This Way to Paradise (20 page)

‘Oh, I care,' he said,‘and much of what you say is true. I was thinking of myself. I was. My job. How I would support my family. But I was thinking of you too. I thought, my girl's growing up. She's a teenager. Almost a woman. I need to butt out a bit. Let her go and not crowd her so much. I need to give her space to breathe and find herself.'

I sat back and looked at him.'
Space?'

Dad nodded. ‘I think I read the wrong teen manual. I got it all wrong. Maybe too much space, hey?'

The idea of my dad trying to do the right thing had never occurred to me and, as it did, the anger I'd felt towards him began to melt away. He was only human, trying to find his way like the rest of us. He wasn't perfect. He got it wrong sometimes, but he cared. He did. And that's what mattered.

Dad leaned over and pulled me in closer, so that my head was resting on his shoulder again. ‘My only girl. I should have known better. India, I'm sorry. In future, we must always talk. Not leave it too late. Always talk.'

Before us, the dusk was beginning its nightly display with a blaze of colour lighting up the horizon.

‘Another sunset,' said Dad.

‘Our favourite time of day,' I said.

We sat and watched as we had before, so many times, in so many countries.

‘I've missed you,' said Dad as the sun finally disappeared below the horizon.

‘I've missed you too,' I said. ‘And I've only just realised how much.'

‘Flight B413 will be leaving shortly from Gate 3,' came the message over the tannoy.

‘Here we go again,' said Kate, slinging her bag over her shoulder, and together we made our way towards our gate.

I couldn't wait.

Dad had stayed on in Greece for two days. Spending time with him made me realise that the last week, since Mum had gone back to London, hadn't been a barrel of laughs for him either. Dad loves to travel, but with his family, and he'd been away from most of us and thrust into a new situation too. I wasn't the only one. Once we'd talked everything out and there was nothing more to say, I had a great time showing him the island. Aunt Sarah had let us have the car and we did the town,
the beaches, the shops, the cafés, and at last I got to eat in the little restaurant that I'd spied on my first day on the island. The one with the stunning views over the bay where I'd imagined I'd be with Joe. So it wasn't with him. It didn't matter. Dad was great company and we had a fabulous time together. And then the day before yesterday, he had to go back on the tour, as the man standing in for him had to go on to another job.

I didn't mind when he said goodbye, because we were OK with each other again and because I knew that I was going to be homeward bound soon and he'd back with us all in October. I was really looking forward to being in London again and I hoped that Mum and the boys would be there at the airport to meet me. It would be so fab to see them all.

Robin and Tom had returned a few days earlier, so Kate was in semi-mourning, but Joe was on the same flight as us.

‘No yogurts this time,' I said as he joined us on the way out to the plane.

‘And how are the head lice?' he asked with a grin.

‘Nicely cleared up, thank you. Not that there ever were any.'

‘I knew that,' he said. ‘It was fun winding you up, though.'

I gave him a playful punch.

Once on the plane, Kate took the aisle seat, put on her iPod, closed her eyes and was asleep by the time the plane burst through the clouds after take-off. As fate or luck would have it, I was in the middle and Joe at the window.

‘Think I've got that feeling of déjà vu,' I said.

‘Do you want to swap?' he asked, indicating his seat.

I shook my head and glanced at Kate. ‘Wouldn't want to do anything to disturb the sleeping beauty. She needs to recover from her holiday.'

Joe laughed. ‘And what about you? Do you need to recover from it?'

‘Yes and no,' I replied as Joe took a look at the in-flight entertainment brochure to see what movies were on. ‘I'm glad to be going back, though. Four weeks was enough. What about you?'

‘What about me?'

It was the first time we'd spoken since the awkward scene in the art room earlier in the week and, this time, neither of us could get up and walk out. I decided to take advantage and to ask him everything that I'd wanted to know.

‘Hhmm,Joe Donahue? Where can I start? OK. So have you always been such a loner?'

Joe laughed.‘Loner? Me? No. Why would you think that?'

‘You kept to yourself a lot of the time up at Cloud Nine.'

Joe looked thoughtful. ‘I guess.'

‘Kate told me you're a party animal back in London. So what happened?'

‘
Was
a party animal.'

‘So, you're not any more?'

Joe shrugged and looked out of the window. ‘Not sure.'

‘Sorry. I . . . er . . . if you don't want to talk . . .'

Joe turned back.‘No. It's OK, India. No. Kate was right. I was the party animal. You name it, I did it. Drink. Drugs. Girls. Trouble was, there was a price to pay. My grades. My relationship with Mum and Dad, not to mention my relationship with some of the girls.'

‘I'll bet,' I interrupted as I remembered what Kate had said about him being a heartbreaker.

‘And to be honest, it was getting to a point where I wasn't enjoying myself any more, you know? You indulge in anything too much, it loses its appeal. Like at Christmas, too much chocolate and sweet stuff . . .'

‘Noooooo. You can
never
have too much chocolate,' I said with a laugh. ‘But I get what you mean. Like, yeah, you can get to a point where you feel, if you see another mince pie, you'll hurl.'

‘Yeah. Too much of everything, and everyone over-indulges, thinking it will make them happy, but it doesn't. Your man Sensei said something one day that made a lot of sense to me. He said, if you seek happiness too intently through the pleasures of life, then you lose the meaning. But on the other hand, if you seek happiness through the meaning of life too intently, you lose the pleasure. You have to find a balance.'

‘I like that,' I said. ‘Like, moderation.'

‘Yeah. He said some good things. I liked him. It was just some of his followers I wasn't so sure about.'

‘Somehow, I get the feeling that you're talking about Liam.'

Joe smiled. ‘Yeah. I've heard his routine – all that stuff about the darkness in you resisting when you don't want to go along with something he said. That's so manipulative.'

‘The greater the light, the greater the darkness around it – that's what he told me.'

‘And it's true on
one
level, but blimey, you could say that everything is the darkness in you, if you don't want to do something. Don't want to eat your greens? Ooh, it's the darkness in you. Don't want to go to school? It's the darkness. Don't want to snog me? Ooh, it's the darkness in you.'

I laughed. ‘Yeah. Maybe.'

‘You have to admit, he could be intense.'

‘He was very persuasive.'

‘And some,' said Joe. ‘I guess we were just into different things. Opposites. But neither works.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I did the pleasure thing; he did the opposite – the renunciation, denial thing.'

‘Me too, for a while,' I said.‘Aunt Sarah said I seemed earnest. Kate said I'd become boring.'

Joe laughed.‘She's not the most diplomatic, your cousin. But a few times when I saw you in the last week, I thought you looked . . . well, a bit down, like you were trying to be happy but weren't, which is why I tried to warn you off getting pulled in too deep. I've seen Liam lay it on people too heavily before. But it's his trip, not necessarily theirs. That's all I wanted to say
to you that day: don't let him talk you into anything you don't want to do for yourself. But Sensei, he was cool. He never tried to get anyone to do anything. He let people be, to find their own way.'

‘I won't do anything I don't want.' I wouldn't either. I felt free of Liam and, in a way, a little sorry him. He seemed sad when we said goodbye before I set off for the airport. I think he knew that, despite our mutual promise to keep in touch, that I wouldn't – that, since Dad had been over, he didn't have the same hold over me – like I'd been awoken from the spell he'd cast on me. ‘But what about you? Do you think you've found your way?'

‘I'm getting there. Mum and Dad gave me an ultimatum. Shape up or ship out. I chose to shape up. I've one more year to go and then hopefully college.'

‘Shape up or ship out. You never spoke about it. I thought . . . least . . . I thought . . . you —'

‘To tell you the truth, India, at the beginning of the holidays, I didn't know if I was going to make it in Greece. Didn't know if I was going to stay or take off. Some days I was well ready to split. I needed to spend some time alone, to get my head together. I never really appreciated it before, but that place your aunt and my mum have got going really is a good place to go —'

‘When you're at a turning point,' I finished for him.‘I met so many amazing people there who were at crossroads in their lives.'

‘Yeah. Me too. That's what's good about it. People can go there to escape. To think things over and then go back to their lives. What I don't think is so good is when people run away and use the spiritual life as an escape from something. Those are the ones who Liam worms his way in with. Like he senses they're vulnerable or something.'

‘Maybe. But they'll soon learn that they carry whatever unhappiness that is inside of them with them – you can't run away from it. Like with me, when I started meditating, that was when I realised what I'd been hiding from, I felt angry and lonely, but it was all inside of me – no getting away from it. You have to deal with it in the end.'

‘Yeah. Happiness is a state of mind, right? I reckon you can be in heaven or hell on a beach in paradise, or heaven or hell in a busy street in rush hour, depending on the state of mind you are in. No point in running away to some remote ashram, like Liam is always trying to get everyone to do. I think it's because he doesn't want to go alone!'

I laughed. ‘Yeah. Maybe. If he's going to go on the lonely path, he wants to be sure there's a whole load of people with him.'

Joe laughed too. ‘All being lonely together.'

‘Yeah. I'm going to keep doing the meditation, though – I just prefer to do it from my home in Notting Hill. I agree with you. I don't think you do have to be in some so called spiritual place for it to work – before I left, Sensei said that the challenge
is to live in the real world and be happy. He said we have to be like a lotus. It has its roots in muddy water and yet flowers above the water.'

‘I guess,' said Joe. ‘Not getting pulled down into the muck. Nice image, though not one I'm going to be repeating to my mates any time soon. Can you imagine if I get off the plane spouting about being a lotus? They'll think I've lost the plot.'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘My mate Erin thought I had, and I suppose I did get a little evangelical with her at one point. She really thought I'd lost it.'

‘And had you?'

‘No. I hadn't. Yeah, I went through some stuff. Like so many of us on the island, I was at a turning point too, but I think I know which way I'm going. Erin knows I've not joined the loonies, least not just yet. We talked before I set off for the airport, and she's going to come over and visit some time in the autumn, I hope.'

We spent the rest of the flight chatting and, the more we talked, the more I liked him. Like Liam, Joe sounded as if he had thought deeply about things but unlike Liam, I didn't feel that Joe was trying to get me to think like him. And he had a healthy sense of humour about it all. I hoped that he liked me too. I think he did as from time to time he'd nod his head, as if he was inwardly agreeing with what I was saying, and I think I did manage to get my thoughts across and be more myself and not the inarticulate idiot I'd been the first few times we'd met. By
the time we got off the plane and collected our luggage, I felt like we had made a connection. A
real
connection. Like even though we'd only spent a little time together over in Greece, we'd shared something, a parallel journey.

‘Be weird to be back in Notting Hill,' he said.

‘Yeah. And it's all still relatively new for me,' I said as we wheeled our trolleys through the
Nothing to declare
exit into the arrival hall, where there were lines of people awaiting passengers. Kate, I noticed, was diplomatically drifting along in front of us. ‘I was just starting to find my way round London before I was sent away.'

‘In that case, I'll have to show you some of the good spots,' said Joe. ‘I know where you are and I still want to see some of your paintings.'