The night that Richard’s body is flown back to England, Camille finally sleeps through the night.
She’s staying at her mother’s bar, because at least then, when she wakes up screaming, with the phantom pain of an ice pick in her chest, there’s a comforting figure there to offer her alcohol and to stroke her sweaty forehead.
Camille has never felt as weak she does right now.
Still, when she finally sleeps, she dreams.
She’s stuck in dead person’s house, during a hurricane. The wind is howling outside, rattling angrily against the windows. She’s on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, hastily pulled off the bed. She wraps her arms around her legs and rests her forehead on her knees.
‘Camille.’
She looks up through tear-blurred eyes, to see Richard standing in front of her, in his stupid suit, his forehead still bleeding slightly.
‘Richard,’ she breathes.
He smiles at her, softly, and that’s when she remembers that it’s a dream.
She stands up, and slaps him.
‘You deserve that,’ she says, through her tears. ‘Why didn’t you tell us about your case? Why didn’t you ask one of us to come with you? Why did – why did you leave us?’
Her dream-Richard shrugs.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘I’m in your imagination, remember.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ she snaps, that old familiar irritation rising, and all of a sudden her sobs turn into laughter.
It sounds more hysterical than anything else, and she sinks back down onto her blankets when her knees give way.
Richard crouches down in front of her, cups her face with his hands, wipes away her tears with his thumbs.
‘I’m sorry, Camille,’ he says.
‘You should be,’ she replies. ‘We had to catch your killer by ourselves.’
‘I practically delivered the answer to your door!’
They stare at each other in silence.
‘The new detective…’
‘He’s good. He’ll help you.’
‘He’s not you,’ she says. Richard shrugs again.
‘No, he isn’t. But then, nobody ever really liked me, even my so-called friends. I was always the ‘eccentric’ one.’
‘I liked you.’
‘Not at first.’
‘You grew on me,’ she admits. ‘And even then, sometimes I could have happily punched you.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ he says, rubbing at his cheek. It’s faintly pink.
It’s quiet for a little longer, the wind still pulling at the house from outside.
‘It never would have worked, you know,’ Richard says, conversationally.
‘What wouldn’t have worked?’
‘You and me.’
Camille takes a deep, shaky breath.
No, she supposes. It wouldn’t have. Richard had never been completely happy on the island of St-Marie; he was too dour, too curmudgeonly, too English. His natural habitat was grey, drizzly skies and cozy pubs serving tapped ales and soggy chips. He would have gone back eventually.
She contemplates, for a second, what would have happened if she went back to England with him. It isn’t a pretty fantasy. Her life has always been bright colours, unashamed dancing, revelling in the rich culture of the Caribbean. She would be too bright, too exotic, too much a francophone. England would drain her, in the same way that, in the end, St-Marie would exhaust Richard. In the way that it did, in the end, lead him to an ignominious death at the hand of a woman he barely knew.
‘It would have been good, though,’ Richard says, flicking his eyes towards her, quick as a lizard. ‘While it lasted.’
Camille just nods. There really wasn't anything she wanted to say.
‘Anyway.’ Richard stands, stretches out the kinks in his neck. ‘I need to go.’
His hand is on the door, and he’s turning back – perhaps for one last goodbye – when Camille jumps to her feet.
‘But what will happen to us, without you?’ she asks, desperately. ‘Fidel, and Dwayne, and me?’
‘You never needed me,’ Richard says, rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling. ‘And you’ve got this new fellow. You’ll do your job well, just like you did before I arrived.’
‘I’ll miss you,’ she says.
She kisses him, once, just a press of her lips against his.
‘See you on the other side,’ he says, which is rather an un-richardlike thing to say, but it comforts her anyway.
The door swings shut behind him, and then, all at once, the winds drop.
Camille wakes up to the sound of a beautiful day on St-Marie.
Her mother is still asleep, so Camille quietly makes herself a cup of tea and walks to the beach, letting the waves lap gently at her bare feet. The sun is slowly climbing the sky, and is already sauna-hot. It’s going to be another warm day.
‘Cheers,’ she says, sipping the tea. Then she grimaces. ‘I don’t know how you drank this stuff,’ she grumbles, and then she tips it into the sea.
She walks back to her mother’s bar with an empty cup dangling from her fingers and the sun rising up behind her.
