The Day Of The Wave (15 page)

*

'This way!' Kalaya calls, leading us down an alley once we're all on the island. I note Justin help Izzy with the zip-up bag I lent her, so she wouldn't have to bring her whole big suitcase. The narrow streets are hot and crowded and she keeps looking around her, half intrigued, half nervous I think. 

'You OK?' I ask her now, touching her arm gently. She's wearing a red dress. It reminds me of the one she was wearing on that morning, when I left her waiting for us outside the dive shop. Everything's reminding me of that day now.

'I can't believe I went on a boat,' she says, moving to avoid being knocked out by a guy's huge backpack.

'You're doing so great! Even if you didn't look out the window the whole way.' 

She tuts but she's smiling. I know being on a boat was a huge thing for her and I can tell she's proud of herself for doing it. Her cheeks are rosy red now from all the sun and she has even more freckles around her nose.

'This way!' Kalaya calls again, waving us around another corner. We pass some stalls selling photos of Phi Phi's scenery and another selling SIM cards, till we come to a big battered sign outside a shambolic looking one-level hotel that says Rick's Place. It's painted purple with blue window trims and over-the-top hanging baskets are swinging from the bamboo overhang. 'I know Rick,' Kalaya explains.

'Rick is clearly color blind,' I say and Izzy giggles. 

Kalaya frowns. 'What you mean?'

'It was a joke,' I tell her, putting an arm around her and stepping into the reception. Justin drops his own huge backpack on the floor, takes the glass of coconut juice we're all offered from the welcome tray. A skinny Thai man in his late forties sashays out from a back room and puts his hands in the air when he sees Kalaya, hurries something out in Thai. I watch them hug.

'These are my friends,' she says, gesturing to us and he kisses us all on the cheeks, beaming and clapping his hands. 'We need two room please.'

'Three,' Izzy says quickly, looking at Justin.

Justin pretends to stab his own heart. 'I'm starting to think you're not falling in love with me,' he says, with a little too much emphasis on the me. He flicks his eyes to me as he says it and I pretend I don't notice how he's insinuating again that there's something going on with me and Izzy. 

I look to her now, searching the lobby with her eyes, running a hand through her long hair. Is it really that obvious that the damn sparks never went out? I'd be lying if I said they had. She's a magnet like she always was, even if she's lost some of her confidence. 

'Follow me, I give you best rooms,' Rick says, motioning us down a hallway. I pick up Kalaya's bag and Justin takes Izzy's again. Rick leads us to three rooms all in a row in a dark corridor. 'You will like these!' he grins. 

The whole place smells of stale booze and cigarettes. We're inland from the beach so the basic fan rooms are just one-fifty a night with no WIFI. Kalaya makes a point of pulling me onto our bed in front of Izzy while Rick explains how there's WIFI on the beach and in all the restaurants, like the only thing we really care about is WIFI. I'm always amazed at the number of people who come away here on vacation and only ever sit about glued to their phones. They might as well be at home watching YouTube. They'd save a lot of money on flights. 

We drop our bags and walk back through the maze of narrow streets to the beach. Izzy's quiet. 'So much of this was totally destroyed,' she says thoughtfully, looking round us at the massage parlors with their handwritten signs, the rows of jewelry stands and open sided bars with neon lights and pumping music, even at midday. Coils of incense are curling through the heat from a hippy store, selling mini Ganesh's and candles.

Two thousand people died here on this island on Boxing Day 2004. Over a hundred kids lost either one or both of their parents. I know all the facts and I'm sure Izzy does. It was as bad as it was in Khao Lak and Sri Lanka and everywhere else that got hit. It's another graveyard; not that many people here now are thinking about it I'm sure. Justin isn't. 

'Check it out,' he whispers, nudging me in the direction of a sign outside a smoothie store. It says
We fly you to the moon with mushroom shake
!

'Really?' Izzy says as he stops and peers inside. She's looking at him like he's already lost his mind. I know she wants to get to the PP Sandy Beach Hotel ASAP and see if Alan Gillespie's still here. Her eyebrows wriggle up and down as she looks from him to the mushroom sign and when she fixes her brown eyes on mine and conveys complete bewilderment, it hits me like a baseball why I fell for her the way I did when I was sixteen. 

It's the things I see in Izzy's eyes that draw me to her; they're corridors. As a boy I saw incongruous dreams and hopes in waves and colors, radiating out and pulling me in, even when she was quiet. When she laughed it was like some splintered rainbow fell on the world and lit it up, and when she was mad, she got mad in beautiful blacks and shadows. Even though she sees the world through a veil of grief and gray these days, I can still see her colors. 

'We're on a mission!' she reminds us, folding her arms and I can't help it, the whole thing makes me laugh.

'He's on a mission, to fly to the moon,' I say.

'I'll buzz you in a bit, mate, yeah?,' Justin tells me, patting his pocket. 'Don't worry about me.'

He slips inside like a panther. 'I worry about him,' I say at the exact same time as Izzy.

'Jinx,' she grins, holding out her pinky.

'What are we,
children
?' I say, looping my finger round hers.

The beach on this side of Phi Phi is like nothing I've ever seen with my own eyes. The water seems bluer than it does in Khao Lak; the kind of blue you see on TV programs and wonder how many filters the camera crew used in post production. Turns out, none. Longtail boats are bobbing in bright yellows and reds and the beach is sheltered on both ends by curving green jungle. 

'Isn't this where they
filmed The Beach
?' I ask Ben. Giant rocks are towering out of the water like Transformers and I half expect Leonardo DiCaprio to scale down one and walk out of the surf all wet. 

'Close,' he says, 'that was on Maya I think. You can get a boat round to there from here. You OK?'

'I'm OK, thanks,' I reply, still looking at the scene. He hasn't stopped asking if I'm OK, but actually, I really am. I was just so busy thinking how gorgeous it all is that I almost forgot to be scared. I search the horizon now, brace myself for the terror to strike, but weirdly it doesn't hit me as hard as it did the first few times I looked out from the mainland. I breathe in the salty air. Maybe it will help, they all said. I actually think it's helping. 

'I'll wait here,' Kalaya says, fishing for her phone again and dropping a sarong onto the hot sand. 'I hope you find the bad man. I'll look for Justin.' 

'I don't know how long he'll be,' Ben tells her, helping her straighten her sarong so she can sit on it. 'He may have no concept of time by now.'

I chuckle, watch as Kalaya strips off her sundress, down to her white bikini again. She has an amazing figure and she knows it. She has no scars, either, not like me. There are hundreds of people on the white sand, all roasting themselves into varying shades of red and brown. It's busier here; there are way more backpackers than there are in Khao Lak. A guy with dreads saunters up and hands us all fliers. 

'Party on Bamboo Island tomorrow night,' he says. His tongue is pierced and so is his left eyebrow. His shirt is torn along the hem. 'Three hundred baht all-in. Leaving at three from the pier, it's gonna go off. You guys should come.'

'Thanks, we'll think about it,' Ben says, folding it up and putting it in his pocket. He turns to me. 'OK, so the hotel's up there,' he says, pointing up the beach. 'We can walk in from the beach. I've been thinking, maybe I should go in first, see if I can see any red-headed guys with blond streaks who look shady. If he sees you he might freak out and leave.'

'Good thinking, detective,' I tell him, putting my own flier into my purse. Kalaya scrunches up her dress as a pillow, flops down and puts her headphones in her ears. 

'OK,
vamos
! Kalaya, we'll come back for you,' Ben says.

She raises her hand at him but doesn't look up from her phone and we carry on walking towards the spot where the trees get thicker and the crowds get thinner. 'Do you really think he's going to be there?' I say to Ben. I can feel the tension again as soon as we're alone. I don't know if he can, too, but it's thicker than the air. He kicks a shell.

'The cops have no record that an Alan Gillespie was leaving on any of the boats today and the hotel say he's been paying night by night, so as far as we know, he's still here. I spoke to them this morning. We'll track him down.'

'He could be anywhere,' I sigh. 'There's so much concrete.'

'It's pretty overdeveloped, yeah,' Ben says. 'They rebuilt a lot after the tsunami, but they didn't really stop. It always got me how no one really learnt their lesson with that.'

'What do you mean? They have the escape route signs everywhere.'

'I know, but they still built all this shit, you know, right here! It's still beautiful but, I don't know...' he trails off, shrugs again. 'I always thought they should've gone back to basics when they had the chance.'

'Maybe they didn't have a choice,' I say. 'They lost so much, they had to get the tourists back.'

'True,' he says, picking up another shell. His hair falls over his eyes as he studies it, then hands it to me. 'Khao Lak's not so bad yet but it was mostly the
farangs
with the most money who rebuilt the hotels,' he says. 'The locals couldn't afford to rebuild. It changed things. It changed all the dynamics.'

'You built the dive shop back up,' I counter, looking at the shiny white shell, the size of my palm. 

He smiles. 'I did. But I gave a lot of people jobs. I guess that's a bonus - the more facilities there are, the more jobs there are, but it doesn't stop all of us ruining things little by little, you know? Us and the locals, we're all taking it down all over again. We don't even need Mother Nature to smash things up.'

'That's development, Ben, it's happening everywhere.'

'I know,' he sighs. 'I've seen it all over the world.'

'I want to see all that, I really,
really
do.'

He stops walking. 'Stop talking like you're old, like your life is already gone. You have time, Izzy. You have time to make a difference, too. Marcus can't wait to have you take over at the school!' His blue eyes are sparkling in the sun next to me. He's so tall and sexy it's ridiculous and even the slightest word of concern or reassurance from his lips makes my heart skid now. These feelings roared up with a force at the waterfall and they're still gushing through me. My insides twitch thinking about the school, too. I'm excited to be doing something good, somewhere totally out of my comfort zone on all counts. It feels good. And I've hardly thought about Colin all day.

'Is this it?' I say as Ben starts walking again and heads inland from the shoreline. Then I see the sign.
PP Sandy Beach Hotel.

'This is it. What were we just saying about development? Check out that infinity pool.' Ben takes his shades off for a second, leads me further in towards the hotel. I can see white pagodas poking up like hats, the tops of sun umbrellas and a big blue swimming pool with several people in it, gazing over the edge at the beach. I realize I'm nervous. What if he's not there? What if he is? The place is pretty posh - more posh than the dump we just signed into at least. My eyebrows almost touch. He probably booked this with my money.

'OK, you want to wait over there?' Ben says, nodding to a shaded bar area under a roof made of palm fronds just next door. There's no one there. He rubs his hands together dramatically, shakes them off like he's stepping into a fight, making me laugh. 'I'll sniff around, go talk to reception and see what they'll tell me.'

'OK, thank you,' I say. 'Be careful.'

'The Scots don't scare me,' he says, flexing his muscles jokingly in front of me. 'I can't even understand them most of the time.'

I'm still laughing as he walks towards the pool. I take a tall seat at the bar, order a pineapple juice, pull the flier I just got given out of my purse.
Amazing DJ Sweden spins Electro House,
it says
. Tents will be pitched on the beach in an intimate setting
.

I don't really know what to imagine. Sounds more like a frantic orgy than a party. Colin would have done his Sainsburys shop by now and not much else with his weekend, whereas I've been out on a boat and ridden a scooter and swam in a waterfall and if I want to, I can go and see a Swedish DJ on an island, or have an orgy in a tent. 

I put the flier down on the bar, line up the box of pink straws with the napkin dispenser, watch the barman singing along to Bob Marley while he chops up the pineapple. Then I turn the shell over in my fingers, let the sand fall out, hold it to my ear. A tiny whisper from the ocean makes me smile. 

'Sorry, no,' the Thai guy says. 'Alan Gillespie check out already.'

'Really?' I say. 

'One hour ago.'

'Well, did he say where he was going?'

'We not know,' he says, 'sorry sir.'

'That's OK, it's not your fault, thank you,' I sigh, walking away from the desk and outside again, over to the deck right by the pool. There are no guys with red hair on any of the loungers and I didn't see any when I walked through the restaurants either. 

I call the police station again, but it rings and rings till I have to leave a message on an answerphone telling them not to let him leave on any boats.
Dammit
. This is not unusual, though. They don't have the most organized of police services on these islands. They mean well, but it's not exactly LAPD in action. In my home country the police probably would've searched Alan Gillespie and held him on suspicion till we got here, or at least spent some healthy tax payer's dollars speeding him in style back to the mainland so we could confirm his thieving ass.