How to Find Your (First) Husband

by Rosie Blake

  Duncan appeared first and was about to speak. I spat my snorkel out and raised my finger to my mouth, pointing quickly to where the turtle was slowly moving away. Duncan put his head in the water and then Liz and Andrew were there, all of us paddling at the same pace of the turtle, moving above him like we didn’t have anywhere else to be in the world. And we didn’t.

  Sitting back on the boat an hour later, I couldn’t keep the grin from my face.

  ‘He was beautiful, don’t you think?’

  Andrew was still cleaning his mask and didn’t react. Liz was watching him do it.

  Duncan looked at me. ‘He?’

  I frowned. ‘He seemed like a he, was he not a “he”?’ I asked, turning as I did so towards Andrew, who was removing something from deep in his ear.

  ‘Water in it,’ he explained, slapping at his head.

  ‘Look, Isobel, she was a she, she had curves,’ Duncan said, moving both hands in the air.

  I cringed. ‘Nooo – don’t be pervy about turtles.’

  ‘Woman, I can be pervy about anything,’ he promised.

  ‘I believe she was a female, too, actually,’ Andrew said seriously, leaning forward, both palms up, clearly keen to explain things. I put on my most-interested face and rested my chin in my hand as he began.

  ‘I couldn’t see the cloaca, the hole on its tail, but certainly the tail seemed narrower than most. In a male I would have expected it to be thicker and longer.’

  ‘Thicker and longer, eh?’ I felt heat creep up through my neck. You naughty man.

  He didn’t return the smile. ‘Also, the fore claws were not very long, again indicating we were dealing with a female turtle.’

  ‘But he was really big,’ I argued through my eyelashes, loving this serious side to Andrew. Teacher Andrew.

  ‘Well, actually, female turtles are bigger than their male counterparts. It’s a common mistake,’ he chuckled to himself.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said, smiling, and adding a quick chuckle too. We were SO BONDING.

  ‘It is hard to tell really as an amateur, so you are forgiven for mistaking its sex.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, narrowing my eyes to do my most intelligent face.

  I noticed Liz sitting next door to me, her head tilted as she earnestly nodded at him, too.

  I prayed for a sudden freak gust of wind, a cry, a lame ‘Man Overboard’ shout from me. Moo ha ha.

  ‘…ISOBEL…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seawater blocking your ears, too?’ Duncan asked. ‘I asked if you wanted to learn how to drive this thing,’ he called from next to the engine.

  ‘Oh, oh sure,’ I said, shifting along my seat and sitting with Duncan. Yeah, driving would make me look cool. I looked back over my shoulder at Andrew, who was staring at my arse. Yay!

  Duncan helped me start the engine, which mostly involved me pulling on a cord and him leaning over me, his chest on my back, arms looped around me as he showed me how to steer. I was relieved when we had moored up, thrown the anchor down and swum into shore.

  As we stepped onto the beach, I heard Andrew’s voice, a hand raised to his face. ‘I think I’ve got a fly in my eye,’ he said, blinking and looking round. Liz was still swimming in; she was like the slowest swimmer in the world, had a lazy left arm that made her swim the breaststroke funny. Ha, ha, weird breaststrokey Liz, I could call her. I ran to his aid.

  ‘Here, let me,’ I offered, leaning over to help him, my face inches from his, one hand on his cheek as I searched his eye.

  He was looking upwards, rolling his eye back and forward. It was actually making me feel a little queasy and I forgot to enjoy the smooth sensation of his face in my hand, our tantalising closeness.

  ‘Er, nothing there,’ I announced, not really sure. ‘Must have flown out again.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, still blinking.

  ‘Sunbathing time,’ Duncan announced with a loud hand clap just behind us. We snapped apart.

  Liz had finally arrived, panting lightly. ‘I was planning on wandering up to the crest over there to take a photograph,’ she said, one hand moving to rest lightly on Andrew’s forearm. ‘Want to come?’

  Andrew was still blinking and looking up at intervals. ‘Okay.’

  Should I offer to go, too? Would that just make me seem desperate?

  They started moving away. Liz had a smudge of eyeliner on her cheek and I went to tell her, but her hand was still on his arm so I didn’t. Weird breastrokey, smudgey Liz, I thought, as they wandered off together.

  ‘You and me, hottie,’ chuckled Duncan as I rolled out my towel next to him.

  ‘Indeed,’ I mumbled distractedly. Up ahead, Andrew and Liz were strolling side by side, her hand hanging loosely in the gap between them both, itching perhaps for his to cross the distance and hold hers. Her hair seemed to glow in the sunlight. His broad shoulders and height made her seem fragile in comparison. I should have gone with them.

  Duncan was smoothing down his towel.

  ‘What is that?’ I asked, pointing to a pocket of fabric dangling from the side of it.

  ‘It’s a towel which has pockets for things.’

  ‘Like sun cream?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes sun cream,’ Duncan smiled as he surreptitiously pushed a runaway condom back into it.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘You really shouldn’t keep those near direct sunlight,’ I said before thinking.

  ‘Those?’ He smirked at me, playing it dumb.

  ‘You know, the…thingies,’ I said, pointing to the pocket and feeling like a twelve-year-old. ‘The…’ Say condom, Iz, for heaven’s sake, you are a grown woman! You have a degree! You can drive. ‘… The rubber.’ RUBBER? Who are you, Iz, your dad?

  ‘Rubber,’ Duncan sniggered predictably.

  ‘Condom,’ I whispered. ‘They don’t work after they’ve been in the sun or something. I read about it in…’ On a blog when I was Googling one of Mel’s new sex moves? ‘The newspaper,’ I coughed importantly.

  ‘Well thank you for the warning,’ Duncan said seriously, tipping about twelve condoms out of the pocket and into his hand.

  I looked away. ‘Gosh, I might get sunburned,’ I said, feeling my cheeks flame.

  Duncan patted his walnut-brown oil-covered chest. ‘No chance of that.’

  He lay back down and I had to admit that he looked good, his rippled torso turning an even deeper brown. I hugged my knees to my chest and looked away from him.

  Up ahead, Liz and Andrew were out of sight, probably wrapped up against the bark of a nearby tree, or carving their initials into it.

  Relief washed over me when they returned a few moments later and we ate crisps and baguettes stuffed with ham and read books in a line, apart from Duncan who was asleep using Fifty Shades as a shade. Scooting next to Andrew, I pointed to what he was reading, a thick book, a muscled man with a sword on the front.

  ‘Good?’ I asked.

  He swivelled one eye to me. ‘Yes.’ His mouth was in a thin line, not following the sentence up with anything more. I assumed Liz was smirking at me from her towel.

  ‘Great,’ I said, realising that I didn’t know what else to say. We hadn’t really explored a wide range of topics as yet, were more comfortable going over memories from when we were young.

  ‘I like books,’ I said, cringing as the line spilled out before I could stop it.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Yes. Always have.’

  Andrew looked at me and nodded once.

  ‘Books.’ I repeated and added a chuckle at the end, as if suddenly remembering a funny book. I felt sticky and hot. ‘I’m going to snorkel again.’ I pointed at the sea as if he was unclear as to where I would be.

  ‘Good idea,’ he said, returning to the page.

  That hadn’t gone as well as I might have liked.


  Scooping up my mask, I headed over to the shoreline. Paddling out, I wondered what else I could do to try to accelerate our relationship. I had found him, after all, so it must have been fate and, although perhaps we didn’t seem to have completely fallen back into our familiar ways, the fact that I was here meant something. I just needed to try harder.

  As I ducked my head beneath the water, all thoughts drained away once more and I became completely absorbed in my underwater world. Emerging from the water, legs aching, skin wrinkling, I realised I had been in there a while. The towels were lying empty and crumpled, the boys playing Frisbee down the other end of the strip of beach. Liz was watching them, looking all wistful and fragile in her bikini as she sat on a thick, low branch of a tree looking out over the ocean. Her skin was pale and seemed to glow in the late afternoon light. She had somehow found a lace fan from somewhere and was quietly fluttering it in front of her face like she was now starring in a Jane Austen drama. I removed a piece of seaweed out of my hair, my face patchy and red from where the snorkel mask had pressed into my skin, and went to join the others.

  ‘Hey, Iz,’ Andrew said, the Frisbee whistling across the gap between us. I stepped and caught it in my hands. ‘We used to do this on the beach at Southsea.’

  Grinning, I returned it, gently sloping down to land neatly in his hands. ‘I remember.’

  Yay! This wasn’t so hard after all.

  Dear diary,

  I haven’t spoken to Andrew for days and I miss him. Today in Maths he pushed a note over to my desk, but I screwed it up and didn’t even read it. Then I threw it in the bin at the end of the lesson, but it was annoying as later that day I wanted to get it again and read what it said. The cleaners had emptied it though so all that was there was an empty plastic bag and I would never read what it had said.

  I x

  Chapter 26

  Collapsing next to the fire, I sank my toes into the sand. It was still warm from the day and tickled the skin between them. Andrew was prodding at the twigs and logs in the fire, making it glow orange, the odd spark making a bid for freedom as it crackled away in front of us, throwing long shadows beyond. The air smelled smoky and intense and the whole scene brought back memories of my childhood toasting marshmallows on sticks on Halloween, watching the marshmallows become gooey and runny and then tipping back my head to guide them in.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ he asked, his voice low, his eyes on me.

  I blushed and told him.

  He nodded. ‘We did the same. Do you remember the school used to run a fireworks night every year? We ate three toffee apples and you helped me make a guy for the fire. I remember watching him bob over our heads before being thrown on the flames and I started to cry. I was so embarrassed and you just held my hand.’

  ‘Traumatised, much?’ I laughed, putting an arm around him before I could stop to think about it. That memory struck me then, too – so many moments in our childhood when we had been close like that.

  Andrew didn’t flinch, but instead gave me a big smile, his teeth sparkling in the half-light of the fire. ‘Isn’t this perfect?’

  I nodded wordlessly. Perfect. He was so right. I couldn’t believe my luck. I had started out on the other side of the world – a stranger, a girl on a crazy mission to meet this man before me. On a whim and an old memory. I was so glad I had taken the leap. LA, my rubbish jobs, Randy, Stewie, they all seemed a million miles away as I breathed in the woody scent of the fire, listened to the low hum of hundreds of insects, stared up at the sky spattered with stars, felt the warm breeze on my bare arms.

  ‘Perfect,’ I whispered.

  It must have been hours later, and eight bottles of beer, that I felt a woozy pull on my arms, a quick walk across the sand, an arm guiding me carefully back, my head resting on a pillow. Someone saying goodnight, fingers brushing mine, and then sleep.

  You FOUND him – how completely wonderful,

  darling. What is he like? Did he remember you? You must pass on hellos to his mother. Is she well? And what are you doing out there? Have you seen lots of marvellous things? I am so glad you are travelling and seeing the world. You MUST keep writing to us. Your father is sending love, well he would if he were here but he is actually out with Bob doing something to do with sheep’s wool. All very strange but I think best not to ask too many questions. Let them retain their air of mystery.

  Tell me everything, everything, and many kisses,

  Mum x x x x x x x x x

  Chapter 27

  I think it’s going really well. I woke up next to him again this morning, this time on the camping mat on the floor. I held my breath as I looked at him lying there, inches away, not daring to disturb the moment. Feeling a little woozy with the sun and the beer from the day before, I lay back. Someone had put one of the cushions under my head as a makeshift pillow. I was still wearing all my clothes, my shorts twisted, my knickers needing to be adjusted. The floor felt horribly hard underneath me but I wasn’t ready yet to start the day. My stomach growled at me and I rested one hand on it. That was when he woke up and turned sideways to take me in. His eyes widened a fraction. This close I could see the flecks in his irises, his pupils dilated.

  ‘Oh.’ He sat up.

  ‘Morning.’ I grinned, then worried I looked a crazy mess; he seemed more alarmed than I’d expected. ‘I was just get­ting up,’ I said, grabbing the bed next door and getting to my feet.

  Moving across the room and out, I leaned on the balcony, breathing in slowly, never bored of the view. The small fire on the beach had long since burned out, a sad wisp of smoke snaking upwards towards another gorgeous blue sky. It was early, and the whole forest seemed to be steaming behind us, a low mist covering the top trees so it seemed like the whole island was tinged with magic.

  The village was slowly waking: a distant cough, a rumble of bicycle tyres, someone sweeping a wooden floor, back and forth, rhythmic. The air smelled of oranges and I grinned at the thought of another day ahead in this paradise. I was going to make it a day to remember. I turned back to the hut, smiling to myself as I planned what I would do. We would spend hours together, reminiscing, experiencing the island, squinting at each other through the sun, splashing in the waves and then I would come back here, offer to cook him dinner, see where the night would take us…

  Eating banana pancakes for breakfast under the awning of a nearby cafe half an hour later, anything seemed possible. Andrew looked refreshed and gorgeous. His hair was still wet from the shower and he was dressed in a cream T-shirt and navy shorts. We’d been swapping gossip about pupils we’d both known twenty years ago for a while now. Andrew had not been aware that ‘Big, Fat Josie’ had totally lost the weight and had been on Take Me Out last year. Nor was he aware that ‘Pirate Jimmy’ had lost the patch and had had corrective surgery in his teens and now worked as a buyer for Topman. We laughed over old teachers yes, that had been our Mrs Thompson in the Daily Mail holding her world record-breaking rabbit. With his feet up on the seat next door to me, I had to resist the urge to reach over and fondle his toes. They were all tanned and sandy and they wiggled when he laughed. I was mesmerised by them. The short blond curls that led up his calf. My hand wavered.

  Andrew had scraped all the bananas to one side and called the waiter over to remind him that he hated them too ripe. I tried to smile at the waiter, but he had already moved away.

  ‘Well I’m sure he’ll remember next time,’ I said, trying to make light of it.

  ‘How hard is it?’ Andrew said, rolling his eyes.

  I swallowed back a reply, feeling a momentary pang of relief when Duncan joined us, bleary-eyed and in need of a shave. He was drinking something bright green that he promised us was a ‘miracle cure’.

  We spent the day out on the boat again, dipping in and out of hidden coves, exploring more reefs, swimming through shoals of fish and sunbathing on patches of sand, relishing
the warmth of the day as we lay prostrate on the sand, letting the water wash over our feet. I insisted on making dinner. The boys had been great at letting me crash at theirs and adding extra to their meals, so this was my chance to pay them back. Liz was coming over, too, but even this news hadn’t dampened my mood. I bought coconut cream, chillis, rice, and chicken and was going to make a Thai curry. A lovely dinner, candlelight softening my features, a small nod of thanks as the compliments descended, maybe a toast to the chef, the certainty that I had fully ingratiated myself into the group, Andrew’s eyes on me as I spooned him a second helping…

  Humming to myself, I collected up the pots and pans I could find. The boys had gone out to fetch beers from a shop on the other side of the beach and had no doubt got waylaid if they’d opened any. I stared at the contraption in front of me, a makeshift gas hob that Andrew had shown me how to use. Leaning over me he had wielded an extra-long match and held my arm as he instructed me how to turn it on. It hadn’t looked too complicated, but all I had really taken in was the fact that he smelled of lemon and the sea. I had closed my eyes; the image of the cottage in England wafting into view as I pictured us there, by our Aga, in the future.

  Fiddling with the dial, I started to get the ingredients together, chopping up chicken to fry and thinly slicing the chilli pieces – removing the seeds with the point of the knife. Stepping out onto the balcony for a moment, I smiled to myself. The evening was mild and the sky was a haze of blues and purples. The odd boat interrupted the calm in the distance as the sun sank lower in the sky. This was my favourite time of day I thought, breathing in the evening air which smelled of jasmine with a hint of something else…onions? I frowned a fraction, sniffing exaggeratedly. Shrugging, I moved back inside.