Falling Again for Her Island Fling

With the setting sun behind him, she couldn’t make out his expression. He was just a dark silhouette against the bleeding orange of the sun dipping into the water.

‘What is it?’ she asked as the last rays of sunlight streaked around them.

‘It’s...’ Guy hesitated, as if he was making up his mind whether to speak. ‘It’s just strange, being back here again,’ he said eventually, coming round to the front of the tents and spreading a blanket on the ground. ‘We spent so much time here before. And I’ve had this place in my mind for so long.’

‘It’s so strange not being able to remember it,’ Meena said, sitting on the blanket and wondering whether this conversation would have been different if she’d had her memories. If Guy would even have talked about the past at all if she hadn’t been reliant on him to fill in the missing parts for her.

‘It’s strange for me too,’ Guy said, lit now only by the full moon as he dropped down beside her. Darkness had fallen fast, and Meena didn’t want to risk interfering with the natural instincts of the turtles by turning on a torch or lighting a fire. ‘It’s hard to know what to tell you.’

‘I want to know it all,’ she said, glad of the darkness that hid her expression, letting her ask questions she’d never have dared to if she’d properly had to look him in the eye.

‘I know...’ Guy said. ‘I know you think that you do, but...’

‘But what? But you know what I want better than I do?’

‘But me telling you isn’t the same as you remembering.’ He explained his thinking. ‘Would it really change anything?’

‘It might,’ she countered. He could never know what it was like for her to live with this hole in her memories. To feel as if she didn’t know herself. ‘I want to know everything I can about that time when my memories are missing.’

He sighed, shaking his head. ‘Why does it mean so much to you? It all happened such a long time ago. Why can’t we just leave it all in the past?’

How could he ask that? Had their relationship meant so little to him that he could just pretend that it had never happened in the first place? Had she meant so little to him?

She could see why it wouldn’t matter to him. He was clearly a womaniser who picked up women and dropped them with barely a thought for what came next. But she wasn’t like that. Had he known, then, that she’d been a virgin? She couldn’t think of anything more mortifying to ask. If he hadn’t known, it would be mortifying telling him now. That he had been so special to her when she had clearly meant nothing to him.

‘Because I deserve to know my own past,’ she told him. ‘You’re hoarding these memories like it’s your decision only. But I helped make those memories, and I think I’m entitled to have them back. Perhaps not everyone with amnesia feels this way. But what I’ve pieced together of that summer doesn’t make sense. The Meena that I see through those memories doesn’t make sense to me. I want to understand her. Want to understand who I was.’

‘I don’t remember you changing,’ he said, as if that was the end of the matter. How could it be? How could she have been pregnant with his baby if she hadn’t become someone else over those months?

‘That’s not possible,’ she said eventually. ‘I know that I changed. I want to know why.’

‘Is this because—?’ Guy stopped himself, and that was all she needed to hear to know that he was about to tell her something important.

‘Just say it,’ she told him.

He hesitated, but she knew that her tone hadn’t given him any choice but to answer. He must remember something of her, to know that. ‘Is it because of me? Because of our relationship. Is th

at what you’re confused about?’

‘Partly,’ she confirmed, though she couldn’t tell him about the baby. Assuming that he didn’t already know, of course. It was impossible trying to pick through these conversations when both of them were hiding so much. Surely if he had known then that she was pregnant he would have asked about it by now?

But even if it hadn’t been for the baby she would still have been confused about what had happened. The Meena that she remembered wouldn’t have slept with Guy. So she must have been someone different those months.

‘I just don’t understand...us,’ she said at last, not sure that it was a good idea mentioning their relationship, but unsure of how else to get the answers that she needed. ‘The me that I remember wouldn’t have...’ She was grateful for the dark hiding her expression. If she’d done it, she should be able to talk about it. But as she didn’t even remember having sex with him—having sex with anyone—she figured that it didn’t count.

‘Wouldn’t have slept with me?’ Guy asked outright.

The blood rushed furiously to her face and she could feel her skin burning even as the evening was starting to turn cooler.

‘Yes,’ she said, forcing out the word to break the awkward silence.

‘I know that you hadn’t before,’ he said after a long pause. ‘That I was your first.’

She kept thinking that it wasn’t possible to be any more embarrassed than she already was, and then Guy would go and open his mouth and suddenly she was dying all over again.

‘It wasn’t a casual thing,’ he went on when her silence continued. ‘If that’s what you were thinking. It was important to you. To both of us.’

She blew out a breath, hoping that it would take the heat in her face with it. ‘I... I’m glad. That helps,’ she told him. And she meant it. It was a relief, if she was honest, to know that it had been important enough to her for Guy to know that. They must have talked about it, for him just to come out and say it like that. And he still knew her, to know that that was what she was wondering.