Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

caves and hollows where unknown creatures lurked, distant shapes that
shimmered in the rays of the sun. I didn’t want to come up. I could have stayed
there forever, in that silent world. It was only when James started gesticulating
towards the dial of his oxygen tank that I realized I didn’t have a choice.
I could barely speak when I finally walked up the beach towards Will and
Nathan, beaming. My mind was still humming with the images I had seen, my
limbs somehow still propelling me under the water.
‘Good, eh?’ said Nathan.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I exclaimed to Will, throwing my flippers down on
the sand in front of him. ‘Why didn’t you make me do that earlier? All that! It
was all there, all the time! Just right under my nose!’
Will gazed at me steadily. He said nothing, but his smile was slow and wide. ‘I
don’t know, Clark. Some people just won’t be told.’
I let myself get drunk that last night. It wasn’t just that we were leaving the next
day. It was the first time I had felt truly that Will was well and that I could let go.
I wore a white cotton dress (my skin had coloured now, so that wearing white
didn’t automatically make me resemble a corpse wearing a shroud) and a pair of
silvery strappy sandals, and when Nadil gave me a scarlet flower and instructed
me to put it in my hair I didn’t scoff at him as I might have done a week earlier.
‘Well, hello, Carmen Miranda,’ Will said, when I met them at the bar. ‘Don’t
you look glamorous.’
I was about to make some sarcastic reply, and then I realized he was looking
at me with genuine pleasure.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’re not looking too shabby yourself.’
There was a disco at the main hotel complex, so shortly before 10pm – when
Nathan left to be with Karen – we headed down to the beach with the music in
our ears and the pleasant buzz of three cocktails sweetening my movements.
Oh, but it was so beautiful down there. The night was warm, carrying on its
breezes the scents of distant barbecues, of warm oils on skin, of the faint salt
tang of the sea. Will and I stopped near our favourite tree. Someone had built a
fire on the beach, perhaps for cooking, and all that was left was a pile of glowing
embers.
‘I don’t want to go home,’ I said, into the darkness.