Soul Beach

that X factor is that gets you a ticket to paradise .’ The bitterness in her voice is painful to hear.
    ‘I wondered if it might be fame? Or at least notoriety.’
    ‘I’m not famous. Why would anyone have heard of me? Over-achieving Indian girl dies of anorexia. At our school, anorexia was almost as common as acne. That’s not going to make the headlines, is it?’
    I want to tell her that it should make the headlines, that it’s an awful story. But I realise that’s too simplistic, too glib. Triti is making a choking noise, a swallowed cry.
    If only I could help her.
    Danny’s words come back to me: you’ll only get away if whatever landed you here in the first place is resolved, back in the real world.’
    Could I try to resolve things for Triti? And, by testing the theory, find out if I can do the same for my sister?
    ‘Triti. If there was a way out of here, would you take it?’
    The choking stops. ‘Like a shot,’ she whispers.
    ‘Please don’t raise your hopes, or anything, but there might be something I could try. If you’re absolutely sure. Because I don’t think there’d be any going back.’
    ‘Oh, Alice—’
    I realise too late that she’s reaching out for me, and we watch, horrified, as her hand drops through space onto the sand with a painful slap.
    ‘I forgot,’ she says, and her voice sounds so tiny and desperate that I feel an emptiness opening up inside me. ‘But believe me when I tell you that I have never been surer of anything in my life.’ She manages a warped smile. ‘Or in my death.’
    Maybe I am crazy to offer – to think a sixteen-year-old can change anything – but I know I can’t leave her to suffer like this. ‘There are no certainties, Triti. I could be wrong. It might make no difference. But I will try, I promise you that.’
    ‘Thank you.’ She nods, then closes her eyes and I feel as though she’s a long way off, even though we’re still right next to each other. Perhaps I should ask for more information, but then the threat of being banned from the Beach is always hanging over me. And if I am banished forever, then I can’t help Triti, Meggie or myself. I must take it slowly.
    I push myself up off the sand, to look for the others. They’ll be expecting me. But even as I walk towards the jetty, I wish I could take just one night off.
    After just a few minutes with Triti, everything feels different. Bleaker. It’s going to take all my acting skills to laugh and joke and pretend that the Beach is paradise right now . . .

39
    My cousin Laurel is very, very drunk, but nobody minds. That’s what you do at your twenty-first. It wouldn’t be much of a party here in the real world if you could remember any of it.
    Her little sister Stacie sidles alongside me. ‘She looks like a bloody Barbie doll,’ she says, nodding towards Laurel.
    Considering that Stacie has fake tan, fake nails and new fake boobs which were an eighteenth present from her step-dad, this seems a bit rich.
    ‘So long as she’s having fun.’ On the stage, Laurel rocks backwards and forwards on her silver heels, and I wouldn’t bet on her staying upright for much longer.
    Stacie and Laurel are Dad’s sister’s daughters, from the WAG side of the family tree, but even though they couldn’t be more different from Meggie and me, we’ve always got along.
    ‘So where’s the sexy Robbie then?’ Stacie asks.
    I shrug. ‘I wouldn’t know. We finished.’
    Her eyes widen. ‘No way! You shouldn’t have let him get away.’
    It’s obvious she thinks that Robbie was well out of my league, that I’ll never get a lucky break like that again. ‘Right now other stuff in my life feels more important.’
    ‘Yeah, I know, but . . . Alice, the right bloke is going to take your mind off everything. When you’re with them, you can’t think of nothing else, not even what happened to Meggie. Sooner you find a bloke, the better.’
    Considering that Stacie loves fake everything , her faith in true love is always surprising. ‘Is that what it’s like with David?’ I ask her.
    Her eyes go funny, like she’s stoned. ‘I felt like half a person until I met David. Now I’m like, a whole one. I can’t wait till he’s back from Kabul. I think he’s going to propose.’
    David’s a soldier – Stacie always said she thought she’d marry a man in uniform.
    ‘See, it wasn’t like that with Robbie,’ I tell her. ‘He was lovely, and kind, and very cute, but . . .’
    ‘You never felt