Island 1

My eyes snap open. I’m awake, but not completely. I’m not sure where I am. It feels like a cage – a great, soft, white cage. All around me is this white haze – an unpleasant milky whiteness surrounding me, above and all around. I can’t catch my breath. It’s soupy warm. Nasty. The white everywhere makes it worse – it’s above me and around me on all sides. The only splash of coIour is the bright turquoise linen cover, crumpled in a heap at the end of the bed. I can’t breath and I am terrified. I kick my legs free of the sheet – kick it off completely. Remember what the doctors said, remember? It’s just a panic attack. The more you worry the worse it will be. Calm down. Calm down. Sit still and take slow deep breaths. In and out, in and out. If you have a bag, breath into that, if not, it’s okay – you just have to breath deeply, and slowly. I concentrate on this for a while. I calm down slightly and as that happens, it feels easier. The panic lessens.

I’m properly awake now and it’s a little less intense. I don’t feel as if I’m going to die anymore. I still hate the mosquito net though – makes me feel trapped – claustrophobic. I pull it to one side, getting ensnared briefly in the mesh – ugh – horrible clinging stuff. Apart from my breathing, the room’s completely silent. I sit up, I have no idea what the time is – not night anymore, but only just light. I am still dazed by sleep, exhausted by the panic attack, still scared. I am scared by lots of things these days – since I got sick – enclosed spaces, heights, strangers – even sleep. . Sleeping brings nightmares, and I don’t like waking up because then I remember, and the realisation of that is like a big heavy weight pressing down on top of me. Before it all happened nothing frightened me.

Anyway – I’m not totally sure where I am. I’ve been in so many places lately it’s confusing. I look around. I’m not in my great aunt’s house with its formal heavy dark polished wood. There are no paintings of the Virgin Mary, It’s all pale here. Pale stone walls – a golden pale now the mosquito net’s up, and dotted around are pretty little statues, and tea lights, placed in niches in the stonework … I know where I am now and I wish I could be anywhere else.

I stretch. My arms are so brown against the white of the bed. The hairs are bleached white blonde by the sun. Sunbathing is all I have to do here, and then when it gets too hot I walk into the sea and swim around for a while, then I come out and get hot again. Sometimes I paint my toenails red, draw, read, find excuses for not eating. I try not to think about anything, which is harder than you’d expect when you have too much time on your hands. When I think, I start remembering, and I don’t want to. It’s been three months since Joel died.

I am on the island to get well – I’ve been sick for months, and I am in this particular place because Marnie asked me to come. Of course I said yes – it was Marnie, and I’d do anything she asked; “would you keep her company for me? I can’t get there because we’re filming. I’d be so grateful.”

So I’m here in the villa with Joe’s girlfriend and her new boyfriend, and it’s weird and I wish I were anywhere else in the world.

Clunk

My book’s fallen onto the floor. I turn my body sideways, slide half off the bed, slanting down to the floor to pick it up. Brave New World. I’m just about to pull myself back up, when under the bed I see a little scorpion. My hand is resting quite near it on the floor, stopping myself from falling. As I stare, I can make out the little tail. It’s not moving but I don’t think it’s dead. We both stay there like that, immobile. I am half upside down and the blood’s rushing to my head while I try to remember what Joe said. “The small ones are the most lethal – they’re the ones that can actually kill you.”

I’ve never seen a scorpion before – I know nothing about them. Was he taking the piss? He often did, and you had to really pin him down, sometimes twist his arm behind his back quite hard to make him tell the truth. I don’t know what to do. Slowly I pull myself back up onto the bed. Then I pull my legs up, and I sit there, with my head resting on my knees, and I start to cry and find I can’t stop, because he’s dead and I’ll never be able to ask him.