Saskia bounces on the balls of her feet and points at something in the water. ‘Look! Right there!’ Reuben and I get to our feet and look out at the silky jade-green water. About twenty feet ahead is a pod of dolphins arcing through the waves, sunlight bouncing off their silvery backs. We all gasp. None of us have ever seen a dolphin in real life.
Saskia is weepy with excitement. ‘I have to go swim with them, Mum! Please, please, please!’
‘Here,’ Michael says, squatting in front of her. ‘Climb on.’
She jumps on his back and Michael quickly wades out to them while I hold my breath. Michael is capable, a strong swimmer. Dolphins are amazing creatures but the water is deep and there are endless dangers out there.
They’ll be fine, don’t spoil it.
I can’t watch. I busy myself by helping Reuben with his sand sculpture until Michael and Saskia emerge from the waves laughing and the dolphins have moved further down the bay.
We’ve been here two weeks, and by ‘here’ I mean the coast of Belize. Our original plan was to spend the school holidays travelling around Mexico. At Mexico City we joined a tour bus to the Yucatán via some jaw-dropping (and knee-wrecking) sights, such as the pyramids at the City of the Gods, where Reuben delighted in telling Saskia about mass human sacrifices. We saw the soaring white peak of the Popocatépetl volcano, the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque, the pretty pastel-coloured streets of Campeche, and finally Cancún.
Reuben has adapted to the foreign setting more easily than I expected. The tour group was mostly older couples, so the bus was quiet and the air conditioning during long journeys helped to keep him comfortable. We had a problem at first with the lack of pizza – which is all he will eat – but we learned to improvise with tortillas laid flat and covered with salsa and cheese.
We went to Mexico for Reuben’s benefit. At least, that’s what we told everyone, including each other. Reuben did a stunning Year 9 project on the Mayans, involving a hand-crafted scale model Mayan temple and a 3D digital sketch that he projected on to black card surrounding the temple. We’d no idea he was capable of something like that and Michael said we should reward him. A trip to the real Chichén Itzá seemed the perfect way to do this, and as we’d not had a proper family holiday in a long time we figured a bit of a splurge was well overdue. But I also sensed that Michael was on edge, eager to run again. We’ve lived in Northumberland for four years now. Far longer than any other place.
When we arrived at Chichén Itzá Reuben sat in the tour bus for a long time, his face turned to the grey pyramid visible through the trees. Michael, Saskia and I all held our breaths, wondering whether he was going to start screaming or banging his head off the window.
‘Should I do the feet thing?’ Michael asked me nervously. The ‘feet thing’ is how we calm Reuben when he gets really worked up. I discovered it by accident when he was just a baby, and it grew out of the nights that I bathed him and then laid him on his mat to dry his little body. He’d lift his feet up towards my lips and I’d grab his ankles and blurt on the soles of his feet. It tickled him, made him laugh. As he got older and more sensitive to sound and chaos we tried everything to calm him. One night, when he’d worn himself out from screaming and lay down in bed on top of my legs, I ran my fingers up and down his shins. He started to calm down, then lifted his bare feet to my lips. I blurted them. He stopped crying altogether.
Ever since then, we do ‘the feet thing’ when he seems to be building up to a paroxysm – kissing a teenager’s smelly size tens and stroking his hairy shins somehow doesn’t have the same appeal as when he was a baby, but whatever works.
‘I think he’s OK,’ I told Michael, studying Reuben, reading the air around him. The trick is to approach him as you might approach a wild horse. No questions, no fuss – even when he strips naked in public places. We’d somehow convinced him to wear shorts in Mexico and he complied (we made sure to buy blue shorts), but he was still ignoring Michael at that point. I tried to tell myself that this was progress. After the thing between Michael and Josh’s dad, Reuben had gone ballistic, crying, screaming, smashing up his bedroom. I managed to get him to stop being so violent, but he withdrew and wouldn’t speak. Instead, he took to writing ‘Dad’ on his iPad and then vigorously crossing it out, signalling that Michael was dead to him.
At Chichén Itzá, though, I hoped that we could put everything behind us. Reuben looked from me to the pyramid – El Castillo – as though he couldn’t quite believe it was real; that he was here. I glanced at Michael, signalling that now was his chance to make amends. He turned around in the driver’s seat and grinned at Reuben.
‘We’re here, son. We’re actually at Chichén Itzá.’
Reuben kept his head turned away. Definitely not a sign that he wanted his feet to be stroked.
‘Do you want to climb to the top with me, Reuben?’ Michael asked gently.
He reached out to take Reuben’s hand, but Reuben sprang up from his seat and raced up the bus aisle, his long limbs moving in fast strides towards the clearing.
‘I’ll go,’ I said, and I reached down for my bag and followed after. Once I caught up with him I put my arm around his waist. We fell into step. He’s already six foot, even though he’s only fourteen. I wish he wasn’t so tall. It would make the sight of him clambering on to my knee for a cuddle or breaking down in tears when we’re out in public far less likely to draw stares.
‘You OK, sweetheart?’
He nodded but kept his head down. I handed him his iPad and followed at a comfortable distance while he raced off and began to film the site. We spent the day with the rest of the tour group exploring, giving Reuben hourly countdowns, as promised, so that he could anticipate leaving and manage his feelings of sadness a little better. Even so, when we got back into the bus at dusk I saw that his lip was trembling, and my heart broke for him.
We headed to the hotel at Cancún, and that’s where things started to go wrong. It was just too busy. Reuben’s noise-cancelling headphones usually keep him calm but the crowds and heat were overwhelming for him. Saskia and I were worn out by the searing temperatures and squabbling couples amongst our tour group too, and the guide seemed intent on traipsing around tourist-tat stalls instead of taking us to more ancient ruins. At one point Saskia lost her teddy, Jack-Jack, in a market and we had to spend an entire day trawling through souvenirs to find it. She’s had Jack-Jack since birth – a gift from my sister, Jeannie – and wouldn’t be consoled until we found him.
Luckily, we did, but we were all agreed – noise and crowds weren’t for us. So Michael went online and changed our booking to a small resort in Belize, within driving distance of a Mayan site even bigger than Chichén Itzá. Reuben was elated. We hired a car, broke free of the tour group and drove to this place.
I go back inside and pull laundry out of the washing machine, then take it out to the side garden to hang on the line. Michael comes into the garden, soaking wet from his swim. He’s in the best shape of his life, his arms broad and sculpted from deadlifts, his legs strong and muscular from cycling most nights to counter long days at the bookshop. His deep tan suits him, though I’m not sure about the beard he’s grown. He likes to say he’s ‘an auld git’ (he’s forty-one) but to me, he’s never looked better.
‘Where’s Saskia?’ I say, looking past him at the tide that has begun to creep up the beach, devouring Reuben’s sand sculpture.
He slicks his dark wet hair off his face. ‘Oh, I just left her to swim on her own.’
‘You what?’ I take a step forward and scan the part of the beach further to the left. In a moment, Sas comes into view, wrapping a strand of seaweed around her waist to make a mermaid tutu.
‘Honestly, Helen,’ Michael says, grinning. ‘You think I’d leave her to swim out in open