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

two of them. But he hadn’t crossed her mind. Her day had been too . . . eventful to be daydreaming about her boyfriend and she shook her head now, as though swatting away her guilt.

‘You okay?’ Alex asked. ‘Mozzies bothering you?’

‘Fine. I’m fine.’

‘I’ve got some Deet if you need it.’

‘I said I’m fine.’

He inhaled sharply at her brusque tone, looking irritated. ‘Okay, well let’s set up here then.’ And he unbuckled his backpack. Without hesitation, Tara did the same, rolling her shoulders and feeling light as air as she shed its weight. A groan escaped her and she caught his head automatically turn in her direction at the sound.

She watched as Alex unrolled his hammock, fixing it to two trees that seemed very conveniently located, only having to hack at some low-growing branches that would otherwise poke him in the back. Then he secured a nylon line higher up the trunks and draped a large mosquito net over it, so that it fell on both sides over the hammock. Finally, using another fly line on a tree set just a little further back, he draped a tarp that angled above the hammock and fell behind one side of it, creating a wall.

Tara looked on, irritated by the impressive makeshift ‘room’ he had created – a bed that was off the ground, dry, protected from insects and any rain. He looked over at her. ‘Want me to do yours?’

She scowled at him. ‘I’m sorry – do I have “helpless” written across my forehead?’

He sighed, his hands on his hips, regarding her with an exasperated look she recognized, the one that he always used to give when she would remake their bed – plumping the pillows, tucking the fitted sheet, smoothing out the wrinkles on the duvet – straight after his own best efforts. His retort had always been to throw her on the bed and proceed to make it very messy again. Now, though, he looked away. ‘My mistake.’

Swallowing hard and regretting her reflexive proud scorn, she did her best to copy what she’d seen him do – but her trees seemed further apart, stretching her bed tight like a trampoline, and the tarp tree was further away so that she was only half-covered from the dense canopy overhead. It was risky – Jed had forever warned her as a kid how monkeys liked to drop things like stones and fruit from on high – but if it was the price she had to pay for privacy, so be it; unlike Alex’s tarp, which hung behind his bed, she had deliberately draped hers in front, so that it stretched like a wall between his hammock and hers.

She could hear his sighs grow heavier and more frequent as she tested his patience but she didn’t care. What had he expected? A bonding exercise? That they were going to reminisce over old times?

He stuck his head around the tarp, watching for a moment as she grappled with the hammock ties; she couldn’t get them to loosen. ‘Do you want to dig the toilet or get the water?’

She stared back at him as if the question was a joke.

‘Yeah, thought so . . . Just watch for crocs.’ And he put a pair of collapsible rubber buckets on the ground. She looked back around the tarp to find he’d picked up a small shovel – like the type Rory had in his avalanche kit when skiing – and was pushing through the bushes, walking with the ease of a gardener making his way back to the potting shed. He disappeared from sight within a matter of seconds and she immediately, acutely, felt her sense of aloneness again. The afternoon’s events had left her more shaky than she had appreciated and for all that she hated him, she had begrudgingly taken comfort in his company and expertise too; this had been his home for nigh-on ten years, after all.

She turned a circle on the spot, looking out for the neighbours, but she felt lumberingly conspicuous just standing there. It felt better to keep moving and she picked up the buckets and walked in the direction of the rushing river. She pushed tentatively through the bushes, startling as her eye glimpsed a tail flick through the leaves, by her feet. A pair of butterflies flitted in a dance, fluttering in a helix above the leaves of a bush with bright orange spiky flowers. The light had deepened in intensity, as it often did in the moments before sundown, and the bold, bright colours glowed almost neon, as if under ultraviolet.

There was no path to follow, just delicate animal tracks that meandered around trees, hanging vines to push back, the giant root-bed walls of upended giants to navigate. She watched where she put her feet, noticing how big the ants were, easily the size of grape pips. Bullet ants – Jed always used to point them out to her, and they were named for good reason; they had a nasty bite.

She stepped out of the jungle onto the riverside and took a breath as the world suddenly opened up again. She had a view, some breathing room; she didn’t have to push at something to see past. She stopped by the water’s edge and watched the river flow. It was a muddy torrent, the earlier rain having washed the land into the water, large branches sweeping along with pronged, leafy fingers, catching on boulders before releasing themselves again.

The river was wide here, but it didn’t seem very deep. Rocks poked through the surface like the smooth humps of hippo backs, some mossy and slippery-looking further out; but there was no sign of any man-eating reptiles as far as she could see. There wouldn’t be crocodiles this far upriver, surely? Alex had just been trying to scare her, to throw her off guard and keep her nervous, as if somehow in his debt.

He wished!

She stepped carefully into the water, grateful for the borrowed pair of walking boots; they were waterproof – possibly bulletproof too, judging