The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

went back in to her patient, a seven-year-old boy with an infected leg wound. ‘Right. Now, where were we?’ she smiled.

Tara lay on the rock, out of breath and still laughing at Holly’s wedgie on her last ‘run’. Jed had taken them to the waterfalls she remembered visiting as a child. They weren’t as high as in her memory, nor as azure as Instagram led everyone to believe, but the river feeding into them was wide and fast and the falls fanned round the pool in a crescent. In the far corner, a short sequence of smooth-bouldered runs acted like chutes and it was possible to slide down them – which was what they had been doing for a couple of hours now. Jimmy couldn’t get enough, and Holly and Dev had been taking it in turns to ‘cannonball’ with him. They were all feeling very waterlogged.

‘Anyone hungry?’ Jed asked.

‘Me!’ Holly’s arm shot up like she was in school.

‘I would murder for a coffee,’ Dev panted, wading through the pool to where Jed was sitting on the rocks and opening up his large rucksack.

‘Not got coffee here, but how about some fresh papaya juice and some mangoes?’

‘Oh my God yes,’ Holly said, hurriedly wading over too, elbows out like she was a sales shopper. ‘This is like one of those posh spas – waterfalls. Mangoes. Papaya juice.’

Tara lay flat out on her rock, basking like a seal, her eyes closed and listening to the sounds of the jungle all around them. It was so much busier than her sleep apps suggested. The air positively thrummed with noise, it dripped with scent, even her own skin quietly beaded with sweat as though that too was brimming to overflowing. It felt like sensory overload and she had a feeling of becoming grounded and settling back into her own body again. Even her headache was on a dim setting.

She heard a distinctive shriek and opened her eyes in time to see a keel-billed toucan flying between the trees. She smiled, still able to remember the first time she’d seen one. She’d been ten.

‘Here, T-t.’ Jed was squatting on the rock beside hers, reaching over with a glass of juice.

She scrambled up onto her elbows and took it gratefully. ‘So this is heavenly.’

‘I sure think so,’ he grinned.

‘Having fun, Jimmy?’ she called over. He was still clambering over the rocks and shooting down them without stopping, but he couldn’t hear her over the thunder of the falls.

Dev was watching him with an unwavering gaze and Tara felt a rush of love for her old friend. He was such a good father, such a patient husband. Tara didn’t think there were many men out there who would or could put up with Holly; she was strong, demanding, generally uncompromising. She always shouted longest and loudest – and yet, somehow, Dev steered her to where she needed to be. They made a good team. She couldn’t imagine either one of them without the other and yet she remembered a time when Holly had been so determined to cut him out of her life. It seemed inconceivable now. ‘He frightened the hell out of me,’ Holly had admitted years later. ‘I had this sense he was going to be The One and it really pissed me off. I thought I was going to get a lot more shagging around in first.’ The revelation that Holly had been pregnant at the same time as Tara had been just one of many shocks for them both in that period. It was the only one she could look back on with warmth.

‘So, Jed,’ Holly said, settling herself on the rocks, her elbows resting on her knees. ‘Twig told me you’ve known her since she was a little girl . . .’

Tara grinned at her friend’s tone of voice. Uh-oh.

‘. . . That means you must have some dirt on her.’ Her blue eyes twinkled.

Jed laughed. ‘Well now, if I did, it would be more than my life’s worth to share it.’

‘Huh, that’s very disappointing, Jed,’ Holly quipped. ‘I think you and I are going to need to crack open a bottle of rum sometime soon and see what you have to say then.’

Everyone chuckled.

‘I can’t believe we’ve got this place all to ourselves?’ Dev said, looking over at Jed. ‘I assumed it would be overrun with tourists.’

‘Well, there are some much bigger falls than this a few kilometres away. They usually go there and mainly it’s the locals come here, ’cos it’s close by. But it will all get busier once the new park opens. What is it they call it? Eco-tourism?’ He gave a wry smile.

Dev grinned. ‘I still can’t believe your family owns a national park, Twig.’

Tara blushed. ‘Well, technically it’s still just a private conservation project until the weekend. Only once it’s gifted back to the Costa Rican people will it become a national resource.’

‘Oh, just call a spade a spade,’ Holly scoffed. ‘It’s a goddam national park!’

Dev looked back at Tara. ‘It’s an incredible thing, what your family’s done.’

‘It’s really nothing to do with me.’

‘But for your family to use their money like that, to realize such a bold vision. I mean, how many other people in your position would have committed to something of that scale? It’s all very well and good signing up to the notion of good causes but actually following through on it . . .’

‘Dev – stop talking?’ Holly muttered, seeing Tara’s frozen expression. It was several seconds before he caught up and remembered the background story. Realization ran openly over his face. He had been there, back then; he remembered the fallout from this Great Idea, the sacrifice to the Grand Scheme . . .

He looked at Jed instead, flustered. ‘How is it regarded by the Costa Ricans?’ he asked, looking for safe ground.

Jed gave a cautious nod. ‘Most people are pleased.’

‘Only most? Not all?’

‘Well, not the mining or the logging or the oil companies, nor the ranchers, or the farmers or the plantation owners. All the ones who have to cut