Survive

by Tom Bale

  And then he’s out of the room, easy as that. She didn’t see him take the envelope and slide it beneath his shirt.

  The Baxters are still at the bar, Trevor nursing a fresh drink and staring into space, Kay reading something on her phone. They don’t look up until Sam is looming over them. He drops the envelope on to the table. ‘There you go.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Trevor says.

  ‘For the thing tomorrow. I, um – Jody and I think you should go, instead of us.’

  Trevor is frowning fiercely, like it’s some kind of trick. Kay is quicker to take it at face value.

  ‘You don’t want to attend?’

  Sam shrugs. ‘There’s plenty to do here.’

  Without hanging round for more questions – or a word of thanks – he turns and walks away. He feels pleasantly proud until he’s almost at the room, and then the doubts creep in.

  The kids are tucked up in bed, Grace with a book, Dylan doing a drawing. Sam kisses them goodnight, and finds Jody in the bathroom. Her hair is tied back and she’s applying some sort of cream to her face. Smells like seaweed or something. Nice, though.

  ‘I, er, hope you don’t mind,’ he begins, and she reads the seriousness of his tone and stops what she’s doing, turning to face him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I gave the invite to Trevor and Kay.’

  Jody stares at him, coldly. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Because of how Trevor was going on about the president’s son... and, I mean, it’s not like we’re that bothered–’

  ‘You’re not. What about me?’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased. It’s like you were saying – be the bigger man, and all that.’

  She nods unhappily, as though he’s throwing her own words back at her as a tactic, and not because he agrees it’s good advice.

  ‘Come on, Jode. If we went to it we’d just be worrying sick about saying the wrong things, or Dylan breaking something. And it’s brilliant here. Why waste a whole afternoon somewhere else?’

  To Jody, it feels like a breach of trust, and that festers while she’s preparing for bed.

  When she joins him, the room is dark and the children are fast asleep in their curtained-off alcove. Jody slips into bed and listens to the whir of the air-conditioning, the pitch of the motor rising and falling until it begins to sound like a wearisome voice: Oh yes, don’t mind me, slaving away to give you a comfortable night’s sleep…

  ‘I’m just,’ she begins, but her mouth is dry and she needs to moisten her lips before trying again. ‘I’m annoyed that you didn’t discuss it with me first.’

  ‘Yeah, I should’ve. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, it’s done now.’ She reaches out and finds his hand in the centre of the bed, waiting to make contact. ‘We’re not gonna let it spoil the rest of the holiday.’

  ‘No.’

  A long silence, then the mattress creaks and she turns her head and Sam is staring at her in the dark, an impish grin on his face.

  ‘Do we need to make up?’ he asks.

  ‘You want to make up?’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind.’

  She pretends to mull it over. ‘Mm, I suppose you can earn my forgiveness if you like.’

  13

  Jody wakes early and immediately starts to wonder if she let Sam off too easily. What’s hard to work out, without the benefit of hindsight, is how much she wanted to go in the first place.

  It had been playing on her mind that they’d be fish out of water, but now, when she knows they’re not going, she finds herself dwelling on what they might have missed. The picture she summons up is like something from a glossy romantic comedy of the sort she loved when she was thirteen or fourteen. Handsome men in evening dress, women in ballgowns: all very pure and sweet and wholesome.

  Then she recalls her dad’s warnings about the country. Practically a fascist state, he said, ruled over by a president who had murdered his way to power and now clung to office through a combination of bribery and vicious persecution of his opponents.

  ‘It’s too late to cancel,’ she’d responded, ‘unless you’re saying it could be dangerous?’

  Dad hadn’t backtracked, exactly, but he did try to reassure her. ‘From what I’ve read there’s no real trouble on the islands. Precious little meaningful opposition anywhere, now the international community have given him legitimacy. It’s all, “Take a bow, Mr President! Of course your elections were fair and free. Of course we’ll ignore the reports of intimidation and torture. Now give us your lovely oil, your copper, your zinc!”’

  Her dad was like that when he went into one: angry and sarcastic and so passionate that no one else got a word in edgeways. Sam often appeared to be torn between taking him on or running away, but Jody and her mum knew it was best just to tune him out. These days it took less and less to get him ranting about injustice in the world, not least because of what he called ‘the curse of the internet’. You no longer had the excuse of not knowing about massacres, poverty, exploitation in some far-flung corner of the world.

  ‘Because nowhere’s far flung anymore,’ he’d say. ‘It’s all up close, right here. So the people who do nothing have to face the ugly truth. It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that they don’t care.’

  Jody would disagree. She’s perfectly aware that she and Sam count among those who do nothing, but it’s not because they’re indifferent. They simply have too many other priorities: children to raise, an income to earn. They’re too busy trying to survive.

  Beside her, Sam is beginning to stir, a modest little ranter-in-training compared to her dad. Jody can’t help going back over the other moment that upset her – when Sam denied that there was something bothering him. She knew straight away that he was lying, but couldn’t bring herself to confront him.

  Many times she’s rehearsed the scene when he reveals his secret. She’s tried to picture how she will agree to forgive him, strictly for the sake of the kids. But the pain, the pain she’ll be feeling…

  Is forgiveness possible, when someone has torn your heart out?

  Soon, she tells herself. I’ll do it soon.

  It’s a while before Sam lets on that he’s awake. First he wants to reflect on last night. He knows he was wrong not to talk it through with her, but in his eyes the most important thing is that he showed generosity towards people who basically think he’s a piece of shit.

  He and Jody had made love before going to sleep, but even that hadn’t helped much: it felt more like two people having sex on their own. So when he finally opens his eyes and turns in her direction, the first thing he does is apologise again.

  ‘I was an idiot. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She gazes deep into his eyes and seems to be on the verge of a question, but there’s a rattle from the alcove and the curtain swishes aside, Dylan up and eager to start another day.

  Wednesday, Sam thinks as he reaches for his shorts and a t-shirt. No, Thursday. What should have been the posh reception is now another long and lazy day of freedom. And it begins, on a spur-of-the-moment decision, with a swim.

  The pools are out of bounds this early, so they go to the beach instead. A nod in greeting to the bored security guard, and then a staggering discovery: there isn’t a single other holidaymaker in sight. The sea is flat, without the slightest ripple. On the surface there are streaks and patches in different shades of blue, some deep like the Chelsea colours, others a sort of milky blue, like Man City’s. The sand is cool beneath his feet, and it’s a lovely sensation to scrunch it with his toes. A single bird twitters away, as if welcoming them to paradise.

  And that’s it. No traffic noise, no voices, no dogs barking. And that sugary hot taste to the air: incredible.

  Plunging into the water, gasping even though it’s not really cold, Sam twists and kicks on to his back, surveys the rows of deserted sun loungers and says, ‘It’s like we’re billionaires or something.’

  ‘What?’ Jody is swimming alongside him, creati
ng almost no wash at all.

  ‘The whole place to ourselves. Hey!’ Sam calls out to the kids. ‘We’ve got our own private island, you all right with that?’

  Grace and Dylan laugh with joy, but when he turns to check on Jody’s reaction, she is head down in the water, swimming like she’s trying to get away from him, and he doesn’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer to realise he isn’t yet in the clear.

  14

  Grace is enthusiastic about the kids’ club, but Dylan reacts with determined resistance. He wants to go swimming with his dad, and Jody can tell that Sam has little appetite for a battle.

  Once they’ve got Dylan into the main building, Jody suggests it’ll be better if she takes them on her own. Sam looks grateful, and jabs his thumb towards a room that has books, games and computers available for the guests. ‘Gonna look something up. I’ll meet you at the pool.’

  Jody nods, but shuts her eyes for a second at the clumsiness of the man. They’ve just been assuring Dylan that no one was going to the pool until later.

  And why, exactly, does Sam need to go online?

  The kids’ club meets in a small function room with several tables set out for painting and other craft-based activities. Jody lingers for a while, edging away from the table where a young Scottish woman is encouraging Dylan to draw her a picture. There are two other staff, a Dutch girl and an Italian man, all of them exuding a carefree manner that can’t help but make Jody wonder what might have been if her life had taken a different turn – college, travelling, a few make-do-and-party jobs before succumbing to a responsible adult existence.

  Finally she escapes. There’s no sign of Sam in the computer room. Two of the three PCs are in use, which is probably a good thing – otherwise she might have been tempted to search the internet history to find out what he was up to.

  You’re assuming he won’t simply tell you.

  On the way out through reception, she happens to glance at the lounge area and spots the Baxters. Kay half rises from her seat, beckoning Jody over. Kay’s wearing a floral dress and a pashmina shawl, while Trevor is in razor-sharp slacks, a check shirt and a tie. Are they dressed for the reception already?

  ‘We wanted to thank you, personally,’ Kay says. ‘Such a kind gesture.’

  She turns to Trevor, her expression as stern as any parent training their child in good manners.

  ‘Uh, yes. Very kind.’ He gets up, hands fidgeting. ‘Would you excuse me? I just have to...’

  Run away from me, Jody thinks. Sure enough, Kay is shaking her head in exasperation.

  ‘Believe me, I do my best to smooth off his rough edges. Thirty years and counting.’

  ‘A lifetime’s work,’ Jody says with a smile. This is the first time she’s felt any sort of kinship with the woman, and it makes Jody feel like a proper adult, rather than a child pretending.

  ‘Sometimes I think–’ Kay stops abruptly, eyes glistening.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes – no, it’s just–’ She swallows, tries again. ‘We almost split up, two years ago. Well, no, actually I nearly left him.’

  Jody nods, cautiously. She has an intuition that Kay isn’t accustomed to confiding in people.

  Barely whispering, and with frequent nervous glances in the direction Trevor has taken, Kay says, ‘I had an affair. A serious one, not a fling. I was ready to make a new life with him. Peter.’

  Her voice wobbles on the name. Jody feels her stomach churning; it’s as if she has been presented with a possible future version of herself.

  ‘I suppose we both thought Trevor would be the one more likely to stray. He’s always had a wandering eye.’

  When Kay pauses, as if inviting a comment, Jody struggles to maintain a neutral expression.

  ‘Anyway, Trevor found out about it – about Peter – before I was ready to tell him. And he...’ Kay shrugs, flopping a hand into her lap. ‘It was like I’d pulled a plug on him. He begged me to stay, said he was nothing without me.’ She gives a start. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’

  ‘Because after this holiday we’ll never see each other again?’

  ‘Perhaps that’s it. And I suppose I wanted you to know that Trevor isn’t... well, he’s more vulnerable than you might think.’

  Jody manages an awkward smile. ‘I hope you both have a wonderful time at the Conchis.’

  ‘Thank you. I know you were more eager to go than your husband.’

  As Jody turns away, she realises she can’t leave it there. She turns back to see Kay dabbing at her eyes with a tiny lace handkerchief.

  ‘Do you regret it, not going off with Peter?’

  Kay stops what she’s doing and stares at Jody. ‘Every single day.’

  Sam has collected the towels and he’s getting settled on a lounger when Jody joins him. The first thing she does is lean over and kiss him on the lips.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Nothing, really.’ She lies down and stretches out, luxuriously, like a cat. ‘Just... I think you did the right thing last night.’

  ‘Okay.’ He’s curious to know what has caused this change of attitude, but decides not to push his luck. When she asks what he was online for, it’s easy enough to fob her off with rumours of a big signing for the Albion.

  In fact, his plan was to arrange a little treat – a way of apologising for causing her to miss out on the reception at the Conchis. He was looking up boat trips, hoping to find something with dolphins guaranteed, after Trevor’s snarky comment. He found several local charter companies but their prices were ridiculous, and what you got for the money was no better than the trip they’d already booked.

  He came away undecided, but also distracted by what else he found. The search brought up news stories about various accidents around the island. One was a fire on board a boat full of environmental protestors, dating back to when the airport was built. The protestors argued that the airport wasn’t needed, as the island was only twenty minutes by ferry from the mainland, and the construction threatened the habitat of all sorts of protected wildlife. When the fire broke out, most of those on board managed to escape, but two people died. After that the protests faded away and the airport went ahead.

  Then there was the tragedy that Gabby had mentioned: a case of reckless high spirits on the part of three young Danish men, whose yacht had slammed into a fishing boat. It was hard to tell from the rough internet translation, but the fisherman didn’t seem to be hurt, and for some reason the bodies of the tourists weren’t recovered from the water until a week after the collision.

  From that article Sam spotted a link in the sidebar to another incident. Three years ago a young German couple went missing after hiring a boat to go scuba diving. The boat was eventually found, drifting far off course from the approved safe areas for diving. The likeliest explanation, according to the news report, was that the couple had been eaten by sharks.

  Now, with a shudder, he says, ‘The kids’ club don’t take them swimming, do they?’

  ‘I don’t think so. There’s painting, trampolining, archery… probably no time for swimming.’

  ‘Good. And Dylan went off okay?’

  ‘He was fine.’ There’s a pause, in which he almost tells her about the internet search, but then Jody lets out a sigh and says, ‘Perhaps it’s Grace we should be worried about.’

  ‘Grace? Why?’ Sam thinks of his daughter as far more level-headed than Dylan, quietly in control of her life – and nothing like he was at that age, thank God.

  ‘Because it’s Dylan who gets about eighty percent of our attention. Who knows what effect that’s going to have on Grace, always feeling her brother’s the top priority?’

  ‘But she understands. I mean, she was as scared as we were when–’ He stops short of saying, When we thought we might lose him.

  ‘Yeah, but he’s fine now. So it’s probably time we got that into our heads and stopped… mollycoddling him, or whatever it is we do.’r />
  ‘“Mollycoddling”?’

  ‘Yeah. It means treating him like a baby. Wrapping him up in cotton wool.’

  For some reason it’s given Sam the giggles. ‘Mollycoddling. Who comes up with these words? It sounds like you could swap it round and no one would notice. Collymoddling! Isn’t that just as good?’

  15

  Somehow he’s found a way to make her laugh, even when Jody is smarting over the secrets he’s keeping. Why else would he sneak away to use the internet and then give her some nonsense about football?

  Okay, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense that he mentioned the computer room in the first place. He could have gone off for a drink and she’d have been none the wiser.

  ‘Do you want anything?’ he asks, as if he’s picked up on the change in her mood.

  ‘No thanks.’ Jody turns to stare at the underside of the umbrella, the sun beating down on it with an intensity she can feel through the fabric.

  Sam is lying in the same position. After a minute he performs an elaborate yawn. ‘Wondering if we should go back to the room…’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Sure?’

  He sounds disappointed. She can’t blame him. That’s the whole point of kids’ club, isn’t it? Mummy-and-Daddy-shag-time.

  ‘It’s not that long till they finish. And it’s nice to lie here and relax.’

  From Sam, there’s a short, defeated sigh. ‘Fair enough.’

  Sam can’t work out if she’s still annoyed with him – and if she is, he’s not sure why. He tries to forget it, and takes her advice. Even with his eyes closed he can see a kind of burning orange glare on the inside of his eyelids. He stares at the little flecks, like crawling insects, that drift across his vision. It lulls him so much that he nearly dozes.

  By the time Jody stirs, and suggests a swim, the pool is almost deserted. Probably because the restaurant’s about to open. After breakfast Sam couldn’t imagine wanting to eat anything more for the rest of the day, but now the thought of a few chips is quite appealing; and maybe a bread roll with ham or cheese. Or ham and cheese.