled away. She glanced back at the house, just in time to see around the concrete wall and into the yard. A man in jeans and a hat was reaching into a pick-up and he happened to look up as they passed. His eyes locked with Tara’s. In the next instant, they had driven past and he was gone again but something in the way he had looked at her, the way his body had tensed as he had seen who she was . . .

  ‘Who was that?’ she asked quietly, knowing Jed had seen the interaction.

  There was a short pause. ‘One of Miguel D’Arrosto’s men.’

  ‘And who’s he?’

  ‘Just a cattle rancher who doesn’t like being told no.’

  Tara hesitated. ‘. . . Same rancher whose men almost ran us off the road last night?’ she asked, lowering her voice.

  Jed glanced at her. ‘Don’t worry. He’s all talk.’

  Tara wasn’t sure that was true. That truck bearing down upon them at speed, threatening to tail-end them at eighty miles an hour, hadn’t felt like ‘talk’. It had been action. Open threat.

  She automatically rubbed her temples, knowing it made no difference to her headache, knowing this wasn’t the time to discuss it – her friends were in the seats behind, their young child sitting between them; and besides, they had arrived at their first destination. She gave a small gasp as they pulled into the parking lot of the clinic she had only ever seen on a computer screen – her ‘baby’, loved from afar, it had been the first of her award-winning international mother and child clinics, and unlike real babies, she definitely had favourites. This would always be the one she loved most.

  Seeing it in three dimensions was surprisingly emotional and immediately she sensed the energy about the place. It was so much bigger than she had imagined, for one thing. It wasn’t an object of beauty – a bright white concrete hulk, single-storey, with lots of windows, a red medical cross sign hanging above the door, the universal language for medical help. But a couple of young mothers were sitting on a bench, one breastfeeding a baby while toddlers played with a hoop around them.

  They parked up, and Jed and Dev went round to the back to start lifting out the boxes of supplies she had brought over from England. It was a stocking-up of basic kit – syringes, sterilizing solution, dressings, antibiotics, saline, blood pressure monitors – but she’d also managed to get her hands on some Doppler ultrasound scanners.

  ‘Pretty decent,’ Holly nodded casually at the clinic. It was hard to impress her friend.

  They walked into the air-conditioned cool. For all the bucolic calm outside, inside there were people everywhere – doctors in white coats moving officiously, nurses running between rooms, parents and children and babies sitting on plastic stackable chairs. The noise level was high – babies crying, toddlers shrieking, but also the hum of conversation too, the punctuation of laughs as mothers talked among themselves as they waited to be seen.

  Tara looked around with a critical eye. In spite of the seeming chaos, there seemed to be a patient registration system in place and everything looked clean, from what she could see. The antiseptic smell was reassuring.

  ‘Ah, home sweet home,’ Holly quipped. ‘I can feel my cortisol levels rising already.’

  ‘Shuddup,’ Tara grinned. ‘This won’t take long.’

  She saw the reception desk and walked over. A young woman looked up and smiled at her, asking her something in Spanish.

  Tara replied in kind, saying she was looking for Dr Morales, and the receptionist pointed towards an office in the far corner. ‘Gracias.’

  ‘You spea
k Spanish?’ Holly asked her as they walked across to it. Now she was impressed.

  ‘Just enough to get by.’

  She knocked on the door and leaned forward, waiting for a voice to tell her to enter. Instead, the door swung open and she found herself almost at eye level with an enormous bosom.

  There was a moment of mutual surprise, and then the owner of the bosom gave a huge smile. ‘Dr Tara? You are finally here?’

  ‘In the flesh. How are you, Yorleny?’

  She was swept into a hug by way of reply and it was like hugging pillows, everything soft and warm.

  ‘It is good to see you,’ the woman said. ‘We have waited a long time for this moment.’

  ‘I’ve waited a long time to get back here. I’ve missed this beautiful country.’ Tara stepped back to introduce the others. ‘These are my friends, Holly and Dev Motha. They are doctors too. And their little boy, Jimmy.’

  ‘Welcome, welcome,’ Yorleny said in English, greeting them all with double-hand clasps, including a cheek-chuck for Jimmy. She lifted her head and called out in Spanish: ‘Hey, everybody – this is Dr Tremain, our clinic’s founder and benefactor.’

  Tara’s face burned as suddenly all faces turned towards her – doctors, nurses, patients – and people began clapping.

  ‘Oh God, you really didn’t have to do that,’ Tara said, mortified, under her breath and smiling back politely. She could hear Holly laughing beside her as a train of people came over. Some wanted to shake her hand, others just to look at her – seemingly – and she understood for sure that her family’s name had resonance here. People knew her for reasons other than just this clinic.

  ‘Oh no, I’m not anyone,’ she heard Holly bluster as her hand was reached for too, her curly red hair touched like it contained magical powers. ‘Oh, well yes . . . how do you do . . . uh-huh . . . Okay yes, you can stroke my hair . . . Yes, hola.’

  Tara laughed as the crowd swarmed around, mobbing them. Even Jimmy found himself caught up in it, mothers cooing over his limpid eyes – so like his father’s – children showing him their toys, pointing at his trainers.