The Honeymoon

by Tina Seskis

  Jamie’s hypotheses continued to crawl through his brain, like maggots. He just couldn’t work it out. If Jemma was having an affair with Dan, why would she have gone to all the trouble of marrying him, Jamie? She had many faults, for sure, but he was pretty certain being a deceitful bitch wasn’t one of them. Yet what had made her so suddenly hostile? Jamie had willed himself not to react tonight, to walk away from dinner with his head held high, but he’d been drunk, and overwrought, and utterly demeaned. He’d even tried calling Camille when he’d got back to the bungalow to ask her what to do. Camille had been so great to him when Jemma had delivered her marriage ultimatum, had even talked him into proposing – not that he dared tell Jemma that, of course, just in case she took it the wrong way. But Camille was married anyway; there was no need for Jemma to be jealous. Or maybe marriage didn’t count for anything in Jemma’s book, if her attitude to being a newly-wed was anything to go by. The whole situation was a joke.

  Jamie didn’t know what to do, who else he could confide in. He felt too humiliated to talk to any of his mates, and there was no way he could let his family know what was going on – his mother hated Jemma enough as it was.

  Slowly, Jamie’s mind turned a corner, to a new realization. Perhaps this was all his fault anyway, for stealing Jemma off Dan in the first place. Maybe it had never been destined to end well. But there had been something about Jemma that had got to Jamie the moment he’d set eyes on her. And true, he’d behaved badly in the beginning, should never have humiliated Dan so publicly by snogging his girlfriend, and at a family party to boot, but he’d tried his best to make amends. He’d begged Dan to forgive Jemma, to take her back, but Dan had refused, like the pig-headed sulker he’d always been. Sometimes Jamie didn’t know what Dan’s fucking problem was.

  Jamie started to shiver. He wondered what he could do to rescue his marriage – or was it really set to be over before it began? He’d been so happy about getting married, despite having dragged his feet for so long beforehand – but it was never because he hadn’t loved her. It had just been that hardly any of his friends were married yet, and he hadn’t seen the point of rocking the boat, and Jemma had stopped mentioning it, anyway – and so he’d thought she was cool with it too. He hadn’t realized how unhappy it had made her. Her ultimatum had shaken him, and he’d been shocked at how much he’d missed her in the week they’d been apart. He’d missed the way things were never predictable with Jemma, how she was never dull like his other girlfriends had been. Maybe crazy was how he liked his women. They’d totally blown it now, though, that was for sure. Nearly drowning each other was not the way to build bridges.

  Jamie put his head on his knees and groaned. He’d tried so hard to make this honeymoon perfect, had brought Jemma to the place of her dreams, to a resort so luxurious it had cost an absolute fortune, even with the discount Pascal had got them. Perhaps he should have told Jemma about that, but she was still so paranoid about Camille he hadn’t wanted to infect their honeymoon with any link to his ex-boss. However, a lie was a lie – maybe Jemma had picked up on it somehow and that was why she’d become so hostile. Or perhaps she’d found out about his new bank account – but he hadn’t dared tell her how much this place was, even at the reduced rate, and so it had been easier to just put some money away each month without her knowing. It would have just spoiled it for her.

  Jamie heard a tremor behind him and turned, but saw nothing. The jungle was black and impenetrable. Only the warm breeze, the sandy ground beneath him, gave a clue to his whereabouts. He’d rarely felt so alone, as if he was at the edge of the world. He tried to decide what to do next. The irony was that, even after his and Jemma’s row at the restaurant, Jamie had been sitting on the terrace, waiting for Jemma to come home, so he could apologize for his part in the argument. But when she’d come lurching up the beach with Chrissy, laughing as though she hadn’t a care in the world, it had infuriated him. And then when she’d seen him and instantly turned on her heel and raced back down towards the water, as though she couldn’t bear to even breathe the same air as him, of course he’d gone after her. And when she’d run straight into the sea, the nutcase, he’d gone in too – but only because she was clearly paralytic, and he’d been worried about her alone in the water.

  Jamie could hardly bear to remember the next bit. How he’d easily caught up with her, even though she was usually a better swimmer than him. Jemma lashing out at him, trying to push him under, telling him over and over that she hated him, that she wished she’d never married him. Fighting her off, holding her down. Her coming up gasping and choking once he’d released her, and then attacking him all over again. He felt sick at the memory.

  Jamie got to his feet. His heart was still hammering, although his breath was finally beginning to regulate. He shook his head, as if to free it of the images circling through his brain, and started walking again, his wet clothes unpleasant against his skin now. He needed to check on her. Hopefully she was safely out of the water by now and had gone to bed. As Jamie kept walking, again he tried to make sense of how he and Jemma had got to this last dismal point in their relationship. He couldn’t work it out. But however it had happened, it seemed that everything, absolutely everything, was fucked up. His marriage. His honeymoon. His life.

  What the hell was he going to do?

  Jamie looked down through the trees to the beach. It was quiet, and dark, and the sea gleamed blackly. A flash of plankton lit up the surface and it was mesmerizing. The air was hot and perfumed. He imagined taking a kayak out into the waves, chasing the glow, seeing where it led him. Escaping from all this, to a little secret island perhaps. Maybe that’s what he should do. It was possible. The water would be calm, and huge, and lapping, and liberating …

  And he was being an idiot.

  Jamie sighed and turned away, and started to follow the path across the island to home. He might have been being a coward before, but he wouldn’t be one now. He needed to go and face the music, sort things out with her. Perhaps he just needed to ask her outright, find out what she was so unhappy about. And if confronting it meant that their marriage was over before it began, at least they’d both know. It was the paralysis, the pretence, on their supposedly perfect honeymoon, that had been driving them both mad. Yet despite everything, he loved her still. And she loved him, he was sure of i—

  The thud landed right in the middle of the back of Jamie’s head, and it was dull, and satisfying, and entirely effective, and Jamie’s redemptive thought process was never quite completed, and after just a few seconds his poor tortured mind was quieted forever, which, considering what happened next, was probably just as well.

  83

  In Gloucestershire, a million miles from the Maldives, it is pouring with rain. It’s Saturday, late-afternoon, and Dan is at home, alone. Lydia has gone to her mother’s, again, and he’s feeling fairly bereft, but he’s been like that for months now. He still feels so guilty about his little brother, who had been a thorn in Dan’s side from the moment he’d sprung out of their mother’s womb. And although it was true that Dan had wanted revenge on Jamie, he hadn’t wanted all this to happen. Dan keeps going over and over the call that he’d made to Jemma, the night before her wedding. He can still remember it word for word. It still makes him feel terrible.

  ‘Hello?’ She’d sounded sleepy, content.

  ‘Hi, Jemma.’

  ‘Hello? Is that Dan? What are you calling me for?’

  ‘Jemma, I just wanted you to know something … I still love you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I still love you, Jemma.’

  ‘Dan … What the fuck? What the fuck?’ He remembers the bewilderment in her voice, swiftly rising to rage. ‘What the hell are you calling me for? I’m getting married tomorrow. You’re insane.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I wanted you to know how I feel.’

  ‘No, Dan. I can only assume that you must be drunk or something, because this is really not on. I will pretend this conversation neve
r happened. Go away. Leave me alone.’ And with that, she’d slammed down the phone.

  Dan had felt satisfied. He’d known the damage was done, and he’d revelled in it. He couldn’t let them have a completely perfect day, could he? The pair of them had deserved it. But then when Jemma had rung him distraught the day after the wedding, saying that she’d made a mistake marrying Jamie, Dan had been rattled, and he’d realized that maybe he’d gone too far. In the end, he’d just begged her to go on her honeymoon, as he certainly hadn’t wanted her back. Not after she’d spent years with his brother.

  And now? Now Dan feels chock-full of regret, as if he is drowning in it. Yes, he may have always resented Jamie. Yes, it was true his love for Jemma had turned to hate – but he had never intended for all this to happen. He still hopes that one day his brother might turn up, come back, especially now someone else has gone missing too. Improbable as it sounds, perhaps both men have absconded somehow. Frankly, nothing would surprise him at this point.

  In the end, it is a call from his poor, broken father that alerts Dan to the latest theory. Dan checks the news on his phone, but he just can’t believe it. He flees into his garden, despite the weather, and stands in the deluge, his face turned to the sky. He needs some fresh air in his lungs, to try to breathe out the stench permeating his body. Rain is driving into his eyes but he doesn’t care. He feels the need to weep, and this is the best he can manage for now.

  Soon Dan’s stomach inevitably starts to turn, and he vomits into the flower bed. The story is too disturbing to contemplate, but he supposes it might just be true. After a few minutes, he wipes his mouth, turns around and heads back into the kitchen. He stands at the sink and puts his mouth under the tap, rinses out the bile, dries his face on a tea towel. Muddy footprints trail across the pale-grey tiles. Water drips off his hair. Dan goes into the lounge and checks the iPad this time, just in case his father had been lying, just in case he, Dan, has imagined it.

  No. The headlines carry the normal gleeful tone the tabloids usually reserve for these situations:

  Honeymoon horror:

  Chef cooks bridegroom and feeds to bride.

  Mohammed Chatala, a chef at the luxury Seabreeze resort on Baadhoo Island in the Maldives, has been accused of murdering Cory Faustino, 30, of Sydney, Australia, and adding his flesh to dishes that he then served to guests at the seven-star honeymoon resort, including Mr Faustino’s own wife, Nathalie, 30.

  Police are currently looking into the link between this disappearance and that of Jamie Armstrong, 35, of Islington, London, who went missing on the same island nine months ago.

  Before this latest development, Mr Armstrong’s wife Jemma, 34, who has recently given birth to their son, was on bail, awaiting trial for the murder of her husband.

  Dan throws down his iPad and sinks to the floor, his head in his hands, where he rocks back and forth, in disgust, and horror, and shame.

  84

  Chati is sitting quietly at the back of the little red seaplane, which is preparing for take-off. There are four Maldivian police officers on board too, right at the front, as well as the pilot and co-pilot. Chati is in leg chains and hand-cuffs, which are really quite unnecessary, but he supposes he can’t blame them. They don’t understand.

  Chati is well aware that he’d been playing a dangerous game, doing it again, and he wonders now whether he might even have wanted to get caught, otherwise surely he wouldn’t have done it. Or maybe his cannibalistic tendencies, once indulged, had become too strong to deny. Well, he thinks, at least he’s killed two birds with one stone, as the charges against Jemma will be dropped now. He’d been horrified that his vainglorious attempt to free her from her miserable marriage had resulted in her being accused of her husband’s murder. That hadn’t been the plan at all – but, there again, he hadn’t known until afterwards that she’d had such a complicated history with the brother. It had been unbearable watching Jemma suffer as the net closed in on her, and all he could do was bring her meals, try to show her that he believed in her, was looking out for her, even if no-one else was. They’d become such good friends. He’d missed her so much when she’d left.

  Chati hears the roar of the engines starting up, and in a moment he will be leaving this island forever. It saddens him in a way. He’d enjoyed his job at first, had taken pleasure in flashing his widest, friendliest smile at the prettiest guests from his position behind the serving counter, doling out culinary comfort with a flourish. But after a while, he’d become lonely, and he’d been on the island too long, with nowhere else to go. So at least coming up with his plan had given him something to think about, work towards. He’d thought of everything. The place deep in the jungle where he’d spent hours sawing up the body, and where no-one had been able to hear him. The neat packages of meat he’d put in the industrial-sized freezer, ready for use in the dishes he’d so carefully planned. The bones and fat and unwanted flesh that he’d taken out in a boat the next day, in his time off between shifts, and fed to the fish. Other bits and pieces of Jamie that had gone out in the refuse tugs, along with the rest of the island’s rubbish. The clothes that he’d cut up and burnt on the beach, while preparing a romantic barbecue. And all executed before it had occurred to anyone that it might be anything other than an accidental drowning. It was like one of those magic tricks, where you divert attention from the scene of the deception. It had been so simple. A mask and snorkel washing up on the beach on the wild side of the island. The missing flippers being dumped with all the others at the dive centre, as no records were kept of who’d been loaned which pairs, and Jemma would never have been able to identify them.

  Chati feels devastated as he thinks of Jemma, broken-hearted that he’ll never see her again. There had been something so special about her. Up until now, he’s been getting his fix of her through watching clips of the news stories on YouTube, but he doubts he’ll have access to the Internet where he’s going. She was so beautiful, and so sad. Chati had been drawn to her from the very moment she’d run into him on her bike in the bushes, when he’d been out there finalizing arrangements. And as soon as he’d realized how unhappy she was with her husband, he’d known that she was the one – or rather, that Jamie was. And she’d been so kind to him when he’d delivered her meals each day, and he’d derived such a deep satisfaction when he’d seen how happy he’d made her, under such stressful circumstances.

  Dear, sweet, brave Jemma, Chati thinks now. Look at how she’d lugged a fish-bitten hulk of a man to shore and then had sprinted to find help. Had sprinted to find him. It had been their destiny, surely? Her lovely face had made his heart warm with hope, and he’d known then that he was ready. It had been almost too easy. By far the worst part had been having to watch, helpless, from the edge of the beach as his sweetheart nearly drowned – but when he’d finally watched her rise from the sea like a mermaid, her slender form lit up by the moonbeams, he’d been on the verge of ecstasy.

  As the plane takes off, Chati looks down at the brilliantly freakish seascape, his home for so many years, and tries to think what might happen to him now. He knows it will be nothing but bad – but that’s the price you pay, he thinks, when you love someone. He and Jemma had shared such a special bond, and he’d never ever forget her. And at least he’d always know that she would be OK now, that he’d done the right thing by her – that both times he’d killed a man, he’d ultimately ended up saving her.

  85

  I’ve known for eleven unimaginable days, and although I still pray it’s not true, I know it almost certainly is. It’s evening, and I’m sitting alone on a sofa in one of the furthest corners of North London, weak with dread. Dad and Kay are in the kitchen, attempting to make me something I might feel able to eat, and I know I have to try, if not for them, then for my baby. Although I do my best not to let them, my thoughts turn yet again to Chati, dear, kind Chati, who had fed me, looked after me, nurtured me. Had he really murdered Jamie, and then chopped him up and fed him to me, his despairing bri
de, for the best part of a week? I hadn’t thought things could get any worse. My head floats and spins, again. The nausea rises, again, although of course I am no longer pregnant.

  And yet I can’t stop thinking about it. Somehow, processing my feelings for Jamie’s murderer feels important to me. I am almost as horrified by my erstwhile friendship with Chati as I am by what he has done. How had I not felt his evil? How had I thought he was sweet, that his wide, gleaming smile was one of benevolence? The irony is that I was drawn to Chati, not just because of his gentleness, his assiduousness in looking after me, but because he was the only one who seemed wholeheartedly to believe in me. And yet of course he was. He was the only one who knew the truth.

  But just how deluded was I? Shouldn’t I have realized how inappropriate it was, when he started staying to watch me eat? Shouldn’t I have guessed something was wrong? If I’d thought to mention it to the resort, or the police, might I even have saved the next man? And then I tell myself not to be fanciful, that never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the truth. That it’s not my fault.

  Kay comes in with a tray, and she places it in front of me, and then she sits down next to me, just the right distance away to make me feel safe, but not too close for me to feel threatened. There are triangles of Marmite toast, with the crusts cut off, and I can eat those. There is an apple, and I know that will be fine too. A handful of crisps is beyond my limits for the moment, but that’s OK. Kay smiles at me encouragingly, and I press her hand gently, and we both know I’ll get there. I have to, for my son. I have no choice.

  ‘Hello?’ Gabriel is squawking in the background, so it’s hard to hear, but my phone has told me who it is, of course. And although I dread doing it, I know I need to confront this, and sooner rather than later. I need to purge everything, for my baby’s sake.