Chapter 2

2

brOWNSEA ISLAND, POOLE – SUMMER 1998

Rebekah waved to the tired and happy visitors as the last ferry of the day left the island and made its way back across the harbour to Poole Quay. The other guides and volunteers had left as well, taking the shorter ferry ride for staff to Sandbanks, and, as always, she felt her heart swell with joy for the evening's solitude ahead of her.

Ben had seemed to want to hang around a bit more than usual today, and just as he'd been about to get on the boat, he'd turned back as if to say something to her, but then changed his mind. He was several years her junior and a great worker as a volunteer, but just lately, it had seemed he was angling to spend more time with her – time that Rebekah was not interested in sharing with anyone.

Rebekah took a moment to take a deep sniff of the sea air and turned towards the harbour entrance to watch the chain ferry as it glided across from the Haven Hotel to the Studland side. When it reached the shore, the front end of the car ferry lowered slowly like a giant jaw dropping open. It issued a groan of rusted metal, as if its old joints ached and complained, and then the cars began to roll off the deck and up onto the road beyond, headed for the little toll hut, and then along the road, where perhaps the visitors would take an evening swim on the beach or travel to Studland village and the seaside town of Swanage beyond.

She walked back along the little quay, pausing to look down into the clear, shallow waters for fish or crabs, then headed through the National Trust reception, locking the quayside door behind her. Rebekah checked that the cash tills were all switched off for the night, and the day's takings locked in the safe. She closed the windows, then she locked the island-side door to reception as she walked through it and left ‘work' for the evening. Rebekah then took her last stroll of the day around the eastern end of Brownsea Island on her way to Rose Cottage for the night.

She ran her fingertips gently along the ancient brick wall to her left, as if to say goodnight to the tiny Italian snails she seemed to have spent hours searching for earlier in the day. She loved telling visitors to the island about this rare little snail – so small you could barely see it – that was thought to have travelled here on the slabs of Italian marble brought to be used in the building of the castle, in its more extravagant era of refurbishing, over two hundred years earlier.

Rebekah smiled at the cheeky red squirrel who crossed her path and seemed to be saying, Catch me if you can , as it scampered up the oak tree beside the path.

At St Mary's Church, Rebekah walked up the ancient stone steps and along the gravel path to check that the church door was shut and locked, and then looked around the Church Field and the open-air theatre site to make sure none of the campers, or more likely their children, were up to any mischief among the half-built stage and seating gallery.

Every year, the island became home to an open-air theatre that had staged a different Shakespeare play ever since 1964. For several months, the activity of building the stage, the set, and the seating gallery created excitement. And then hundreds of playgoers would come over on a special evening boat to watch the play over a fortnight in summer.

More than once, she'd found some cheeky kids acting out a few lines of Romeo and Juliet on the set, and though she was bound to chastise them, she loved their adventurous spirits, though she scoffed at the naturally romantic heart that all young teens seemed to have. She supposed she'd felt that way, briefly, too, despite knowing from her mother that romance only led to anguish, and she learnt it for herself the hard way eventually. Shakespeare was probably making the same point in Romeo and Juliet though, she thought to herself as she regarded the stage set for the next display of the bard's works.

Only a few more weeks now until the next play would be showing – As You Like It – for the thirty-fifth consecutive year of the Brownsea Open Air Theatre plays. Soon her evenings wouldn't be so quiet when hundreds of people would make their annual pilgrimage over on the late-afternoon ferry, bringing their picnics and chilled wine and blankets, and settling in for an evening of outdoor Shakespeare. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a couple of weeks, the atmosphere on the island would throng with the excitement of the theatre. She loved it, really, though the influx of people was always a strange change to her peaceful island life.

Rebekah climbed the hill up to the lookout and paused to take in the view she knew would never grow old for her: the sweeping vista of Studland, beyond it to Old Harry Rocks, and around towards the west across the heath and the Purbeck Hills. This was the view that had helped her fall in love with this island in the middle of the harbour. The tales she'd grown up with, told passionately by Aunty Peggy, had sparked her curiosity, and the disaster that had been her first love-come- hate affair had cemented the idea of running to the other side of the world. But when she had first arrived here in the flesh, she'd been left speechless by the beauty of the place. And, for Rebekah, Brownsea Island was the gem, the pearl in the oyster, of everything Poole and this beautiful stretch of Dorset coastline had to offer.

Rebekah always marvelled that though destiny had set her birthplace on the other side of the world, in Australia, she'd been allowed to come here to Poole, where her neighbour Peggy had grown up, and she realised now that she'd never found out exactly why Peggy had left Poole, or what could have been a powerful enough inducement to take anyone away from this paradise.

Despite Rebekah's attachment to Brisbane, Poole was now home too, and her love for the limestone hills and cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck and Poole Harbour, and especially the most wonderful place of all – Brownsea Island – was all the proof she'd ever need that she was right where she belonged.

Her first winter had been a trial of perseverance and new experiences: the bitter chill of wind that felt sharp enough to cut her throat; the feeling that her feet might never be properly warm again and the pain as they tingled back to life in front of the fireplace; the dark of night that began at four in the afternoon and went on until eight the next morning, and even then the thick blanket of grey cloud seemed to hang over all of England and didn't let the sun shine through. But within a couple of months, spring had sprung with bright daffodils, bluebells, warmer weather and longer days. Now that her third summer was here, Rebekah could understand why so many poets of old had saved their best words for their adulation of the English summertime.

The distant sounds of happy campers floated up from the campsite down near the shore and mingled in the evening air with the aroma of sausages and bacon cooking on campfires. Rebekah saw children playing on the beach below, throwing little pieces of driftwood into the water and collecting shells, while their parents were preparing their dinners. All was well.

Rebekah turned towards home. She passed one of the remaining stands of rhododendrons that still needed to be dug out and burned. There were remnants of them everywhere, even thirty years after the National Trust had taken over and started eliminating the invasive weed, clearing the way for native trees like the oaks, hawthorn, and yew. The heathland was beginning to return to its natural glory, with purple flowering heathers and the buttercup-hued gorse thriving once more. Even now, late in the afternoon, Rebekah could see the benefits of the clearing work that had been done in the pine stand as dappled sunlight fell around her feet on the woodland floor.

As she unlatched the squeaky gate to Rose Cottage, her island home, and walked through the garden and up the path to the front door, she was grateful that she had finished all the human interaction needed for the day, and thanked the fates, or destiny, or the stars, or whatever spirit it was who was responsible for her life winding up this way. At her age, most of Rebekah's friends both here and home in Brisbane were married, and many already had a few children, but life as a ranger on Brownsea Island suited this introverted young woman perfectly. Wildlife, peace, no traffic, no crowds – absolutely no men trying to tease her into that thing they called love, but which only led to pain and hate – and hours and hours of spare time for reading.

Inside the comfort of the little cottage, Rebekah took off her walking shoes and headed to the kitchen. She opened the fridge door and pulled out the newspaper-wrapped parcel that she'd placed there earlier. When Ben had arrived on the staff ferry that morning, he'd greeting her with a grin and held out the parcel.

‘Something from the seafood kiosk on the quay for you, Rebekah.' He'd winked as he handed over the gift. She had thanked him and reached out to give him a little pat on the arm, and then regretted it as he turned and gave her a full and tight hug – exactly the kind of physical contact with a man that she hated. He was a nice enough chap, but Rebekah was not in the slightest bit interested in anyone that way.

She'd called her thanks again over her shoulder as she pulled away and went to stash the parcel in the staff fridge until she had a moment at lunchtime to run it up to her own kitchen in Rose Cottage. Ben had been a constant in her life ever since her arrival on Brownsea Island and was one of those people she knew would always be there for her. She had never had much time or interest in socialising once she'd made Brownsea her home, and so as Ben came to the island twice a week, they had fallen into what had become one of her most constant relationships. He seemed to bring her gifts like this more often than not on Fridays when he came to the island to volunteer.

Rebekah wondered now whether she ought to give him something in return, but there wasn't any produce grown on the island to share and she felt bad that the gift giving was so one-sided. Perhaps she should offer to pay him. But perhaps what he really wanted was the one thing she was not prepared to give.

She opened the parcel on the aged wooden table to reveal a pile of shiny black mussels. Rebekah tucked her loose, cinnamon-brown hair behind an ear before bending to sniff the smell of the sea that had come into the room as she opened the parcel. She tapped each shell, checking to make sure none of them were open and ensuring they were fresh enough to eat still, then rinsed them in a colander in the old stone sink of the cottage kitchen. After taking a saucepan and a frying pan out of the cupboard, she set water to boil, then reached for the spaghetti from her larder.

Rebekah stepped outside into the garden and picked a bowl of warm, shiny, red, cherry tomatoes from the vine growing against the south-facing wall, popping one straight into her mouth and feeling the warm burst of sunshine tingle on her tongue as she exploded it with her bite. Back in the kitchen, she crushed some garlic and fried it in olive oil, then added some chilli and the tomatoes before dropping the spaghetti into the bubbling pot of water. She added capers and olives to the frying pan and then the mussels, covering them with the glass lid and watching the slow process of each mussel shell opening as they steamed. Then she popped the cork on a bottle of chilled Chablis and enjoyed the welcome chuckle of wine poured into a glass.

The aroma of the Mediterranean filled her little Dorset kitchen as she drained the pasta, then scraped the mussel mix, and all its delicious garlicky juices, into the spaghetti. She served herself one portion and set aside the remains for tomorrow's dinner.

With a deep sigh of satisfaction, Rebekah gathered her pasta bowl and wine glass and sat down in her favourite window seat to eat until she'd licked the bowl clean. She rested, enjoying the warmth in her belly and the sensation of the wine reaching her fingertips while she watched the tops of the trees move gently in the light evening breeze and the summer sunlight outside. She drained her wine glass as she set the dirty dishes in the sink, and then poured another as she settled in for a night with Thomas Hardy.

Rebekah was part way through Far from the Madding Crowd , for about the fourth time, and though she knew full well that Sergeant Troy was a cad, she couldn't help but feel for poor, romantic Bathsheba, who wanted more out of life than stability and sense, and a husband who promised little more than determined constancy. What woman wouldn't fall for a tall, handsome romantic who promised her excitement with every twinkle in his eye? Actually, Rebekah thought to herself, she knew she wouldn't. Not any more.

Rebekah's life had been perfectly adequate without a man around, ever since the last time. She had learnt by watching her mum and her neighbour, Aunty Peggy, that a woman didn't need a man in her life to make her happy. Still, she seemed to have always known that singledom wasn't the first choice for either woman, and though love and marriage had never been modelled for her at home, something inside her had sometimes longed for it, all the same.

The thing with Andy had started out so well. A bond over their joint love of bushwalking had seen them spending more weekends together than not, and the nights they'd shared together in a two-man tent had soon turned into weeknight study sessions that led to sleepovers at his flat in the city. And she'd been happy with the fun and the company, and loved being around someone who made her laugh and treated her well on their occasional splurges for dinner in the city.

The trouble had started at a party with all their friends, when she'd found herself deep in conversation with someone from school that Andy didn't know. When Lloyd had got up to get her another drink from the bar, Andy had appeared from nowhere, grabbed her by the arm and frogmarched her out of the bar. She was too shocked by his outburst to understand that his jealousy was the tip of a controlling nature she'd never seen before. Within a few weeks, he'd begun to ask her details of everywhere she'd been, and who she had been with, insisting on driving her to and from every social engagement she had. And when Lloyd turned up at a friend's dinner party and she'd greeted him with a friendly hug, Andy's true nature was fully revealed.

Afterwards, when he had crossed the line that she knew she would never let another man cross again, she'd packed up everything that she kept at his flat immediately, and taken a taxi straight to her mum's place. There, in the sanctuary of home, her black eye, cut lip, and traumatised soul were mended with love, encouragement and a protective shield that could have kept off an army of demons. She'd tried to report him to the police, because both Mum and Aunty Peggy persuaded her that rape was rape and should be punished as such. Peggy had driven her to the police station, making no attempt to conceal the burning rage she felt for the man who had so hurt the girl she loved like her own granddaughter.

‘Rebekah, my love, men have been treating women with this kind of disgusting disrespect for hundreds, thousands, of years. But it is so wrong. And they must be made to stop. The last thing any woman needs in her life is a man who treats her worse than an animal. We just won't stand for it,' she'd seethed. But the off-hand way the middle-aged police officer dealt with her in the suburban station told Rebekah that if she had a boyfriend, she should expect a bit of rough now and then. So from that moment on, supported by Mum and Peggy, she'd stayed well away from all men. The threat of tying herself to one and being stuck with him for life had brought her up sharp and she'd chosen singledom instead.

The only thing she could remember about living with a man in the house as a child was loud arguments, shrieks of fear, and the occasional crash of breaking furniture. The experience with Andy had only solidified her understanding. And perhaps, quite apart from that and the childhood trauma she barely knew she harboured deep in her heart, she'd also learnt from Bathsheba Everdene, or Tess Durbeyfield, or all the fictional women she'd read about who'd learnt their lessons the hard way. Men were either trouble in disguise, or boredom personified. She would stick with squirrels and trees. Birds and books. Her island home in paradise.

‘God bless Thomas Hardy,' she said out loud and laughed at the sound of passion in her voice. She took another sip of wine, put her feet up and opened her book with a satisfied sigh. This, she agreed with herself for the billionth time, was a life of utter perfection.