by Natasha West
Eden couldn’t wait to get to the island and hit that bar.
***
Eden was on a sun lounger in the cosy warmth of the late afternoon, dozily staring into a pool, the bar handily close for top ups on her mojito. Even handier, she was sectioned off from the beach by a dense tree copse. Handy because that was where most of the gang was, on the shore playing volleyball or, in the case of Florence and Mary, watching everyone else play. So Eden was staying put, keeping a low profile. Maggie was at the pool too being as she wasn’t sportily inclined, claiming she was allergic to her own sweat.
Eden felt the effects of her mojito, and she turned to Maggie to say something about finding the toilet. But Maggie wasn’t there, she was over the other side of the pool, chatting up some girl with cornrows who was at least fifteen years younger than her. Eden observed for a moment, watching how hard Maggie grafted, waving her arms around as she told the girl some tall tale. The girl gave a pink-cheeked giggle, and Eden knew that was that, deal sealed. She was happy for Maggie. She deserved to find, if not the love of her life, then at least someone to put a smile on her face.
Eden got up to look for a toilet, but its location wasn’t obvious, so she went up to the bar to ask. The barman was doing some Tom Cruise Cocktail stuff for a transfixed group of women who were clearly watching in the hope he’d have an accident. Every time you thought he was about to smash his bottle, whoop, back up it went. Eden didn’t feel like she could stop the show to ask where she could pee. She poked her head in the dining hall - more of a shack than hall – but she didn’t spot a toilet anywhere. The place was heaving with people eating, the staff snowed under, so she couldn’t ask them either. She left and went back around the side of the open-air bar, hoping to find it herself. Nothing. There was only one other place to look.
Eden stepped through the trees and came out on the sandy beach, the sun lowering onto the cruise liner that sat on the horizon, awaiting them. Farther down the beach was the volleyball game. Steph and Isabella were on one side of the net, Max and Natalie on the other, everyone else sitting back. Eden watched a volley back and forth that ended with Max smashing it over the net and scoring. She and Natalie high fived each other in celebration. Eden stopped watching.
She turned and walked down the beach farther in the opposite direction from the game, the white powdery sand feeling good under her feet, the ocean to her left, lush greenery to her right. It was all very gorgeous, but Eden was bursting now, and when she needed the toilet, she could think of absolutely nothing else. She was getting to the point where she would have peed on the Mona Lisa, were that opportunity to present itself.
She’d given up on finding a bathroom, she was on plan B, an isolated spot where she could be sure she wouldn’t be found squatting by drunk lesbians. It was Eden’s classic internal struggle between her own needs and not wanting anyone to see the woman behind the curtain, the one with normal – and by now raging - bodily functions.
Eden began to jog through the ever-thinning tourist population, the movement only making things worse on her tender bladder. She hoped she didn’t just end up where she started; at the volleyball game. After all, the island was small. She might run its circumference the way it was going.
But finally, she found a place where she couldn’t see a living soul, and she hopped quickly behind the treeline, walking another thirty seconds deeper into the trees to be sure. Relatively certain she was alone now, Eden leaned against a tree, dropping her bottoms, and giving her aching bladder sweet relief. She could just about hear the ocean through the trees, and she had the sudden realisation that she could have been peeing ten minutes ago in perfect privacy by standing in the bloody sea: nature’s bathroom. She tutted at herself as she finished weeing and stood up, reaching for her bikini bottoms, still berating herself for not seeing such an obvious solution and making her own life harder. But, Eden thought, wasn’t that just her whole prob-
‘Aaaaagggh,’ Eden screamed as she got her feet twisted in her bottoms, shuffling backwards and falling down a large unseen incline around the other side of the tree she’d been squatting against, eventually coming to a stop in a shallow puddle of muddy water.
She lay in the puddle for a moment, trying to decide if the accident had been fatal. But then she realised that if you could ask yourself a question, you were most likely not dead. The second question she asked herself was if she’d sustained any injuries that would lead in that direction. She wasn’t in great shape, but she didn’t feel any serious cuts or broken bones, only scrapes and bruises. Third question, could she get to her feet? She could and did, gingerly rolling onto her front and pushing herself up from the puddle, getting a nice mouthful of disgusting puddle water in the process. She spat it out as she stood, but it had a lingering quality, and she had to spit at least six further times before she felt like she wasn’t going to get dysentery. Or wait, hadn’t she once read that’s how you got polio, from infected water? She spat two more times for good measure. It would be just her luck to die from something so ridiculously Victorian.
Once the spitting was over, she realised her bottoms were still around her ankles. She pulled them up, glad no one had seen this.
Once she’d finished, she looked around her. She became rapidly less happy about the lack of people nearby because she hadn’t fallen down an incline; it was a hole. She could see some exposed pipe running through the puddle, and it was obvious that this pit had been dug for repairs. But the digger had neglected to put up any warning of the danger to passing urinators, the damn idiot. Eden looked around her at the ten-foot-deep, five-feet-diameter hole she was in, and she started to feel a small measure of panic. But panicking was pointless. What was needed now was to just start climbing. The quicker she started, the sooner she’d be out, looking down into this hole and laughing about her near miss with being properly stuck in the thing.
Five minutes later, she was not laughing. The walls of her little prison had absolutely no purchase. Every time she tried to get a foothold, she slid right back down. Once she found a tree root that looked like it could offer some leverage, she hoicked herself up with her hand, hoping to get her bare foot on it. But as soon as she put pressure on it, the thing immediately snapped, sending Eden sprawling back down where she landed once again in the puddle at the centre of the hole. She screamed with frustration and slapped the puddle, splattering her own face further with murky water. She was wet, cold, dirty, tired and angry. The only upside was that she didn’t need to pee anymore.
Eden got to her feet and took a deep breath, finding some calm. So she couldn’t get out? She’d just have to get help. Embarrassing, but not a disaster. She shouted the word help as loudly as she could, and then waited. No response. A minute later, she yelled again and waited. Still nothing. She began to wonder right then just how far she’d wandered from the pack. But it couldn’t be too far, could it? The island was tiny. Someone was bound to come this way eventually. She yelled again, waited again, yelled again, waited again.
Nothing.
In the silence, while Eden listened for the sound of approaching cavalry footsteps, she could hear the ocean roaring distantly. She realised that it didn’t matter if anyone wandered farther up the beach for a romantic stroll. Her cries would be masked by the white noise of the waves lapping. That panic she’d tried not to feel earlier returned, and Eden couldn’t fight it this time. She poured it into one last loud scream. It didn’t even have the word help in it, it was just a scared shriek, and it went on for as long as Eden could make it last.
When it was over, Eden was hoarse. She didn’t know if she could keep calling for help, or if there was a point. And the sun was going down.
Twenty-Five
Natalie was body tired and ready to get back to her stateroom on The Adventurer. She was absolutely done in. Max had begged to team up with her against Steph and Isabella for beach volleyball. The game kept going until long past the point of enjoyment for Natalie. But Max wouldn’t let her quit, she was
enjoying the time with Isabella too much, though Isabella was laughing in Max’s face every time she scored against her.
Eventually though, the time came to get back aboard the boats to take them home, and Natalie was freed from her sporting obligation. She saw everyone from her group walking back to the little jetty, ready to depart. Natalie counted them off herself because she truly didn’t have any confidence in the jokers running the transport to do a proper headcount. She was pretty sure they were all smashed. Her confidence plummeted further when she heard one of them say, ‘Hey, has anyone seen the manifest?’
Mary, Florence, Steph, Max, Caz, Saz, Isabella, Angelique, Maggie (who was talking to a young woman Natalie didn’t recognise) and Beatrice, all were present and accounted for.
But one person was notably absent. Natalie was pretty sure she wasn’t around, because she had about half a foot on most people, so it wasn’t like you could miss her. Natalie was torn. Should she say something? Who to? Which staff member was the least drunk?
Natalie checked the time on her phone. Ten minutes until first departure. Maybe Eden was at the pool? Natalie could just check, and if Eden had somehow gotten waylaid, she could say, ‘Hey, we’re leaving,’ no big deal. She headed off to the pool beyond the trees.
***
Eden wasn’t at the pool or its bar or the dining hall. No one was, it was all completely deserted now, everyone off to wait for their transport back. There were only a few minutes until the boats started leaving. Natalie had to go and tell someone now; it was the only sensible course of action. She turned to head back to the jetty.
That’s when she heard it. A sound she thought she’d imagined at first. It was so very quiet, this noise, but the pool was silent - the noise of the crowds on the beach somewhat blocked by the trees - and it just about reached her. At first, Natalie dismissed it as a bird squawking to attract a mate for some hot avian action. But for some reason, even after Natalie had decided it was nothing, she didn’t leave. She kept listening.
And then, perhaps due to some change in the wind, it reached her a little louder. This time it sounded human. Natalie began to walk toward it. She didn’t have very long until the boat left, but she could afford a few seconds to make sure she didn’t hear what she thought she could hear.
As she walked in the direction of the sound, away from the pool, deeper into the trees, it came even clearer. It was definitely a person. Natalie found herself running toward it, concerned the screamer might be seriously hurt. Then the shouting got a little quieter, as though the screamer was getting tired. But it was definitely to her left. Natalie changed course.
Two minutes later, Natalie heard the call with total distinction. A woman crying for help. Natalie altered course again, getting closer. ‘Hello?’ she called.
‘Hello!’ the woman said, and Natalie recognised the voice. Eden.
Natalie rushed through brush toward the woman. ‘I’m coming! Hold on!’ she called to Eden.
‘W-w-wait! Don’t…’ Natalie took another step before she could hear more. She was down at the bottom of a pit for the end of the sentence, which turned out to be ‘…Fall in.’ Natalie looked up at Eden, stunned from her fall, not to mention soggy from the puddle she’d landed in. ‘I came to help,’ she said feebly. Eden pulled her up, and she looked around to see that Eden hadn’t broken her leg or anything. She was just in a hole. As now was Natalie, too. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked Eden, a bedraggled mess.
Eden sighed. ‘I’m in a hole, but other than that, dandy.’
Natalie looked around her, realising she’d dropped her bag before she fell in, it was somewhere outside the hole. ‘How did you get down here?’
‘Same as you. I fell in,’ Eden said simply.
Natalie felt stupid. She’d come to be a rescuer and ended up needing as much rescue as the damsel she’d been looking for. Oh, and also… ‘Shit! The boats are leaving!’ Natalie cried.
Eden’s mouth fell open. ‘Jesus, I’ve been down here longer than I thought! But surely, I mean… someone will realise we’re not there, won’t they? The people running the transport back?’
Natalie shrugged. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘But the manifests, we all put our names down.’
‘Last I saw, one of the guys was trying to find it, so…’
‘Oh god,’ Eden said, her eyes widening in horror. ‘But hang on, you told someone, right? I mean, someone will know you came looking for me?’
Natalie laughed nervously. ‘I was going to tell someone. And then I heard you yelling, and there didn’t seem time.’
Eden’s eyes kept getting bigger. ‘But one of our lot, they’d know…’
‘Hard to say. But what about Maggie? You were with her all day, she’d notice-’
‘Think again. I hadn’t seen her in a while. I think she got distracted, making a friend.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘We’re screwed.’
Natalie heard the emphasis on friend, but there was no time to examine it. The clock was ticking, she had to get practical. ‘OK, so we’ve established that we might not be missed. We can’t wait to be rescued. We need to get out ourselves.’
Eden shook her head. ‘I’ve tried that. It’s a no go.’
‘You can’t climb out?’ Natalie asked.
‘I can’t get a foothold; I just keep sliding back down.’
Natalie looked up at the opening of the pit, to a tree almost at the edge. She looked at Eden, head to toe. ‘You’re what? Five-ten?’
‘About that, yes,’ Eden said.
‘And I’d guess the depth of this hole is ten feet or so?’
‘I think that’s about right.’
‘And I’m five-four. Add us together, and that’s eleven feet of person. We can get out if one of us hops on the other person’s shoulders and grabs hold of that tree.’
‘Of course!’ Eden exclaimed happily. ‘God, Natalie, of all the people that could have fallen in here, I’m so glad it was you!’ Her smile slipped. ‘Because you’re a good problem solver and you don’t panic,’ she added quickly.
Natalie was thrilled that her muddy face was probably hiding her blush. ‘That’s… Thank you,’ she said with a small cough. ‘Right, I propose that as you’re the taller one, you should be the base. That OK?’
‘Of course. So you just need to get on my shoulders?’
Natalie nodded. ‘Yeah. I think if you just crouch down, I can…’
Eden immediately ducked down. Natalie paused for a moment before she climbed onto Eden’s shoulders, thighs around her ears. It was a lot of extremely intimate contact, but Natalie refused to think about that. ‘Now, can you stand?’ she asked Eden.
Eden got to her feet like a wobbly foal, and Natalie grabbed onto Eden’s hands for balance. ‘Lucky you’re light,’ Eden noted.
The compliment threw Natalie slightly. ‘Well, I try to get to the gym when I can… Anyway, er, can you walk over there and get me to the tree?’
Eden walked very slowly to the edge of the hole. ‘Now what?’
Natalie took a deep breath, preparing herself for serious gymnastics. ‘Right, I can get out. But I have to stand on your shoulders, my full weight on them. Can you handle that?’
‘I can if it means getting out,’ Eden said enthusiastically.
‘OK, just stand as still as you can,’ Natalie instructed Eden.
‘I’ll be a statue,’ Eden vowed.
Natalie kicked her flip-flops off and put her hands against the wall of the hole. She began to slide one leg up very carefully, getting it on Eden’s shoulder. Next came the tricky bit, the other foot. This one would bear all her weight onto Eden’s shoulder for a few seconds before she could properly stand. ‘Eden? I’m about to do the hard part. But if I’m quick, it will only be dodgy for a second, so get ready.’
‘I’m ready,’ Eden said confidently.
Natalie took a moment to fortify herself and then swung her other leg up and jumped up. For a hairy second, she felt Eden wobble, and s
he was sure they were going to collapse in a heap at the bottom of the hole, back to square one. But Eden seemed to find some strength, and she righted herself as Natalie got herself up on both feet. She’d done it, she was standing on Eden’s shoulders. And she could see over the lip of the hole. Better, she could reach the tree. She grabbed ahold of it with both hands. Then paused.
‘How’s it going up there?’ Eden asked.
‘I’ve got ahold of the tree. But…’
‘But what?’
‘There’s no branches this low. I don’t really have the upper body strength to just grip a tree trunk and pull myself out from this position,’ she admitted wretchedly.
‘No, hang on,’ Eden said. ‘What if I get ahold of your feet and push up? You should get your body at least halfway out. Can you take it from there?’
