Page 13 of After the Accident
THE SMELL OF HOPE OR SEWERS
Emma:I walked down the path, away from the edge and that stupid cone. I thought about heading back into the hotel, but it was late in the morning and the scent of the village was in the air. It’s always the smells that get me.
Not long after I’d been released, I’d gone into a mall where the cleaners were busy working. They were using this detergent that must have been the same one from prison. I was frozen in front of the door, unable to shift until someone asked if I could move. I bet I could smell that again in thirty years and it would still send me right back in time.
That’s what it was like when I was outside the hotel. I was helpless to do anything other than follow my nose down the slope towards the centre of the village. It was déjà vu the entire way, remembering how I used to feel making this journey. I was a young woman then, a girl even, and I had my whole life ahead of me. This time, it felt like so much of my life was behind me. I’d wasted those best years and, if anything, gone backwards.
Julius:Emma always had a thing about the village below the hotel. I didn’t see it myself. The hotel was about as luxurious as you’re going to get on an island like that, so why waste your time in a dump?
Emma:Things must have changed over time, but, as I got to the edge of the market, it all seemed the same as I remembered. There were the stalls selling counterfeit football shirts, bags and branded tops. The rug stall was still on the corner, with a huge, faded carpet rolled up against a telegraph pole. I swear it was like that the last time I’d seen it.
I suppose the sights are much like any market – but it’s the smell that sets it apart. It’s hard to describe because you have to experience it. It starts at some time after eleven, when the locals are cooking lunch, hoping to entice the tourists. There are these huge vats of rice, vegetables and spices, which blends with fresh fish being grilled on outdoor barbecues. Because the village sits down a path below the hotel, it all whips together on the breeze and drifts its way up.
It’s just…
…
It’s the smell of hope and being young. Summer and sun. There’s nothing like it.
Julius:I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a smell. Sometimes the sewers run over. Is that what you’re talking about?
Emma:I ended up sitting at a table outside a café. There was shade and a gentle breeze. All I wanted to do was watch and listen. To absorb everything. I had a lump in my throat and cried a little bit to myself.
I’d usually have found a place to be alone and hide everything – but I didn’t want to move in case the feeling went away. It was the village that caused that. It was that smell.
I could tell you I was upset about Dad, but it wouldn’t be true… not completely. It was those feelings of the life I’d lost.
At the sentencing, my solicitor talked about ‘genuine remorse’ and it always stuck with me. He said: ‘She has genuine remorse for what happened’ and it felt like one of those things a lawyer would say. I bet everyone has ‘genuine remorse’ because it makes their sentences shorter. Except, I was actually broken by it.
Properly broken.
I could barely dress myself, or get out of bed. I wasn’t eating. I had to be reminded to drink. People would whisper about me and wonder if I was planning to kill myself.
And, as I sat outside that café, all I could think about was how younger me had walked through this village, had drunk the tea and eaten the fish. How she’d never have been able to guess the person I’d become.
So, yeah, I cried for myself.
Julius:I don’t think I visited the village once on that trip. Why would I?
Emma:We went to the island so often that it would have been impossible not to pick up a little of the local dialect. I’m not saying I’m bilingual, but I do know the odd word and sentence, plus I can generally get the gist of what someone means.
I was sitting at that table and there were these two men standing near the café door talking to each other. I heard the word ‘beach’ and ‘fall’, plus what I thought was the word ‘British’. I turned around and asked the man who was talking if he was the person who’d found Dad on the beach.
He only knew a few words of English, but we managed to figure it out through a mixture of the two languages.
I told him I was staying at the hotel and that my dad had fallen the night before. He came across and held my hand. He knew the word for ‘sorry’ and kept saying it, before the café owner had to help us piece together the next bit.
He was saying a word that sounded like ‘smock’. I’m probably pronouncing it wrong. The owner was saying ‘fall’, ‘fall’ – and I didn’t get it. I felt like such an idiot because what he was trying to say was that the man hadn’t just found my dad on the beach, he’d seen him fall.
Julius:Sometimes Emma hears what she wants to hear.
Emma:The man said he was walking on the beach and heard a noise from up on the cliffs. It was dark by then, so he didn’t realise what was happening. He saw a shadow and thought it might have been a tree branch falling. It was only when he got closer that he realised it was a person… that it was Dad.
He said he’d already talked to Jin about it that morning because he was sure the noise he’d heard from the cliff wasn’t just a voice. He said it wasvoices…
Chapter Seven
THE STUPID SENSE OF ENVY
