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

‘Want me to carry those?’ he asked, straightening up again and holding a hand out for the buckets.

‘No, I’m fine,’ she said, walking back up to where he was.

‘Of course you are,’ he muttered with a careless shrug, shaking his hands off and turning back into the trees again. She followed quickly after him, not wanting to lose sight of him again and wishing she hadn’t been so stubborn. At least if she’d given him one bucket, she would have had a hand free for pushing through the bushes.

She kept him in her sights at all times, noticing after a minute or so a white stripe – like a lick of Tipp-Ex – painted on some of the leaves every few metres; she saw how his hands automatically reached for them, as if he was counting them as he passed. Within minutes, they were back at the camp.

She stopped at the sight that greeted her. He had built a small fire that was already flickering red and orange. But not just that.

‘What did you do that for?’ she asked, seeing how he had moved her tarp to the far side of her hammock, effectively creating a little room in which they both now slept.

‘Room for the fire, for one thing,’ he pointed out. It sat between their two beds. ‘Plus your own protection. Falling branches are the number one cause of injury out here.’

‘If a branch is going to fall on me, I doubt that thing’s going to provide me much in the way of protection.’

He blinked, refusing to be baited. ‘Anything to break the fall is helpful. Besides, the monkeys will have a great time pelting you with God knows what if they see you sleeping unprotected.’

She saw now that her hammock had been adjusted too; it lay slack and inviting, something to roll into, rather than cling to. Ordinarily she would have said thank you. But nothing about this was ordinary.

‘I’ll take those,’ he murmured, and she startled as he leaned towards her and took the buckets from her hands. For a moment, she felt his skin brush hers and the unexpected silky warmth of it gave her shivers. It wasn’t personal, it wasn’t anything to do with him. The jungle was just so spiky and scratchy and tickly and hot and wet. Skin-on-skin out here felt like cashmere on a November night back home.

She watched as Alex put the gas camping stove on its feet and poured some of the water from one of the buckets into a small pan. He added a water purifying tablet and both sitting on their haunches on opposite sides of the flames, they watched in silence as it slowly came to the boil.

‘You should keep your sleeves rolled down,’ he said, glancing at her rolled-up shirt sleeves. ‘Everything will be coming out around now.’

She didn’t reply. She didn’t want even to roll down her sleeves – to reject his advice just to reject him was a pleasing thought – but there would be only one victim of that mindset. What was that Buddha quote Holly loved throwing at her? Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and wishing the other person would die.

She went to roll down her shirt sleeves, but he suddenly reached over and held her arm still. ‘Hmm, that looks nasty,’ he muttered, examining it closely. She saw she had a scratch on the underside of her forearm, just down from her elbow, several inches long. It was livid-looking, a raised red weal, and she flinched as he placed a hand protectively over it, feeling the heat. He looked up at her. ‘How did you get that?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t know I had,’ she frowned.

‘Really? It looks deep. You must have felt it at the time?’

He was right. They both continued staring at the wound. ‘. . . It must have been when Jed was attacked,’ she said, thinking back. ‘There was a lot going on. I was running, trying to find him, and . . .’

His eyes narrowed as he regarded her afresh. He looked . . . she wasn’t sure what. Concerned? ‘And you’re sure they didn’t hurt you?’

She looked back at him coldly. She didn’t want his concern. Or pity. ‘Do I look hurt to you?’

Mission accomplished.

He blinked, letting her arm drop. ‘No. You look damn near armour-plated to me.’

Another moment passed in which they said nothing, just stared at one another, both of them fundamentally bewildered to find themselves in this scenario.

He turned away, checking on the water, and she examined the wound herself more closely. She didn’t like the look of it either – deep, angry, hot – and she rolled her sleeve back down. With the heat, humidity and lack of washing facilities here, she would need to take care it didn’t become infected.

The light had all but gone and the fire threw out a spreading, warming glow. Alex poured a packet of rice into the pan, added some black beans and began stirring it. She went over to her rucksack and pulled out her head torch and the crank-up flashlight he’d given her, putting them both inside her hammock. She fussed with her mosquito net like it was the drapery to a four-poster, hearing the flames crackling at her back. She resented how easy he made this all seem. She knew perfectly well that to be out here alone would have been a very different story; the lessons Jed had taught her in childhood wouldn’t have covered much of what had happened on the journey so far.

‘Jed must be a good friend, for you to be doing all this for him,’ he said, still stirring the rice as she came back to the fire, nothing else to do. He had found and rolled some logs – of course he had! – for them to sit upon, and she sank onto the nearest one.

‘Anyone would do the same.’

He frowned. ‘Would they? This isn’t exactly camping for beginners.’

‘Well, I’m not exactly a beginner. Not completely.