It wasn’t as if she felt dissatisfied, unsettled even. It was as though she didn’t know what she felt. She heard Zaw sweeping the leaves and realised it was after seven.
Today would be the same as yesterday. Not in a bad way. She loved her days. Usually when she woke up to the sound of the leaves being swept she would stretch her arms, turn over her breakfast options in her mind and feel for fresh overnight marauders on her body. One lump or two? She never even felt them bite her now but, sure enough, every morning the evidence was there. Not as triumphant as it had been in the first week, smaller mounds now, they must be getting bored with her not quite so fresh blood.
Baked beans or a cheese omelette or maybe ‘poashe’ eggs on toast as Zaw would say? Mango and yoghurt or papaya and pineapple? Her tummy (the class had loved that new word) would rumble with excited anticipation as she rose from the bed, turned on the shower and turned off the air con.
There was something wrong today. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. She let the warm shower run over her body, towel dried her hair and put on a clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt. A Skype meeting at 3.45? maybe that was it?
At breakfast she opted for mango and yoghurt and baked beans. Two cups of coffee later and her first lesson of the day was only minutes away. She hadn’t even done a lesson plan but that was OK, Zaw needed to go through the menu again and Gelda, of the crooked teeth, would be more than happy to show off everything she’d learnt the day before. She knew every colour now and at least ten verbs. She wanted to start the Kurt Vonnegut book that Jess Walter’s had recommended at the end of his haunting book, ‘Beautiful Ruins’ but knew there wasn’t time.
Zaw came towards her clutching his exercise book, closely followed by Gelda. It looked like a double lesson. Then Ali spoke up, out of the blue, as if someone had waved a magic wand. “No, not today, no lesson today. Mama have holiday today.”
How did he know, when she didn’t? How did he know that all she wanted to do today was nothing? She just wanted to listen to the pulse of the sea, feel the warmth of the sun and lose herself in someone else’s fantasy. How could they be so in tune with everything around them?
They are giving me permission to do exactly what I want to do today, she thought, and today that is exactly nothing.