Chapter 1 Paradise

True Paradise is a place we must find within ourselves.

The Paradise we are sometimes fortunate to see around us can be a mirage, perhaps even a dangerous place.  Some travellers seek to leave their past and its traumas behind them, to find a new and better life, but our pasts have a way of catching up with us.  Anyway, at midnight, no airport is a paradise, not even one in Tahiti.

It was midnight in the Arrivals Hall at Faaa Airport.  A young Tahitian man in a colourful hibiscus-patterned shirt and white shorts stood in the waiting bustle of tour guides.  In one hand leis of frangipani, and in the other a tablet bearing two names, Parker/Gordon.  Even in Papeete handwritten signs had long been replaced by technology.  Outside the terminal the white minibus was waiting ready to transport the new arrivals from LAX to their hotel.  After a two-hour delay in departure and nine hours in an aircraft all that the four travellers wanted was to get away from the airport, a quick hotel check-in, their room key and a comfortable bed.

The tallest of the arrivals was middle aged, possibly in his late fifties, a touch of grey just starting to appear on his temples.  Dressed in slacks and a polo shirt with a tiny logo on the breast he wore the look of …………………

From the local gendarme the story of the discovery emerged.  It was just after sunrise when a fisherman passing close by the little islet on his way to a favoured fishing ground noticed a red bundle on the sand.  At first he was annoyed thinking it to be garbage, cast overboard by some travelling foreign yacht, that had been washed up on the beach of the motu, but his curiosity was awakened and he had gone closer to investigate.  It was then that he realised the bundle was a woman in a red dress.  It was too late.  The woman was dead.

“Because I too have been doing some research.  It took some time before I found your story.  It’s no wonder we couldn’t place your nationality.  And you, will you sail off into the sunset to discover new exciting worlds with the beautiful Ana?”

“Gabrielle, I envy her for her youth, her energy, her enthusiasm to discover life.  However your question?  That is the fantasy of tellers of stories, and this is real life.”

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 As sad as a day may be we can still make it one day closer to a better future.