The Backpacking Housewife
The Next Adventure
JANICE HORTON

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HarperImpulse

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Copyright © Janice Horton 2019

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Janice Horton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008302696

Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008340629

Version: 2019-06-19

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: Tortola, British Virgin Islands

Chapter 2

Chapter 3: George Town, Grand Cayman

Chapter 4: London UK

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9: The Bahamas

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12: Luminaire

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15: Back to Tortola and Waterfall Cay

Chapter 16: London UK

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20: Six Months Later

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

To my family … with love. xx

Chapter 1
Tortola, British Virgin Islands

This morning, in bright sunshine and on calm waters, we’re heading back to Road Town, Tortola, the capital of the British Virgin Islands: the starting point of our round the world adventure eight months ago and today our final port of call. I gaze out from my viewpoint on the forward deck at the shimmering vista ahead of me and at what must certainly be one of the most beautiful sights in the world; a chain of tropical islands laid out like an emerald necklace.

I know I should be feeling elated, excited, or even triumphant about our return, but I’m feeling rather overwhelmed about it instead. That’s because I woke up this morning to realise that its’s exactly one year ago today that I grabbed my passport and got on a plane at Gatwick, leaving my whole life and my old life, behind me. A whole year.

And today, it feels quite literally and figuratively, like my life has come full circle.

So, while everyone else is busy and getting ready to disembark and celebrate our homecoming, I can’t help but to look back, rather than forward. I can’t help but to wonder what happens next for this backpacking housewife.

If this is the end of my journey? Or just another new beginning?

I’m torn in two by my conscience and my heart.

I have a big decision to make and it’s not going to be an easy one.

Do I continue to travel the world with Ethan? Or do I head back home to the UK?

I know that Ethan wants me to be with him. I know he loves me. And I love him.

But how do you tell someone who is something of a real-life Indiana Jones and who thrives on a life filled with endless adventure that you’ve started to think it might not be the life for you after all? That a life spent in perpetual sunshine while saving the planet has become too difficult for you? That the weeks and months and the thousands of miles of distance between you and those you’ve left behind is all too much?

I have two grown up kids and an aged mother who I haven’t seen in a very long time.

My heart aches as I realise it’s almost the end of November and Christmas is coming.

I missed Christmas with my family last year. I spent last Christmas on a tiny island in the middle of the South China Sea. If you looked it up on a map, you’d see it really is as far away from anywhere else as you can possibly get. I imagine, as far as my family were concerned, I might as well have been on the moon. On Christmas Day, I remember sitting crying on the beach, under a scorching sun, thinking of the place I used to call home and imagining them all opening presents without me, which brought on another kind of guilt. The kind that tells you how spoiled and ungrateful you are for not appreciating what you have and where you are now.

I’ve missed a whole year of birthdays and anniversaries and other special family days too.

When I last checked in with my family, via a wi-fi signal in a port of call just several days ago, I discovered that my eldest son, Josh, and his girlfriend, Zoey, had just got engaged. That was unexpected. I mean, he didn’t even have a girlfriend on the scene when I’d left.

He sent me a lovely photo of the two of them taken at their engagement party.

A party that I missed.

I’d called the happy couple as soon as I could to offer my heartfelt congratulations. But then our conversation had quickly resorted back to the question of when I might be coming home.

And that was awkward, as I really didn’t have an answer.

When I speak with my younger son, Lucas, he often sounds surly and uncommunicative and he makes our long-distance conversations hard work. I ask him about his day and what he’s been doing over the weekend and how his work is going and he’s dismissive. Call it mother’s intuition, but I worry if there is something going on that perhaps he’s not telling me?

I also worry if I even have any mother’s intuition left these days.

I could of course be worrying for nothing. But getting any information from Lucas about his life is impossible when he immediately switches the topic of conversation from him back to me. And I’m told once again, how most people’s middle-aged mothers (and I’m only forty-eight for goodness sakes) take daytrips to The Lake District and join Book Clubs, rather than go backpacking around the world and then join the crew of an ocean-going ship.

I listen and I agree. I know both my sons are missing me and they also worry about me.

I worry about them too. I worry about missing them. I constantly stress over whether I’ve done a good enough job as a mother to leave them to it now that they are both in their twenties?

What if they do need me? Even though they are grown up successful young men.

And, because I’m not there, who do they turn to if they need advice or emotional support?

Their father? What kind of example is he when he’s proved to be an untrustworthy liar?

And how do they really feel about their parents being divorced now?

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t exactly been able to talk to them about their anxieties or concerns in any depth over the past twelve months? Not since that time just before Christmas last year, when they both flew out to Kuala Lumpur to see if I’d lost my mind as well as my homing beacon. In speaking face to face, I’d been able to reassure them. Whereas now, I find it frustrating how feelings are a difficult subject to tackle by text message.

Somehow, words seem to get scrambled and become devoid of sensitivity.

That they don’t reflect what’s really in the heart.

Not to mention autocorrect issues and textspeak which often make matters so much worse.

Only this week did Josh question my overt use of: WTF.

I thought it meant: Well That’s Fantastic.

And so, of course, I’ve been using it rather a lot.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been tossing and turning more than this ship.

I’ve been losing sleep, while trying to work out how I can continue to live a nomadic lifestyle with Ethan, while also maintaining a tangible and meaningful connection with my family. But having it all seems impossible.

I don’t feel Ethan is the kind of man to step back from the helm and retire.

And I simply can’t be in two places or on both sides of the world at one time.

I’ve had to confide in him over feeling permanently at sea these days. Although, I was using that as a metaphor for our nomadic lifestyle, rather than our ocean-going situation. He’d listened to me and he’d said he understood. He said that he understands all my angst and guilt.

But, I’m not sure that he does fully understand, because he has no family of his own.

I tried to explain about my mum to him. ‘She’s not getting any younger.’ I said.

Which, in hindsight, didn’t best explain how I really feel about her needs, her age, her fragility, and not being there for her.

Ethan had simply replied. ‘Well, Lori, my darling. None of us are getting any younger.’

And, of course, he’s quite right. Yet another reason for us all to grab life and really live it.

Ethan’s parents died a long time ago and, from what I can gather, he was still in his teens at the time. I don’t know exactly what or how it happened. But they do seem to have passed away at around the same time as each other. I wonder if they were in some kind of accident.

Only, he doesn’t talk about them very much. Maybe it’s too painful for him?

It’s also entirely understandable that he is perhaps unable to truly empathise with me and all my worries over my two sons or an aging parent. Although, with his roots in Scotland, I find it hard to accept there isn’t at least someone somewhere in the world who is related to him.

An uncle twice removed or even perhaps a distant cousin?

When we had briefly talked about it once, I’d suggested doing a bit of genealogy research to check for anyone who might be a relative, or even a black sheep in his clan. But then I’d noticed a vein in his temple starting to visibly pulsate and how quickly he changed the subject.

A shout disrupts my thoughts and I turn around to see Ethan on deck.

‘Lori! I have news. I have great news!’

A smile spreads across my face. I watch him in amusement as he struts his stuff, wiggling his hips and dancing through the early morning sunbeams and across the main deck towards me, wearing an unbuttoned shirt and baggy khaki shorts, while waving his satellite phone in the air. I laugh. I do love his boundless energy and passion.

Ethan has the heart of a lion, but he extrudes all the enthusiasm of a child.

I mean, just yesterday, as we sailed past the island of St Martin, he was positively whooping about a pilot whale and her calf swimming off our bow. Last week, he sounded the muster alarm when he spotted a record number of dolphins following in our wake. And, last month, when our research vessel Freedom of the Ocean rallied on a conservational issue off the coast of Costa Rica to stop illegal shark finning, he stood out on deck beating his chest like Tarzan.

But I have perhaps not seen him quite as exuberant as he is today.

Several of the crew whoop loudly in response, as I wait to hear what crazy escapade he might have conjured up for us next. Life with Ethan is always an adventure and to my certain knowledge every one of those adventures has been the result of a phone call.

‘My darling, I believe I’ve found us a piece of dry land that we can finally call home.’

I catch my breath and my heart skips a beat. His words wash over me through the warm and salty air between us. Did I hear him correctly? Did Ethan Goldman, nomadic eco-warrior and king of the seven seas, just say dry land and home in the very same sentence?

Had he really been listening to my worldly woes?

To my worries about my family and how much I miss them?

Had he really understood and been putting together a plan for when we got back here?

‘Really? Oh Ethan, that’s fantastic! Where is it?’ I gasp.

‘Here. In the BVI’s. Although I’ll have to head over to Grand Cayman to sign the lease.’

‘Here, in the British Virgin Islands? A lease? Are we renting a house?’

My brain clicked into overdrive. Is this plan of his both the answer and the compromise?

The resolution to the conflict in my double life?

A base for us to work from and for us to call home?

Only moments earlier, I’d been imagining a heartbreaking and distressing scenario, where I was sobbing into Ethan’s pineapple patterned shirt and saying goodbye to him this afternoon.

I had imagined that the very next phone call he took would be the catalyst to him taking off on some new and fabulous adventure and that he’d have to go saving something somewhere in the world without me. But now, instead, I’m suddenly and happily conjuring up in my imagination a traditional clapperboard Caribbean style house, surrounded by palm trees, either here on Tortola or Virgin Gorda. I’m imagining myself holding out my arms in welcome to my family as they arrive to spend Christmas with us this year. And, next year, planning with them a visit over the summer holidays and lots of other special family times too. I imagined my mum sitting on a comfortable chair under our shaded porch, looking out at a beautiful tropical garden, rather than sitting in an old armchair in front of the fire and looking outside at her small winter ravaged patio. I imagined Ethan teaching Josh and Lucas to scuba dive in the warm sea and them all having an amazing time together.

That’s my dream – a big happy family – all spending quality time together.

And, when my mum and my two boys step off a plane into my new world – and they see for themselves what kind of life I’m living and what kind of man I’m living with now – then they can be happy for me at last. Then they wouldn’t worry about me so much. Or continue to question my state of mind. And demand, in every long-distance conversation, that it’s time I came home. What a perfect way that would be for me to introduce them to Ethan too.

Part of my angst and guilt is because I haven’t yet told them I have a new man in my life.

I’ve only explained about going off with a new friend to do some conservation work.

I certainly hadn’t told them how I’d met a gorgeous man in Thailand, fallen head over heels in love with him, and that we were now travelling all over the world together.

I don’t feel it’s the kind of news that’s best shared in an email or a message.

Although, I’m sure, if they ever did manage to get over the shock of me having a new man friend, then they would be impressed that he’s a renowned environmentalist and the founder and CEO of The Goldman Global Foundation. And, when my mum eventually picked herself up off the floor at the thought of me having another man in my life, she might be thrilled to hear that Sir Ethan had been knighted for his services to global ecology and endangered animal conservation.

Right now, I’m excited. I find Ethan’s idea of a renting somewhere entirely acceptable.

Although, it is certainly a little unusual – simply because as a rule Ethan doesn’t rent – Ethan buys. Probably because he can afford to buy anything he wants. Like this ship, for example.

While many fifty-year old men might choose to buy a classic motorbike or a flashy car, this middle-aged philanthropist prefers to spend his small change on a state-of-the-art fully equipped ocean liner, with the world’s most advanced gadgetry and marine research facilities on board. But renting a house will be far quicker than buying one.

We might even be able to move in today!

‘It’s not a house,’ Ethan tells me with great gusto. ‘It’s an island no one has lived on in a hundred years!’

And, suddenly, I can feel my elated heart sinking ever so slowly down into my deck shoes.

The image of an idyllic Caribbean colonial style house with my mum on the porch immediately crumbles away to be replaced by something far less decant and far more decayed looking. I sigh and take a deep breath. I do love that he cares so passionately about preserving ecosystems and saving the endangered creatures of the world. But after eight months spent mostly at sea, and while working on the most pressing conservational issues in the world today - that of plastic pollution in our seas and the study of global warming on our oceans – what I really meant when I’d tentatively hinted to him that we might settle down and find a home together, was somewhere with an actual address.

I’d thought we might live in a place that can be found without satellite imaging or having to use longitude and latitude coordinates. Somewhere civilised with a population and civil amenities and a transportation system that includes an international airport and not just a precarious landing strip. Somewhere with shops. A supermarket where I can buy milk that doesn’t necessarily have to come from a coconut. A house with a proper kitchen rather than a galley with a floating stove. A bathroom with a tub instead of a tiny shower and with a proper toilet rather than one in a tiny claustrophobic cubicle like the kind you find on an airplane.

Was I expecting too much? I guess so. This was Ethan Indiana Jones after all.

Because now I fear he has another adventurous project in mind rather than an actual home.

On an island that no one has lived on in a hundred years no less!

But was that even possible these days in the BVIs?

Jeff, one of our marine biologists, laughed. ‘You’ve gotta admit it, Lori. This is so Ethan!’

So Ethan had become a popular adage with all the scientists onboard for when anyone had a crazy idea. Never crazy to Ethan, of course, who was still enthusiastically strutting his stuff on deck. I roll my eyes as I consider yet another desert island where we can live like castaways.

I know how cynical and ungrateful that sounds, but I’m kind of fed up with shifting sand.

I’m missing solid ground. I’m missing being in one place for a while.

But more than all of that I’m really missing my family.

Chapter 2

At Road Town, Tortola, The Freedom of the Ocean is now safely docked in the harbour and no one has wasted any time getting onto dry land. Ethan has wasted no time either in securing a small boat to take us – just the two of us – on what he describes as a romantic voyage of discovery. So, I’m now standing on a wooden jetty in a very busy part of the marina, with my cell phone firmly clamped to my ear, while I’m trying to reach my family back home.

Ethan is chatting to a very distinguished looking man who is wearing a linen suit and a panama hat. I’m casting my eyes over some incredibly impressive yachts and catamarans in what is known as the boating capital of the Caribbean, and as I can already feel my long wavy hair becoming even crazier in this ridiculous humidity, I’m regretting not bringing along a hat myself. I’m already perspiring profusely in my white cotton shirt and shorts that I’m wearing over my swimsuit. The tops of my flip-flopped feet are being scorched by the hot morning sunshine.

I watch the two men gesticulate over a very sleek looking motor boat. It’s expensive looking with white padded seats and two powerful outboard engines and I can’t help but to wonder why, when I have a full signal on my phone for the first time in absolutely ages, is no one answering my calls? I then realise 10am here is 2pm in London. My boys will be at work and my mum will no doubt still be at her afternoon pensioner’s bingo session.

Then I see Ethan and the distinguished looking man shaking hands and there is a set of keys being handed over. Suddenly he is waving at me with great enthusiasm. ‘Okay, Lori. Let’s go!’

I dash over to untie the mooring rope from the cleat and jump into the boat that Ethan has procured. We set off into the sparkling sunshine and soon made good progress through the stretch of water between the islands that is known as the Sir Frances Drake Channel. As we leave the harbour and the bay, I can clearly see the verdant shapes of the larger islands across the straights from us. In the far distance there is Norman Island, said to be the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Treasure Island, and Peter Island, with its broad curve of white sand beaches and exclusive high-class hotel resort.

I do know a little about the Virgin Islands from my own days as a travel agent. Many moons ago, while I was also a housewife and mother bringing up two little boys, my ex-husband and I had our own very successful travel business. Only, in those days, I used to plan other people’s adventurous itineraries and could have only dreamed of the life I have now.

The Virgin Islands are split into American and British territories. The largest of the British owned islands is Tortola. The second largest is Anegada - also called Drowned Island - as it’s flat and low lying and often flooded by high tides. Although, I know next to nothing about the smaller islands except that there are lots of them – over fifty – and that’s just in the British Virgin Islands or BVIs as everyone calls them for short.

I point a finger across the straights towards a small islet. ‘I know those are Salt and Cooper and Ginger Island, but do you know what that little round one with no trees on it is called?’

‘Aye. That’s Dead Chest Island.’ Ethan answered. ‘There’s nothing growing on it because there’s no freshwater. It’s where Blackbeard the pirate once abandoned fifteen of his crewmen with one keg of rum and a pistol with one shot between them. I suppose he’d assumed they’d all get drunk and then fight over the pistol to commit suicide.’

‘Couldn’t they have just all swam over to Peter Island instead?’ I asked, thinking it didn’t look too far away.

‘It looks close enough but there are dangerous currents between the islands. The story is that they did all try to swim for it but only one of them made it. That’s why there’s a Dead Man’s Bay on Peter Island.’ He remarked.

I stared over at Dead Chest Island and tried to imagine the horror of being stuck in a place where nowhere actually looked too far away and yet everywhere was impossible to reach.

Ethan then boldly opened the engines and began to heartily sing at the top of his voice.

‘Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!’

I sat back and enjoyed the warm wind blowing through my hair and took in the dramatic shape of Virgin Gorda, the third largest island in the BVIs off our starboard or right side, looking like a giant woman reclining in the shimmering Caribbean heat.

We are heading towards the outer islands now. I know that some are still uninhabited, but others are now the exclusive hideaways of the rich and famous; rock stars, movie moguls and rich entrepreneurs. I decide to look out for Tom Cruise because I’m sure someone mentioned that he’d recently bought one of these outlying atolls.

Ethan saw me peering ahead with eagerness.

‘We’re heading northwest towards The Dogs,’ he informed me.

‘What kind of dogs are they?’ I asked cautiously, wondering if we’d needed rabies jabs.

Ethan laughed. ‘There are no dogs. It’s a group of islands named so because sailors once thought the barking they could hear came from dogs on the islands.’

‘And, if it wasn’t dogs, what was it?’

‘Caribbean Monk Seals,’ he clarified. ‘Sadly, they’re now extinct.’

He looked gloomy for a little while as he considered this awful loss.

We soon approached a group of five small rocky islets that made up The Dog Islands.

They looked wild and rugged against the calm deep blue of the surrounding sea.

‘Now we’re truly in virgin territory!’ Ethan proclaimed.

He sounded excited as he stood proudly at the helm, inhaling deeply, as if the air around here was purer too. ‘Many years ago, the sailors who came here thought this was the very end of the world, and they imagined the horizon line that you see now was the drop off point. All these islands around here are privately owned. But some are also protected wildlife sanctuaries for creatures that can be found nowhere else in the world. See that island up ahead?’

I peer through my sunshades at the shape of an irregular mound in the distance.

‘That’s Mosquito Island. It’s where I first learned to scuba dive. My instructor, Booty Bill, was known as the last pirate in the Caribbean. He was a real character. There’s so many rumours about him finding shipwrecks and treasure around here. No one ever really knew fact from fiction. When I first came here, at eighteen years old, Booty was like a father to me.’

Ethan sighed happily as he remembered those times.

‘He sounds like an amazing man. Is he still here? I’d love to meet him.’

‘No. He retired to Florida. But now, of course, Richard owns the island.’

‘Are you talking about Richard Branson?’ I gasped.

‘Aye, in 2007, he swiped Mosquito from under my nose for just twenty million.’

Ethan shook his head as if 2007 was just yesterday and twenty million was small change.

‘But I thought Richard Branson owned Necker Island?’

‘Aye, he does. He bought Necker way back in ’79. Although, interestingly, on one very old map of the BVIs it’s shown as ‘Knicker Island’. As you might imagine, Richard, with his sense of humour, thought that was downright hilarious!’

I laughed. ‘Yes, I expect you’d have to be British to appreciate that joke.’

I’m guessing he and Richard Branson have an interesting alliance.

‘So, is that why you know this area so well? Because you lived here as a young man?’

‘Aye. I spent a whole summer down here before I started university. I love these islands. I know these waters like I know the back of my own hand. It’s long been an ambition of mine to buy a boat and an island here and make my home in the BVIs. A dream, actually’

‘But I thought Scotland was your home?’ I said in some surprise.

‘Nah. Not really. I’ve gone soft in my old age. Scotland’s too damn cold. I’d rather follow in the footsteps of my fellow Scot, Robert Louis Stephenson, and live in warmer climes.’

And, I suddenly realised, that although I do know certain things about this man – his recent history, his passion for conservation, his determination to save the planet, and how much I love him – there is still so much that I don’t know about him. His childhood in Scotland. His earlier life. How he single-handedly built up the Goldman Global Foundation. And this dream of his.

I suspect Ethan is as deep as these waters all around us and as equally intriguing.

‘And, this island we’re going to see today,’ I said. ‘Do you think this might be your dream?’

He turned from the helm to grin at me. He had such a handsome face in any regard, but when he smiled, Ethan looked movie star handsome and my heart did a little flip.

‘Lori, my love, believe me when I tell you this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Unfortunately, this island’s not for sale or I’d be snapping it up. It’s held in an ancient trust. One hundred years ago, it was leased to someone who died with a hold over on the lease agreement, so the island was left to inheritors for the remainder of the lease despite them having no plans nor interest in the island. My guess is they forgot all about it until the lease finally expired this year. I got my lawyers straight onto securing it for the next hundred years.’

‘And that’s why no one has lived on it in all that time?’

‘Aye. It’s a rare find. The last private island with an untouched eco-system in the Virgin Islands. That’s just like finding a virgin in a brothel!’ He chuckled at his own joke.

‘So, what you’re actually talking about is another research facility!’ I remarked a little sourly. I couldn’t help it. I loved his enthusiasm. But how could an abandoned island possibly be our permeant home? How could we possibly thrive, never mind survive, out here on a small rock? I imagined the two of us sitting on a deserted island beach together, sun scorched and dehydrated, with nothing more than one bottle of rum between us – like those poor abandoned pirates – and fighting over one gun with one bullet in it with which to end our awful misery.

As we made our approach, to what I could easily understand being thought the very edge of the old world, Ethan’s untouched virgin island rose dreamily from the sea and it was breath-taking to behold. At first glimpse, I see white crested waves crashing into rocky inlets and small sandy coves. But then I spotted a small heart-shaped cove with a tiny curved beach and with swaying palm trees and a labyrinth of boulders forming natural pools and seawater-flooded grottoes. I hear the call of seabirds, egrets, herons, pelicans, frigates, and drag my eyes upward over sheer rugged cliffs to see undulating hills covered in misty jungle, as Ethan steered us straight into the heart-shaped cove, where the shallow waters were teeming with colourful fish.

He puts down the anchor onto a sandy bed. ‘The boat will be safe here. This is the only safe way to approach the island because the lagoon on the other side is protected by a coral reef.’

Then carefully he pulls out an old battered map from a folder he’s brought along, and we stand together on the gently swaying deck to study it carefully. It’s deeply creased and faded with age. It looks exactly like a treasure map with its star shaped compass drawing and little illustrations showing landmarks. In excitement, I spot an outcrop marked ‘Treasure Point’ at the most northerly aspect.

Treasure Point: so called by ye freebooters from the gold and silver supposed to be bury’d thereabouts after the Wreck of a Spanish Galleon.

‘Oh, it’s a real treasure map!’ I gasp. ‘But who are the freebooters?’

Ethan looked amused as he passed me a bottle of cold drinking water from the cooler.

‘I’m guessing any treasure buried here would have been lifted a long time ago by my mate, Booty Bill. Freebooters, hence booty, was a name for pirates in the old days.’

My eyes flitted across the rest of the map. I see the island is long and shaped like a figure eight, or a symbol of infinity, with two distinct volcanic ranges and a narrow middle area.

‘Oh, look, there’s a house here!’ I shake my finger in excitement at an illustration of a dwelling. I immediately imagine us living there overlooking the beach and the lagoon.

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much. I doubt it’s still here. Not after all this time.’

Ethan tapped a finger at the top of the document where it said: Map of Waterfall Cay by Thomas Jeffreys, Surveyor and Geographer to The King. The Virgin Islands, 1775.

‘This island is called Waterfall Cay? How beautiful. But surely it will still have a waterfall?’

My imagination conjured up a romantic scene in which Ethan and I were swimming naked below a tropical waterfall with rainbow coloured mists all around us. Ethan, who might have been imagining the same thing, slung an arm around me and pulled me closer to kiss me slowly on the lips. As we touched, our skin was hot and damp through the light cotton of our shirts.

His lips tasted of sea spray but in a nice way. More mythical merman than dirty pirate.

When he spoke, his voice was low and sexy. ‘Shall we go exploring to find out?’

We left the boat in the little bay and we slipped into thigh-high warm clear waters with soft sand underfoot and waded ashore. Once ashore, we made our way east through the steamy interior and then began a climb through steep and rugged jungle terrain. We stepped carefully along what appeared to be remnants of an ancient trail of flat rocks that must have been laid down and trodden smooth by many feet so many years before us. Pirates, castaways, sailors, explorers, wanderlusters—who knew?

We leapt across narrow rushing streams that cut through our path and in all the places where the path had collapsed. Ethan, being a gentleman, held my hand and guided me as we traipsed along muddy banks and through the deep forest foliage.

We quickened our pace once we heard the thundering sound of a waterfall ahead.

Then we fought our way through a curtain of hanging vines, to emerge breathless and dirty and sweaty, and to find that we were standing inside an open-air grotto filled with cool misty air in which countless shiny reflective green butterflies fluttered in streams of filtered sunshine.

It was breath-takingly beautiful.

Inside this grotto, there was also a large round emerald green pool of water, surrounded by many other smaller round emerald pools, separated and interspersed at differing levels by giant granite boulders. Some of these giant boulders were shiny volcanic black. They were round and flat and smooth from centuries of rising and declining water levels washing over them. Others were white, limestone or marble, and also flat and smooth.

Ethan took my hand again as we leapt from one to another, like we were playing a game of giant checkers, to reach the deep main emerald pool beneath the tall and writhing and thundering white-water stream that fed it from high above.

In the smaller pools, the water was as still and smooth and reflective as a mirror. I peered down at my reflection. I’d like to say that what I saw was the face of a gypsy wanderer. Someone with the heart of an adventurer and the spirit of a mermaid. But what I actually saw was a middle-aged woman with a happy face, sparkling bright eyes, and long and messy and dirty wild hair. I decided I liked what I saw. This was Lori, the world explorer.

Not Lorraine, the ex-housewife from London.

Lori was a happier and more fun person than the anxious always unsure version of herself.

And then suddenly the mirror became a window into what lay beneath. Large translucent fish suddenly appeared as if by magic. They’d been completely invisible until the sharp rays of filtered sunlight revealed them. ‘Look—’ I called out to Ethan.

He was suddenly beside me and when our eyes met, my thoughts of love were clearly reflected in his eyes too. Our lips crashed together. Our breath quickened between our hasty kisses as we tugged and pulled at each other’s clothing. Not that there was much in the way of our bare skin. I dipped my fingers into the waistband of his shorts, flipping open the button fastening with one hand and boldly pulling down his zipper with the other and soon they were discarded, flicked away onto a nearby rock. In response, with a practiced dexterity, he lifted my vest top over my head and pulled down my shorts in one swift move. My bikini soon went the same way. Then we were together as one, turning and twirling, in the cool emerald pool.

At one with nature and with each other in what appeared to be a paradise.

Happily, after making love, we lay back in the wonderfully cool rippling water, listening to the rhythmic background of the cascading falls and gazing up at the small patch of blue sky that could be seen high above the walls of tall verdant vines that reflected in the pools of water.

It looked unreal. It was like being wrapped up in swirling northern lights. Like in a dream.

‘This place is magical. This island is incredible. Look at all these butterflies!’ I gasped.

I lifted a hand out of the water, sending tiny droplets of rainbow glazed water into the air.

I splayed my fingers wide apart under the wings of a hovering and shimmering and glimmering green butterfly. To my astonishment it settled itself down onto the tip of my thumb.

‘Oh look. It’s tame. I’ve never seen anything quite like this!’

‘Many years ago, this island was a butterfly sanctuary.’ Ethan told me, as he also lay back relaxing in the water. ‘One of my heroes, Alfred Russel Wallace, who was a 19th Century Scottish biologist and explorer and a direct descendent of William Wallace, discovered a unique species of giant butterfly right here on this little island.’

‘Do you mean William Wallace of Braveheart fame?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Alfred reported that the butterflies here were as large as dinner plates. At that time, the Victorians were keen collectors of tropical butterflies and so The Green Morpho butterfly of Waterfall Cay soon became highly sought after and so incredibly valuable that it was prized above all others. Eventually, Wallace came back to this island to find that his special discovery, one of the largest butterflies in the known world, had been almost wiped out. That’s when he established the sanctuary. To try and protect and save them. But, over the years, the island continued to attract butterfly poachers and so The Green Morpho is now sadly extinct.’

‘And that’s what led to its extinction? People collecting them?’

I couldn’t take my eyes of this tiny butterfly as it settled onto my hand, undulating slowly, showing off how it could magically change its wings from green to gold in an instant.

‘And these little fellows, although very pretty, aren’t so rare.’ Ethan told me knowledgably.

‘But maybe this island could be a protected sanctuary for butterflies again?’ I suggested.

‘Perhaps. Only, to apply for the protected status from the government, we’d need to find an indigenous species here or at the very least an endangered one.’

‘Indigenous? That means a native species?’

‘That’s right. Like the Green Morpho.’ Ethan leaned forward to kiss my bare shoulder.

As if offended at not being deemed special enough, the little butterfly fluttered away.

‘There’s only one problem. ‘I adore butterflies, but I really can’t abide caterpillars.’

Ethan laughed in surprise. ‘Why ever not? I mean, it’s not like they can hurt you.’

‘Because I think I had a traumatic experience involving caterpillars when I was a little girl,’ I confessed. If I closed my eyes, I could recall a misty memory of myself as a child, standing at a big leafy shrub in the garden. ‘I was picking caterpillars off a plant and collecting them into a plastic bucket. I have no idea why.’

Back then, like today, there’s hot sunshine on the top of my head and the earthy scent of damp soil and vegetation all around me. I remember the simple childish pleasure I felt at collecting dozens – if not hundreds – of tiny new creepy crawly friends.

‘I suppose it was some kind of a childhood game.’ I continued. ‘Except, I’m still not entirely sure if it was something that really happened to me, or if it was just a horrible nightmare. When I heard my mother calling me, I left my bucket of caterpillars on a workbench inside our garden shed for safekeeping.’ I paused and shuddered at the thought of retelling it.

‘So how is that traumatic?’ Ethan scoffed, not seeing anything offensive in my story at all.

‘Because, when I returned to the shed to play with my caterpillar friends, I remember the wooden door slamming behind me and finding my bucket almost empty, except for just a few green caterpillars and some leaves. I can remember looking around to see only one or two caterpillars crawling along the bucket rim and wondering where they’d all gone?’

‘That doesn’t sound anywhere near as bad as the time I found my ant farm unexpectedly empty.’ Ethan interrupted me to say. ‘Except it wasn’t kept in a shed. It was in my bedroom!’

He laughed at the memory. I ignored him to continue with my own story of icky trauma.

‘I then suddenly realised that there were hundreds of caterpillars covering the walls and the glass windows. They were also crawling on the wooden beams and ceiling. When they started to drop onto me, I began to scream. They didn’t look cute to me anymore. They didn’t look like tiny friendly toys that wriggled. They looked like tiny bloated chomping hairy monsters and I screamed and screamed. I remember feeling the pitter patter of them falling onto my head and getting caught up in my hair and sticking to my dress and my bare arms. I remember trying to flee. Only to find the door handle and my escape route covered in caterpillars. I was trapped. They all looked like tiny wriggly scary snakes. Yuck!’

I shuddered again and pulled a face to show my revulsion to both snakes and caterpillars.

Ethan laughed and discreetly pinched my bottom ‘Oh, look, there’s a snake in the water!’

But I wasn’t falling for it and so we had a splash fight until we were suddenly aware of the time and how the whole morning had somehow escaped us. We reluctantly left the waterfall grotto and made our way back through the rainforest towards our boat, where Ethan said that included in our charter was a cooler with fresh drinking water and a packed picnic lunch of sandwiches and fruit. He was always so thoughtful and thorough about everything.

Although, being Ethan, of course, he would call it being prepared.

Once back on board, after our packed lunch, to get our bearings, we cast our eyes over the ancient map once again. I traced my finger along the line that formed this side of the island.

‘Okay, so this is the bay where we’re at anchor just now. And here is headland and the lagoon and the long stretch of beach that’s protected by this coral reef.’

‘Yes. That’s right. And that’s where I want to build our house.’ Ethan declared.

I dragged my eyes up from the map to look at his handsome face and wondered how I’d ever thought to doubt him over these past few weeks. He had been listening and sympathising with all my concerns. He had understood me when I’d tried to explain how I loved my life with him but couldn’t help but to feel anxiety over being separated from my family. He’d said then that he’d find us somewhere for us to call home and he’d been true to his word. All this, despite my reservations that Ethan Goldman could no more settle down somewhere, than a butterfly could choose to land on my hand. Happily, I’d been proved wrong on both counts.

‘I want to build us a big beautiful traditional style Caribbean house. Using only natural materials and with features that will provide us with a zero-carbon footprint.’ His eyes sparkled as he told me his plans. ‘We’ll use solar panels to generate our own electricity. We’ll dig a well and tap into the fresh water source here for our drinking water. We’ll finally have somewhere to call home. A perfect place to take time out and a base to return to between our travels. Where we can invite your family over to spend their holidays and where we can both grow old together. How does that sound to you, Lori?’

‘I think it sounds perfect,’ I told him with tears of happiness blurring my vision.

We gathered up our things to find the beach where he wanted to build our house.

Then Ethan opened the cooler again, to haul out a bottle of chilled champagne.

He waved it at me momentarily before stuffing it into his small backpack.

‘When we find exactly the spot to build our house, Lori, then we’ll open this to celebrate!’

I laughed and clapped my hands in excitement and approval at this wonderful idea.

We waded from the boat and back onto the little sandy beach in the heart-shaped bay from where we made our way into the steamy jungle once more. This time, we ventured in a westerly direction, into what looked like a beautiful and exotic tropical garden with giant vegetation and flowers everywhere and with butterflies and hummingbirds and other colourful birds in the trees. We stepped carefully over twisted roots and through feather-like grasses and wound our way through wild sugar cane and tall bamboo and trees with long hanging tendrils. We craned our necks to look up at the tallest of palm trees, laden with coconuts, and with their fronds waving back and to in the warm humid breeze. I saw bananas growing in great clumps, hanging down on storks, weighted down by the hefty purple cones of the banana flower.

There were breadfruits the size of footballs. Mangos and starfruits ripe and tantalisingly ready to eat. The tropical flowers that I recognised looked like those grown in heated botanical gardens back home. Others looked so vibrantly colourful and oversized and waxy that they looked completely unreal. With every step, I started to realise this island had an awful lot going for it. Ethan kept stopping along the route to take photos on his phone of the flora and fauna.

‘This island might look like a total escape from the outside world but as far as locations go it’s in the middle of the tropical suburbs,’ he told me. ‘It has protected waters. Consistent trade winds. Line of sight neighbours and it’s just a short boat ride from Tortola and its regional airport and the international airports on St. Thomas, Antigua, and San Juan.’

I started to get it. I began to understand.

Excitement fizzed up inside me like the effervescent bubbles in our soon to be popped champagne bottle. I could now see how this island was a middle ground for us between remote and accessible, public and private, and a perfect place for us to call home. It ticked all the boxes. It really was that perfect compromise that I’d been looking for and longing to find.

Suddenly, we reached a place where lush vegetation stopped and beach began, and we stepped out of the shaded surrounding jungle with its cool dampness underfoot into hot sunshine and hot powder fine white sand. I laughed and pointed out a discarded beer bottle in the sand. ‘I’m starting to doubt your claim no one has been on this island for a hundred years!’

‘Maybe there’s a message in it?’ Ethan suggested, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

I checked, just be sure, but only found a small hermit crab. Then an iguana crossed our path – a big one – looking like a fearsome prehistoric creature and I jumped back in surprise. Ethan reassuringly grabbed my hand, and then we both ran with our bare feet burning across the hot sand towards the water’s edge, where he pulled me into the clear and shallow waters of the calm blue lagoon and into his arms once more.

He kissed me long and hard until I was breathless and dizzy with desire for him. His big hands gently held my face then moved down my neck and my body and then holding me closely, he said to me in what was almost a whisper. ‘Lori, my darling, I know I’ve been acting a bit crazy lately. But, to be honest, I’ve been ridiculously nervous about coming out here with you today.’

‘Nervous? No way. The Ethan I know doesn’t do nervous!’ I protested, laughing.

I’ve seen Ethan keep his cool in the scariest of situations. Like the time he’d managed to keep his sensibilities about him when, in the middle of a vast ocean, everyone else was freaking out at the ships generator failing on us while we were engulfed in three hundred and sixty degrees of thick soupy sea fog, and all the noise and vibrations we’d all become used to had become an eerie and deafening silence. He’d proved unshakable.

‘Well, okay. Then I’ve been ridiculously excited,’ he relinquished with a grin.

‘Well, now I understand. This place is beautiful. And, like you said, it’s a rare find.’

He gazed deeply into my eyes, making my heart melt and butterflies flutter in my stomach.

‘It’s not just the island that’s got me excited. It’s because I knew that today it would be just you and me here. I knew it would be the perfect place. The perfect moment.’

And then he did something totally unexpected.

He got down on one knee, reached into a pocket in his shorts, and produced an exquisite solitaire diamond ring. ‘My darling, Lori, will you marry me?’

And, I fell down in front of him onto my own knees, in absolute astonishment.

My legs were shaking. My whole body quivering. I couldn’t breathe. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t swallow. I was dizzy. My heart was suddenly pounding so hard in my chest and so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t think properly. My mind and my thoughts, so clear just a mere moment ago, were now as fractured and streaming as the sunlight being refracted by the beautiful diamond being presented to me. What do I do? What do I say? What do I think?

The man I love is asking me to marry him.

This island, our new home, is an absolute paradise.

It’s perfect and he’s perfect.

So why do the obvious words escape me?

What’s not to love about him and this idyllic proposal?

Why am I hesitating and not immediately saying yes?

A searing silence hung in the air between us.

It was like the whole world and time itself had all stopped still.

There was not a breath of wind nor a ripple of movement in the lagoon.

And, instead of thinking with my heart, and saying yes because I love him, my head is once again filled with confusion. All I can think about is how my family who are back home will react? What will they say if I tell them I’m getting married again?

Then my own reservations surfaced too to present their side of the argument.

I’d been married before. So had Ethan. So why do it over again?

Tears welled up in my eyes. I tried desperately to blink them away.

Ethan’s handsome face was becoming oddly distorted.

I fought my panic and conflicting emotions and prepared to explain myself to him.

Perhaps I needed a little more time? Time to think.

Surely there was no urgency or reason for us to rush into anything?

Wasn’t us just being together and loving each other enough?

But when my vision cleared, I could see that his expression had indeed changed from romantically anxious to something that resembled downright furious. His eyes, just a moment ago were soft and loving and kind, were now wide and blazing and murderous.

Had I offended him so badly, with my hesitation, my reluctance?

And then I realised that he wasn’t looking at me at all.

He was looking right past me and over my left shoulder.

So, I turned to follow his distracted gaze and my mouth dropped open in astonishment.

At the far end of the beach, at the headland, where there where some giant boulders, there was also a giant construction crane. There was also a man-made jetty type structure jutting out into the sea with its concrete piles buried into the coral reef.

What the Hell was happening here!?

What about the pristine virgin eco-system? What about the untouched reef?

And what had happened to Ethan’s lawyers securing the hundred-year lease?

Suddenly, Ethan was no longer down on one knee. He was on his feet and running along the beach. I ran after him. My heart racing. My breath dry and rasping in the salt laden air. Sweat pumped and rolled from every pore on my body in the heat and humidity and under the ferocity of the midday sun. When I caught up with him, for a moment we stood side by side, panting in disbelief, at the offending machinery and chaos of construction that had already destroyed a whole section of coral reef. ‘I just don’t understand. It’s supposed to be ours!’ Ethan hissed.

Then, in a glimmering shimmering mirage, I saw a group of people.

Before I could even say a word, Ethan had spotted them too, and he was already scrambling in their direction. Again, I followed him in hot pursuit and saw that there were in fact four people standing in a huddle, perusing a document that looked like it might be a building plan.

There were three men and a woman. Two of the men, wearing hi-vis vests and construction helmets, were obviously the labour workforce here because they appeared to be listening to instructions from the other man. The one doing the talking was tall and well built, deeply tanned, silver haired, and smartly dressed in tailored shorts and a white linen short-sleeved shirt. This man had the air about him of someone incredibly important and affluent.

The woman standing beside him was willowy slim. She was wearing a pale-yellow sundress and large brimmed white straw hat. Beneath the hat, I could see she had a small heart-shaped face and that she had long bright red hair that she wore in a heavy braid over one shoulder. All four wore sunglasses, but still managed to look surprised to see us as we approached them.

I stopped a short distance from them and wrung my hands anxiously. This was awful.

I’d never seen Ethan so angry. Not even that time when we’d come across a gang of rogue fishermen using sticks of dynamite to fish on a coral reef in the Sulu Sea.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ He exploded, as soon as he’d got close enough.

The woman whipped off her sunglasses to reveal wide steely grey eyes. She fixed her gaze on Ethan, with what appeared to be familiarity. Then she suddenly started to laugh through her shimmering red lip-gloss. Her laughter sounding like the playful tinkle of sleigh bells. I couldn’t decide if she was brave or incredibly foolish to mock Ethan in such a way. The last time someone had dared to laugh in his face, he’d performed a citizen’s arrest and locked the offender in the hold, until he could be handed over to the authorities at our next port of call.

‘Well, what a surprise. If it isn’t the famous Ethan Goldman!’

Had she recognised him because he was quite famous?

Or did she actually know him?

Oh Lord, please tell me this isn’t another ex-wife!

‘I could ask you the very same question, brother!’ Snapped the smartly dressed man.

Brother? Was that a term of endearment or was this man Ethan’s actual brother?!

I narrowed my eyes and recognised the line of this man’s hair, the broadness of his brow, the strength of his jawline, the shape of his eyebrows, the contour of his profile and the clincher that was his aquiline nose. This man was Ethan but perhaps in ten years’ time.

Otherwise they were clones. Time twins. Doppelgangers.

What did this mean exactly?

Did it mean that this man – whom I trust implicitly with my life and whom I love with all my heart and who has caused me so much angst over whether or not to return to my own family and who had just proposed to me with a diamond ring on a perfect beach on bended knee – has blatantly lied to me all this time about his so-called lack of family?

Chapter 3
George Town, Grand Cayman

When Ethan is upset, he’s a man of very few words. I know this from experience because after a particularly traumatic incident at sea, involving a fully grown female whale and a Japanese whaling ship off the coast of the Philippines, when our ship The Freedom of the Ocean had arrived a little too late to save the whale but just in time to witness the terrible distress caused to her young calf, Ethan had hardly spoken a word for days afterwards.

When I’m upset, however, I need to talk it through. I need to micro-thrash the details.

So as we hurtled back towards Tortola at breakneck speed in our speedboat, I wanted to know how and why these people were drilling holes in Waterfall Cay – when it was supposed to be our island and our new home – and why, out of nowhere, it turns out that Ethan has a brother called Damion and a sister in law called Gloria.

But, when I voice my concerns and my confusion to him, I get the silent treatment.

Once we are back on Tortola, however, it appears we are on speaking terms again.

He tells me he’s taking a flight over to Grand Cayman to talk with his lawyers.

I point out that it’s already late in the afternoon. He assures me it can’t wait.

I say I’m going with him. The next thing I know we’re in a car heading to the airport.

I broach the subject again. It’s killing me that he’s lied to me. I need to know why.

My heart is so heavy right now that it hurts and I’m drowning in my own disappointment.

I’ve been the victim of lies once before and I’d promised myself never again.

My ex-husband lied to me and so did my best friend. It was cruel and soul destroying.

But Ethan? My strong, unshakable, dependable, rock? Well, that is truly heartbreaking.

Now, I look at him and I can’t help but to wonder what else I don’t know about him?

How many other secrets he might be hiding and keeping from me?

What other aspects about himself he might currently deny but eventually admit?

Ethan is slumped in his seat, his hand rubbing his forehead, as if he’s easing a pain.

‘I didn’t lie to you, Lori. He’s just no longer my brother. Hasn’t been for a long time.’

‘But he’s your sibling.’ I argued. ‘Just because you disowned each other doesn’t mean you’re no longer related. It’s not like divorcing Marielle. Your brother is family. He’s blood!’

‘Lori, forgive me, but this is not the time. I have to find out what happened with the lease.’

I bite my tongue and steel myself to stay silent. Not easy when I have so many questions.

And then, of course, there’s the elephant between us.

His marriage proposal is still hanging in the air.

At the airport, Ethan quickly charters a private jet. It takes us two hours to fly over to George Town on Grand Cayman. On the plane, in my big comfortable seat opposite Ethan, I sip a glass of champagne that was spontaneously offered to us after take-off. Only, it tastes sour in my mouth. Ethan didn’t even touch his. He just stared out of the small oval window, frowning.

At the lawyer’s office, I prefer to sit in the reception area listening to the heated exchange going on at the other side of a closed door. I check my phone. It’s 6pm here and so that means 11pm in the UK. It’s now too late to call my mum or my boys.

I decided to call Josh anyway and to leave another message.

When Ethan comes out of the lawyer’s office his face is red with rage.

‘Come on, Lori. Let’s get out of here. I need a drink.’

We walked two blocks and into a bar. I order a glass of wine.

Ethan orders straight bourbon. A double.

‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?’ I asked him tentatively.

He threw back his bourbon and swallowed it. ‘We lost it.’

I’m starting to feel sorry for him now. My heart softens. My anger dissipates.

I actually consider wrapping my arms around him to offer him some comfort because if Ethan’s drinking doubles then he’s having the worst day ever. And I’ve seen Ethan having bad days. Like the time we just happen to lose an underwater (thankfully unmanned) research drone that was apparently worth over a million US dollars. I consider his words for a moment.

‘How? I don’t understand. How did you lose an island?’

‘He got to the lease before us. His plan is to build a luxury hotel resort on the island.’

I shrug. ‘This isn’t like you, Ethan. If he got there first, then why all the resentment?’

Ethan was usually so philosophical about everything. I’ve never seen him harbour any hard feelings towards anyone. The need for justice, yes, absolutely. But, when faced with an unfairness, he’s normally the first person to say, ‘whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye’ which in Scottish, is the same as ‘what is meant for you by fate won’t pass you by.’

Obviously, he felt very differently regarding this particular situation.

‘Because he played dirty. I can’t believe he actually pretended to be me to get hold of that lease and then he took it for himself. He cheated us out of that island. Now do you understand?’

I nod my head slowly and I feel badly. I remember my ex-husband Charles doing something like that to me. He’d taken out a loan in my name because he’d been refused the credit. I only found out about it when he’d defaulted on the payments. ‘Yes. I think I do.’

‘Do you want to go back to Geluk Island for a while, Lori?’

I nod and offer a little smile and place my hand on his and give it a little squeeze.

Last January, we’d spent a blissful six weeks together on the island paradise called Geluk.

The name, pronounced Gluck, means ‘place of happiness’ and indeed we were very happy there. Ethan, or rather his foundation, the GGF, has an oceanic research centre on the Caribbean island. We’d spent our mornings working and diving on the coral reef and our afternoons upstairs in our private quarters making love. In the early evenings, we’d meet up with locals and friends at a beach bar at sundown, to enjoy rum cocktails and grilled seafood and spectacular sunsets. Then, hand in hand and under a sky full of stars, we’d stroll lazily back up the beach to our simple loft room under the swaying palm trees with its bamboo furniture and wooden shuttered windows. It was a perfect way of life. Idyllic, in fact.

The island, like Ethan, had quickly claimed my heart.

It was easy for me to imagine that we might have stayed on Geluk Island forever. Ethan had said that he’d once felt the same way about it. The island is situated in a sheltered bay between the Cayman Islands and the coast of Honduras. It’s often described by those who know of it as a well-kept secret – and they’d liken it to a Key West of the 1930’s era; a laid back and sleepy little gem of an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea.

Until of course that secret got out and the tiny tropical paradise became invaded by tourists.

On most days, it looked exactly how you might imagine a Caribbean island before any commercial tourism arrived. With just one main street and locally owned shops and businesses and quiet bars and restaurants. A commercial boat came in twice a week with imported supplies and the islanders principally trade in fish and shellfish and are self-sufficient in tropical fruits and coconuts. There are no cars there and there’s no pollution. People get about on bicycles or they simply walked everywhere as nowhere is too far away from anything else on Geluk.

There’s a real and very special sense of community amongst the population.

But, being so conveniently close to the Cayman Islands and now part of the new and popular cruise routes, means that half the time there are hordes of people on the island spoiling the ideal and the idyllic. Plus, Ethan is a kind of celebrity. Lots of people know of him and his work. Especially those in the diving community. He’s often recognised in the street and approached by strangers in bars and while simply trying to have a quiet drink and minding his own business.

He hates all the fuss. Especially if he’s being asked for his autograph.

So, I guess we’ll just have to move on and find our paradise home somewhere else now.

Or not. I mean, now that his dream of living on a private island in the BVIs has been taken away from him, I must once again wonder if he will ever want to settle down anywhere else?

And, is it even in Ethan’s nature to live in one place?

He’s an activist. A man of the world. And what about me?

I must question whether or not I am truly a woman of the world?

I can’t help but to doubt myself. Yes, I want to travel. Yes, I want to be with Ethan.

I’m still being torn in two by my wanderlust and my desire for stability.

But all those ‘wants’ feel so selfish when to claim them for myself means I have to treat my family like they no longer exist. I met a Buddhist monk in a golden temple in Thailand once, and he told me that Buddha says that you should remove the ‘I’ from ‘I want something’ because it is your ego, and you should remove the ‘want’ also because it is your greed. Then you’ll be left with your ‘something.’

And, as much as I try to reason with myself and apply all that I’ve learned over this past year into my decision making, that angel and devil of good and bad and positive and negative, sit on my shoulders to this very day to constantly whisper into my ears and taunt me.

And, of the two, I’m never sure which one of them is being entirely truthful.

I can’t help but to agonise over what it is that I must compromise on?

Today, with Waterfall Cay, it really seemed like I’d found the answer.

It seemed, in a moment of hope and glory, that I’d found my compromise.

But now that option has disappeared as fast as it came and I’m back to the same question.

How can I possibly choose to love a man over my own family?

How can I ever allow myself to really trust anyone ever again?

How can I trust another person when I can’t seem to trust my own instincts anymore?

When having it all is impossible and so means having to choose?

Ethan dragged his eyes away from staring at the bottom of his empty bourbon glass to look at me. I really don’t think I’ve ever seen him so dismayed. Not even when together we’d nursed a turtle, who’d been hit by the rudder of a longtail boat in Thailand, and its carapace was cracked open and its right flipper gone and a chunk missing from the edge of its shell.

‘Oh Lori, I lost something else today too —’ he confessed miserably. ‘I lost your ring.’

I didn’t know what to say. It was a beautiful ring. I just hoped it was insured.

‘I must have dropped it in the sand. I expect the chances of finding it again will be remote.’

I looked deeply into his soulful eyes. Those very beautiful but now incredibly sad pools of light and love and emotion. I couldn’t help myself. A great surge of love came crashing over my own fiery feelings and doused them out in a wave of both passion and compassion for him.

‘Ethan, losing a ring doesn’t mean you’ve lost my love. I love you. I want to be with you. But, despite what you call the cruise ship invasion, I still think that Geluk Island would be our next best choice as a perfect place for us to build a home together. Then we can have something that resembles a home life between our work projects. I need that stability. I want a door to close when I need to shut out the problems of the world. I want somewhere to rest when I’m feeling tired. I want walls on which to hang my favourite photographs. I’m afraid, I just can’t carry on like this —as a homeless nomad.’

Ethan shrugged and sighed and sulked and he didn’t look either convinced or happy.

‘I suppose I’ve always thought that one day, I’d settle down in the BVIs.’ He confessed. ‘I really wanted that island to be our home, Lori. I really felt we belonged there. Strangely, I’ve never felt that way about anywhere, not even Scotland. But, you’re right. I’ll just have to accept it’s not going to happen and move on. Just give me some time and I promise I’ll find us somewhere else to call home.’ He looked so incredibly sad and disappointed.

For someone who always seemed ready and prepared and who knew exactly how and when it was time to move on, I’ve never known Ethan to drag his heels, or to be so reluctant before.

‘Look —’ I tried to reason with him. ‘If this island is really that important to you, why don’t we go and talk to your brother about it? If he only knew how you feel – how very special this island is to you – then he might be prepared to back off and give it back to us?’

Ethan vehemently shook his head. ‘No way. Lori, you simply don’t understand who you are dealing with here. Damion will not give up the island. Especially, if he knew how special it was to me. There’s nothing that you or I can do about it. It’s gone.’

‘I simply can’t believe that to be true. You are brothers. Surely this can be worked out?’

Ethan shrugged again but it was more like an acknowledgement of defeat than of acquiesce.

‘If it was anyone else but him then I’d be inclined to agree with you,’ he said to me while signalling the bartender for another drink. ‘But Damion and I don’t get on and we never have.’

‘Never? Not even when you were small boys together?’ I queried.

‘No. Especially when we were kids. We were born ten years apart and it’s like we were born to be complete opposites in every way. We could never agree on anything. Damion would make everything into a competition that he would win no matter the cost or the consequence. If he wants something, then believe me, he will not stop until he has it and he will never give up or ever back down. It won’t work. So why don’t we just forget all about Waterfall Cay?’

‘Forget? But you said it was a rare find. You said it was your dream? There has to be another way. There must be something we can do. He is your brother and he must have some redeeming qualities. Surely, it’s time you two agreed on something and made amends?’

I pondered on my own childhood. I’d been an only child, but I’d always longed for a sister.

I’d imagined a sister to be a constant and reliable forever friend who would never let you down. I’d brought up my own two boys to be good friends and allies and to support each other.

‘Not while he is as stubborn as he is ruthless.’ Ethan noted sourly.

And just at that moment my phone rang. ‘Oh, I’ll need to take this. It’s Josh.’

A feeling of something that I can only describe as pure unadulterated dread washed over me in the moment when I saw that it was Josh calling. My stomach turned over because I knew it was well after midnight in the UK. It was the middle of the night. It was so unlike him to call at this time. Unless something was wrong?

And that’s when I heard the news about my mum and my mind and my body and my whole world went into a freefall of absolute and total panic.

‘What? Josh, slow down! What did you just say?’

I looked to Ethan. ‘My mum has had a heart attack. I need to go home right now!’

And Ethan did what he always does best. He immediately sprang into action.

He hailed us a taxi and we headed straight to the airport.

At the British Airways desk, he wanted to buy two first-class tickets to London, and we argued about it for a while, but I insisted that I needed to go home alone.

‘I need time to deal with this myself. My boys don’t know anything about us yet, Ethan. This is absolutely not the right time to tell them. I’ll call you. I’ll speak to them. I promise.’

Then in my rush to get to my gate and onto the plane that was already boarding, I turned to say goodbye to him, only to realise that I’d already gone through the point of no return.

And, suddenly, Ethan was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter 4
London UK

It’s early morning in London when I step off my overnight flight and it’s very dark outside. The temperature is reported to be well below zero degrees and everyone else has deplaned wrapped up in coats and scarfs and boots. To my embarrassment, I’m wearing a flimsy summer dress and flip-flops. I have a small backpack with me and no checked luggage because I’ve left the mainstay of my sparse belongings back in the Caribbean.

I emerge from the green zone of customs into the brightly lit bustle of the arrivals area at Gatwick airport and I’m feeling like an exile after being away for a whole year. I know I look different. I feel different. I’m also shivering violently from an assault of icy cold air that’s being sucked inside the terminal from the doors leading to the outside world. I’m chilled to the bone.

Goosebumps are doing a Mexican Wave across my entire body and it feels as if my skin, that just yesterday was warm and brown and supple in the humid tropical air, has suddenly become grey and shrunken and icy in response to the dry air on the plane and now the cold damp atmosphere in the UK. My eyes feel sore and heavy as I look around me in confusion at the faceless crowd. Then, to my relief, I hear a shout from a familiar voice.

‘Mum!’ And my heart leaps as if it’s been shocked back to life by a defibrillator.

Then I’m standing in front of Josh, my darling eldest son, who looks even taller and more handsome than I can ever recall. I throw myself into his arms before noticing he’s with someone; a pretty young woman with big dark eyes and long brown hair.

‘Mum, this is Zoey, my fiancée.’

I embrace Zoey and kiss her cheek and say how pleased I am to meet her.

‘Hello, Mrs Anderson. Wow—you are so suntanned!’ said Zoey, who was staring at me as if I’d just arrived from another planet and she’d never seen anyone quite like me before.

‘Oh, please, call me Lori.’

‘We’ve brought you a warm coat, Mum. We guessed you’d be getting off the plane in summer clothes!’ Josh was now helping me take off my small backpack, so that he could wrap a padded jacket around my shoulders, to save me from freezing to death.

‘Oh thank you! I feel so ridiculously underdressed. Oh, that feels lovely and warm!’

It smelled of a young person’s scent: light and fruity and fresh.

‘And thank you, Zoey. I assume this is your coat?’

‘Yes, but I have others, so you can keep it for as long as you need.’

Then I saw her looking down in sympathy at my stone-cold blue-tinged toes.

And I could tell she was wishing that she’d also brought me some socks and boots.

I turned to Josh for an update on my mother’s condition.

‘How is your Gran? Can we go straight to the hospital to see her?’

When I saw Josh and Zoey exchange uncomfortable glances my heart dropped like a stone.

Tears filled my eyes and I was now shaking so much I could hear my teeth rattling.

Clearly, I’d arrived too late and she was gone. I’ll never see her or speak to her or hug her ever again. There would be no joyful reunions here or in the Caribbean. I’d never be able to tell her about all my adventures and the people I’d met over the past year.

There is no time left in which to celebrate or to tell her how much I’ve missed her.

None of that was ever going to happen now. I was too damned late.

I let out a sob of grief and felt a great stab of sorrow and guilt rip through my breaking heart.

I’ve been so heartless and selfish in abandoning my family when they’d needed me here.

What had I been thinking? Taking off without a care or a thought for my loved ones?

I’d behaved appallingly. I’d thought of only myself, when one year ago I’d grabbed my handbag and my passport and ran from the house to get as far away as possible, thinking of nothing but leaving behind my adulterous husband and treacherous best friend. When, what I’d really done, is to selfishly abandon my whole family. I’d ran away and left my kids and my mother to deal with the aftermath of what happened that day and then to face the mess of divorce without me here. What must my kids think of me now?

Selfish? Indulgent? Weak?

For a whole year I’ve been travelling all over the world looking for purpose and happiness when that purpose and happiness was right here all the time – with my family. I hadn’t really needed to travel great distances or pray in golden temples or take guidance from monks in saffron robes or find ways to make a difference in the world. I’d already made a difference. I might not be a wife anymore, or a housewife, but I was still a daughter and a mother.

The full impact of this realisation and the consequences – that I’d never see my lovely mum ever again – was more than I thought I could take. I just stood there with tears streaming down my face. ‘Oh, Josh! I’m s-s-s-so very sorry!’

‘Mum. No. It’s not what you think!’ Josh responded rapidly to my deathly reaction. ‘Gran’s fine. In fact, she’s just been discharged from hospital. We feel badly now, for telling you over the phone that she’d had a heart attack, when actually it just turned out to be bad indigestion.’

I stood speechless and in shock with my mouth open for what seemed like an age.

I’m relieved, of course, that my poor mother isn’t dead or on death’s door, but part of me is now also somewhat annoyed. I’ve just flown half way around the world in a terrible state of panic. I’d left Ethan in a very bad situation and I’d practically given myself a coronary in my rush to get to the airport and onto a flight immediately after getting Josh’s phone call.

I hadn’t stopped to think. I’d just reacted.

And I suppose that’s exactly what I did this time last year too.

My instinct to run has by fate and circumstance brought me right back here.

And now the gruelling flight is over, and the awful panic dispersed and the weight lifted from my shoulders, I feel like I’ve just woken up from a nightmare and with a terrible hangover.

Maybe I’m suffering some kind of post-traumatic stress?

‘Come on, let’s get you out of here before you freeze to death,’ said Josh, rattling car keys.

We walked briskly outside of the terminal and crossed a dark wet and busy road filled with the noise of screeching taxis and the roar of busses and the clatter of people dragging enormous suitcases or pushing precarious piles of luggage on stiff wheeled trollies. Josh fed a parking ticket machine with notes and coins. When I saw how much it had cost him to park the car, I searched for my purse, before realising I didn’t have any money in Sterling to offer him.

‘Oh, can we stop at an ATM? I had meant to go and swap my dollars for pounds.’

‘No problem. I’ve got it. We can sort that out later, mum.’

I slid into the back seat of the car and soon we were driving away from the airport. It was the morning rush-hour and I peered out of the window at the foreboding sight of shiny slate grey streets and a background of darkness. It’s as if I’ve been transported from a world of technicolour into a one of monochrome. It was raining hard. I watched Josh’s head move from side to side in sync with the windscreen wipers as he negotiated the heavy traffic, checked the rear-view mirror, changed lanes and twiddled with the air con all at the same time.

‘We’ll soon have you warm, Mum,’ he said, setting the dial to red and the blower to full.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself by staring down at the goose bumps standing to attention on my bare knees and wondered if I’d ever feel warm again.

It had been thirty-six degrees C when I’d left Grand Cayman.

It was, of course, the middle of winter in the UK, so what could I expect?

But had it always been this awfully dark and dreary looking?

‘We’ll go straight over to Gran’s.’ Josh said. ‘She’s got the spare bedroom ready for you. She’s looking forward to having you stay with her until you get yourself sorted.’

I bit down on my lower lip and realised I was a homeless burden until I ‘get myself sorted’.

Sorted with what? My own place? I suppose that all depended on how long I stay.

And then I realise that I’m already contemplating leaving when I’ve only just arrived.

In the same front room of the small terraced house where I’d been born forty-eight years ago, my mum was sitting in her armchair with a cup of tea and a shortbread biscuit when we arrived. The house was warm, the TV was blaring, and she was watching Good Morning.

Her face broke into an immediate expression of joy when she saw me, and she leapt to her slipper-shod feet without any hesitation. ‘Lorraine! You’ve come home!’

‘How are you, Mum? You gave us all quite a scare.’ I said, hugging her tightly.

She ignored my comment and insisted on pouring me a cup of tea to warm me up.

Then she fussed over us and force fed us cakes and biscuits. When I asked how she was feeling, she replied that she was ‘feeling much better now’ but wouldn’t look me in the eye.

Then my younger son, Lucas, arrived and it felt so wonderful to be in the same room as both my sons again. I’d missed them so much that I didn’t want to stop hugging them. I found myself stroking their shirt sleeves and touching their faces and ruffling their hair. Checking they were real. And of course, it was lovely to meet and chat to Zoey, and admire the engagement ring she was wearing. Even though it made me emotional and tearful on two counts. I was full of joy for them both, but I couldn’t help but to be reminded of Ethan and the ring he’d offered me.

I wiped my tears and blew my nose and pulled myself together.

Zoey is a lovely girl and, although we’ve only just met, I immediately approved of her.

I see the way Josh looks at her and it’s clear that he loves her and that she loves him.

That’s good enough for me.

Oh goodness—my boy has become a grown man in my absence.

After an hour or so, Lucas and Josh and Zoey, said they had to get on as they had previously made plans for the day. It was a Saturday, so Mum insisted that they all come back again tomorrow, for Sunday lunch. Just knowing that I’d be seeing them the next day to catch up more on their lives made seeing them all leave a little easier. Then, once they’d gone, Mum insisted that she and I go upstairs to sort through her wardrobe to find me something warm to wear. I was incredibly tired. I just wanted to take a bath and have a good long sleep. But I knew that if I gave in to the jet-lag now, then I was likely to be wide awake in the middle of the night.

I followed my mum up her narrow and carpeted staircase, thinking that despite the generous gesture, I really didn’t want to wear any of her clothes. But I was hardly in a position to refuse.

She emptied the content of her entire wardrobe onto her bed and made me try things on.

Her trousers were all two inches too short on me. Her dresses were too wide. At least we were the same size in shoes. In the end, I chose a matching brown wool sweater and skirt ensemble and some one hundred denier tights and a pair of sturdy tan brogues. Teamed with Zoey’s jacket, I felt like a twenty-years-older version of myself, trying too hard to look trendy.

Once suitably clothed, Mum said we needed to ‘pop out to the shops’ to buy some more teabags and enough food for tomorrow’s family lunch. I stifled another yawn and checked my phone, wondering if I had any messages, only to find the battery was totally flat.

I put it on charge while we went out to the shops in mum’s old car.

Mum drove us and it was a terrifying experience. I’d felt safer in a tuk-tuk on the streets of Bangkok or hacking my way through the jungles of Borneo or fleeing pirates in the South China Sea than being in the passenger seat of my mother’s little car. Had she always been this bad a driver or had this only happened over the past year? She seemed to have lost all her road sense and also her sense of direction. The route to town was incredibly busy and the traffic was stopping and starting at every roundabout and set of traffic lights. It was now early-afternoon, but it was quite dark – twilight at best – and it was still raining heavily. The roads were so wet that they reflected every passing car’s headlights and my tired eyes felt dazzled. Mum chatted non-stop the whole time that it took us to get to the shopping mall, animating her laughter and conversation by waving her arms around her head, instead of holding onto the steering wheel and focussing on the road.

I sat rigid with fear in the passenger seat as we ran a set of red traffic lights and narrowly missed being hit by a lorry. The irate lorry driver had the nerve to stick his fingers up at me, while mum seemed oblivious to any other traffic on the road and drove around the roundabout twice because she’d missed the turn off onto the by-pass.

Eventually, after battling with an automatic ticket machine and a barrier at the entrance to the underground car park, we arrived at the shopping mall and found a space to park. I wearily followed mum’s hurried steps inside, where thanks to a blast of hot air from a blower over the entrance door, it was warmer and more comfortable.

There were already Christmas garlands decking the shopping aisles and a huge Christmas tree, fully decorated with lots of twinkly lights, stood in the main square. It looked quite wonderous. I stood staring at the tree for a moment, feeling surprisingly emotional and suddenly extremely grateful for being back here. It was all such a wonderful relief.

I turned to my mum and hugged her warmly and wiped a tear from my eye.

She hugged me too, laughing at my unexpected show of affection. Then she suggested that while she went into the supermarket, I should go off and buy myself some new winter clothes.

I agreed it was a good idea and we said we’d meet up with each other again in the square.

I know this mall very well. I know its lanes and avenues like Ethan must know the waters of the Caribbean. I must have walked through here many hundreds, if not thousands of times, as a housewife. I used to come here several times a week to do all my shopping.

Yet today, it doesn’t feel at all familiar to me in the same way it once did.

I really don’t understand it because all the shops that were here before are all still here.

Yet, it’s like I’m having a déjà vu experience and attributing it to another lifetime.

It feels surreal to me. I’m noticing things that I’ve never noticed before. I see how incredibly pale and pallid and stressed people look as they rush around and pass me, pushing loaded shopping trolleys, prams and pushchairs, dragging screaming toddlers, all while chatting incessantly into their mobile phones or to each other. There are so many droning voices being punctuated by piercing high pitched shrieks and background music and other sounds that it has all become a buzzing white noise to my ears. It’s bouncing off the steel and glass and cold white tiles that clad the walls and floor of the shopping mall.

It feels quite suffocating and all consuming.

After spending so much time in the third world, where people have so little by comparison, everything here suddenly seems so abundant and glossy and extravagant. Shop windows are full of unpractical stuff that no one really needs but will buy because its Christmas. People proudly carry a clutch of bags showing off that they’ve been and bought the big brands.

Clothing. Shoes. Cosmetics. It’s all so excessive.

But I’ve never noticed it before. Not that I used to be any different. I used to do it too.

I once felt it was important to have the designer handbag, the new coat, the right shoes for every occasion, and a new dress because I couldn’t possibly be seen out in the same one twice.

Not to maintain modesty or to keep warm but to impress and keep up appearances.

A child, of maybe ten years of age, ran into me without an apology. He’d almost knocked me off my feet but without a care he yelled and swore at me as if it had been my fault we’d collided. I noticed how well dressed he was in an expensive premier league football shirt and training shoes. The same branded trainers that I know my son Lucas loves to wear.

For some reason, I was reminded of something that happened to me not too long ago when I’d been shopping for fresh fruit on a street on one of the lesser known of the Caribbean islands.

The shops on the street were just wooden tables, some made from old doors, piled high with a selection of locally grown fruits or they were simply a battered looking wheelbarrow that was filled with ripe bananas fresh from a nearby tree. A young boy, again around ten years old, had spotted me doing my shopping that day and was soon running alongside me to beg to be allowed to carry my shopping bag. I guess that with my western looks and my blonde hair, I’d been an easy target for his attentions.

‘Let me help you, lady. Let me carry your heavy bags today?’ he pleaded so politely.

I’d been immediately charmed by his smile and his entrepreneurial spirit and so I let him carry my bag containing a few mangos, a couple of pineapples, a hand of bananas, knowing that I’d be soon asked for a dollar in return. The day was scorching. Blisteringly hot. And, as we walked along side by side, with the sun beating down on our heads and heating up the hot hard dry sand base that formed the street, I could feel the heat burning through the rubber soles of my flip-flops. Yet, I noticed this boy wore no shoes. I asked him ‘where are your shoes?’

And he simply smiled at me and shrugged and then shook his head.

And that too had made me stop and reflect on how in the western world we have so much.

A thought that I suppose simply wouldn’t have ever crossed my mind before I’d travelled.

Of course, we confuse the price of material things with the price of happiness, don’t we?

It’s only by stepping out of the material mindset that we can appreciate that confusion.

But I do need some new clothes today. I need some practical clothes to keep me warm.

So I head across the mall to a shop where I know I’m likely to be able to pick up what I need for a reasonable price. It’s a charity shop where I used to work several mornings a week as a volunteer. Where, for many years, I’d worked with the same group of women who I called my closest friends. One of them, Sally, had been my very best friend in the world.

I used to confide in her. We’d had a laugh together. And a cry, sometimes, too.

But I didn’t want to see Sally today. Not yet. Not now.

Not dressed in my mum’s clothes and looking red-eyed and exhausted.

I know that’s incredibly vain of me, but I’ll freely admit to being a proud woman.

In Buddhism, pride and vanity are considered poisons, as they are part of a selfish ego.

No doubt, here in this small suburban town, where everyone knows everyone and everyone else’s business, I will bump into Sally soon enough. But, by then, I hoped I’d be more up for the challenge. More prepared. Because, if I was being honest, the thought of seeing Sally again filled me with anxiety and dread and a great dollop of despair.

What would we say to each other after what had happened and after all this time?

It’s not as if the past year has changed what I saw or diminished what she was doing with my husband in our marital bed on the day I came home unexpectedly early. If anything, it has amplified it. It’s like that horrific moment has being preserved – frozen in time – until it can be properly addressed and Sally and I face both the consequences and each other in real time.

Yet seeing Sally used to fill me with joy. She was my best friend.

More than that, she was like the sister that I’d never had and always wished for.

I suppose that’s what made this whole thing worse. Even more heartbreaking.

Why couldn’t Charles have had an affair with his secretary instead?

Why did it have to be the woman whom I’d allowed to become my soul sister?

I suppose it was for all the same reasons that I’d once loved her too. Sally was an attractive and sophisticated woman. She was great company and she was always upbeat and fun. She never seemed to run out of interesting things to say or exciting things for us to do together.

When Sally decided to lose weight and get fit, we joined the gym together. When she needed new clothes and makeup, we went shopping together. When she decided to learn French, we signed up for evening classes. We confided in each other completely and talked for hours over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine in each other’s kitchens. We confessed our most intimate secrets. I now cringed at the thought of telling her that Charles and I rarely had sex.

When I reached the charity shop, I see another co-worker and friend at the counter and so I go inside. I walk along the sale rail and pick out a couple of sweaters, a pair of jeans and a warm coat, a thick wool scarf and then head over to the till. When Taryn sees me, her eyes light up and she gasps in surprise. ‘Lorraine! You’re back! And, oh my gosh, you look fantastic!’

‘Yeah, I just got back today. I need a few things to wear. How are you?’

‘I’m fine. Just the same as ever. You know how it is. Nothing ever changes here.’

I nod my agreement as she rings up my purchases and I hand over my bank card.

‘We’re still short staffed, if you want your old job back, it’s yours!’ she said, while bagging my new-to-me things and putting me right on the spot with her immediate job offer.

I panicked a little and shrugged. ‘Oh, erm—I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘Sally doesn’t work here anymore. Just in case you were wondering. None of us liked what she did to you. Taking your husband. Moving into your house. If that helps?’

‘Maybe—’ I said, feeling a little flustered and trying to think of what to say in response and failing miserably. My jet lag was suddenly making me dizzy and giving me a headache.

‘Let me think about it and I’ll call you. Thanks, Taryn.’

I walked away not feeling as pleased as I might but feeling slightly horrified.

How easy it might be to slip straight back into my old life here?

Not all of it. Not back to being a housewife or a best friend. But the rest of it.

In many ways, being back here so abruptly, it feels like the past year has only been a dream.

That heading straight for the airport and arriving in Bangkok, then exploring Thailand, island hopping down the Andaman Sea all the way down to Malaysia; then having to convince Josh and Lucas – after they’d flown all the way out to Kuala Lumpur to bring me back – that I was still relatively sane and wanted to continue to travel, had only happened in my imagination.

But it did happen and because of it I knew I wasn’t the same person anymore.

I wasn’t Lorraine Anderson, housewife. I’d become someone else entirely.

I was now Lori Anderson, a world explorer.

I’d crossed continents and sailed the oceans and seen the most amazing things.

Yet nothing here in this town seemed to have changed at all.

And there was undoubtably something strange and disconcerting about that fact.

I thought back to yesterday, when I’d been on a beautiful Caribbean tropical island, swimming naked in an emerald green lagoon fed by a waterfall, with a tiny butterfly sitting on my hand. The symbolism hadn’t escaped me. In the same way that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, I felt that I too, in travelling, had emerged from a cocoon and found my wings.

And then, of course, I’d met and fallen in love with Ethan.

At a time when I never thought I’d ever find love again.

Whom I’d left reeling and alone in Grand Cayman.

Who still deserved an answer to the question he’d asked me on the beach yesterday.

Had it really only been yesterday?

Chapter 5

I woke the next morning with an anxious jolt and in surprise at finding myself back in my old bedroom at my mother’s house in London. I’d been dreaming about being onboard The Freedom of the Ocean and so that’s exactly where I’d expected to wake up – in our cabin and in our small bed – with Ethan beside me. The creaking sound I’d heard in my sleep wasn’t caused by the ropes and the sway of the boat as I’d thought but by a tree in my mum’s garden.

I’d woken expecting Ethan’s big warm body to be stretched out next to mine, his long and tanned legs in a tangle with the sheet that had covered us in the chill of night. The sheet that would always end up discarded as soon as the sun had risen over the line of the horizon, sending pale pink shimmers of light through the small porthole above our heads followed by an intense yellow blinding light that quickly heated up our little cabin, until we lay splayed out and soaked with perspiration in our nakedness.

Then in our drowsy state, we would reach out to each other without opening our heavy-eyes and we would rouse each other with a tender touch, a sweeping finger, a tentative kiss from drowsy lips on hot sensitive skin. Then our breathing would quicken, and our tender touches would become something more urgent, and without a word uttered we would welcome this brand new day and greet each other, with a celebration of our lovemaking.

Realising I was quite alone and that the room was chilly and dark, I quickly grasped the reality of my new situation. My mind flitted over all that had happened over the last forty-eight hours. The island. Ethan’s brother. The news. The panic. The flight. Being back home.

I snuggled back under the duvet and sank into the warm comfortable mattress and let my head lay heavy on the soft pillow. A feeling of peace and relaxation and acceptance washed over me. I heaved a great sigh of relief that my mother’s heart attack had been a false alarm.

I found myself smiling until my smile became a ridiculously happy grin in knowing that my mum was perfectly all right and it was just a few weeks until Christmas and I was back here with my family. Just like I’d wanted. After all the pining and moping, and all the missing and the wishing that I’d done over the past few months, I really should be making the most of every precious minute with my family. I really should be making up for all the time I’d been away.

So, with a lightness of heart, I grabbed my phone from its charger on the bedside table to find that because I’d turned the sound down to sleep blissfully uninterrupted, I’d missed four calls from Ethan. On the last attempt, he’d left me a voice message, saying how relieved he was to hear that my mum was okay. He’d also said that he was missing me and that he still regretted not travelling back with me to the UK. I played the message twice over to listen to his deep and smooth and oh so sexy voice with his gorgeous Scottish lilt. I knew I could listen to him talk forever because his voice melted my heart and soothed my soul.

And I was missing him too. I was missing him so much that it hurt.

So much that my heart was heavy again and my thoughts conflicted and confused.

Arrrgghhhh! Was it even possible for me to ever feel completely contented with life?

What did Buddha say about contentment? That it is the ‘greatest wealth’.

I tried to call Ethan back but to my disappointment I got his automated answer again.

And that was the problem in having an entire ocean between us and being on two different time zones. I left him another message saying I’d just slept off my jet lag. That I was fine and I was looking forward to spending the day with my family. That I would try to call him again later if he didn’t call me first. And that I loved him.

Then I realised I could smell cooked bacon wafting upstairs from the kitchen.

Oh my goodness – I smell British bacon! Big fat rashers of lean and meaty goodness.

For a while now, I’ve been a vegetarian. It’s a personal choice but it’s one that fits in with my new beliefs and my life as a conservationist. I do feel passionately about animal welfare and greenhouse gas emissions and global warming and so not eating meat seems ethical to me.

In joining The Freedom of the Ocean, I had been correct in assuming that everyone else onboard would also be vegetarian. What I hadn’t expected, however, was that marine biologists generally don’t eat fish either and so are mostly vegan. I had happily and perhaps naively considered that living on ship, surrounded by water and therefore a bounty of seafood, would have meant me having to find a zillion different ways to serve fish for dinner.

It makes perfect sense to me now of course that people who protect and study fish don’t actually eat them. But I must admit (although certainly not publicly) that I love eating seafood.

So, I was quite gutted – pun intended – by the dietary restrictions and also in having to find a zillion different ways to serve tofu. Ethan, who like most men will happily eat anything he’s given on a plate, would if pressed always describe himself as a ‘flexitarian.’ In that he takes a more environmentally sustainable approach to the source of his food in occasionally eating meat and fish and other animal products. I’d always thought this was cheating and like having your beef cake and eating it. So, I did now feel terribly guilty, as I leapt out of bed and into the slippers and dressing gown that mum had kindly loaned me and padded down the stairs following the scent of cooked bacon into the kitchen.

My mum was at the stove waving a spatula at me. ‘Good morning, Lorraine!’

I was so overjoyed to see her, alive and well and real, that I rushed across the kitchen to put my arms around her and squeeze her tightly. ‘Good morning. I love you, mum!’

She laughed and kissed my forehead and ruffled my bed head hair, saying I should pour us both a cup of tea. Then we sat at the kitchen table eating good old British bacon sandwiches with HP sauce squidging out of them and drinking our strong tea and putting the world to rights.

We talked about all the things I’d missed as well as my family – TV soaps, British magazines, proper tea, fish and chips with mushy peas, Yorkshire pudding, proper gravy, Victoria sponge cakes and steamed pudding with thick creamy custard. Until we realised that we’d chatted half way through the morning and, as Lucas and Josh and Zoey where coming over for lunch, it was now time to start preparing the main meal. I was so excited.

This was going to be the kind of family day that I’d dreamed about for so long.

One that I’d dreamed of while standing onboard ship, looking across an endless ocean.

While sitting on hot sand with my toes in the tideline, gazing at an unbroken horizon.

Walking through a tropical forest, staring up through palm fronds into a cloudless blue sky.

Thinking about my precious and beautiful family so many thousands of miles away.

So, while I was helping mum and peeling vegetables and setting the table with a pristine white cloth and her best china, I happily continued to listen to her chatting away and telling me all about her social clubs and the pensioner trips she’d taken over the summer, all about her friends and what they were doing, and how busy she’s been with her church activities all year.

She told me how she’d recently started helping out at a homeless charity. That she still volunteered at the hospice and the local hospital and the food bank. This was all on top of the reams of stuff she did through her church. My mum is a kind and generous woman. She seems to have boundless energy and keeps her days incredibly full and active. I’ve noticed that some of the people she helps and refers to as the ‘older ones’ or ‘the elders’ are actually a lot younger than she is and I find myself wondering how she even has the time to sit here chatting with me.

‘Oh, don’t worry!’ she assures me when I ask if she’s going to miss church today. ‘Joan’s handing out the bibles today. As I’ve just come out of the hospital, John, that’s our Minister, has insisted I take this Sunday off. But maybe you and I can do it together next week, Lorraine?’

‘I’d really love that—’ I said, deciding that rather like my vegetarianism, I might be best to keep my new belief in Buddhism to myself.

Mum asked about my travels again. She wanted to hear more about places I’d seen.

So I regaled her with my adventures in Thailand at the turtle sanctuary and in Borneo learning about the Orangutans. How I’d learned to be a scuba diver and how amazing it was to be underwater and helping to restore coral reefs that had been damaged by either man or nature and about the lovely people I’d met and the incredible experiences I’d had along the way.

But I also continued to stress how I’d really missed her and the boys the whole time.

How I was really and truly happy to be home.

In turn, she confessed how worried she’d been about me.

‘I want you to know that every Sunday in church, I prayed to The Lord to protect you.’

Then she put down her teacloth and I saw she was trembling and had become a little tearful.

‘Mum, are you okay? What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘Lorraine, I do understand about you going off to Thailand. I understand why you felt the need to run away from that bloody no-good husband of yours after what he did with that no-good woman who’d called herself your friend. But all this time you’ve been away, a whole year, I’ve been hardly able to bear the thought of you out there all alone and so far away from us. And, for the life of me, I just don’t understand how you ended up running away to sea on that damned ship and going all the way around the whole world on it!’

I took a deep breath and decided this was exactly the right time to tell her about Ethan.

‘Look, mum, if we are being honest with each other then I have something to tell you too. I wasn’t all alone out there. I have someone. I’ve met someone quite wonderful and that’s why I went on the ship. I wanted to be with him and it was the only way for us to be together.’

‘He’s a sailor?’ she gasped in horror, as if sailors were the absolute depths.

‘No. He’s not a sailor. His name is Sir Ethan Goldman and he’s a famous explorer.’

Mum’s eyes practically popped right out of her head and into her tea cup.

‘He’s a philanthropist, which means he does amazing things all over the world to help people and animals and to save the planet, and that’s why he was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen.’

Mum, who was a big fan of The Queen, was immediately smitten.

‘Oh, go on, Lorraine. Tell me some more about Sir Ethan and your trip around the world?’

As she took a seat and dunked another shortbread into yet another cup of tea, I obliged.

I explained how after first meeting Ethan in Asia, and after a month or so of us living in the Caribbean together, he had been called to an important meeting in Grand Cayman. ‘It was to discuss a high-profile project to do with climate change with the world organisations. Naturally, they all wanted Ethan heading up the team. I knew at once when he returned to me that he’d already agreed to go. And, why wouldn’t he?’

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