Authors: Lexi Duval
His presence helps to soothe me and give me confidence,
and by the time we walk out together, hand in hand, it grows quickly
obvious that the rumors are true. That yes, we did have a romance on
the island, and that yes, we are now an item.
It's the stuff that dreams are made of for the press. A
billionaire and a regular girl, stranded together on a tropical
island for 6 months. Learning to live off the land and survive, and
falling in love in the process.
We tell our story, and the audience sit in almost total
silence, completely entranced by the little world we paint for them.
Shrouded in blackness, I can barely see them, my view obscured by the
bright lights blazing down on the stage.
After a while, it feels like only me and Flint and
Donald out there, just as we were in Flint's mansion. I start
nervous, but Donald eases me in, ever the pro, and gradually I relax.
We speak about the things that no one knows about yet.
Flint talks about the sheet of metal from the fuselage of the plane,
how it saved our lives and took us to the island. He never says he
saved my life in so many words, but his explanation of his actions
make that clear.
He gets a round of applause and I kiss him on the cheek
to a chorus of 'ahhhs'.
We speak together about our time on the island. About
the storms that shook the earth and turned the seas into a violent
torrent, but kept us alive with the water they spilled down on us.
We speak about the coconut and our methods of hunting
fish and the great fire pit we built to try to signal any passing
boats or planes. We talk about our shack, which started as nothing
but a means of keeping the rain off us and ended as our haven.
We talk about how we learned to live there, accept it,
before everything turned in our minds and we began building the raft.
And then Flint speaks with great emotion about the fall that broke
his leg, that led him to the door of death.
He looks at me, and tells Donald, and the audience, and
the entire world, that I saved his life. And the crowd roar and clap
and stand, and I hear calls of 'hero' among them.
The spotlight falls only on me when I recount my tale,
becoming the main character of the story as Flint fell ill. I
describe how I finished the raft, gathered provisions, and set my
mind to taking a risk on the ocean. Either escape or die, there was
no other choice.
And then the final disaster – the storm that engulfed
the world and stole the raft from my grasp. The sight of Flint's body
giving out with nothing I could do to help him. I feel a tear falling
down my cheek as I talk of it all, but I don't break stride, and I
don't break down.
And eventually, we speak of the love that grew. Of the
deep bond that we now share. Of the fact that now, back in the real
world, we're taking it one day at a time, and it's going well.
When we're done, and are backstage once more, Donald
tells us both how well we did. He gives me particular attention,
telling me the ratings are the highest of the year, and that the
public have already fallen in love with me.
“
You alone might just save Flint's reputation,” he
says with a wry smile.
It feels strangely liberating to get it all off my
chest, telling the world our story. I feel that, now that we've done
so, things will ease up and the press will stop hounding us quite so
often.
Of course, I'm sure we'll have to make some more
appearances, but now that I've got the first out of the way, I start
to feel that everything will be a little easier after this. In fact,
there's an unexpected buzz running through my body that I certainly
didn't expect.
That evening, we attend an after party, and for the
first time I meet Flint's mother and sister. As soon as Flint and I
were rescued, they'd visited him in the hospital, but I hadn't met
them, preferring to give them time alone as a family.
After that Flint had kept in contact with them via
phone, mainly, not wanting to have them come to the mansion and get
involved in the media storm around us. Now that we've told our story,
however, we finally have a chance to meet.
When she greets me, she does so with the warmest hug.
The sort of embrace I'd expect to get from my own mother, from
someone I'd known for years.
“
Thank you for saving my son,” she tells me in my
ear, her arms gripped tight around me. “I will never be able to
thank you enough for returning him to me.”
I tell her that I didn't do anything out of the
ordinary. That I just did what anyone would do. Yet still, like the
audience who cheered and called me a hero, she waves off my words as
mere modesty and looks at me with a gratefulness and reverence that
I've never witnessed before.
Flint's sister is the same, if slightly less over the
top. She hugs me as a sister and calls me just that, her smile sweet
and a tear in her eye. She's more my age, too, several years younger
than Flint, and is just as charming as both her brother and mother.
That night we enjoy the party after the show, and I'm
treated as one of the family. I'm asked a hundred and one questions
by Flint's family, but only few of them relate to the island.
Instead, they seem interested in me, who I am, my life before the
event.
They're incredibly gracious and inviting, trying to get
to know the woman who Flint has fallen for. Perhaps wondering if it
was merely our forced proximity on the island that created the bond
between us, or whether I am truly up to his level.
I find myself desperately hoping that they like me.
Wanting them to report to Flint that he has their blessing for
continuing the relationship we've started. Mostly, I still feel
incredibly out of my depth. Not only with all this media attention,
but entering Flint's world.
On the island, we were on an equal footing. We were
stripped of everything we were before and were nothing but two human
beings trying to survive.
That's no longer the case.
Now I'm being integrated into the world Flint left
behind, a world of chauffeurs and chat shows and mansions. A world of
fame and incredible fortune which my life was never going to include.
Before I left, I was nothing but an aspiring lawyer, set
to have a decent, if unremarkable, career and live nothing more than
a steady existence. Now, I'm world famous, in a relationship with a
billionaire, and being hailed a hero all over the globe.
But at night, that all fades, and I'm comfortable once
more. At night, when it's just me and Flint, I can forget about the
world and focus only on him, on us, and on the memories that will
never leave me.
Some will haunt me forever. The plane crash, the sight
of Benjy's lifeless eyes. The desperate thought that I'd have to
watch Flint slowly die in my arms and be left alone on the island
afterward.
But, sprinkled within those nightmares that torment me
are those that brighten my mind, that send me into delirious
daydreams. The memories of Flint and I making love under the stars or
in the ocean. Of the time when we forgot the world for a period and
looked only to each other for comfort.
Much of my time on the island was spent in great
happiness, against all the odds and all expectations of the early
days. And now, strangely, I'm finding it hard to recover, hard to
reintegrate myself into the world. One that's changed so dramatically
from when last I saw it.
Gradually, however, I grow used to my fame. Together,
Flint and I attend other talk shows and tell the world more of our
story. We become the couple of the moment, Hollywood execs already
approaching us with ideas of putting our experience up onto the big
screen.
And then, just as I'm getting used to it all, and
perhaps even starting to enjoy it, things calm. The media storm
softens to a light breeze. And slowly but surely, Flint returns to
his work and his world.
And I'm left wondering just what the future holds for
mine.
Chapter Five
It's over 6 months after being rescued that Flint comes
to me telling me he has a surprise.
For the last few months he'd been continuing his rehab
on his amputated leg and, by now, has managed to have his prosthetic
fitted. When he's wearing pants, you'd be hard pressed to realize
he's got his lower right leg missing at all.
His walking isn't stymied, and unless he intends to go
out running or engage in a competitive game of tennis, little in his
life will be affected.
Certainly, his mood hasn't been, and not once has he
moaned about it or even mentioned it in a negative fashion. He
remains, and forever will be, grateful to be alive, legless or not.
It's the weekend, and in the last two months I've turned
my attention back to work. Once the media focus began to shift away
from our story, and the masses took up some new idols, I found myself
at a loose end.
Flint started back at work, refocusing his energies on
the various businesses under his wing. Of course, already being
famous before the incident, little truly changed in his life. His
world was pretty much as he left it.
The same couldn't be said for mine, and having fame
heaped upon you is always going to make returning to a regular job
difficult, if not impossible.
Flint advised me to channel my energies into other
projects, and so I did. In particular, I began to look for charity
work, particularly working with disaster aid charities around the
world.
It's only been a couple of months now, but I truly think
I've found my calling, and am able to use the fame bestowed upon me
for good.
But this weekend I have off, the first since I turned my
attention to my charity work, and Flint has promised me a surprise.
First, he takes me to the airport in Sydney, where we've
continued to live together since arriving back here, and onto a
private jet. It isn't the first time either of us have flown since
the crash – his work and mine taking us around the world regularly
– but I can't help but feel that twinge of panic when stepping on
board.
It's natural, of course, and I'm sure it will always be
there. But I wasn't going to turn away from air travel forever, and
feel confident that one crash is going to be the limit of my
suffering during my lifetime.
Yet still, I do like to check the weather before
traveling, and won't hesitate to take another flight if possible,
should I spot any black storm clouds on the horizon...
Today, though, the weather is clear, and the skies blue
for a thousand miles in every direction. So we step aboard the
private jet and set our course eastwards out of Sydney airport,
quickly leaving the landmass of Australia below and cruising over the
wide Pacific Ocean.
I look down over the water, and naturally my mind turns
back six months, reflecting as it often does on the island that held
us captive for so long. I look up at Flint and ask him where we're
going, and all he does is smile and say: “you'll see soon enough.”
Right then and there, I know just where he's taking me.
The flight doesn't last long, and soon we're touching
down on a small private airstrip on the main island of Viti Levu in
Fiji. It's my first sight of a tropical landscape since our island,
and I find myself immediately captivated by the smells and sounds and
lush colors of the world around me.
We're transferred to a speedboat that's moored on a
jetty on the coast nearby. And that's where we're left alone.
We step onto the boat, just the two of us, and Flint
begins navigating up across the ocean. The sea is choppy, but the
boat large enough to deal with it all as we travel for a little over
two hours out into the wide ocean.
I don't speak much, and neither does he. I just look at
the uninhabited islands we pass and wonder when we're going to arrive
at ours. Wonder how it might have changed and how it will make me
feel to see it again.
Eventually, with the sun still high in the sky, I spot
the sight of the long white beach that we called home for half a
year. Of the thick jungle beyond, and the high hill climbing up in
the South.
We grow nearer, and I spot the rocks that we would stand
and fish on, thrusting our spears into the fish beneath the surface
of the sea. I trace the line of the beach with my eyes, and feel my
hands trembling at the sight of our shack, still standing under the
canopy of palm leaves above.
I feel tears forming in my eyes, a strange feeling of
longing and nostalgia and trauma all overcoming me at once. Flint
gently pulls up against the rocks on the beach, tightly fastening a
rope around them to moor the boat.
I look on, thinking of the raft that escaped my
clutches, of the feeling desolation that overwhelmed me at that
point. Thinking Flint would die there and I'd be alone.
He helps me off into the shallows, and I feel the warm
seas that I bathed in everyday. We don't speak as he leads me up the
beach, hand in hand, walking slowly around the island and taking it
all in.
We reach our shack, and look inside, and see that
nothing has changed. That it's withstood the other storms that have
been thrown at it since we left. Our haven and home.