The undercurrent of 2001.

It is unfair and she deserves better, deserves more. She has fought against, struggled through some gale force times to arrive at this point and it should be calmer from here, more certain from here. This should be a time defined by the soothing caress of calm breezes; the certainty that new days will dawn as moments of beauty, red suns rising to reflect and dance upon seas as flat as morning glass. Instead this will be a time with different definitions, different waters.

She will look ahead and see only a bright future, see only clear skies. She will not see the grey of the storm clouds in the blue of his eyes as she asks him to smile, takes his picture against the backdrop of a hot, foreign land. She will not sense the crack in his smile and does not know yet what he fears now; that a union they once declared immortal may soon be given the last rites; that the pictures they take today, take tomorrow will grow in significance and become more than just holiday snaps. She does not know that they will become their last ever pictures from their last ever holiday, that the couple in those pictures will have parted within two months of that shutter's final click.

Their two weeks on this island will be centred around relaxing. They will focus on casting their cares and concerns into the ocean which sits at their window each new day; a brooding expanse of azure which invades each morning as heavy wooden shutters are unlatched and thrown open again to let a new day blaze in. The ocean below their window will look calm from the safety of their whitewashed rustic building set high, hidden amongst the expanse of olive groves. Only the occasional patch on the ocean, hues of darker, more forceful currents will offer any indication of the hidden threat contained within; offer any evidence of the power it possesses, the ease with which it could pull them under, drag them down to tumble them or hold them tight until their last breaths are expelled as bubbles.

From this high vantage point they will see only azure, pay those darker patches no mind and later when they immerse themselves in that same sea, when they swim and laugh, play in the surf and swim in the shallows they will do so safely. They will not venture further, closer to the forceful rips and the threatening currents that breathe and circle in those deeper, darker patches. They will stay in the surf, and he will look at her, look at them both in the shallows, choose not to see the threat lying beyond these warm waters. He will start to believe that they may be safe after all, safer still with each baptising wave that breaks upon them. Each new day that dawns, each new wave that breaks he will trust more that his fears can be unfounded and his hope renewed - and each new day that dawns, each new wave that breaks will bring them closer to their departure, to their return; to that shutter's final click.

Two weeks concluded, they will leave this place and this break from their routine. They will return to their cool grey normality in their cool grey country; return to their shared life with its responsibilities, its bills. Their films will be processed, their pictures developed and they will buy an album, fill an album. They will sit together, look at those moments captured but see different images through increasingly different eyes. She will see their smiles, their beach, their surf; yet his eyes will be drawn to the darker waters now, those patches he failed to see then, yet sees so clearly now. It will begin that way and with each new day that passes, each grey day that breaks he will know more that his fears are not unfounded and that that hope, like tans, can quickly fade to nothing without heat and light to sustain them.

Two months after that last click and long after their bags are unpacked, he will not fight the current when it finds him, swells around him. Instead he will allow himself to drift away without so much as a cry; allow himself to be carried from the shallows and into the stronger, darker waters without making a sound. Only when he is already distant will she realise the danger and only when he disappears beneath the surface will she realise that he is gone; that he will not return now. Only then will she look at their pictures, finally see those clouds in his eyes, the cracks in his smiles, the dark patches in the ocean. It will come too late though and it is unfair because she deserved better. She deserved more.