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

‘Ah, the famous propofol tree. Yes, I’ve heard of it,’ she quipped drily.

He shot her a look. ‘Chew on that.’

She chewed on the twig. With minutes her mouth and tongue were tingling, all taste gone. ‘Huh. Could be handy I guess.’

‘It has been. Many times.’ He began walking again.

‘For you?’

‘Yeah, once or twice.’

‘Like when?’ she pressed.

‘Well, there was one time I was out looking for some quetzals that we’d heard were nesting here. They usually stay on the Pacific side of the Talamanca mountains.’

‘So quetzals are . . . birds, then?’ she clarified. He always had assumed everyone had a PhD in biology.

‘Yes, very famous ones,’ she could almost hear him rolling his eyes. ‘Although now sadly nearing extinction. They’re beautiful – dark green wings, scarlet stomach, really long tail feathers and a cute little buzz cut. They’re hard to spot. I’d been out here for three days looking and was just giving up when I had an unfortunate encounter with a protective mother peccary and ran straight into a manchineel tree.’

He looked back at her to see if she understood the meaning.

‘You lost me at buzz cut,’ she shrugged, wearily picking her way over a tree trunk.

‘The manchineel tree is known as the Tree of Death.’

She shrugged up her eyebrows. ‘Are we getting a little dramatic?’

‘Their fruit looks like small apples. If eaten, they cause vomiting, fever, ulceration of the throat, haemorrhage of the upper digestive tract, slowing of the heart, coma and death.’

She nodded. This was her kind of language. ‘Wow. Impressive.’

‘Clearly, I didn’t eat the apple. But the bark and leaves are toxic too – they give you lesions, blisters. You shouldn’t even sit under the trees in the rain because the drops carry off the toxic resin.’

‘Nasty.’

‘Yeah, and I basically ran up to it and gave it a hug.’

‘Whilst running from a close relative of the pig?’

‘Hey!’ he protested, laughing. ‘I’ll have you know it was a nasty incident! I managed to get some anaesthetic leaves and rub them on quickly, but I’ve still got the scars – look.’ And he took her hand and pressed her fingers against his upper chest and neck.

Ten years contracted to a single breath as the sudden contact of her skin upon his made her own laughter fade. She could feel the scars beneath her fingertips, skin she had once known so intimately now marked by events experienced in her absence, and it made her wonder – how much had he lived without her? How many stories and adventures; how many women . . .?

She felt a white flash of pain sear inside her, memories she had long ago suppressed shooting up like fireworks. ‘Alex—’ She tried to pull her hand back but the pressure on her hand increased.

‘Tara.’ His voice split and at the sound of it she instinctively looked up. A mistake – the passion that had surged between them from their first ever meeting was there still, impossible to deny; like an underground shoot reaching for the light, she understood now that it hadn’t withered but had simply been buried. ‘Tara, you have to forgive me.’

She swallowed. ‘No.’ The word was unequivocal.

‘I know what I did, the way I hurt you.’

She looked straight back at him, forcing back down all the feelings that wanted to surge and be seen, acknowledged, felt. ‘. . . You don’t know anything.’

‘You have to forgive me,’ he repeated. ‘It’s been ten years!’

‘I know,’ she said simply. ‘Our child would have been nine.’

Her words, softly spoken, were like thunderclaps and she watched as the confusion ran over his face. His hand dropped from hers and he stumbled back, away from her, as though she’d hit him.

‘. . . What?’ His voice was a whisper.

‘I was pregnant. I’d planned on telling you after the engagement.’

She spoke quietly but with power. How many years had she waited to say these words? She saw the pain travel through him, an electric current she had been able to shoot across from her heart to his, leaving him trembling. But there was no joy or satisfaction to be had from it. It didn’t mitigate her loss. She felt only dismay that the secret she had so excitedly wanted to tell him in bed one night, all those years ago, was instead being revealed like this, here, a world away. She could still see her and Holly’s ghosts standing on the bridge in Hyde Park, both thinking they knew their own futures. They had each been so utterly wrong.

She looked straight back at him, determined to answer the next question before he even asked it. ‘I miscarried nine days later.’ The intimation was clear.

‘Tara—’

‘It’s why I can’t forgive you, no matter how much time passes,’ she said simply. He looked broken, but she was resolute. The heart vibration is weak. You lost a child. She had spent ten years living with this and the pain was still the same. She didn’t feel any less empty, and unburdening herself of the secret didn’t make her feel any less haunted. He knew now too, that was all. He understood, at last, that they had lost so much more than the last decade, that there was no way back, whatever chemistry told them otherwise. ‘What you took from me, you can never give back. And no matter how kind or generous you may be – now that you’ve achieved what you wanted – we’re not friends. I just need you to help me help Paco and then we’re done.’

He stared at her in an anguished silence. She could see the words and arguments climb into his eyes and onto his lips, only to be discarded again. They would have had a child, nine by now? There was nothing to counter that.

She watched as he swallowed and looked away, his body turning as if in slow motion. He put one foot in front of the other and they resumed the trek in silence.

There were no more jokes or stories now, the miles ticking along as the sun charted its descent. The jungle was