tie a knot, Desi would practise it until she was perfect. She had a great memory and learnt quickly. During the day, she was confident around the water: she swam like a fish, and could bounce around on the deck and help out with no indication of nausea. In the evenings when it was her turn to cook, they ate far better than on the other nights. And she always hummed softly to herself while she worked.
Connor seemed delighted, and loved to tease her. It had begun on the very first night, when he’d discovered that Desi hadn’t even brought a tent. ‘The one thing I told you to bring,’ he’d laughed as Desi looked alarmed. He’d inspected their own modest accommodation. ‘I guess there’s room for three.’
Without conferring, the boys had smartened up their act once Desi was there. They kept the inside of the tent tidier. They kept themselves a bit cleaner. And Pete noticed that Connor always went to the camp toilets during the night, rather than staggering into the nearby bush.
Desi got some shocks too. On their first day on the boat, when she’d asked what they did about toilets, Connor had indicated the sea. ‘There you go.’
She had given a short, perturbed bark of laughter. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m afraid there’s no going back for rest stops. You’ll just have to hang your butt over the edge.’
She had been horrified, but to her credit she had never moaned about it. Pete had tried to avert his eyes for her first few clumsy attempts. But Connor had openly laughed at her as she struggled to hold herself up using the handrail at the stern.
Pete still wishes he could have had the chance to know Desi before she met Connor. Perhaps if he could have talked to her first, had her full attention on him for a little while, then she might see him more clearly now. Instead, he had watched it all from the sidelines, falling in love and knowing there was no chance. When Pete first laid eyes on Desi, she already worshipped Connor. And while Connor had taken more time to reciprocate, when Pete had returned to visit them a few months later they were an item. And he had to admit they made a great team.
Still, while you could see that Desi held nothing back in her affections, there had been moments when Connor’s smile seemed a little strained, his relaxed pose slightly forced. At the time, Pete had dismissed it as his own jealousy, searching for chinks in their togetherness so that he might better endure their enviable happiness. But later he thought he understood.
Was it finally time to tell Desi everything? Would it help, or make things worse?
Pete is stirred from his memories by a heavy pain running from shoulder to elbow. Alarmed, he looks down to see Desi’s head nestled in the crook of his arm. She is fast sleep.
He gently pulls his arm from under her, putting a cushion there instead, then sits up. He rubs his face, and turns to watch Desi sleeping. The urge to lean over and kiss her is strong, and he wonders if she would wake up if he did, and what she would do. But he daren’t risk it. He knows they share a deep connection, but still, all these years later, nothing will release her fully from Connor’s spell. From the point of his death, she has been sleepwalking, permanently caught within the congealing amber of grief, unable to wrest herself free. Pete can do nothing more than helplessly witness, until he figures out some new trick to finally pull her from her torpor.
He rolls his shoulders, trying to relax. The reminiscences of Monkey Mia have set his mind straining, as though trying to push some connection into his consciousness. Then he realises: the book he’d seen Maya slot into a drawer. He hadn’t recognised it at the time, but now he thinks he knows what it is.
He has an overwhelming desire to check. He gets up and creeps towards Desi’s bedroom, sits on the bed and pulls the drawer open as quietly as he can. He takes out the red leather book and lets it rest in his hands for a moment. He can’t abide snooping. What if he’s mistaken, and this is Desi’s diary? Then Maya shouldn’t have been reading it, and neither should he.
Before he can get into a debate with himself, he opens the cover and begins to