Free After the Storm by Jane Lythell Page A

in the brilliant sunshine. There were modest houses along the beach and small boats and canoes at the water’s edge. Kim stripped the damp sheets off the beds and hung the sheets and quilts out to dry and Anna helped her. Two men rowed over to the El Tiempo Pasa . They were in a pongo, a shallow canoe, a smaller frailer version of the cayuka and they had fruit and fish with them which they offered for sale. Kim bought some small yellow mangoes and Owen asked the men to come back in an hour and he’d pay them to clean the boat.
    It was going to be their hottest day yet. Anna put on her bikini and had a shower on deck using buckets of cold water. Rob watched her as she shampooed her long hair and lathered it, her eyes shut tight. Her bikini was made up of two small triangles of bright blue that just covered her breasts, and tiny panties that stretched over her bottom. She was tall and slim and he loved the way her belly stuck out a bit over her hipbones. He sometimes wondered why meeting Anna on the tube with the blood trickling down her chin had made such an impact on him. He thought it was because he was drawn to her intensity, both the intense way she was reading her book and the intense way she looked at him when their eyes met for the first time. Maybe it was the mole between her eyebrows that gave her eyes their extraordinary power. Of course some people might consider that mole a defect. His classically beautiful mum probably did, though she’d never said anything about it. He remembered the first time he introduced Anna to her. They had been invited round to lunch and Anna was dressed simply in jeans, a white shirt and ankle boots. She had put her little silver earrings in but wore no other jewellery. She wasn’t a woman for bangles or necklaces. As he rang the bell on the house in Crouch End, which his mum shared with Elliot and Savannah, Rob had looked over at Anna to give her an encouraging smile and at that moment he thought her the most beautiful woman on earth.
    His mother opened the door to them. She was wearing one of her flowing white linen outfits and a turquoise necklace with heavy uneven stones which complimented her brilliant blue eyes. She was scanning Anna over his shoulder as she leaned forward and embraced him and then she took Anna’s hand. Anna held out a bunch of Sweet Peas to her. She had insisted on getting those particular flowers and they’d had to go to two flower shops to find the blooms. Later his mum had told him that she approved of Anna as his girlfriend. She thought she was a young woman of substance and that if anyone could straighten Rob out then Anna could.
    Kim came up onto the deck and this stopped his reverie. She was also in her bikini which was acid yellow. She looked good too he thought.
    The men from the village came back to clean the boat and Owen told the others to go ahead and he would join them in a while. They got into the dinghy and made the short journey to the beach.
    ‘We’ll eat here today. There should be places where we can get some good fish,’ Kim said.
    She tried not to show it to Rob and Anna but she was feeling miserable and out of sorts with Owen. She watched as they strolled in front of her through the village of Triunfo de la Cruz. It was a clean, well-kept village with traditional wooden houses that had thatched roofs of palm and one or two modern concrete bungalows too. She remembered the time she and Owen had come here before, about a year into their adventure. It was a happier time then and they had been more united.
    Triunfo de la Cruz was a Garifuna community and Rob was telling Anna about how the Garifuna were descendants of Caribbean and West African people. Rob was pleased at everything he saw: the chickens scratching at the grit, a pile of coconut husks outside a bar, the smoky bonfire smell of the village. The streets were sandy and children were playing outside their houses and calling out ‘ Hola , hola ’ to them as they walked along.