The Backpacking Housewife Page 16

  Over the past week, we’ve often played ‘where in the world’, ‘likes and dislikes’, ‘three favourite things’ and ‘name three things you’d take to a desert island’ as a covert way to get to know each other better. This keeps things between us cordial and safe and polite and also fun.

  Where in the world: It seems he’s been almost everywhere and from what I can tell, he’s also managed to tick off everything on my bucket list.

  Likes and dislikes: He doesn’t like women who wear too much make-up (he prefers the natural look) or women who have hang-ups about food (so I guess Marielle was just naturally skinny) and he also says he doesn’t like pineapples, which is weird, as he has at least two shirts with a pineapple pattern and he eats pineapple pudding.

  Three favourite things: Name three of your favourite artist/bands, songs, animals, colours, books, foods, drinks, movies. Me: Jack Johnson. Anything sung by Jack Johnson. Dogs. Green. Him: Morrissey. Every Day is like Sunday (says it reminds him of Scotland for some reason). Orangutans. Blue.

  Three things you’d take to a desert island: Me: a box of books, a bag of sunscreen, and a crate of wine (he said that’s cheating). Him: a machete, a flint, his guitar.

  But tonight. Well, tonight has a whole different feel to it.

  There are no gaming questions. No teasing or even any tentative flirting.

  Tonight, there is a feeling of sadness in the tropical sultry air between us.

  This time tomorrow, I will be on Langkawi island and Ethan will be in Kuala Lumpur.

  So, when we reach the water’s edge, we sit on the sand next to each other, close enough to feel each other’s body heat but not quite touching and we sip our beer and we watch the sun go down and we are silent. We both know there are things to be said but neither of us feels the need to say anything just yet. I suppose it’s our way of honouring the incredible beauty of our last sunset together on this beautiful island and respecting nature’s nightly spectacular lightshow of pastel pinks and violets deepening into magenta and amber as the sun dips down over the horizon. It certainly warrants us being speechless for this grand finale.

  Although, I see it’s also dark and stormy in the far-off distance.

  It’s reflective of my mood. It’s just perfect right now but it could be gloomy later.

  The fluorescent green lights of the squid boats on the far horizon are brighter than usual against the inky blackness of those tumbling clouds. I can hear the warning sounds of faraway rumbles of thunder. We continue to sit as the light fades and then we turn our faces to the night sky. Directly above us, stars are starting to pop out like faraway flashbulbs, planets and universes and cosmoses too, are all being reflected in the still lagoon in front of us and creating a miracle of tiny lights with no up or down or end in sight.

  I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the warm and salted air and after holding it for a moment, I let it go as one long and heavy sigh, breaking our mutual time of silence.

  ‘So, Lori. Tell me, have you decided where you’re going after Langkawi yet?’

  ‘Yes. I’m thinking of going to Borneo to help out at an orangutan orphanage.’

  He smiles and nods. ‘You are a lovely lady, Lori. Gosh that sounds just like a song lyric. I must write that down. Lovely lady Lori…’

  He starts to sing it. I laugh. ‘What, you’ll write a song … about me?’

  ‘Aye. A love song…’ he says, finding my fingers and lightly kissing the back of my hand.

  My heart is melting and his words and his lips are like an aphrodisiac to my love-starved body. My wanton lust for him is off the Richter scale. When I lift up my eyes to meet his, it actually terrifies me how much I want him. But I remember the words whispered to me by the young monk of Chiang Mai about ‘want’. There was once a lady who said to Lord Buddha, ‘I want happiness’ and Lord Buddha told her that she must remove ‘want’ because that was her greed. And then, she would be left with ‘happiness’.

  In another time and place – somewhere real – I know I could easily fall in love with him.

  But right now, it’s a bit like Marielle’s spirit is sitting between us, a ghostly chaperone.

  ‘I see another opportunity for you. If you’re interested?’

  I gaze at him curiously. ‘Really? What is it?’

  ‘You could come with me. I’ll be in Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days before I head over to another small island just like this one. This time it’s a re-established coral garden. I need another diver to work with me. It’s mostly shallow diving, so you’re already qualified for the job. It would be the perfect place for you to increase your logged dives and even get your advanced diver certification. How am I doing? Have I talked you into it yet?’

  I stare at him. I think I might have even left my mouth open. I don’t know what to say.

  Was this perhaps our other time and other place?

  ‘So where exactly is this island with its coral garden?’ I ask him.

  He sits closer to me, leaning in, as if he’s telling me a secret.

  ‘It’s in the Sulu Sea, just off northern Malaysia, in the national marine park there. It’ll just be for a month, maybe less, all depending on the arrival of the seasonal tides.’

  I’m tempted. Diving. Spending more time with Ethan. It sounds heavenly.

  It sounds perfect but then perfect is not always real, is it?

  He reaches out to touch my face and his voice is now low and gentle.

  ‘I really want us to be together, Lori. Please say you’ll come?’

  And, as much as I want to say yes, I really don’t think either of us is ready for that big a commitment. Not yet. He’s not offering me a job. He’s offering me a relationship. It’s true we have made a connection here but, whether it is real or imaginary, we are also both still connected to other people. He might be separated but he is still married to Marielle.

  Just as I’m still married to Charles. And it’s not past history – its current news.

  I’m starting to feel guilty about something but I’m not sure what. Maybe it’s just being so far away and out of touch. My kids are still my kids even if they are also grown men. I still have accountability to them if not responsibility. Being off grid has certainly been conducive to my state of mind – it has helped me think more clearly – but seeing things clearly often comes with mind-blowing guilt trips as a consequence.

  Ethan is waiting for my answer.

  He continues to hold onto my hand but I think he realises I’m about to turn him down.

  I take a deep breath. ‘Ethan, these past two weeks have been very special to me.’ I pause, trying to keep my voice steady and to deliver my thoughts coherently, even though I’m trembling inside and I don’t trust that what I want to say will come out right. ‘But, we are both actively dealing with the end of our current relationships, so I feel the timing is wrong for us.’

  I chew on my lower lip anxiously and wonder how he’ll respond.

  ‘Timing…?’ he reiterates, as if he can’t quite believe my reasoning.

  I nod. ‘Yes. Ethan, the truth is, I wish you and I had met six months from now.’

  ‘But I was going to say that the timing is perfect,’ he argues. ‘We have both realised our current relationships – only I’d much prefer to call them past relationships – aren’t working and that we are both free to move on.’

  ‘Ethan, I disagree,’ I counter immediately. ‘We are not free to move on and that is why our timing is truly terrible. Please, believe me, when I tell you that I wish things were different and that I will really miss you. I’ve loved being with you here and having this time together.’

  He kisses my hand again. ‘Okay. I get it. You need more time.’

  We walk back up to the camp. The lads and lassies are nowhere to be seen.

  Ethan and I stand facing each other in the dull red light from the camp and he wraps his strong arms around me and hugs me tightly. I hear him sigh and feel his warm breath on my hair and the softn
ess of his lips as they graze past my earlobe and across my cheek.

  I know he wants to kiss me.

  With all my heart, I want to say yes, yes, yes.

  But I bury my face in his palm tree-patterned shirt and I swallow back a sob while holding onto him. I know that in the morning, when we part company, there will be no time for sentiment or tears or anything other than a firm shake of hands and cursory kisses to the side of the face. I want to kiss him properly now but I know if I start then I won’t want to stop.

  I inhale his scent – an intoxicating mix of manliness and coconut oil and sea salt – and I whisper into his ear. ‘So, I guess this is goodbye.’

  As he looks down at me, I see his sea green eyes are sparkling with sad glossy tears.

  And my heart aches all the more.

  ‘Lori, if this really is goodbye, then do you fancy a little nightcap?’

  ‘Do you mean a beer?’ I actually can’t face another beer this late in the evening.

  He smirks at me. His boyish grin has returned. ‘Do you like whisky?’

  ‘Well, that rather depends on whether you mean Scotch or Thai?’ I reply quite honestly.

  He disappears to his bungalow and soon reappears with a bottle of Scotch.

  He pours two good measures into a couple of clean jam jars that doubled as glassware.

  We sit down next to each other on the wooden steps in front of Turtle HQ.

  ‘What are we drinking to?’ I ask him, raising my glass.

  ‘How about better timing?’ he suggests, looking me squarely in the eye.

  ‘Sure. To better timing!’ I knock my glass against his.

  When I get back to my bungalow, my heart is heavy and my body is tingling from the after-effects of the whisky and the after-shock of Ethan’s farewell embrace. I wanted to kiss him. I ached to kiss him. But what good would it do either of us to taste forbidden fruit?

  I shower and treat my foot, smearing it with a little antibiotic cream.

  There is an indented patch of new white skin forming over where the infected graze had been but it’s healing nicely. Ethan says I’m likely to always have a scar there now as a reminder of him. But I think the scar that will remind me of him is on my heart, not my foot.

  I chase the bellowing bullfrog around the bathroom for a while before I give up and go to lie in my hammock. My mind is full of thoughts about Ethan. I try to imagine the small tropical island he is going to and what it might be like to go diving there on the coral garden reef.

  Then I try not to think about us spending all our time together on the beach, in the sea, and what it would be like sharing his bed and to make love with him every single night as the sun sets on our very own paradise. Oh, how my heart aches. How my poor body aches for him!

  And all this while, Barry the bullfrog White is doing a duet with a fuck-you lizard.

  A couple of hours later, there’s a tap on the door.

  I answer it in my shorts and vest to find Ethan standing outside my door.

  ‘Have you come to catch my bullfrog?’ I ask him, hopefully.

  ‘Come on, I want to show you something,’ he says, holding out his hand to me.

  I follow him outside into the darkness and he guides me along the path to the beach.

  When we reach the point where our feet touch the sand, we stop and I gasp in wonder and astonishment. What is happening here? What is this?

  The night sky is filled with thousands of stars. Tiny, twinkling, sapphire blue and white lights all being reflected in the flat calm liquid mirror of the lagoon. But now, in addition to the night sky, the sand on the beach is full of stars too. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  A sparkling Disney-esque fairy-tale or something out of the movie Avatar?

  Am I still asleep in my hammock and dreaming this?

  The whole beach is glowing with tiny individually luminescent sand particles.

  ‘It’s bioluminescence,’ Ethan explains. ‘A natural lightshow from phytoplankton.’

  ‘I’m completely bowled over – it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,’ I breathe.

  ‘It’s been washed up on the beach, and now the tide’s going out, it’s leaving behind these tiny light-producing organisms in the sand. It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?’

  This truly is a spectacular phenomenon. Ethan scoops up a handful of sand and he pours it into my cupped palm. I’m left with a handful of sparkling electric blue particles running through my fingers. It looks like stardust. We run into the middle of the beach to be enveloped in the magic of it all. Once again, I’m amazed by the natural wonders of this world of ours.

  Ethan still has hold of my hand. He pulls me slowly and purposefully towards him and he looks deeply into my eyes. ‘I felt the very same way, the first time I saw you, Lori. Completely bowled over.’ His voice is gentle, soulful, and sincere. ‘Would you mind if I kissed you?’

  I tip my face up to his and say to him softly, ‘I think your timing is perfect.’

  Chapter 12

  Koh Lipe

  The speedboat arrives the following morning, on time at 10 a.m. Onboard are the new team members taking over our responsibilities for the remaining nests and for their own assignment.

  There are two girls and two guys, who seem to me to be overly enthusiastic to meet Ethan. There are also half a dozen passengers onboard who are heading down to the border with us and who are all agog with amazement at stopping off at an island none of them had known existed and that looks so out-of-this-world perfect.

  There isn’t much time for a handover, but we’ve cleaned up the camp and packed up our personal belongings and now Ethan and Jodie and Laura and George and David and I are all stood on the beach with our backpacks, ready to climb aboard the boat headed for the last vestige of Thailand where it meets Malaysia.

  As we speed along the Andaman Sea in the fast-moving speedboat, with the wind whipping our hair and snatching away our voices, conversation isn’t easy, so we are left alone in our thoughts about the time we have shared together and our adventures still to come.

  At breakfast this morning, everyone had spoken enthusiastically about travelling to their new destinations, even though there was a tangible feeling of sadness that our mutual time together on Koh Phi Tao had come to an end. David and George still have each other’s company to look forward to and so do Laura and Jodie, as they’re moving onto new teams and new adventures with the Goldman Global Foundation in the Philippines and Indonesia respectively. Ethan is sat across from me on the boat. He is wearing dark sunglasses and he has his Indiana Jones style hat pulled down over his face. I guess he may or may not be sleeping. Either way, despite the heat of the day, I feel a cold tangible distance between us now.

  When we get to Koh Lipe, the beach is busy. It could have been idyllic, but it’s teeming with people and the waterline is packed with long-tail boats all anchored in lines and on ropes and with their extended bows bedecked with colourful garlands and flowers. We join the masses of people and their luggage in the line to clear border control and the customs office checkpoint, which is of course, in a small hut under a palm tree on the beach.

  The heat on the beach is stifling and shade is non-existent. I’m so glad to have remembered my sunhat this time or I don’t think I could survive standing in line for the time it takes to get to the front of the queue. When it eventually comes to my turn, I find myself at a small window where a uniformed Thai official is sitting. He demands to see my tickets, my departure card and my passport and then he waves his hand dismissively, flicking his cigarette ash at me. ‘Go. Wait. Go!’ he yells. I guess someone is having a bad day.

  I step aside and Ethan takes my place at the window and goes through the same procedure. Then we both shuffle aside to wait as we’re told, with another group of people.

  I feel so nervous at having to give up my passport. I mean, it was after all my most precious possession, and there are so many people here and so many passports being handed over that I’m dete
rmined not to let this official out of my sight while he has it.

  This means waiting in the scorching sun until my precious passport is back in my hand.

  Ethan says he’ll go and find us some water and then he disappears into the melting madness and reappears over a dehydrated hour later, by which time I’m sure I have sunstroke, with two bottles of water for us. He says the queue for refreshments was unbelievable madness.

  Just as I am thinking how awful all this all is, there is suddenly a commotion.

  Something is happening. A border official has appeared and is calling out names.

  I listen carefully for ‘Lorraine Anderson’ and then step forward when my name is called. I am given a label for my backpack and sticker for my shirt that says ferry on it but still no passport. ‘Can I have my passport back please?’ I ask him politely but I am ignored and more names are read out, Ethan’s included, and he steps forward too.

  ‘But when do we get our passports back?’ I want to know.

  Another passenger tells me our passports would now be given to the ferry boat captain, who would keep them until we were physically out of Thailand. I do not find this at all reassuring and so follow the official carrying a box of passports right down to the beach where all the long-tail boats are lined up and where I can see a large ferry waiting out at sea.

  ‘No. Not yet! Wait up there, not on beach!’ I am told by the officially rude man.

  I pretend I don’t understand him. Ethan has joined me on the beach now and this tactic at least has us first in line for boarding the long-tails that would transport us to the waiting ferry. Then, after being packed into one of the long-tails, gripping my backpack and gritting my teeth, I manage to head the scramble to get aboard the ferry and secure us two seats on the upper premium deck where I think I’m less likely to get seasick.

  The seats upstairs cost just one hundred baht extra – around a measly two UK pounds – but they are larger, more comfortable, in an air-conditioned cabin and also include a bottle of cold drinking water each. An absolute bargain.