The Honeymoon

by Tina Seskis

  ‘Oh, that’s great,’ said Jamie. ‘Congratulations! I think that calls for a celebration.’ He shot off and soon came back with champagne and four flutes, and as he opened the bottle, he said, ‘Here’s to little Ella.’ He proceeded to pour, as expertly as a sommelier.

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Dan, who’d silently appeared at Jemma’s side. Jamie nodded and continued his charm assault on Carol. The older woman’s twin-setted shoulders were fully upright now, and her cheeks were turning increasingly pink as Jamie kept topping up her glass. The champagne helped relax Jemma too, and soon she and Carol were giggling at Jamie’s bath-time stories, with Carol almost crying with laughter at something to do with a Desperate Dan soap-on-a-rope.

  ‘Desperate Dan,’ snorted Carol. ‘Just like your boyfriend, Jemma!’ She thrust her champagne flute towards Dan, who didn’t seem to find it as funny as Jemma did.

  ‘Ha, that’s what we used to call you, wasn’t it, Dan?’ said Jamie, holding court.

  ‘Humph,’ said Dan, walking off.

  Carol peered over her glasses. ‘What’sh hizh problem?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, he’s always been like that,’ said Jamie. ‘Throws his toys out the pram when things don’t go his way.’ He winked at Carol and Jemma.

  Jemma giggled and took another large sip of her drink. Who’d have thought Carol would be so much fun? She, Jemma, should really stop judging people on first appearances – look at how wrong she’d been about Dan. She smiled fondly, and then looked around. Where was Dan? She shrugged compliantly as Jamie topped up her glass, yet again, and then she smiled at him, and he smiled back – and she felt a fizzing inside that had nothing to do with the champagne. He was younger than Dan, and richer, and funnier … God, she needed to sober up. Jemma wrenched her gaze away from her boyfriend’s brother, picked up a sausage roll from the buffet and stuffed it into her mouth, just as Veronica swanned past and asked her how she was enjoying the party.

  23

  Now

  It’s still Day Four, or at least I think it is. I fear that I will always count the days from now on. There was everything that came before – and now this. I finish eating the meal Chati brought me, and then I throw it all up. Time unravels. Seconds and hours become interchangeable. That’s it. I refuse to wait any longer. I’m done.

  Darkness is already half-smothering the island by the time I realize that I just have to stretch my legs, do something, before I go mad with inactivity and fear. I decide to go for a run, as it’s the least outwardly enjoyable thing I can think of, the one least likely to raise merry-widow suspicion. Surely people will understand that I can’t sit around this place and wait forever? Moreover though, a run gives me an excuse to go down to the dive centre, try to catch Pascal before it shuts. I haven’t spoken to him since we went out in the dhoni on the first day my husband was missing, and he was uncharacteristically abrupt with me then. I still feel there’s something about the resort’s marine biologist, and it’s not just his dark French good looks, his provocative charm, his come-to-bed eyes. Chrissy (who I can’t help but think seems way more interested in him than a newly-wed should be) has told me that the police keep questioning him. Pascal knows something, I’m sure of it. I can’t wait any more for the police to tell me what’s going on. I need to find out for myself.

  I put on one of Jamie’s T-shirts, which is so long you can’t even see the shorts I have on underneath, but of course I didn’t bring any more conservative ones – I didn’t think I would need them. I wear my husband’s favourite cap pulled low over my eyes. I lace up the red Nikes I’d packed in case the mood had taken us to play tennis, and then I step outside, into the jungle. As the door clicks shut I feel so scared I break immediately into a sprint, suddenly worried about what nocturnal wild beasts there might be here on the island. Are there any? I have no idea. You only ever hear of the fish.

  My pace is fast and heart-thumping, and I soon cross the interior through the tree-infested paths. When I arrive at the dive centre I’m breathing heavily, due to a dizzying combination of terror and exertion. The lights are on, and one of the dive guys is just shutting up shop, but he’s a local and his English is not so good. When I breathlessly mention Pascal, he gestures for me to sit down and wait in the briefing area, but I’m not sure whether he means that Pascal is coming back, or not. I sit there for what feels like forever, and just as I’m about to give up, Pascal appears from the direction of the beach. He is half-wearing his wetsuit, and his feet are sandy and his dark, damp hair is curling at his neck. It’s immediately clear he’s not at all happy to see me.

  ‘Pascal,’ I say. I cut to the chase. ‘Do you know what’s happened? Do you know where my husband is?’

  Pascal’s accent has no effect on me now. ‘I have spoken to ze police, Jemma. I cannot tell you anything more.’ I look at him, and he looks at me, and we both suspect the other of something. My eyes shift to the map on the wall behind him, of the atolls that make up the Maldives. Of all the water. Of all the potential hiding places. I shouldn’t have come.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Of course, I understand.’ I turn and I can feel his eyes on the back of my head, and it feels like they are burning through, into my brain. His attitude scares me somehow. Is he responsible for Jamie’s disappearance? Or does he think I am? I turn and flee, and as I run home the trees are like bullies and naysayers, crowding in on me beneath the moon, whispering that it’s my fault, after all – and I stumble and trip, blinded by tears. When I get back there is a tray on the terrace and under the silver dome is a glass of cool watermelon juice, a bowl of fresh fruit salad and a slice of coconut cake. I wipe my eyes, sit down at the table and gratefully devour the lot. And then half an hour later I bring it all up again, my head down the toilet bowl in my oh-so-beautiful bathroom.

  24

  Six years earlier

  Peter and Veronica’s New Year’s Day party was still going strong, thanks to Peter having bought far more alcohol than his wife had realized, or indeed would have sanctioned. Jamie still had Carol and Jemma in fits of giggles, so much so that Carol had fully rallied from her previously maudlin state and was now waxing lyrical about her ex-husband’s sexual deficiencies, and Jemma was laughing, mainly because she’d never met the poor man.

  ‘And anyway,’ Carol was saying now, in a loud conspiratorial whisper, ‘that old trollop can keep the pencil-endowed little goat, and good luck to her.’ She threw back her head and guffawed, and some of her drink slopped down her cardigan and onto the long-suffering carpet.

  ‘Jemma,’ whispered Dan, who had appeared back at her side and was sober. ‘We need to get going soon.’

  ‘Yesh, fine,’ said Jemma. ‘How are you getting home, Carol?’

  ‘Oh, I’m shtaying here,’ said Carol. ‘My shitty little flat can wait until tomorrow.’ She cackled again. ‘I’m going to paint it Rhino’s Breath, though. Jemma’s told me to.’

  ‘Elephant’s,’ said Jemma.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The paint. It’s called Elephant’s Breath.’

  ‘Oh, whatever,’ said Carol. She stuck her knobbly finger into the houmous and sucked it.

  Veronica had just come through from her amazing kitchen and was prowling the living room, looking thunderous, which made Jemma giggle again. She took another glug of champagne.

  ‘Jemma, we need to go,’ said Dan, more firmly this time.

  ‘Oh, really? But we’re having fun – aren’t we, Carol?’

  ‘It’s late,’ said Dan.

  What was his problem, Jemma thought. And then she dimly realized that it was probably because she’d got completely smashed, and he was driving.

  ‘OK,’ she said. She smiled sweetly at him. ‘I jusht need to go to the bathroom.’

  Carol had the same idea and beat her to the guest cloakroom, loudly proclaiming inferior bladder control, and so Jemma staggered downstairs. As she washed her hands her head was spinning, and she felt happy, and free, and it was a new year, and she loved Dan, an
d they were going to have a good year, and she was sure Carol would turn her life around – she might look like Mrs Merton but, once she got going, she had the wit of her too. Jemma grinned at herself in the mirror as she dried her hands, and gave a little wave, but her reflection looked hazy, too far away. She unlocked the door and came out of the bathroom, where she stumbled, and almost fell into Jamie’s arms. As he caught her, she felt his breath in her hair. He steadied her and let her go. And now they were staring into each other’s eyes, their faces moving together as if in slow motion. And then Dan was there, at the top of the stairs in the upside-down house, watching them.

  25

  Now

  It is news. We are news. Someone must have leaked it. The Mail Online has it as top billing, which is possibly the most appalling development of all. I flip my iPad case shut and nearly throw it across the bungalow.

  I try to keep calm, think straight. My breath feels like it’s coming out of my fingertips and I waggle them, push my wrists against the sides of my head, drum my skull. I circle the room, staring at the floor, feeling more caged than ever. I have to will myself not to scream. Memories broil inside of me.

  The story’s all quite matter-of-fact for now – groom goes missing on luxury honeymoon – but if Jamie’s not found soon, what on earth are they going to drag up? OK, let’s get the worst of it over with. Girl gets off with boyfriend’s brother while drunk on champagne and laughter. Family rift ensues. Brother One never ever forgives her. Years later Girl marries Brother Two, who then vanishes on their honeymoon. Brother One turns up on said honeymoon, to look for Brother Two.

  Oh, fucking, fucking hell. It seems that the disappearance and possible demise of my new husband is set to become a gruesome piece of tabloid entertainment to brighten up people’s rain-soaked Januaries, and with a backstory like that, it’s an editor’s gift. Surely it’s only a matter of time.

  I flee to the bathroom, and at first I imagine that the bats swooping overhead are drones, with cameras, and then I tell myself not to be mad, but still, I wish now the room had a roof. I keep on my dress, just in case, and sink into the plunge pool, and the cool of the water helps soothe me. But then the oppressiveness grows, and grows, as I realize I can’t escape the resort, nor the new headlines that will inevitably come, the slurs on my character, deserved or not. Soft waves start thumping in my ears, jungle calls and febrile sounds are trilling through my nervous system. I start to spin and dive my way around the tiny pool like a slippery captured dolphin. The urge to scream is almost irresistible. I need to get off this island.

  At last I am calm and I loll on my back, numb and silent, depleted. My eyes are closed but I can feel the surface of the water grow smooth, like skin. I make vague, apathetic attempts to rearrange all the strands of the events that have led to this moment, try listlessly to get my head straight. What was it with me and Jamie? And where on earth does Dan fit in? How has this all gone so horribly wrong?

  I backtrack slowly through the past seven-and-a-half years, looking for clues as to how we all got to here. I’m still unsure why Jamie took such a shine to me, and I’ve never dared ask him. I’ve never wanted to know. Perhaps it really was as simple as him wanting something his brother already had, as if they were toddlers still and I were merely a shiny, tantalizing toy. Veronica’s perverse approach to motherhood certainly hadn’t helped the sibling rivalry, but whatever the cause, it seems that Jamie had wanted me enough to intentionally steal me off his own brother. So was I just a pawn in their childish little game? At the time I’d believed that the betrayal was all my doing. How hadn’t I realized we were all culpable?

  And yet, no matter how it’s happened, here I am, all these years later, alone in a pool on a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and my head is splintering and my skin is crinkling and I am married to Jamie and I don’t know where he is, or what has happened, or whose fault it is, and maybe it’s mine – and all I want is for him to walk up the beach towards me, and be safe. I long for him to be safe. I would take any punishment that was coming to me, if only he could be safe.

  26

  Six years earlier

  ‘Well, this is nice,’ said Sasha.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jemma.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll forgive you for the comedy value.’

  ‘It’s not funny, Sasha.’

  ‘Yeah, but if you can’t laugh, what else can you do? I can just imagine his mother’s face.’

  Jemma blushed and hunched into her jacket. It was the second week of January, and they’d been to the cinema to watch a mediocre film that Sasha had slept through, and now they were on the South Bank, in a restaurant made out of a bank of converted shipping containers, eating Mexican tapas. Sasha had insisted on ordering Mojitos, but they seemed to be mainly filled with ice, so even three of them hadn’t made any inroads into Jemma’s heartache.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jem. Dan adores you. You only had a drunken snog, albeit with his brother, but it’s not that bad. He’ll come round.’

  ‘He won’t. He won’t even take my calls.’

  ‘Well, go and see him then.’

  ‘I did. He refused to open the door.’ Jemma sniffed, and then wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘Sasha, what can I do?’

  ‘Oh, Jemma,’ Sasha said, reaching over and putting her hand briefly on Jemma’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t realize you were even that serious about Dan.’

  ‘Well, I was. And now it’s too late.’ Jemma picked up her napkin and blew her nose noisily. As she stared out at the blackness of the river, she wondered yet again how Dan must be feeling. And then she took a bite out of a blue cheese taco and tried to smile. It wasn’t fair on Sasha to be such an unrelenting misery. She needed to get a grip.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry for droning on,’ Jemma said now. She tried to brighten her tone. ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Busy. Underpaid. My boss is a bitch.’ Sasha batted her eyelashes, and grinned. ‘Apart from that I love it. How’s yours?’

  ‘Well, I had a meltdown this afternoon, so that didn’t help. Dan used to calm me down, but now …’

  ‘Oh God, I wondered how long it would take to steer the conversation back onto the Brothers Armstrong.’ Jemma pulled a face at her. ‘Oh, Jem,’ Sasha continued, ‘why don’t you just go out with Jamie and get it over with?’

  ‘Can you imagine?’ Jemma said. ‘It would almost be worth it, just to see Veronica’s face.’ And then her smile faded again, and she looked towards the door, in case Dan was coming in, which was highly unlikely. She took a futile draw through her ice-crunched straw. ‘D’you think I should ring him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dan, of course! Who d’you think I mean?’

  ‘Well, I never know with you. For all I know, he might have another younger brother you could cop off with next, like in Legends of the Fall.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off, Sasha.’

  ‘Always at your service.’ Sasha smiled, and her eyebrows shot up under her dark heavy fringe as her cheeks dimpled. Her voice softened. ‘It’s OK, Jem. Just give it time. He’ll come round, I’m sure he will. And now I come to think of it, he does look a bit like Brad Pitt.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘You never know. You’ve just got to sit tight.’

  And so Jemma did. But, for a change, despite her behind-the-scenes machinations, Sasha was wrong.

  January and February came and went. March exploded into London with a ton-full of snow, and roads were blocked and buses weren’t running. People rang around to check what their colleagues were doing, and then, once they were sure there was safety in numbers, didn’t even bother trying to make it in to work. Jemma caught a terrible cold and felt like she was dying, and yet still Dan wouldn’t talk to her. She’d run out of ideas about what to do. She’d written, saying that she was sorry. She’d even asked him to move in with her, as a symbol of her commitment, but he ignored her.

  It just wasn’t meant to be, Sasha told her, over and over, if Dan wasn�
�t prepared to forgive her. ‘He wasn’t the one for you,’ she’d say, and perhaps, thought Jemma, her friend was right.

  Finally, Jemma gave up. Now, instead of hankering after the past, she flung herself towards the future with the vitality of a moth at a lightbulb, knowing she’d get burnt, not caring if she did. She went to work. She came home. She went to work. She came home. In the evenings, she ran through the wastelands of her ruined dreams with the fervour of a mother about to be reunited with her lost child. She couldn’t share how she felt, so she threw back her head, and shook her pixie hair, and she pounded the streets as if there were a murderer behind her, unable to pace herself. She tried to flee from her feelings until her lungs gave up, but she never escaped, and they followed her like a stream of black smoke, as if her engine were misfiring and she was belching out bad thoughts for everyone to see. She only had herself to blame. Night after night she thudded the pavements, past tall red-brick houses split up into flats, along quiet, drab streets lined with unremarkable cars that nestled into each other. Her breath grew ragged as she ran, and ran, and the buzzing of the phone in her ear was persistent and insistent, but it was always Sasha or one of her other friends, checking up on her, never Dan – and so she ignored it.

  By May, Jemma’s mental state hadn’t improved. She caught the flu and took a week off work. She barely washed. She ate out of cans. Kay tried to call, as did her father, but Jemma texted them and told them she was fine. She took to sleeping with a picture of Dan on the pillow next to her. Even she was worried about herself. Her boyfriend’s refusal to take her back had left Jemma knocked over by grief, as though it had crept up behind her, tapped her on the shoulder, and then punched her in the face.

  More bleak days passed. Jemma forced herself back to work, drew up interiors plans for hotels she would never visit, sat anxiously at her desk through lunch, drifted in and out of meetings, almost as though she weren’t there. She took to obsessing about Dan and how she’d betrayed him. Yet he’d always forgiven her in the past, when she’d gone mad about him sending her flowers, or complained about being forced to have lunch with his parents. He’d loved her. Hadn’t he?