The Beach Holiday: An utterly gripping psychological thriller with a heart stopping twist for 2025 by Nina Manning

Author:Nina Manning [Manning, Nina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2025-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

23

THEN

Everything changed. The doubts I had in my mind, instead of pushing them away in favour of the tranquillity and beauty of Totini, I let them fester, toying with each conversation and contradiction. I began to look at the camp differently. It was no longer just a place of sanctuary and escape where people came to be their most authentic selves without the constraints of everyday society amongst a paradise backdrop. It was now a place where people died. It was a place where people were alive one minute and then dead the next. It could have happened to any one of us. It could happen to me. It could happen to Avril. None of us were immune from death, and with the lack of laws and protection and access to proper medical help, any of us could be next.

The campmates went on about their days, and as I moved into my second and then third week on the island, I felt a hardening develop. Where I had been affected so much by things like Ula living alone and then Clara being carried away in the woods – to die alone – I now felt as though I had lost a fraction of empathy, and in its place, I had grown a thicker piece of skin. Was that the piece of myself that I had to lose to enjoy the paradise that Avril had talked of? It didn’t feel wrong; that was for sure. I understood that was how people had to be here to have some existence. If they were constantly pent up with daily frustrations, emotions and worries, what was the point? Life wasn’t perfect anywhere, I had now come to understand; it was how you chose to live it regardless of whatever else was going on around you.

Surrender a piece of yourself for paradise. That was the mantra. I could do that.

The hardening was also showing on the outside too. My hair was dry and was beginning to mat at the ends. I hadn’t brought any conditioner with me and I was considering not washing it for a few weeks and allowing the natural oils to seep through. My fingernails were dirty, my skin a little burnt and crispy; my feet were hardening where I was walking barefoot every day.

But still within me, a softness lay for the things I missed, like my family and the few friends I cared enough about. And I missed Clara. I had longed for her company when she had been convalescing. Now I understood that Avril and the others all knew the wound was eventually going to kill her and they took her away somewhere quietly to do so. But I was haunted by images of Clara in her last days and hours. How had she been feeling? What had she been thinking? She had no one there with her in the end and I felt a weight of responsibility for that. I should have pushed harder to see her, to be with her, even if it was only to hold her hand.

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