Paradise Calling: PREVIEW

1. The storm

[This is a preview of my new Student-Teacher Forbidden Romance, which will first be available exclusively on Radish]

Caroline stumbled over to the life boat, but somebody pushed past her and got there first. The chaos of the screams, the wind, and the roar of the ocean crushed her ears. In a blind panic she tried to remain calm. At last she reached the life boat, and jumped in. She crouched low, like a scared animal, clinging to the side of the small boat. The salt stung her cheeks, and the wind whipped her hair, causing her eyes to blur with tears.

She could dimly make out another figure in the boat, a man? She was not able to tell who. Another person jumped into the boat. It rocked violently, but Caroline held on even tighter. The craft should hold up to eight, but it was unlikely to be filled: the main ship had not held many passengers, and there were plenty of life rafts.

After hours of cramped, freezing agony she fell asleep. Caroline did not hear the cursing of a man's voice when he saw the motor was broken. They were safe, they had drifted quite a distance from the ship. The other boats had gone a different way, but they were unable to do this with no motor. There were oars, but no one was willing to row, so they could only drift further and further by the current, hopefully to shore.

When Caroline woke, it was early morning and the mist had cleared. The sky was lightening on one side of the horizon. It took her a while to realise where she was. She was stiff and cramped and hungry.

There were only three other people in the boat, all still sleeping. As much as she was comforted not to be alone, she was dismayed to see they included her two least favourite teachers: the headmaster and his wife. Horrible Mr Ferguson who taught Geography and his weedy wife Irene who taught Mathemetics.

Despite the peril they were in, her stomach gave a jolt when she saw who the last person was. Andrew Grant, a teacher who had joined the school earlier that year. At any other time to be alone in a boat with Mr Grant would have sent her over the moon. He was incredibly good looking with tousled brown hair and dark blue eyes. He also taught geography and he was everyone's number one crush.

Mr Grant had been one of the teachers supervising the school holiday, an educational cruise in the Seychelles. They were supposed to be studying the islands' environment and its unique flora and fauna.

No one had expected the boat to run into danger in a storm. Caroline had no idea what had happened to her friends and all the other people on the ship. She felt dazed and numb. It all felt unreal. Had everyone else survived?

Then she thought about her parents and wondered if they would have any idea what had happened yet, or where she was. The worry they would be going through when they found out made her feel sick. Her eyes filled with tears. But she blinked them back. Now was a time to be calm and brave. The boat was stable, the seas were tranquil. She was alive. All she could do was hang on.

How long did it take to get rescued? Caroline glanced up at the sky, wondering if there should be helicopters. But it was a still, empty, flawless blue. It was almost unimaginable that the previous night there had been a crazed fury of darkness and torrenting rain, shot through with lightning.

She pushed a hand through her dark curls, sticky with salt. As she stared out across the waves something about the horizon looked uneven. It took her a few moments to realise what she was seeing.

"Land! Over there, look, land!" It was far off, just a thin line on the horizon, but it made her ecstatic with excitement and relief.

The others woke. Mr Ferguson turned to look in the direction Caroline was indicating. He was a thin-lipped man in his early fifties, unpopular with staff and students alike. Mrs Ferguson looked terrified, clutching her husband's arm and casting a nervous glance over to the horizon. She quickly lowered her eyes again to the floor of the boat. She looked seasick.

"Yes, you're right," the headmaster said. "We'll drift there soon enough." He turned to the younger man who hadn't yet spoken. "Mr Grant, if you could kindly take the left oar, I suppose I had better take the right."

Caroline had learnt to row on family holidays and enjoyed canoeing. "Why don't I take it?" she offered. Mr Ferguson was not known for his physical prowess. On one school hiking expedition he had nearly collapsed halfway up a hill, and had had to be conveyed to the summit by a passing car.

"Don't be so silly, girl!" Mr Ferguson objected. "You probably don't even know how to row. This is an emergency, not a school sports lesson."

"Come on, Derek, give her a chance," Andrew Grant said. He doubted the headmaster's ability even more than Caroline did. "We'll all need to take a turn to reach there. It's further than it looks."

He took the oar, handed it to Caroline and smiled at her.

Even though this wasn't the school lunch canteen and she wasn't safe and surrounded by her friends, Caroline felt a slight flip in her stomach. Despite it being an extremely serious, life or death situation, she was in a boat on a turquoise ocean with an incredibly good-looking young man. It was the kind of thing she and her friends joked about. Who would you most like to be stranded on a desert island with? Who would you most hate to be stuck in a lift with?

But the reality quickly hit her again. The flip of joy was replaced by a knot of fear about what lay ahead.

Coming to her senses, Caroline took the oar. She was a strong, swift rower, and she and Mr Grant kept in good pace, though she guessed he was moderating his own rowing to match hers. With his broad shoulders and muscular arms, if he had rowed at his full strength on one side, the boat would have gone around in circles.

With the sun beating down and the world looking so tranquil, one could easily imagine they were in paradise. The sky and the sea were bluer than Caroline had ever imagined. True, rowing was warm work, but they were cooled by the salt spray in the gentle, light breezes. It all felt very surreal. She was nervous but not overly scared yet. At least they were doing something. They were making progress towards a shore. There might well be people there. And after all, surely they would be spotted by a rescue helicopter eventually and be flown back to safety?

Mr Ferguson kept up a steady mutter of complaints during the journey, punctuated by his wife's sighs and occasional wail. "Oh, what shall we do, Derek?"

Andrew Grant and Caroline remained silent, focused on the rowing. She was unaware that his eyes flicked to her several times. The beauty of the sea, shore and sky absorbed her, contrasting with the terrible, as-yet-unspoken fear that they must all share.

Was someone coming to find them? And how long would it take them to do so?

____________________

Writer's Note

Paradise Calling has a special origin. It's the first novel I ever started writing, when I was about twelve. This is a reworking and continuation of that story. 

While most of it is entirely rewritten, the first section (the paragraphs in italics) is verbatim/uncorrected from my very first draft all those years ago! 

 The setting of the cruise was actually based on a real "educational cruise" that members of our school went on back in the late 1980s. We travelled to countries including Greece, Turkey and Egypt. The ship, called the Jupiter, sadly sank some months after our trip with the loss of four lives. 

 This book is dedicated to the memory of the Jupiter and all who sailed on her.