Siobhan Curham - Dark of the Moon

‘Holy moley!’ the Flea exclaims. The inlet is so narrow the trees on either side meet overhead, forming a tunnel of green. A noisy chorus of squawks and screeches rings out around us, like a drunken band trumpeting our arrival. I look up and see two blood-red parrots watching us with beady black eyes. Their gnarled beaks are huge.

‘What’s happening now?’ Belle whispers.

‘We’re going down the inlet,’ I say.

Belle sighs and closes her eyes.

Dan takes his baseball cap off and gazes around. The Flea looks equally awestruck. Cruz stands at the prow of the boat, his shoulders broad and his back arrow-straight, as if he’s preparing for battle.

My stomach churns as I wonder what might be waiting for us at the other end of the tunnel. I think of Hortense and how she looked when we came across her in the forest – her wizened skin and claw-like fingers, and the horrific rasping noise she’d made when she chased us.

‘Look,’ Cruz says, pointing ahead.

In the distance I can see a glimmer of light. The boat carries on sailing toward it. I look around at the others and a terrible thought enters my mind. What if we’re sailing towards our death?

When we finally reach the end of the tunnel the inlet spills out into a huge lagoon. The water is bright turquoise, surrounded by a high wall of rainforest. It’s like floating inside a huge green bowl and it’s so breathtakingly beautiful that for a second I forget to be scared. I figure the others must be feeling the same, as they’re all gazing around, open-mouthed. Only Belle still looks tense.

‘Where are we?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know, but it looks uncannily like paradise!’ the Flea exclaims.

‘We’re in some kind of lagoon,’ I tell Belle. I start looking round for signs of anything sinister. As the boat drifts toward the far side of the lagoon I notice something moving on the rocks at the water’s edge.

‘Look, there’s someone there,’ I whisper.

‘Who is it?’ Belle hisses.

‘I’m not sure,’ the Flea says, squinting toward the shore.

We all sit in silence as the boat glides closer and closer to the land. Whoever it is they are sitting cross-legged on the rocks, facing away from us. All I can make out is that they’ve got cropped white-blond hair and deeply tanned skin.

Dan looks at us. ‘Should we call out to them?’

We all shrug, unsure what to do.

‘Well, they’re gonna see us soon enough,’ the Flea says, ‘so I guess it makes no difference.’ He carefully gets to his feet. ‘Hello!’

The figure jumps up and turns to face us. It’s a girl. She’s wearing a bright coral sundress.

The girl shields her eyes with a tanned hand and looks straight at us.

‘Oh my freakin’ God! I can’t believe there’s someone here!’ the Flea exclaims, looking back at us.

‘Yeah, and someone who doesn’t look like they’ve just escaped from the set of Dawn of the Dead ,’ Dan says with a wry chuckle.

The girl starts running across the rocks toward us.

‘Who do you think she is?’ the Flea whispers.

‘How the hell should we know?’ Dan says, raising his eyebrows.

I look at Cruz. He shrugs.

‘Hello!’ the girl calls out as she reaches the water’s edge.

‘Hey!’ the Flea cries excitedly. He turns back to us, his eyes wide. ‘She speaks English!’

‘Who are you?’ the girl says in a clipped British accent. Then she starts to laugh. ‘I’m sorry – that sounds really rude. But – where have you come from?’

‘She doesn’t just speak English – she is English!’ the Flea whispers excitedly.

The girl starts wading through the water toward us. Her face is a perfect heart shape and she has the kind of welcoming eyes and wide smile that make you instantly feel at ease. As she gets closer I see a tiny silver nose stud glinting against her golden brown skin and a bright-blue butterfly tattooed on her wrist.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks, her eyes widening with concern as she gets closer to the boat.

‘Yes, we’re fine, thank you. Positively brilliant. Well, we are now we’ve found you!’ the Flea exclaims in his best British accent. ‘I’m Jimmy Patterson, but you can call me the Flea – everyone else does – and it is very nice to meet you!’ He extends his thin arm over the side of the boat to shake her hand.

The girl laughs heartily as she takes it. ‘I’m Lola. Very nice to meet you too.’

She grins at the rest of us. ‘This is so cool!’

The way she says it, so excited and carefree, makes me want to cry. It feels so long since we experienced this kind of normality, I’m not exactly sure how to react.

Cruz nods at Lola, then he jumps down into the water and starts guiding the boat toward the sand. Dan quickly joins him.

Lola grabs hold of the side of the boat to help them. She looks at me and smiles. ‘How did you guys get here?’

‘Very long story,’ I say.

‘We were shipwrecked a few days ago,’ the Flea explains. ‘Over on the other side of the island.’

Lola shakes her head in disbelief. ‘No way!’

The Flea nods proudly. ‘Yes indeedy!’

‘My name’s Grace,’ I say, climbing down into the water next to Lola. She takes hold of my arm to steady me. She’s grinning like a Cheshire cat.

‘This is brilliant. I mean, obviously it isn’t brilliant that you’ve been shipwrecked, but it’s so cool that you’ve turned up today. Ruby’s last lot of guests have just left and I was thinking that it was going to be so boring until the next lot arrive.’

‘Who’s Ruby?’ the Flea and Dan ask in unison.

Lola smiles at them. ‘She runs the retreat.’

‘The retreat?’ Dan turns back to me and raises his eyebrows.

Lola nods. ‘Yeah. It’s where I’m staying. She set it up a couple of years ago, when she got sick of city life. Wait till you meet her. She’s so calm and serene. She’s like a walking advert for island living.’

The Flea leans close to me. ‘Okay, tell me, am I dreaming right now?’ he whispers.

‘What’s that?’ Lola asks.

‘Nothing,’ the Flea says quickly. ‘It just seems very different on this side of the island.’

‘No kidding,’ Dan mutters.

Lola stares at him, puzzled. Then she turns to look at Belle, who’s still in the boat and staring ahead of her blankly. ‘Is your friend okay?’ she whispers to me.

‘Yes, well, no – not exactly. She just lost her sight.’

Lola’s huge eyes widen. ‘That’s terrible! What happened?’

‘It’s a very long story.’

‘But how?’

I look at Lola and shake my head. If Belle hears us talking about her it’ll only make her feel a million times worse.

Thankfully, Lola gets what I’m trying to say and nods. ‘Okay, well let me take you guys up to the retreat. You look exhausted.’

The Flea and I help Belle from the boat.

‘It’s okay, Belle,’ I whisper in her ear,‘she seems really nice.’

Belle nods and gives a tight little smile.

‘Follow me,’ Lola calls, before bounding across the rocks. We trail after her, the Flea arm in arm with Belle, and Dan right behind them. Cruz drops back and takes my hand.

‘What do you reckon about all this?’ I whisper.

He shrugs his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I can’t believe we’re back on the island.’

Cruz nods.

‘Do you think it was Hortense?’ I hardly dare look at him.

‘I don’t know. Sometimes you do get freak winds like that but . . .’

He doesn’t need to continue. I know exactly what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it too – Hortense was never going to let us get away that easily.

Once we get to the end of the rocks, Lola leads us through a cluster of trees. But it isn’t like the rainforest on the other side of the island that’s claustrophobically dense and seems to go on forever. These trees are a lot more spaced out and within a half a minute we’ve reached another huge clearing. It’s cut through by a wide, green river, covered with plate-sized lily pads. A rickety wooden footbridge snakes across the water. ‘We’re almost there,’ Lola calls back to us. ‘Ruby isn’t at the retreat right now. She went to the bay to see the last guests off.’