‘Tense, emotional and menacing’
Louise Candlish
‘A sizzling beach read’ sarah pearse
They Had It Coming
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‘The very best kind of thriller – taut, well researched and superbly written. I’ve read all of Nikki Smith’s books and this is my favourite so far’
Fiona Cummins
‘Nikki’s skilful characterization and sharp prose, together with whiplash-inducing twists and turns, left me turning the pages late into the night’
Sarah
Pearse
‘This clever and twist-packed thriller will make you wish you were in Bali – just maybe not with these two warring couples!’
Ellery Lloyd
‘An expertly crafted page-turner that confirms the author’s flair for destinations both sun-drenched and dangerous. They Had It Coming is my favourite Nikki Smith to date!’
Louise Candlish
‘Absolutely gripping. No matter how far you travel, you can never escape yourself or your secrets’
Jo Callaghan
‘Kept me up until 2 a.m. Twisty, tense, toxic, tropical and timely. They Had It Coming is TERRIFIC ’
Nikki May
‘Nikki Smith has written the ultimate dream destination / nightmare scenario glam thriller. Gives Liane Moriarty a run for her money!’
Helen
Fields
‘Another excellent destination thriller from Nikki Smith. The twists and turns left me breathless. Highly recommended!’
B. A. Paris
‘Nikki Smith has done it again with this clever, complex, twisty, page-turning thriller that will have you guessing right up until the last page. Brilliant!’
Charlotte Levin
‘Sharp, addictive and impossible to put down, this is a must-read’
Lesley Kara
‘An edge-of-your-seat, twist-after-twist thriller with some truly unforgettable characters. A wild ride from start to finish’
B. P. Walter
‘Evocative, with palpable tension simmering in the shadows of paradise, Nikki’s latest thriller is creepily tense. You won’t know who to trust’
Karen Hamilton
‘Nikki Smith is the go-to for scorchingly twisted summer thrillers’
L. V. Matthews
‘An addictive, twist-packed tale of revenge, secrets and lies, all set against the breathtaking backdrop of Bali. It’s utterly unputdownable – I devoured every page!’
Emily Freud
‘The undisputed queen of the destination thriller. This peels back the glossy sheen that coats the lives of digital nomads in Bali and reveals the torment and trouble lurking below. Exquisitely plotted’
Emma Christie
‘A deliciously dark thriller set on the paradise island of Bali, with a cast of intriguingly complex characters, carrying long-held secrets and telling dangerous lies’
Frances Quinn
‘The perfect airport novel. Fiendishly plotted and packed with dodgy characters, with twists and turns galore in a beautiful setting; what more could you want?’
Trevor Wood
‘The seemingly perfect world of digital nomads isn’t quite what it seems – a stunning location and characters with secrets. Nikki Smith at her best’
Catherine Cooper
They Had It Coming
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To Martin – who has stuck around despite the fact that I spend most of my time plotting to kill someone. Not him. Usually.
‘It is in the character of very few men to honour without envy a friend who has prospered.’
– Aeschylus
Prologue
She can’t see her friends. There is only a hot, sticky mass of people, their faces distorted under the strobe lights. Searing flashes of white that cut through the club’s darkness, illuminating the dance floor for fractions of a second. They were here only a minute ago. She’s sure they were; she remembers the four of them dancing together, hands intertwined. Shortly before that they were downing shots of flaming sambuca. The hot barman – a Robert Pattinson lookalike – had grinned as he’d filled up their glasses. Or was that earlier on? Time has stopped being measurable. She could have been here for a few seconds or a few hours; she has no idea. She can only focus on the music that pulses through her body, synchronizing with the hundreds of people on the dance floor, all moving as one to the same beat.
Flash.
The bodies around her are too close. Drops of perspiration slide down her forehead; her own, someone else’s, she can’t tell. She needs to get out. Find somewhere she can breathe.
Flash.
Someone puts their hands on her shoulders and leans in towards her, their pupils blown, their eyes staring into hers, unseeing. She pulls away, bumping into people, weaving her way across the floor.
Flash.
If she can just get to the loos, she’ll be able to gather the thoughts that are rapidly spiralling out of her control.
Why did you drink so much?
How could you be so stupid as to lose your phone?
You shouldn’t have let them leave you.
She sounds like her mother. Irritated; an attempt to hide the panic that rises up, sweet and sickly, in the back of her throat. Her friends wouldn’t have gone without her. It’s their golden rule. Never leave anyone behind. They would have made sure she was with them. Wouldn’t they?
Flash.
Another face appears in front of her, their mouth wide in a rictus grin, and she recoils, the noise of protest that comes out of her swallowed up instantly by the music. He tries to grab her hand, his sweaty palm slipping up and down against hers in the dark, and she pulls away, wraps her arms across her chest.
Flash.
She can see the sign for the loos, and a tear slides down her cheek. She wants to splash her face with cold water and lock herself in a cubicle, just for a few minutes, just until the floor stops feeling like it’s sliding away beneath her feet. She’ll ask to use someone’s phone, explain that she’s lost hers, along with her wallet. Call her friends, and if they don’t answer, grab a taxi. Tell them she’ll pay when she gets home.
It will be fine.
She repeats the words like a mantra as she staggers towards the sign that seems to get further away from her
with each step, the floor stretching like bubblegum beneath her feet.
Flash.
Are the lights getting brighter? She can’t see properly and holds her arms out in front of her to stop anyone getting too close.
‘There you are.’
A familiar voice cuts through the music and relief floods her body, like someone has poured a glass of cool water down her parched throat.
‘ Where did you go?’ he asks. ‘I turned around and you’d gone.’
It takes her a few seconds to be able to speak. Her tongue feels as if it’s swollen in her mouth, squashing the words she’s trying to say. An unintelligible mumble comes out instead, and he frowns.
‘ Your friends?’ he says.
She nods, his breath hot against her ear.
‘They went home a while ago,’ he says. ‘ You wanted to stay with me, remember?’
She stares at him blankly, jumbled memories running through her head: him buying her a drink and making her laugh. She doesn’t understand how the evening has become so muddled in her brain.
‘Are you OK ?’
She shakes her head, watches his face blur into a swirl of fleshy pink as the room spins. She stumbles and holds on to his arm to stop herself falling over.
‘Do you want to me to get you a cab?’ he asks.
She holds up her thumb, incapable of speech, and leans on him as they make for the exit, glad that she’ll be home
soon and that her mother’s voice, still buzzing in her head, will finally fall silent. The noise of the dance floor becomes muffled as they leave it further behind, heading down the corridor towards the exit.
He runs his finger across her cheek as her legs give way beneath her.
‘ You don’t need to worry,’ he says. ‘I’ve got you.’
Any second now and she’ll be outside. Will feel the breeze on her face. Breathe clean air. Hear the familiar sound of traffic passing along the main road.
But that moment never comes.
1. Sophie
When Sophie walks up the path to the communal front door of their block of flats, there is no indication that anything is wrong, no hint that her world is about to shift in a way she couldn’t possibly have foreseen.
Edge Court – the 1970s-style block that includes their one-bedroom rental – is technically located in Raynes Park rather than Wimbledon, but she tends to ignore this detail if anyone asks where she lives. Up near the Village. Just along from the station. Generalizations that slip out more easily than the whole truth. Being only two roads away from the postcode she really wants to be in, as far as she is concerned, is close enough to claim residency.
It’s quicker to walk from Raynes Park station, but she likes to get off at Wimbledon, head up the hill, pop into Gail’s and grab a cortado – a hundred and thirty-five calories less than a latte and still tastes practically the same.
Sometimes she stops in to see Jess, her sister, or peruses the latest range of leggings in Sweaty Betty – she’s got plenty of pairs already, but it never hurts to have additional motivation for a HIIT class and Jude doesn’t need to know if she saves a bit less than they agreed towards their ‘it’s never enough’ house deposit this month. It makes her feel like a local, as if she still belongs here.
Today, like always, she’d passed Headquarters’ glass window and smiled at her stylist, Ruth, who does a full
head of blonde highlights for her every six weeks. She always tells her she wants the style and colour to match Holly Willoughby’s – Jude stares at the TV for longer than he normally does whenever that woman comes on – but Ruth never manages to get it quite right. Maybe if Sophie was taller, if she had the extra two inches of height that Holly does, it would look more like she expected. But her appointments do give her the chance to catch up on the latest gossip. She gets to bitch about her shitty salary and lack of promotion, to hear Ruth sympathize when she tells her (again) that the role which had been sold to her as a PR account manager for a fashion brand had turned out to be more of an executive assistant. And Ruth will no doubt divulge which client’s husband has got some fucking fantastic new job and is buying a house, or who is moving out of London to start a family. Information she is desperate to know, but which also stings sharply when she hears it, like squeezing lemon into a cut.
As she’d walked along Southside Common, she’d passed the road that led to her old school, had anticipated the burn of acid indigestion and swallowed down the memories before they had a chance to bubble up. A few dozen steps further on, she’d played the game she usually plays with herself and pretended she wasn’t going to look at the place she’d called home until she was thirteen but had done it anyway.
A large Victorian property in one of the cul-de-sacs, altered almost beyond recognition after twenty-two years. The red-brick, ivy-covered porch had been demolished by the new owners after the fire, the exterior repainted in an off-white and an extension added to one side. The kind of
house that will always be out of her and Jude’s reach, even if he had got that bloody promotion he’d been so desperate for. Not that she’d ever set foot inside it again, no matter how much money she had.
She’d turned off the main road by the travel agent’s on the corner, had felt a tugging sensation in her stomach when she’d caught a glimpse of the TV screens in the window displaying images of gorgeous beaches and turquoise water. She and Jude could do with a holiday – they haven’t spent much time together recently. She misses the long, lazy lie-ins they have when they’re away – entire mornings in bed, the smell of his skin next to hers, sticky with the heat. Layla and Nate keep asking them to go out to Bali, stay in their flash villa, but she’s not sure Jude should take the time off work. She smiles as she remembers the four of them in Puerto Banús a couple of years ago – Layla climbing up on to a podium in one of the nightclubs, a bottle of Grey Goose in one hand, pulling Sophie up after her; the two of them dancing, their skin slick with sweat. The feeling of being in a bubble of happiness, completely absorbed in the moment, while Nate and Jude wolf-whistled from the floor below.
She turns her key in their front door, the same way she’s done a hundred times before, hears the latch click and kicks off her trainers on to the mat. What happens after she hangs up her coat and walks inside is just a blur as she finds herself in their small living room, staring at her treasured objects lying scattered across the wooden floorboards.
Why aren’t they on the shelf, where they usually are?
She bends down, tries to gather them up, put them
back where they belong. Her brain doesn’t fully comprehend what has happened and spins to catch up, but deep in her gut she already knows. A primal instinct, something dark and full of fear that she doesn’t want to acknowledge.
She feels a sharp stab of pain, and winces. Drops of blood fall on to her Marc Jacobs leather tote bag, a TK Maxx bargain, as the glass from a broken champagne flute slices into her skin. Stupid. She should have just left it where it was, along with everything else. Drawers open, their contents rifled through. The matching candle holders she’d spent ages choosing now in jagged pieces on the marble hearth. A silver photo frame of her and Jude on their wedding day, the glass smashed, distorting their smiling faces into something out of a nightmare.
She trembles as her uninjured hand digs around in her bag for her phone, the vibrations of destruction continuing to echo around the room. She finally finds it, together with a tissue that she wraps around her finger to stem the bleeding. Shit. It’s out of juice. She’ll have to see if Mrs Taylor is in next door. She’s eighty-six and almost completely deaf, so Sophie doubts she heard anything, but she won’t know unless she asks. And she can borrow her landline to call the police.
As she backs out of the living room into the hallway, she glances at their bedroom, doesn’t want to face the horror in there. She needs to speak to Jude; can imagine the way his face will crumple when she tells him. She takes a deep breath, refuses to give in to the temptation to fall apart, reassures herself that this is all fixable, that they are only possessions, that they are insured.
It’s only when she walks past the kitchen that she freezes, blood pounding in her ears, and wishes, too late, that she’d paid more attention to the sensation she’d been conscious of when she’d left the station. A premonition. The same feeling she’d had all those years ago, the one she’d ignored when it had told her to go back. And look what had happened then.
The noise that cuts through the silence is the unmistakable sound of the bathroom fan. Jude had insisted the landlord instal it a few weeks ago after spots of black mould appeared on the ceiling. Brand new, it only comes on when it’s activated by movement.
2. Jude
The burglary is the final straw. They need to get out of London.
It had taken the police fifty minutes to arrive, despite being told there was an intruder still at the scene. By then, of course, the flat was empty, but Sophie, usually unflappable, had insisted on staying with Mrs Taylor next door until he’d got home. He doesn’t blame her. He still feels guilty for not being the first one home, even though he knows there isn’t anything he could have done. The scumbag had trashed the place and then, according to the police, had probably jumped out of the window and run off through the communal gardens. No wonder his wife doesn’t feel fucking safe. Even he’d been shocked after seeing the damage – he’d taken dozens of photos of the mess on his iPhone before clearing it up and had spent his lunch break googling ring doorbells and tamperproof window locks – Christ, he’ll put bars on the windows if it makes Sophie feel more secure.
He joins the escalators going down into Canary Wharf underground station, feels as if he’s being dragged along with the other commuters into some kind of modern-day version of hell. The jostling, the smell of stale sweat, being forced to listen to one-sided conversations by people on their phones at full volume. He’s not sure if he can face coming back tomorrow to listen to Patrick make
yet another speech about touching base, drilling down and staying ahead of the curve. He hates his boss almost as much as his job at Bearman Brothers, and Patrick has recently made it very clear the feeling is mutual.
His unofficial uniform of Tod’s athleisure sneakers, Euro-style grey trousers, pale blue shirt and padded Patagonia gilet act as a good camouflage, but he has never belonged in this environment. He’s felt like an outsider for years – not part of the in-crowd, the ones that matter. He hasn’t got the cut-throat mentality necessary to do this job – he thought he did when he first started, but his ambition has drained away after years of watching others overtake him, and now he can’t wait to be out of the whole toxic charade. He rubs his neatly trimmed box beard as the tube pulls in and the glass doors slide open. Jude squeezes himself on and pulls down the bottom of his gilet as he adjusts his grip on the rail above. He’s lost weight recently thanks to all the stress at work, but despite Sophie saying this one looked better, it still feels a bit on the small side.
He thinks of Nate and Layla, imagines them lying on a beach in the Bali sunshine sipping cocktails. He hopes his best friend won’t take too long to reply to his WhatsApp, that the offer he’s made several times before still stands. After he’d finally cleared up the mess last night he’d shown Sophie the photos Nate had sent over of their new Balinese villa-in-progress, had seen her blue eyes widen at the sheer size of the place.
Until yesterday, Sophie had always refused to entertain the idea of moving anywhere else in London, despite him dropping the suggestion into their conversations on a
relatively frequent basis. She’d insisted she couldn’t leave Wimbledon, that it was where she’d grown up, that it wasn’t the right time. A plethora of excuses which have gradually worn thinner over the seven years they’ve been together and have now reached the point where they both just pretend to believe she’s telling the truth.
But the break-in has changed all that – last night she said she didn’t want to renew the lease on their flat and instead suggested they get away for a while; spend some proper time together. He’d floated the idea of him taking a sabbatical and had been surprised when she didn’t object. Usually he gets the impression that she’s reluctant for him to do anything that might negatively affect his career.
If Nate and Layla agree they can come and stay, he’ll buy the plane tickets for their first-year wedding anniversary in a few weeks. That would fit with the paper theme. Sod the expense. Sophie deserves the best. He knows he’s lucky to have her. The kind of woman that everyone, him included, had always considered out of his league. She’d reminded him of Kate Bosworth with dimples when he first met her: petite, blonde hair, a perfect round face with flawless peaches-and-cream skin. A smile that exuded warmth and made him feel as if he was standing under a spotlight; the only person in the room who mattered to her. She thinks he’s joking when he tells people he’d known from their first date that he’d marry her, but bumping into her like that in Pret and realizing who she was – it really had felt like fate.
His Tom Ford glasses mist up with the lack of airconditioning and he takes them off, wipes them on his
shirt, tries to ignore the tinny music coming from the iPhone of the woman in front of him, which is giving him a headache. Only Southwark to go and then he’ll be at Waterloo. He catches a glimpse of his reflection in the tube window, sees the dark circles under his eyes, the grey flecks in his deep brown comb-over more obvious than he remembers.
This time last year, Nate was doing this commute with him. Sometimes they’d stop off at Clapham Junction, grab a beer and discuss office politics before Nate headed back to his flat in Streatham and Jude went home to Wimbledon. He misses those outings more than he thought he would. The chance to reminisce about university; the place where, looking back, he remembers being happiest. Getting hammered with Nate in one of the student union bars and laughing so hard his stomach hurt; he’d never felt like an outsider back then, never had to make an effort to fit in – something he hadn’t appreciated enough at the time.
Jude had been tempted to phone him today, tell him what had happened at work. Nate would have understood – he always had – but then Patrick had called him into another bloody meeting and he hadn’t had a chance.
He thinks about not having to face his boss every morning, of not having to squash himself into the tube like this every night, breathing in everyone else’s germs. Of the possibility of being thousands of miles away when the shit he’s got himself into really hits the fan. Assuming Sophie hasn’t changed her mind about the sabbatical since last night, he’ll make sure they have such an amazing time in Bali that she won’t want to come home.
This could be his chance to get out of the rat race. To start over and decide what he really wants to do with his life. Not end up like his parents. Spend more time with his wife. Nurture his passions. Make a baby. There are so many possibilities dangling in front of him, he’s spoilt for choice.
3. Layla
Layla finishes her early-morning yoga practice in an Upavistha Konasana pose, stretches her hamstrings, takes a deep breath and lets her worries float away into the cosmos. The monsoon downpours have finally stopped, vanishing along with the worst of the mosquitoes, thank God, but as a result, the garden is suffering – patches of brown have begun to appear on the grass beside her yoga mat and she hates feeling responsible for anything dying, even if it is just a plant. She needs to remember to ask Nate to switch the sprinklers on more regularly.
Her morning wellness smoothie is waiting for her in a blender in the fridge. Fresh ginger, half a lemon, honey, carrot and orange juice. The drink has separated out into layers and she swirls around the thick, vivid colour that has settled at the bottom to mix them together. She pours it into a glass, adds a bamboo straw and snaps a photo of it on her phone, manipulating the filters to blur the background and increase the brightness before uploading it to Insta, adding the caption ‘Seek to be whole, not perfect.’
She’s neglected her grid recently, needs to create some more content, persuade Nate this isn’t just another one of her temporary passion projects. Canggu is already full of influencers trying to live their best lives – beautiful, young, tanned women who curate every one of their social media
posts to goad envy and maximize the number of comments. She can’t compete with them, and doesn’t want to. Since coming out here, her aim has been to cultivate more meaningful relationships with others through her work as a life coach. Channel her own experiences to help others tap into the spiritual side of themselves. It’s the first job she’s ever done that she feels passionate about. Her current list of clients is made up of people who work long hours in stressful jobs around the world, all seeking a better way of life, all curious to know whether it’s possible to live as a digital nomad.
She carries her smoothie back out into the garden, kisses the tip of her forefinger and presses it on to the photo frame on the shelf in the living room; the picture inside one of her with her parents, taken a couple of years ago.
She dives into the pool and swims a length before turning over and floating on her back. The sun draws patterns on her closed eyelids and she relishes its heat in contrast to the coolness of the water.
A shadow falls across her face, bringing her back to reality with a jolt. She looks up to see Nate standing on the side.
‘Earth to Layla. Did you hear me?’ he asks.
‘ What?’ She squints up at him.
‘I said Jude had his sabbatical approved. He and Sophie are going to come and stay.’
He clenches his fist and punches the air. ‘How cool is that?’ His grin lights up his entire face, and for a moment all Layla can see are his teeth; large and very white. She feels a sharp pain behind her eyes as if someone has pricked her with a needle.
‘I thought you said he wasn’t going to get it?’
She massages her forehead, sees his smile fade slightly, clearly confused by her reticence.
‘I said I didn’t think Jude was going to get it. He must have had to do some serious arse-licking to get Patrick to agree to it. What a fucking result!’
Layla ignores his exuberance as she pulls herself through the water, reaches for the chrome handles of the steps and gets out. She gives her long hair a quick toweldry, ruffling the dark strands that she hasn’t had cut since they arrived in Bali. If the Blackwells are coming, she needs to make an appointment to get it done.
‘ You’re going to have to do most of the entertaining,’ she says. ‘I’m going to be busy with all my life-coaching stuff.’
‘I said I would, didn’t I?’
Nate wouldn’t care if she said he had to cook and clean as well – not that he needs to, as their housekeeper takes care of most of it – anything so long as he can spend time with Jude.
‘And anyway,’ he continues, ‘it’s not like you have to work all the time. That’s why we came out here in the first place. For a more relaxed pace of life. You haven’t seen Sophie since the wedding, and it’ll be nice for you to spend some time together.’
‘ Will it?’
He doesn’t meet her eyes, and she can tell they’re both thinking the same thing.
‘ You apologized,’ he says. ‘And Jude said it’s all water under the bridge. You still message each other, don’t you?’
She nods. She and Sophie do exchange the occasional
WhatsApp and comment on each other’s Insta posts, but their words are meaningless phrases that disguise what they both really feel. OMG that sunset is to die for. Yay, go you!! Gorgeous dress, darling x. Soo excited for you to come and visit.
‘Jude wouldn’t have asked to stay with us if there was still an issue,’ Nate continues. ‘And Sophie wouldn’t have agreed to come. Think of all the time you two spent together.’
‘That was before the wedding,’ Layla says.
Nate shakes his head. ‘Fucking up on one day doesn’t wipe out all that history. And having them both here for a few months will give you and Sophie time to reconnect. Sort things out properly.’
‘A few months? ’ Layla’s voice comes out as a shriek and she forces herself to take a breath. ‘ When we agreed they could come a couple of weeks ago, you told me it would be one month – max. Now you’re saying it’s – what – three?’
Nate stares at her.
‘They’re not going to be staying with us all the time. They want to go travelling. Anyway, does it matter? We’ve got a spare room, and it’s going to be great to have someone here who can give me a hand with decorating the villa. The sooner it’s finished, the sooner we can move in, and that’s what we both want, right?’
Layla closes her eyes briefly, tries to centre herself, find the happy place that she’d drifted into in the pool.
‘Three months is a long time, Nate.’
‘I just said they won’t be with us all the time. Jeez, Layla. I thought we’d agreed all this. Why are you being so weird? I thought you were happy about it.’
She swallows the lump that seems to have appeared in her throat.
‘I am happy.’
‘ Well, you don’t look it. It’s like I’ve just announced my mother is coming to stay or something.’
He flashes one of his goofy grins and nudges her arm, but she doesn’t smile back.
‘I know you really want to see Jude,’ she says, ‘but I like it being just us here. Having other people around changes things.’
Nate wraps his arms around her in a tight hug.
‘I won’t let that happen. And Jude and Sophie aren’t just “other people”. He’s my best mate. Our best friends. It’ll be so good to see them. Just like old times.’
She studies his face – the strong jawline and dark brown eyes that she’d fallen in love with, the slightly crooked nose that he’d broken playing rugby when he was a teenager. He reminds her of a giant Labrador puppy; overeager with excitement. He kisses her on her forehead and she can feel the damp patch he leaves behind.
‘ You need to go and get changed,’ he says. ‘ You’re shivering.’
She nods and presses her teeth together to stop them chattering as she heads across the lawn, stopping briefly in front of the sliding glass doors before turning back towards him.
‘ When are they getting here?’ she asks.
‘They fly out in two weeks. They’ve already handed in their notice on their flat.’
Layla walks down the corridor into their bedroom, shuts the door behind her, pulls off her wet bikini and
drops it on the bathroom floor as she turns on the shower.
Sophie’s coming. Here.
The thought grows in her mind until it feels like it’s taking over her brain, squeezing out everything else. She tells herself it will be fine but can’t bring herself to shut her eyes in the stream of warm water, convinced she’ll open them only to see Sophie standing in front of her.
Her reflection gazes back at her – blurry in the steamedup mirror. She repeats the words to herself, then writes them on the glass with the tip of her finger – IT WILL BE FINE – gradually revealing her face, cut up like a jigsaw puzzle.
She thinks back to the wedding, to the part she can actually remember; of Sophie walking down the aisle in her white Caroline Castigliano silk dress, of the look of hostility her friend had given her as their eyes met, briefly, before Sophie moved on, past the next pew.
She can hear Nate in the garden, singing along to one of the playlists he and Jude used to listen to in London. He couldn’t be happier.
It will be fine.
But the sick feeling in her stomach tells her she’s not convincing anyone, least of all herself.
‘Nate?’ she shouts.
No answer.
‘I’m just going out.’ She pulls a white maxi dress out of the pile of clean laundry and sticks it over her head. ‘I won’t be long.’
She picks up the keys to her moped from the bowl on
the dark wooden sideboard in the hallway and slides her feet into her flip-flops.
The traffic on the ten-minute ride into the centre of Canggu is as bad as ever. The original coastal fishing village is now a town; a cluster of roads with giant banana palms and red frangipani crammed in between the dozens of luxury villas, restaurants and shops that stretch inland from the ten-kilometre sandy beach. A haven for surfers and digital nomads, packed with Westerners and Australians seeking a more meaningful life.
She parks her scooter outside the Warung Canteen café, catches the occasional waft of incense from the various offerings laid out on the pavement. It’s one of her favourite spots, and Nate rarely comes here. She heads inside, twisting her still-damp wavy hair up into a messy bun. Old surfboards are fixed high up on the dark walls; below them hang dozens of framed surfing pictures and vintage memorabilia.
She sees who she’s looking for immediately; he’s sitting alone at a table near the back. Part of her had hoped that he wouldn’t show up; that he’d have changed his mind. Then she could go back home to Nate, carry on as normal.
As she sits down opposite him, she adjusts the gold chains around her neck, twisting the talisman evil-eye pendant so the turquoise-blue charm faces outwards. She wonders if he can see her pulse beating through her skin, which feels as if it is transparent, revealing everything inside her. He grins, displaying one missing tooth.
‘I knew you’d come,’ he says.
4. Nate
Nate hears Layla’s scooter start up outside as he rolls over in bed and looks at his Apple Watch. An hour before he has to leave for the airport, and his health stats show he only had thirty-two minutes of deep sleep last night. Layla had woken him up when she’d got out of bed at 3 a.m., and she hadn’t come back for an hour. She’s been doing the same thing for a while now; says she can’t sleep, and it’s got worse since he told her Jude and Sophie were coming.
He doesn’t remember her saying she had a client meeting this morning, but she must have done – either that or she’s gone to another yoga class. She’s starting to become obsessive about them, and when he thinks about this, together with her nightly wanderings, something in his stomach twinges, as if he’s suddenly remembered something unpleasant he needs to do.
He stretches as he sits up, his tanned skin browner than ever against the white sheets. He relishes these lazy mornings. It almost feels like being back at university – long lie-ins, often only waking up to catch an episode of Home and Away – except now he’s in luxury accommodation without the shit food. None of Jude’s dodgy fry-ups of cheap bacon that had constantly set off the fire alarm. Enough time to catch a few waves, then drop in for a massage before settling down in the co-working space at
ConnectZen or HiveHub, ready for when the Vauxhall office comes online. The small consultancy firm that employs him remotely as a freelance project manager only pays a quarter of the salary he used to get in London, but he can do the job with his eyes shut. Living here is almost like being on a permanent holiday – he gets to chill out in the sunshine, eat at amazing restaurants, watch the sunset from beanbags on the beach and then come home to have hot, sweaty sex with Layla. He wouldn’t swap it for anything.
He jumps in the shower, then scrapes his brown hair back off his face, ties it up into a bun. He’d grown it out after leaving London, had a barber here punctuate the length with a sharp undercut, and now he blends in perfectly with the rest of the digital nomad crowd. His co-workers are a mix of the unconventional, encompassing every profession from spirituality to cryptocurrency. All plugged into their Macs, working across various time zones – not just for a better work–life balance, but a better life, full stop.
The low cost of living in Canggu means they have the equivalent of a six-figure-salary lifestyle back in London. And everyone here knows it. Bragging is evident in every social media post, disguised behind hashtags such as #blessed #betterlife #laptoplifestyle. It’s one of the main discussion topics in Tide beach club, which is filled with like-minded settlers from all over the world; Australians and British, mostly, but recently even Russians and Ukrainians, ironically living side by side in harmony, despite the fighting raging back at home.
He makes a mental note to check in with Nyoman
Suardika before he leaves to collect Jude and Sophie. His site manager owes him an update on their new villa; he pushes away the feeling of irritation that arises with this thought as he sticks on a pair of shorts and glances at his messages. He reads the first one, feels goosebumps rise up on his arms, then deletes it before the temptation to reply becomes too much. He wishes he could, but it’s too risky at the moment and, if Layla finds out, she’ll kill him.
He sends her a text.
Missed you this morning, sexy
Her reply comes back a few seconds later.
Will make it up to you tonight
He glances out of the window at the cerulean sky and blazing sunshine and has a flashback to being squashed into a packed tube train with Jude after walking to the station in the dark, damp drizzle running down the back of his neck, his mind running over all the emails marked urgent that he’d need to reply to later that night. The constant backstabbing of office politics meant he’d had to keep a bottle of Gaviscon permanently in his desk drawer. He can’t believe he did it for so long.
If it wasn’t for Layla, he’d still be there. Her parents had paid for all this. A sixty-mile-an-hour head-on collision with a lorry driving on the wrong side of the road had resulted in an untimely legacy and a chance for them to break free of the nine-to-five. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make you re-evaluate your life – something he is already only too well aware of.
Layla hadn’t cried, not even at the funeral. Instead, she’d gone out every night, drunk until she threw up, and
paced around their flat sticking dozens of Post-it notes with different quotes on to the walls. Everything happens for a reason; it’s figuring out the reason that’s the hard part. Often it’s the deepest pain which empowers you to grow into your highest self.
He’d found it hard enough losing two people he’d come to regard as his second family, but it had been worse watching Layla teeter on an invisible tightrope, terrified as to which way she was going to fall. It hadn’t been until he’d switched on a crappy Netflix film set in Bali that he’d seen a spark of interest in her eyes that hadn’t been there for weeks. She’d told him she wanted to move. Get away from all the memories. Start again somewhere new. And he’d agreed, relieved she’d found something to focus on, even though he’d had to bring the flights forward after the complete shitshow of Jude and Sophie’s wedding.
His oldest friend is the only thing he misses about London. He has plenty of mates out here – he knows all the right people and has established a reputation in Canggu as being the life and soul of the party – but it would still be nice to spend time with someone who has known him for longer than a few months. Someone with whom he shares a history that is buried deep into his skin, who knows him better than anyone else, the bad stuff as well as the good.
He checks his Apple Watch again – needs to get a move on or he’ll be late to the airport. He goes to put on his Cole Buxton white T-shirt but can’t find it in the pile of clean laundry. He’s sure he remembers putting it in the wash. What has the bloody housekeeper done with it? He contemplates texting Layla to ask her but knows she won’t want to be disturbed when she’s with a client.
He really wants to wear it today. Jude had always said never to underestimate the importance of a first impression, and even though Nate knows this isn’t that, for some reason it feels like it is. He wants everything to be perfect for their arrival, wants his best mate to see that his poky flat in Streatham where they could barely all fit around the table for dinner is long gone; that he and Layla are living their best lives out here. Which they are. A villa five times the size of his old flat, their own private pool, no more cheap self-assembly furniture. He couldn’t be happier, apart from having to deal with his site manager – he should have listened when everyone told him building projects are bloody stressful.
He searches through his wardrobe, moves the metal hangers from one side to another, flinches at the scraping sound, but his T-shirt definitely isn’t in there. He hesitates, then opens the other door, to Layla’s side. Maybe she’s taken it by mistake. He rifles through her dresses, but there’s still no sign of it. Fuck. He really needs to go. The black one it is.
He catches sight of them as he goes to shut the door. Marks on the dark wood at the back of her wardrobe. He pushes her clothes to one side to get a better look and runs his fingers over the dozens of scratches, his stomach contracting as he realizes they aren’t just marks. They’re letters. Whole words have been carved into the teak with something sharp. He shines his phone torch over them, trying to keep his hand from shaking. I wish it had never happened.
He moves the light further down.