his legs up, away from the skittering foam, and finds he is not alone. Close by, the surface of black rock shifts, the obsidian eyes of countless marine iguanas opening to squint suspiciously at him. He stays very still, observing the ripples in their baggy skin as a few adjust position to slouch against the rock, or lie splayed on top of one another.
This is not good at all. He doubts it is legal to sleep on a Galapagos beach, this close to the hallowed wildlife. He doesn’t remember how he got here, and hopes none of his new colleagues witnessed it. His last memory is of drinking alone, at a small, empty bar – the way he prefers it.
Drink is a familiar, fickle friend to Jackson. Most times it doesn’t seem to matter, the wasted days of retching into the sink, lying around, waiting to recover. If he’s going to binge, he times it to make sure an empty day follows. Drink doesn’t completely control Jackson – even if sometimes he can’t resist the lure. But he hopes he doesn’t live to regret this one.
He takes a deep breath and struggles to sit, his stomach cramping and a bout of nausea washing over him. He swallows it and wraps his arms over his knees, taking deep breaths and staring out towards the sea. In a few hours he’ll be somewhere over that horizon with a team of scientists, sailing towards one of the few refuges for the whale shark – a gentle giant of the ocean, and the long-declared love of Jackson’s life.
What about Kate?
The question sneaks up on him, making him miserably aware of his feelings. For nearly ten years he has deliberately avoided anything but casual fun. It has worked so well that he has begun to inwardly scorn the traditions that so many of his friends have fallen for – blokes who are now saddled with children and mortgages and never stay out past ten. His feelings for Kate are all the more startling since he has known her for less than a month, but he fears that the course of his life has taken an irrevocable turn. Because if she were here now, leading him away from the research boat at the dock – from his dream job – he had a good idea of which way he would go.
There had been plenty of girls over the years – ‘conquests’, his father had called them recently in the midst of an unsettling question: ‘When are you going to stop all these conquests and settle down?’ Jackson was pretty sure it had been Kate who brought the question on. His father had doubtless seen her scurrying back to her tent early the same morning. Jackson had only laughed and turned away, and yet Kate had been on his mind for the rest of the day – that lively face with cerulean eyes, the gentle sand-spun curls in her hair. She was gorgeous, but what really made his head whirl was the way a conversation went with her. When he told other girls what he did for a living, he could predict their excitement. A man who swam with sharks – even filter-feeding, harmless ones – was a catch, and most didn’t care that he wasn’t a keeper. Their responses were along the lines of ‘Wow, how exciting!’ or ‘That’s really brave’, or sometimes, from the plucky ones, ‘I’d love to do that’. But when he had told Kate what he did, she had said, ‘You’re a lucky man, Jackson.’
She had turned up in Lovelock Bay late one night, when most people had already pitched their tents and settled in for the evening. Charlie had brought her across. ‘This girl here is asking about Desi,’ he’d said, and marched off again, leaving Jackson struggling to apologise for his father’s rudeness.
‘My sister isn’t around at the moment,’ he’d answered carefully. ‘Can I help you?’
Kate had shrugged. ‘I wanted to look her up. She’s my aunt – or as good as.’
‘Well,’ Jackson had laughed, ‘as far as I know, she only has one brother, and that’s me … are you sure you don’t have something to tell me?’
She had grinned at that. ‘No – I’m Connor’s niece.’
Jackson had stopped smiling then. To hide his surprise he had asked if she needed help pitching her tent, and by the time they had finished it had grown dark. He’d invited her to share the drinks in his van, and they’d sat