Falling Behind

By Ravi Kulatunga

Do you really know the person you have committed the rest of your life to? Are they the same person you married, once knew, or have you ignored those subtle changes and made compromises just for the sake of happily ever after? Perhaps it is you who has changed, and now everything you once cherished, once hoped for, does not bind you in the way that it once did.

Against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, Beth, and her husband Jake, travel to Samoa to reset and mend a broken marriage. But the suspicion of an affair, an addiction, a crime, or the thought that he just does not want to be around her anymore, travel with her to this island paradise.

How does it feel to lose a child? Your children are not supposed to leave you before you leave them. How do you live in a vacuum, unable to breathe, when sleep and inevitable death are the only reprieve? And then, what happens when you are responsible for their death? An old man and women, isolated from the rest of the world, abandoned by their families and neighbours, grapple with grief.

Falling Behind is a collection of six short stories that explores the character of grief and its manifestation in people and how these very same people attempt to ride it out and hope, at the same time, for it to end. As with Leaving Behind, each story bears an unexpected twist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035800438

Ravi Kulatunga

Ravi Kulatunga was born in Sri Lanka and at the age of four, moved with his family to Central Africa where he spent an adventurous childhood travelling around the continent learning about different people and their rich cultures. He then moved to England for a short time and later migrated to Australia along with his parents and two siblings. He now lives with his wife and daughter in New Zealand, where he works as a business consultant. His family, as well as travelling and writing, take up most of his time now.

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About the Author

Ravi Kulatunga was born in Sri Lanka and at the age of four, moved with his family to Central Africa where he spent an adventurous childhood travelling around the continent learning about different people and their rich cultures. He then moved to England for a short time and later migrated to Australia along with his parents and two siblings. He now lives with his wife and daughter in New Zealand, where he works as a business consultant. His family, as well as travelling and writing, take up most of his time now.

Dedication

To my wonderful mother who always encouraged us to do something different.

Copyright Information ©

Ravi Kulatunga 2023

The right of Ravi Kulatunga to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035800421 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035800438 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Canary Wharf

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E14 5AA

Book 1 – Dappled Light Unseen

It was meant to be a trip to reconcile our differences, bury our grievances and learn compromise so we could save our marriage of seven years. We needed to find a way to put aside the negative feelings and start to respect each other again. But fate conspired from the very beginning, even before we had boarded our flight to Apia, sweeping in, reeking of mischief. The computers were down and the automatic check-in kiosks at the airport were not working, so the queues stretched and wormed their way in a dozen directions. This dominoed into immigration, the lounges packed, and the flights were delayed. Three hours later and we were finally on our way, already worn out and short-tempered. It was a spontaneous decision to go and inevitably the flight was full and we had to sit separately. He was squashed between two very large Samoan women and Jake is not a small man. They needed part of his seat as well and he spent most of the time wearing out the carpet along the aisle. I offered him my seat, but he stubbornly refused to move. Then they forgot to load his vegetarian meal, not that he was in any mood to eat and so he just stomped up and down the aisle, his umbrage growing with each determined stride. Then the last straw was when we got to the hotel and we had to queue for over forty-five minutes to get our key, only to be turned away because our room was not ready. We picked up the rental car at the airport, and throughout the hour’s drive to the hotel he remained mostly silent, his venom bottled, but then at the hotel, he just lost it. I had to walk away, partially out of embarrassment, and partially because of the pity I felt for the poor women he was loudly berating and threatening. I found a seat as far away from him as I could and tried to read the novel I had bought at the airport in Sydney. When he came over to continue his rant about the room not being ready, I just had to get up and leave, to breathe.

When I got past the main entranceway to the hotel, I crossed the road and stepped onto the promenade which followed the coastline. To my left and to the east, about two kilometres away, was the town centre. In the other direction was a row of restaurants and bars and further away, the port. I turned right as the sun was beginning its final journey towards the horizon and despite everything, I could not help but be drawn to the magical lure of this small island nation. It was still warm, and I could feel the perspiration trickle down my back as I started to walk. Above, wispy white clouds hurried along a startling blue sky, as if they were being chased by an invisible foe. I came across a bridge straddling an estuary where children jumped into the water below and palm trees waved at each other as a gentle breeze stole through them.

I walked past the mostly empty bars and restaurants towards the port, and I sat on a concrete bench and watched as a large, cantilevered crane unloaded shipping containers from the hull of a cargo ship. The ship rocked and swayed in the strong current and the waves crashed against its sides in a white, frothy mess. A second container ship lay anchored further out in the harbour as it waited for the first ship to be unloaded and then reloaded with new export containers. A dark grey plume of smoke escaped from a green-coloured, smoke-stained funnel on the deck of the ship and a horn blared impatiently from within. A group of schoolgirls dressed in white and blue uniforms walked past, giggling and bumping each other with their black satchels and a man wearing only a pair of shorts rode past on a rickety black bicycle and he waved at me and shouted, Hello, lady! I smiled and waved back as the cloud of frustration and despair started to lift. An old beaten-up Toyota Corolla sat at the traffic lights, its engine suddenly cutting off. An elderly woman wearing a beige cap and sunglasses leant forward and turned the key in the ignition, but to no avail, the car refused to start. She kept trying though, speaking to the car and rubbing her left hand over the cracked dashboard. The lights turned green and the cars in front of her started to inch forward. When the people behind her realised something was wrong, they began to calmly pull out onto the other side of the road and drive around her. Suddenly, just as the lights turned amber and then red, the car coughed and spluttered and shook itself back into life, belching a large plume of smoke out of its exhaust pipe. People cheered and waved from the pavement as she accelerated through the red lights.

When I returned half an hour later, Jake was standing at the reception counter paying the deposit and collecting the keys to our room. It was already eight o’clock and it had been well over nine hours since we alarmed our house and left our cat, Precious, with our neighbour, Mabel. The room was situated in the old block, a squalid dingy-looking building, away from the beach with not much of a view. As much as I had tried to remain positive throughout the day, despite everything, as soon as I saw where we were staying, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of disappointment start to descend once again. It was nothing like the pictures I had hastily brushed through as I was completing the booking. I did not have the time to research the place, but the few posts I did read did not mention the old and the new buildings. By the time we got to the room, our expectations had bottomed out and nothing could further dampen an extraordinarily disheartening day. Or so I thought. The room did not look like it had been cleaned, two dead cockroaches lay on their backs staring up at the fluorescent lights next to the minibar and the room reeked of nicotine. We stood in the doorway, we did not need to go in any further, our imagination took over.

I could feel Jake tense next to me and then he suddenly dropped his bag in the corridor in front of the doorway, swore and spun around on his heels and headed back in the direction we had come.

Where are you going? I called after him.

Where do you think! he spat back.

I booked a non-smoking room, I said mostly to myself. He didn’t need to say it, already I was blaming myself.

I dropped my bag next to his and sat down on both of them and dropped my