The Day Of The Wave (25 page)

I step closer to her, putting the pencils on a desk. She looks at me in confusion, runs a hand through her thick black hair. It's glimmering slightly with gray. 

'It's me, Isla,' I say. There's a lump in my throat I can't seem to swallow. 'You looked after me, the day of the tsunami. You took me up the hill and made sure I was warm, and you brought me food from the temple. Remember?'

I know she might not recognise me. I was bloodied and busted up practically beyond recognition. I couldn't even speak to tell her my name. Her eyes are still frowning, but I'd know them anywhere. She watched me non-stop for hours and I clung to them with mine like they were life rafts. She didn't even want to leave me at the hospital when we got there. She had to though; her baby needed her.

Oh my god.

She crosses to me now, reaches a hand to my face and sweeps my hair back, leans closer. Her almond eyes cloud over in a second and a sob escapes her mouth. 'You?'

'Yes! Yes it's me! You remember?' I put my arms around her as I start to cry, too. 

'I remember.' I can tell she speaks barely any English but her tears turn to laughter before she starts talking fast in Thai. 'You so big,' she manages, putting her palms either side of my face, brushing a tear with her thumb. 'What you do here?'

'I never knew your name, what's your name?' I ask her.

'Lawan,' she says.

'I'm Isla, I could never tell you! Your baby,' I say, looking to Mali. She's staring at us like we're mad. 

'Mali sister,' Lawan explains. 

Yes. Mali's older sister would be ten. She wouldn't have been at this school, but Mali... this whole time. This is so surreal. I've been teaching the daughter of the woman who saved me.

'What's going on?' Ben's behind us. He puts a big box down on the table. 'New textbook delivery,' he says. 'Hey Lawan, how are you?' 

'You know Lawan?' I say as he crosses to me. His shirt is damp from the rain that's starting to spit outside and he drops a kiss on my bare shoulder. He smells like the ocean again and I know he'll taste of it, too.

'Course I do, why?' He extends his hand to Lawan and she grips his arm, looking between us. Her eyes are dancing now with tears of excitement and I think, pride. My heart is swelling by the second.

'Ben, Lawan is the lady who rescued me that day! The day of the tsunami. She made sure I was safe. I owe her my life. I didn't know she was Mali's mother!'

'You beautiful girl,' Lawan says to me. She turns to Ben. 'Beautiful boy,' she says and just the words are enough to make me cry again as I hold onto her hands. She starts talking to us both in Thai and I laugh with the insanity of it all, rubbing my hot cheeks under the fan. I wish I understood.

'My mom says you come to house,' Mali says, tugging on my dress. 'And you,' she says to Ben. Each word is drawn out slowly and it's almost excruciating, this language barrier, when I have so many questions and I want to tell Lawan so much. 

'I would love to,' I say, squeezing her hands tighter and hugging her again.

'We'll bring Sonthi,' Ben says. He turns to me. 'Lawan loves Sonthi, plus he can translate.'

'You come, you come,' Lawan says, beaming. 

'I never thought I'd see you again,' I tell her, blinking back more tears. 'I hoped I would but I didn't know where to look. I'm so grateful to you, you have no idea.'

Lawan keeps on smiling with those beautiful, kind eyes. I know she knows what I mean, even if she doesn't understand my words. Sometimes you don't need words, though. Sometimes there just aren't any. 

'This house is one we helped to fund. I've been here before,' I tell Izzy now as we put the stands down on our bikes in the mud outside and take our helmets off. She rests hers on the handlebar, climbs off and looks around. She's wearing her denim shorts and a tight red shirt, with her hair in two braids over her shoulders. I pull her against me and kiss her. Then we both realize we're standing in a puddle.

'Eeew!' Izzy springs away, but she's laughing, shaking the mud off her flip flops. 

The rain has turned everything into one big slush pile and we're basically having to do everything between downpours, most afternoons. 'Come on,' I say, walking up the steps to the door and knocking. The house is all wooden, raised on stilts, like the ten or so others dotted around. Each one has space underneath for storage and chickens and in this case, a dog tied up on a rope. He doesn't even look up at us. 

'Isla, Isla!' A voice. A moving tornado of pink T-shirt and long hair as Mali pulls the door open and wraps her arms around Izzy instantly. She does the same to me and I lift her up in my arms, just as Sonthi appears behind us on his bike, with Sasi. I didn't know she was coming too. She's grinning through pink lipstick that matches the tips of her hair.

'Hey!' she calls.

'Glad you could come,' I say. I guess they've been spending all their spare time together over the past week and I haven't seen Sonthi so much as flirt with any tourists, so who knows, maybe this time it will last. I hope so. She's the only one who doesn't put up with any of his bullshit.

Like Izzy wouldn't put up with mine.

Lawan guides us all into the small house, gestures for us to sit down on colorful scatter cushions on the floor. 'You have a beautiful home,' Izzy says, eyes full of awe. She's never been inside a traditional Thai home before and this one is pretty typical. Low bulbs on stands without shades are lighting the room and I can smell something amazing being concocted in the kitchen behind the wooden wall. A small TV set is flickering on a bench in the corner but other than that, the room is pretty bare. It's cosy, though. I sit down and straight away Mali clambers onto my lap, grips me like a monkey.

Lawan's other daughter sticks her head out from the kitchen area. 'Hi,' Izzy says, walking over now, holding out her hand. The kid has hair down to her butt in a long ponytail and she's wearing a faded Justin Bieber shirt. I wonder if she even knows who he is. 'What's your name?' Izzy asks her.

'Lea.'

'Lea. You were just a baby when your mother saved my life,' Izzy tells her, squeezing her hand. 'You were so brave. You hardly cried at all.'

Sonthi translates for her and Lea smiles bashfully before running back into the kitchen. I watch Izzy looking around the room, twisting one of her braids round her fingers. I feel like she's twisting me more every day. We haven't slept together yet. I want to, more than anything and usually I'd have initiated the act and probably won the prize by now, several times over, but this is Izzy. She deserves more.

'Tea?' Sonthi says now, reaching for the glass pot in the middle of the table. Sasi arranges the cups and flicks him as he splashes some water on her hand accidentally. He pretends to gasp in horror and she pretends to stab him with a fork. 'Sonthi spends a lot of time here,' I tell Izzy. 

'This is my village,' he explains as she sits down next to me on a cushion, crosses her legs.

'Right, I remember,' she replies. 'You must know everyone?'

'Most people,' Sasi answers. 'My village, too.'

'I can't imagine everyone knowing everyone in their village where I'm from,' Izzy says. 'Most people don't even know their own next door neighbors anymore.'

'Really?'

I can't help laughing at the look of shock that crosses both their faces at her words. It's a totally different world, for sure. I can't imagine a world without Izzy in it anymore and it hasn't even been two weeks. I watch her laughing now with Sasi. It's just like before, when we had those eight amazing days being stupid, being crazy... but not crazy enough to kiss. Now I'm not sure I'm crazy enough to sleep with her. Just that thought alone makes me pretty uncomfortable in my own skin. I've seen how she obsesses over the little things; her ex called her a control-freak, the asshole. But this thing between us isn't little. I don't want to ruin her.

When Lawan and Lea walk back into the room they're carrying dishes of food. They place them down in front of us - spicy noodles sprinkled with cilantro, chicken and cashews. My mouth waters just smelling it. 'Wow,' Izzy says, leaning down to sniff the steaming plate 'This is something I would definitely put in Sweet Eats, no question.' 

'Sweet Eats?'

I explain to Sonthi what she means and Lawan beams as he translates in Thai. We talk while we eat. Izzy's animated again as she tells Lawan about London and the work she does and the hot cross bun shop and the cost of a ticket for the tube, but I can hear the trepidation creep back into her voice when the conversation shifts to that day. She puts her fork down.

Lawan asks Izzy what happened when she left her at the hospital. I reach for her hand. Izzy hasn't told me much herself and in spite of how much she's achieved by coming here I know she still battles with the memories all the time, like we all do. 'You don't have to...' I start, but she clasps my fingers tight.

'I was sick, and really bloated,' she says on an exhale. 'And I couldn't move for a long time, maybe a week. I kept trying to ask about my parents and Ben but nobody could understand me.' 

Impulsively I kiss her fingers, reach for my water. My throat has dried up and the heat of the room is sticking to my face and the back of my neck. She's still talking.

'When I could walk, I went to a few other places with an American couple and some other British people. We looked on the wall, and in the temples, and on the lists but my mom and dad were identified by their wedding rings eventually,' she says. 'My godmother took me in when I got back to the UK, but I had to spend almost seven weeks in hospital.'

'Seven weeks?' I say, almost choking on the water. Jesus, I had no clue. I'm struggling hard not to let the tears fog up my vision right now. Sasi puts her hand out to Izzy's arm on the table and she twirls her fork again on the plate. 'They put me in the care of a lung specialist. I breathed in so much silt and mud that it was hard to breathe for a long time, it really hurt. They had to operate on my ears too, and they sent me to a tropical disease specialist. I was on about twenty drugs just to stop the bacterial infections. If I got infected I would've died. There was a point where I didn't really care either way.'

Holy shit
. I rub my eyes. What she must have gone through. I was so lucky I wasn't even hurt.

'I did six months of physiotherapy,' she says now, looking at me this time. 'That's when I got into Pilates. I had a therapist too; she told me to find something every day to be grateful for. That helped a bit, still does, you know? I'm grateful for so much more since I got here.' 

Sonthi's still translating. Lawan's pulling her into a big hug, crying too. 'What happened to you, did you find your husband?' Izzy asks her, sniffing self-consciously at the attention. 

I want to leave, right now, before people ask about me; before Izzy has to go through any more of this, but I find myself talking anyway, maybe so I don't break down. 'Lawan's husband is OK,' I say. 'He's at work right now, but he was a fisherman at that time, so they struggled after the tsunami.' 

Sonthi keeps translating. Lawan nods sadly, clears up the noodles Mali has dropped on the table. Sasi helps her gathers up our dishes. 'The trust in Mother Ocean was broken,' I continue. 'Those people who depended on it for their livelihood didn't know where to turn after that, 'cause they thought that eating the fish would be like eating their own loved ones. The fish ate so many of the bodies, you know?'

Izzy's hand flies over her mouth. I never say things like this out loud usually because all I see is Toby, like I'm seeing him now, eyes wide in terror under that ocean. Sonthi takes over. 'Lawan and her husband run a store now, in town. They're doing good.'

'And they have a great house,' Sasi says, gesturing around her, then blowing a kiss to Lawan, who laughs. 'Best food!'

'Best food,' Izzy says, but I can hear she's on the verge of tears, like I am. She's gripping my fingers so tightly now that her silver ring is digging into my flesh.

We talk more about their store. Sonthi and Sasi look more in love than they ever did before. I take all this for granted sometimes, I know I do - the fact that everyone knows and loves each other; the fact that we've all built such an accepting community out of nothing but total destruction, and the fact that we can laugh and cry openly about things that only we could ever understand.

I look down at Izzy's hand in mine. There's so much help and support and love around me. But for one reason or another it feels like walking away from that is all I've ever done.  

*

It's a clear night by the time we get back to Shady Palms. Izzy promised to go see Lawan again soon and after seeing the way they hugged when we left, I know she sees her as some kind mother figure now. My heart bleeds for what she lost, what happened to her, going through hell in all those hospitals. She didn't want to live for a while. She said it. She actually said it. I felt the same way after losing Toby.

'I can't stop thinking about how your real name is Isla,' I tell her as we walk onto the beach in front of our huts, drop to the sand and gaze out at the glistening ocean. Her head rests on my shoulder and the hair that's come loose from her braids tickles my face. 

'You're an island, Izzy,' I say. I say it out loud because I was thinking it, just now at Lawan's when I was watching her mouth move, the scars glistening on her arms in the lamplight. 'You rose above the waves to survive.' 

'I never thought about that before.' She drags a finger through the sand. 'Everyone always says I'm one of the lucky ones, but I always wondered why I was left out. Why did I survive when so many other people died?'

'Tell me about it.' I rest my head on hers. 'We both kind of died in it and lived at the same time, I think.' 

'You've lived more than me,' she snaps back, almost angrily. 'Being alive is everything, Ben. It's all that matters - the now. I feel like I've been wasting my life so far! I don't want to go back that job, or London.'

'Then don't.'

Her head springs up and her eyes shoot up to mine. Something in her gaze draws me in again, right down those damn corridors into a place I always get lost. I know what she's thinking though, and my stomach knots till my breath shortens and I have to tear my eyes away. She's thinking this is the start of something and it's my fault. The thought is like a fork in a toaster, shooting out warning sparks now, not the good kind. What am I doing, with Izzy of all people?