Earthquake in Paradise
Chapter 1: Something Amazing
Chapter Text
Weekend in Saint Marie.
It is dark night, as dark as Caribbean night can be, of course. Richard feels it is impossible to get the perfect night, the quiet, dark night he needs just now to accept the fait accompli.
There is too much light, too much noise and too much heat to get any rest that night. The truth is that he still feels quite vulnerable. He knows that it is very difficult to come to terms with it.
On the other hand, Richard is aware that for the entire population of Saint Marie, for reasons he does not quite understand, it will be incredibly unexpected and unacceptable, but he also expects it.
After all, he and Camille seemed to be the perfect couple. With their great love, their arguments, their differences, their opposing characters.
They were the attraction of the island, thanks mainly to Commissioner Patterson.
Richard still remembers how Camille, a little more than half an hour before, had come screaming out of the shack announcing that he should remember the moment well, because it was going to be the last time she spent the night with a man incapable of being faithful.
If Richard still prefers stupid English roses like Elizabeth after all the time he's been with her, it's his loss!
It was unfortunate that the middle-aged tourist couple wandered into the shack and heard everything that Camille said, or rather shouted.
Regrettable that they should witness his latest failed love affair.
Which, as those same tourists would later radiate to the rest of the island's population, would be their most painful failure.
What a time Elizabeth chose to show up at the hut.
Why wouldn't tea have sedative properties?
With Camille he never needed sedatives. Exhaustion and love helped him miraculously. Of course, he knew that she only let him sleep long enough to restore his strength and start again...
Richard Poole grunts.
Many on the island will wonder how it was possible that he and Camille were planning to marry.
Perhaps a blow to the head would help him sleep.
Camille is extremely upset, desperately unhappy and sick with fury!
Who would have thought all this would happen?
Precisely when she and Richard were doing so well, so well together (in every way).
She is walking on the beach, she needs to reorganize her thoughts, her life, her plans for the future.
She needs Richard! But that can't be right now.
What will Maman think of all this mess?
No more grandchildren, her mother will say, so much time wasted with that stupid Englishman for nothing!
And, of course, it will come out about that other woman. Elizabeth is her name.
Everyone will understand that she can't go back to Richard. He's the last man everyone expected that from! Him with another woman behind Camille's back!
And Camille Bordey has her pride. Everyone on the island knows that.
Fidel and Dwayne, especially Fidel, are in for a huge disappointment. Those two officers had put in so much work to get them to finally understand each other... for nothing.
All to no avail.
She watches the waves kiss the beach. So softly, with that unbearably slow tenderness, like...
'I think I'll go straight home. I've got a lot to think about. I don't want to talk to anyone. Not now. Not for a few days.'
And she walks briskly on her way home.
She knows what everyone will say:
'Richard Poole, in the end he's like every other ordinary man. Poor Camille. She's getting to be of an age. She has no time to waste now.'
Camille finally arrives home and she opens the door quickly as she has detected that she has been watched more closely than usual on her way to her small flat.
Before, everyone on the island was watching her and Richard when they were together and now that they have broken up, because she is sure that EVERYONE on the island knows about it, now they are still the centre of attention... although separately!
She slams the door shut.
She has to make her intentions clear, her strength.
Let everyone in Saint Marie see that Camille lives as well now as she did before she met a certain uptight, stubborn Englishman, even after she met him.
I'm sure that Maman, as soon as she finds out, will already be looking for her diary to start setting her up on blind dates.
But this time Camille Bordey will choose her prey.
And it will be someone completely opposite to Richard Poole.
She knows what everyone who knows her will say: how is it possible that she and Richard were planning to marry?
In the Kaz
'Mais ce n'est pas possible! (But that's not possible!)' Is Catherine's exclamation of disbelief.
'Oh, yes. His daughter was shouting. She sounded furious. And yet we were far away...' It is the tourist who is talking to Catherine. She is the one who, along with her husband, was walking 'away' from Chief Inspector Richard Poole's shack at certain times.
'Are you sure that Camille said Elizabeth's name?' Catherine asks.
Catherine found it hard to understand Richard's behaviour.
'I'm sure she did. It was one of the things your daughter shouted out.' The animated tourist replied.
Catherine already knew that the couple, Richard and his daughter, had become the most important tourist attraction in Saint Marie. It was not unusual for strangers to be wandering around the Detective Inspector's shack.
Commissioner Patterson dealt with that very well.
Tourists always say they've gone astray...
Catherine excuses herself to retreat inside the bar's small kitchen to try to contact her daughter. She must be at home by now.
But Camille doesn't pick up the phone.
Dwayne witnesses the spectacle from a distance. Surely this tourist couple are not drunk or something? Of course, the Chief and Camille are not arguing for the first time (even though they are already together), nor will it be the last.
He will have to make sure whether this time it is serious or not. Catherine seems worried this time, though.
No, before doing anything, before informing Fidel and Juliet, Dwayne prefers to wait until Monday.
But Camille and Richard had already planned the wedding!
He finds it hard to believe about this woman, that tourist woman, is talking about. The Chief and Camille would not have got that far with an argument.
No, he'll wait. Even if he has to smack the Chief and Camille upside the head to get them to come to their senses.