Chapter 3 Kate

3 KATE

NOW

Kate lands at Malé in good spirits. The connecting flight from Amsterdam was on a much larger plane, and Darcy had booked her into first class, which was an utter delight. Kate had a cubicle all to herself and a seat that folded out into a bed at the press of a button. She had her own TV, minibar, and goose-down duvet, and the food was exquisite. She wrote and slept for the whole journey and barely noticed the time passing.

And now, she’s here.

“You’re under arrest,” a voice says behind her. Kate freezes. She spins around and finds Darcy there, her face in a wide grin and her arms outspread. Kate wraps her arms around her and squeezes her tight.

“Oh, it’s so good to see you!” she says. It’s been seven months since they were together, though they’ve had plenty of Zoom calls. But only now can she see the full toll of Darcy’s divorce; she’s a good bit thinner, the bones of her face pronounced, a strain in her eyes that wasn’t there last time they met. A screen shows a fraction of reality, Kate realizes.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Camilla says, her arms flung out. Camilla’s hugs are weird, the kind that feel as though she doesn’t want to touch you any more than she needs to. But despite herself, Kate is glad to see Camilla, too. Nobody but Camilla ever calls her “gorgeous,” “babe,” or—on occasion—“sugar tits.”

“Do we get a taxi to the hotel?” Kate asks as they head out of the terminal.

“Seaplane,” Darcy says, nodding toward a fleet of small planes parked on the far side of the building. Kate registers the size of the aircraft, the rickety propellers, and the steps that creak under her feet, and doesn’t feel as nervous as she ordinarily would. Probably for the best.

And as they soar over a sapphire ocean, drifting toward the palm-tree paradise that is their resort, Kate’s mind turns to the past. Small things, nothing traumatic, not yet—a pair of jeans she loved, two palm trees embroidered on the back pocket. She wore those jeans to death in her early twenties, back when she wore such things as jeans. She thinks of kneeling in the dirt, running a paintbrush gently across stone, sweeping the past away grain by grain. She thinks of Professor Berry, the way his eyes crinkled when he spoke, a triad of lines forming deep in the skin. He came alive when they were on a site, a different energy coursing through his body. An energy she wanted to possess.

She watches Darcy and Camilla on the seat opposite, their faces turned to the window as the plane veers toward a white strip on the island.

“We’re all agreed,” Camilla says. “No emails. Yes?”

“Yes,” Kate and Darcy echo.

“Good.” Camilla pulls a folded wad of paper from her Chanel handbag. “I’ve got our itinerary all planned.”

“Itinerary?” Darcy says with a nervous laugh, glancing at Kate.

Camilla hands out sheets—stapled at the top, Kate notices—to the others. “Turns out there’s a proper way to do a divorce trip, so I felt it only right to follow the rules. Don’t worry, nothing too taxing. Well, aside from the fire walk, but we can discuss that.”

“What’s a fire walk?” Kate asks, scanning the sheets. Camilla has made a table on each page with the days clearly marked out, the weather report added in, and a lengthy description of each activity typed in Times New Roman.

“It’s hot coals, isn’t it?” Darcy says, a little stunned. She looks from Camilla to Kate for confirmation. “That’s what a fire walk is, right?”

Kate is appalled. Walking across hot coals?

“Is there also a public stoning?” Kate asks mildly. “Perhaps some flogging?”

“Don’t panic,” Camilla says, laughing. “We don’t have to do the fire walk. All optional, just ideas. A fire walk is a rite-of-passage kind of thing, so I thought it’d be fitting for a divorce trip, yeah?”

“Hasn’t she already done the hot coals bit during the divorce, metaphorically speaking?” Kate asks.

Darcy smiles. “I’ll think about the fire walk. What else is on here? Oh, a champagne party on a private sandbank? That sounds nice, doesn’t it, Kate?”

The fire walk idea has made Kate suspicious of pretty much everything on the itinerary. “What’s a private sandbank, exactly?”

“It’s actually a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean,” Camilla says.

“Aren’t we already going to a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean?” Kate asks.

“Well, a small island, yes. The sandbank excursion is where they take us out on a speedboat and drop us off at an island that’s literally just sand. They set up a picnic blanket and some fairy lights and we have champagne under the stars.”

“Oooh,” Darcy says. “That sounds amazing.”

Kate can’t bring herself to fake a look of delight. Her mind is turning quickly to the range of disasters folded inside that idea. The planet’s melting under their feet, global warming wiping out ancient glaciers and seaside towns. In twenty years, the Maldives probably won’t exist, swallowed by the rising seas. She foresees the speedboat breaking down, a rogue wave crashing over the sandbank. Sharks.

“Are there sharks in the Maldives?” she finds herself asking, and is perplexed when both Camilla and Darcy break into laughter.

“You won’t be eaten by a shark, lovely,” Camilla says soothingly, but her tone only makes Kate bristle. How does Camilla know she won’t be eaten by a shark? Is she a psychic now, as well as a Pilates guru and social media influencer?

“There are hammerheads,” Darcy says. “Nurse sharks on the reef, but they’ve no teeth. No great whites or anything like that. I checked.”

Kate runs her eyes down the list. “Paddleboarding? What’s that?”

“Ah, so that’s loads of fun,” Camilla says, the words making Kate’s heart sink. “A paddleboard is basically a big surfboard that floats on the ocean. You sit or stand on it.”

Kate stares at her, waiting for more. “Why?”

“Because… it’s fun?” Camilla says, visibly restraining herself from showing how confused she is by Kate’s question. “There is also plenty of time built into the schedule for relaxing, so don’t worry about that. I’m not here to punish you both. And this itinerary is just a suggestion. It’s your trip, Darcy, love. So you call the shots, OK?”

“I like the sound of a manta ray adventure,” Darcy says.

“Oh yes ,” Camilla says, flipping over to sheet five. “That’s my favorite too. This one involves our own personal scuba instructor. He—or she—takes us out on a speedboat to the spot with all the manta rays and we get to swim with them. Incredible, right?”

“Incredible,” Kate says, making her finest effort not to sound sarcastic, so she’s puzzled when both Darcy and Camilla start laughing again.

“What?” she says.

Darcy reaches out to squeeze her hand. “Oh, Kate,” she says. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Kate smiles, feeling momentarily useless in the face of Camilla’s itinerary. Camilla has been divorced several times; Kate has never been married, has no idea about divorce. She has nothing to offer Darcy in terms of understanding what she’s going through, or what to do about it. And she isn’t of the inclination to pretend otherwise.

The plane starts its descent to the resort, which is on a larger island connected to a smaller one with a long meandering wooden causeway. She can make out rows of overwater huts on the edge of the larger island, a bushy green midsection indicating a hell of a lot of tropical trees. Trees mean bugs. Thank God she packed an assortment of bug sprays. She registers how isolated they’ll be out here, no islands or ships nearby. No hospitals or emergency services.

But… she’ll have actual peace and quiet. Lovely food. Writing time. Camilla and Darcy can go walk on hot coals until the cows come home.

Perhaps the isolation isn’t a bad thing.