I took my girlfriend to the Maldives on Valentine’s Day to propose. We’d been together for eleven months by then: eleven months from the moment our eyes first met, and changed my life forever. I’d had previous girlfriends, and had even got close to engagement with a couple of them, but there was always something amiss. As soon as I saw J, everything made sense: the searching in the past, our being in the same place, at the same time, in the same Universe, and the future we’d spend together. It truly is impossible to convey the joy of lying next to your soul-mate, futile to attempt to describe the completeness I felt from our first moment, so I’ll stick to the facts.
I spent the year working hard and saving up for the perfect engagement holiday. Even then I had to take out a considerable loan to afford that which I’d researched to be the one in a billion holiday for my one in a billion girl. The cost was already paid back before we even left, when, telling J where we’d be spending Valentine’s Day, I witnessed happiness that I was never before able to invoke in another person.
As we descended to our island, J and I huddled to the plane window for our first sight of the Maldives, sparkling, like a string of jewels scattered across the Indian Ocean. I escorted my jewel of a girlfriend (and the diamond in my pocket) to the Taj Exotica, a wonderfully relaxed resort full of tasteful touches and gorgeous furnishings. Our room overlooked a palm-fringed beach on the picturesque island of Emboodhu Finolhu, in the South May Atoll, one of the largest lagoons in the Maldives. I watched Jenny from our balcony as she walked out to the glistening surf. She wore a see-through purple and white cotton fabric that caressed her body like a tender hand. Her luxurious hair swayed in the gentle breeze. She turned round to face me, and smiled.
Following an afternoon nap, we rented bicycles and rode through the island’s otherworldly forest, overwhelmed by its infinite shades of green and intoxicatingly pure air. We laughed in delight as we rode, side-by-side, past hidden streams and vivacious fauna, loving each other more with each passing moment. I must have lost concentration for a second because I steered into Jenny’s pedal and sent her flying over the handlebars. The bicycle followed her through the air, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees, and bouncing off into a bush. Jenny skidded across the concrete at least twelve feet before coming to a stop, her knees cut open and her right arm grazed from shoulder to hand.
She looked up to me with a mixture of shock, accusation and pain. I’ll never forget that look.
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