by Wicks, Becky
We drop our bags and walk back through the maze of narrow streets to the beach. Izzy's quiet. 'So much of this was totally destroyed,' she says thoughtfully, looking round us at the massage parlors with their handwritten signs, the rows of jewelry stands and open sided bars with neon lights and pumping music, even at midday. Coils of incense are curling through the heat from a hippy store, selling mini Ganesh's and candles.
Two thousand people died here on this island on Boxing Day 2004. Over a hundred kids lost either one or both of their parents. I know all the facts and I'm sure Izzy does. It was as bad as it was in Khao Lak and Sri Lanka and everywhere else that got hit. It's another graveyard; not that many people here now are thinking about it I'm sure. Justin isn't.
'Check it out,' he whispers, nudging me in the direction of a sign outside a smoothie store. It says We fly you to the moon with mushroom shake!
'Really?' Izzy says as he stops and peers inside. She's looking at him like he's already lost his mind. I know she wants to get to the PP Sandy Beach Hotel ASAP and see if Alan Gillespie's still here. Her eyebrows wriggle up and down as she looks from him to the mushroom sign and when she fixes her brown eyes on mine and conveys complete bewilderment, it hits me like a baseball why I fell for her the way I did when I was sixteen.
It's the things I see in Izzy's eyes that draw me to her; they're corridors. As a boy I saw incongruous dreams and hopes in waves and colors, radiating out and pulling me in, even when she was quiet. When she laughed it was like some splintered rainbow fell on the world and lit it up, and when she was mad, she got mad in beautiful blacks and shadows. Even though she sees the world through a veil of grief and gray these days, I can still see her colors.
'We're on a mission!' she reminds us, folding her arms and I can't help it, the whole thing makes me laugh.
'He's on a mission, to fly to the moon,' I say.
'I'll buzz you in a bit, mate, yeah?,' Justin tells me, patting his pocket. 'Don't worry about me.'
He slips inside like a panther. 'I worry about him,' I say at the exact same time as Izzy.
'Jinx,' she grins, holding out her pinky.
'What are we, children?' I say, looping my finger round hers.
ISLA
The beach on this side of Phi Phi is like nothing I've ever seen with my own eyes. The water seems bluer than it does in Khao Lak; the kind of blue you see on TV programs and wonder how many filters the camera crew used in post production. Turns out, none. Longtail boats are bobbing in bright yellows and reds and the beach is sheltered on both ends by curving green jungle.
'Isn't this where they filmed The Beach?' I ask Ben. Giant rocks are towering out of the water like Transformers and I half expect Leonardo DiCaprio to scale down one and walk out of the surf all wet.
'Close,' he says, 'that was on Maya I think. You can get a boat round to there from here. You OK?'
'I'm OK, thanks,' I reply, still looking at the scene. He hasn't stopped asking if I'm OK, but actually, I really am. I was just so busy thinking how gorgeous it all is that I almost forgot to be scared. I search the horizon now, brace myself for the terror to strike, but weirdly it doesn't hit me as hard as it did the first few times I looked out from the mainland. I breathe in the salty air. Maybe it will help, they all said. I actually think it's helping.
'I'll wait here,' Kalaya says, fishing for her phone again and dropping a sarong onto the hot sand. 'I hope you find the bad man. I'll look for Justin.'
'I don't know how long he'll be,' Ben tells her, helping her straighten her sarong so she can sit on it. 'He may have no concept of time by now.'
I chuckle, watch as Kalaya strips off her sundress, down to her white bikini again. She has an amazing figure and she knows it. She has no scars, either, not like me. There are hundreds of people on the white sand, all roasting themselves into varying shades of red and brown. It's busier here; there are way more backpackers than there are in Khao Lak. A guy with dreads saunters up and hands us all fliers.
'Party on Bamboo Island tomorrow night,' he says. His tongue is pierced and so is his left eyebrow. His shirt is torn along the hem. 'Three hundred baht all-in. Leaving at three from the pier, it's gonna go off. You guys should come.'
'Thanks, we'll think about it,' Ben says, folding it up and putting it in his pocket. He turns to me. 'OK, so the hotel's up there,' he says, pointing up the beach. 'We can walk in from the beach. I've been thinking, maybe I should go in first, see if I can see any red-headed guys with blond streaks who look shady. If he sees you he might freak out and leave.'
'Good thinking, detective,' I tell him, putting my own flier into my purse. Kalaya scrunches up her dress as a pillow, flops down and puts her headphones in her ears.
'OK, vamos! Kalaya, we'll come back for you,' Ben says.
She raises her hand at him but doesn't look up from her phone and we carry on walking towards the spot where the trees get thicker and the crowds get thinner. 'Do you really think he's going to be there?' I say to Ben. I can feel the tension again as soon as we're alone. I don't know if he can, too, but it's thicker than the air. He kicks a shell.
'The cops have no record that an Alan Gillespie was leaving on any of the boats today and the hotel say he's been paying night by night, so as far as we know, he's still here. I spoke to them this morning. We'll track him down.'
'He could be anywhere,' I sigh. 'There's so much concrete.'
'It's pretty overdeveloped, yeah,' Ben says. 'They rebuilt a lot after the tsunami, but they didn't really stop. It always got me how no one really learnt their lesson with that.'
'What do you mean? They have the escape route signs everywhere.'
'I know, but they still built all this shit, you know, right here! It's still beautiful but, I don't know...' he trails off, shrugs again. 'I always thought they should've gone back to basics when they had the chance.'
'Maybe they didn't have a choice,' I say. 'They lost so much, they had to get the tourists back.'
'True,' he says, picking up another shell. His hair falls over his eyes as he studies it, then hands it to me. 'Khao Lak's not so bad yet but it was mostly the farangs with the most money who rebuilt the hotels,' he says. 'The locals couldn't afford to rebuild. It changed things. It changed all the dynamics.'
'You built the dive shop back up,' I counter, looking at the shiny white shell, the size of my palm.
He smiles. 'I did. But I gave a lot of people jobs. I guess that's a bonus - the more facilities there are, the more jobs there are, but it doesn't stop all of us ruining things little by little, you know? Us and the locals, we're all taking it down all over again. We don't even need Mother Nature to smash things up.'
'That's development, Ben, it's happening everywhere.'
'I know,' he sighs. 'I've seen it all over the world.'
'I want to see all that, I really, really do.'
He stops walking. 'Stop talking like you're old, like your life is already gone. You have time, Izzy. You have time to make a difference, too. Marcus can't wait to have you take over at the school!' His blue eyes are sparkling in the sun next to me. He's so tall and sexy it's ridiculous and even the slightest word of concern or reassurance from his lips makes my heart skid now. These feelings roared up with a force at the waterfall and they're still gushing through me. My insides twitch thinking about the school, too. I'm excited to be doing something good, somewhere totally out of my comfort zone on all counts. It feels good. And I've hardly thought about Colin all day.
'Is this it?' I say as Ben starts walking again and heads inland from the shoreline. Then I see the sign. PP Sandy Beach Hotel.
'This is it. What were we just saying about development? Check out that infinity pool.' Ben takes his shades off for a second, leads me further in towards the hotel. I can see white pagodas poking up like hats, the tops of sun umbrellas and a big blue swimming pool with several people in it, gazing over the edge at the beach. I realize I'm nervous. What if he's not there? What if he is? The place is pretty posh -
more posh than the dump we just signed into at least. My eyebrows almost touch. He probably booked this with my money.
'OK, you want to wait over there?' Ben says, nodding to a shaded bar area under a roof made of palm fronds just next door. There's no one there. He rubs his hands together dramatically, shakes them off like he's stepping into a fight, making me laugh. 'I'll sniff around, go talk to reception and see what they'll tell me.'
'OK, thank you,' I say. 'Be careful.'
'The Scots don't scare me,' he says, flexing his muscles jokingly in front of me. 'I can't even understand them most of the time.'
I'm still laughing as he walks towards the pool. I take a tall seat at the bar, order a pineapple juice, pull the flier I just got given out of my purse. Amazing DJ Sweden spins Electro House, it says. Tents will be pitched on the beach in an intimate setting.
I don't really know what to imagine. Sounds more like a frantic orgy than a party. Colin would have done his Sainsburys shop by now and not much else with his weekend, whereas I've been out on a boat and ridden a scooter and swam in a waterfall and if I want to, I can go and see a Swedish DJ on an island, or have an orgy in a tent.
I put the flier down on the bar, line up the box of pink straws with the napkin dispenser, watch the barman singing along to Bob Marley while he chops up the pineapple. Then I turn the shell over in my fingers, let the sand fall out, hold it to my ear. A tiny whisper from the ocean makes me smile.
BEN
'Sorry, no,' the Thai guy says. 'Alan Gillespie check out already.'
'Really?' I say.
'One hour ago.'
'Well, did he say where he was going?'
'We not know,' he says, 'sorry sir.'
'That's OK, it's not your fault, thank you,' I sigh, walking away from the desk and outside again, over to the deck right by the pool. There are no guys with red hair on any of the loungers and I didn't see any when I walked through the restaurants either.
I call the police station again, but it rings and rings till I have to leave a message on an answerphone telling them not to let him leave on any boats. Dammit. This is not unusual, though. They don't have the most organized of police services on these islands. They mean well, but it's not exactly LAPD in action. In my home country the police probably would've searched Alan Gillespie and held him on suspicion till we got here, or at least spent some healthy tax payer's dollars speeding him in style back to the mainland so we could confirm his thieving ass.
Izzy's right, Alan could be anywhere now. There are hundreds of hotels on Phi Phi.
I'm about to head back to the beach when a young kid with sandy brown curls races past me, laughing and shrieking. He stops and chases the ball that's bounced inside and I can't see the face but he looks just like him. I clutch at the doorframe as my heartbeat goes into overdrive. He's exactly the same height. Holy shit. Toby?
'Sir, can I help you?' the reception guy says now, hurrying over. He looks anxious now, like I just almost gave him a heart attack.
I yank my hand from the doorframe, straightening up. 'I'm OK, sorry, I just... thought I saw something,' I say. My eyes are still on the boy as he turns around with the ball and starts bouncing it all the way outside again. It's not him.
Of course it's not him. Idiot.
I'm shaking. I sit down on a soft, white chair just outside. This is exactly what happened when I thought I saw Izzy that time outside Burger King, only it turned out to be her. This kid isn't Toby. I'm starting to think it will never be Toby.
*
I didn't know what planet I was on as Dao's arm around me guided me down the steps of the dive boat. It wasn't the same beach I'd left just over an hour ago, when I last let go of Izzy's hand. I was trembling, like another earthquake was rattling through me. My eyes scanned the apocalyptic scene. People waded through water in places there shouldn't have been any water, or cars, or upturned TV sets, or discarded luggage flattened into the remains of what had been a row of hotels and the dive shop.
I couldn't speak. Dao stayed with me till we were collected with about twenty other sobbing, bleeding people in the back of an open truck and taken to a makeshift rescue center. I was fine on the outside.
'You're a miracle,' one lady said to me, putting her hands on my shoulders. She was a nurse, she said, from Ireland. She'd examined me but I couldn't remember anything other than pulling my wetsuit straight back on afterwards. It was all I had.
'My brother. My uncle,' I managed and her face crumpled.
'You and your friend Dao, you were the only ones,' she said, as firmly as she could.
The only ones who WHAT?, I wanted to scream as her chin wobbled. The only ones who didn't die? The only ones who've come to the rescue center so far?
Dao left. He had to find out what happened to his family. I felt like no one cared about mine, but everyone was crying. Everyone was lost. I saw more blood and injuries than I'd ever seen and more bodies in bags than I could count.
'Why are they in bags?' I asked a Thai guy that first afternoon. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt; there was nothing medical about him at all, yet he'd been bringing the bags in for hours. I stood up from my seat and followed him into a room full of them and I was too fast for him to stop me. The smell was insane. I almost threw up.
'Too big,' he said, motioning to them and then to a stack of empty wooden boxes. Caskets. He meant the bodies were too bloated to fit inside the caskets. He handed me some Tiger Balm, told me to rub it on my nostrils. Everyone was doing it.
I couldn't sleep. I couldn't stop thinking about Toby in a body bag. His face woke me up the second I drifted off, screaming, banging from the inside, asking why I let him go. I stayed for two days at the rescue center, maybe three, slept on pink fluffy blankets that smelled weird, but I buried myself in them anyway. I talked to people; all the people I could as the pieces started to fit together, asking questions, waiting. I comforted some and some comforted me, but Izzy's face too kept me screaming on the inside. I lost her. I lost Toby.
'Isabella,' I said to the girl in braids behind the computer. She was frantic, tapping away a million miles an hour. A line of people were behind me. All of them were bedraggled and beside themselves, like the cast of a war movie. 'Isabella from England. Izzy. I left her on the beach. Can you look again?'
'We don't have any Isabella's yet, I'm sorry,' she said. I asked a hundred times about Toby, too, and Charlie and Van and Tee, but I always got the same answer.
They'd brought in experts from everywhere - Austria, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, and all of them I realized quickly were carrying out the gruesome tasks it took to identify the dead. Most of it wasn't even happening behind closed doors. There weren't enough doors.
After a while, no one was bringing the injured in anymore. It was just more bodies and still none of them were Toby. Still none of them were Charlie or Izzy. At least, I didn't think they were. There were panels of photos of the bodies as they were brought in, on the walls. But they were all so horribly deformed. You can't even imagine what water does. People go black, their eyes bulge out of their sockets. The only way to recognize somebody at first is by their jewelry.
They were fingerprinting the corpses, I discovered. They gave them full dental examinations and took X-rays, then they sent the DNA samples away for analysis. It was when I learned they were matching them to a missing-person's list in Phuket that I begged to be taken there, to the International Hospital. I knew more bodies were there. Maybe I'd find Toby there.
I found my mom instead. She'd just flown in and been allowed a transfer. 'My baby,' she cried when she found me, pulling me against her and sobbing. I was sixteen but her words hit hard. I felt like a baby; a useless, helpless, broken baby. Glenn stood solid like a tree behind her. He hugged me too. It was the first and last time he ever did.
We moved to a hotel, where we stayed for two weeks and I made it my job to look out for Sonthi. He was going through the same thing, only he was still searching for twenty people he
loved. We played guitar at night. We knew the same Beatles song so we sang together outside, taught ourselves the harmonies to take our minds off all the tragedies. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, Now it looks as though they're here to stay, Oh I believe in yesterday.
Even though Sonthi didn't know the meaning of the words, I think they helped us both somehow. The yesterdays we missed were haunting everyone but at least we escaped with our lives.
I went with mom to the councilor, too, but she cried all the way through, and she cried so much at the hotel that I didn't sleep for days. I was a shell. I had no tears left. 'They're gone, they're never coming back,' mom yowled.
'We don't know that!' I yelled at her, but she yowled even more into the walls and the floor and the pillow, while a thousand other people doing the same made even the hotel feel like a funeral parlor.
We got told that DNA breaks down once bodies decompose. The longer we had to wait, the less chance we had of identifying anyone. Eventually I had to say goodbye to Sonthi and everyone at the hospital I'd gotten to know. Our flight was booked; my brother and uncle and Izzy were officially missing, assumed dead. My mom was a pale-faced Martian I didn't know anymore and she hadn't really spoken to me in days. 'Toby, my baby, Toby!,' she wailed into Glenn's expensive shirt as he helped her outside and into the taxi.
I was just about to leave for the airport when the girl in braids came to grab me. 'Ben,' she said, leaning down, putting a hand to my shoulder. I could tell by her face she had bad news. 'We found Isabella, from the UK,' she said as the tears careened down her face. 'There's only one on the list. I'm so sorry.'
It was raining when I got outside. It was a real tropical downfall; the kind of rain that lashes and hurts. I turned my face up to it and let it hit me as the wind howled. I wanted to feel the physical crash of everything that had been breaking my heart. The only thing I felt was how it wasn't rain at all. It felt like my brother and Izzy and Charlie and two hundred thousand other souls were crying.
