It had been planned for a long time. The ultimate 18-day holiday in the sun. Just me and my partner on a small island in the outer reaches of the Bahamas, the Abaco Islands.
Everything about it was great. From the long haul flight from London to Miami, a night at a great hotel there with a fabulous Italian meal and the small plane which took us to Treasure Cay from where we got a boat to our Island, Green Turtle Cay.
On arrival we were met with a stretch golf cart to take the bags and us to our suite. The suites were fantastic, a huge room with a full kitchen and lounge. Best of all no TV and no phone.
This was going to be fabulous.
Pretty soon we realised that we were a little different from the normal clientele. We had booked for 16 days on this island and most of our co-guests were only there for two or three nights, island hopping and then moving on.
The majority of the guests were American and we were no strangers to them having been in the US on many occasions.
We enjoyed the small town, went on boat trips and swam with dolphins. Beach parties and get togethers were impromptu and great fun. The other guests were mostly couples and after a week or so we got used to meeting with people for pre-dinner drinks on the shared balconies of the suite, listening to the surf roll in over the coral.
It was the perfect situation as no sooner had we got to know some of them than they moved on, sometimes sharing e-mail addresses for the future, sometimes not.
After about a week we came back from breakfast to find two new neighbours had just moved in.
They were two sisters, one from New York and the other from Cleveland. Helen and Mary and you couldnt have put together two more different individuals.
Helen was (she told us) married to a lawyer, lived in New York and was taking her sister to the Bahamas for a holiday she couldnt afford. Aged about 63 and tanned, she was well dressed and obviously well off. Mary was a couple of years younger t... Læs hele novellen
