Excerpt

It was another one of those days in the beautiful, lush green isle of Dominica. The heat from the sun’s rays beat down upon the people’s backs as they went about their business. There was hardly any breeze at all, and although the people liked the weather, they wouldn’t have it any other way. There were always the few who complained, Delia was one of them, a beautiful, brown skin woman. People always stopped and complimented her, asking her how is it that she is not a model, or on television since she is so warm in nature and so beautiful. Today she did not feel beautiful at all, today her body ached, her long legs were tired from all that walking in the burning Dominican heat.

  Delia born of original Dominican parents on Dominican soil, she had been sent to England at a young age, but she remembered that time as if it were yesterday; running around with no shoes on her feet, forever, in trouble with the neighbour. She would never forget Theo. He was her very best friend, the twinkle in her eye, but Theo was not always allowed out. His father, a teacher from school was a very strict man and did not like his children unoccupied, but when Theo got the chance to go out, they would wander on the Savannah playing silly games and eat all sorts of berries. Their hands and mouths stained by them, even their clothes and they would end up in the sea to try get rid of the evidence. Sometimes they would take bits and pieces of food from their homes, kill some birds and cook it in an old tin or whatever suitable item they could find, or just roast them on an open fire.

  Those were the days, but now she was older. Sometimes she had to go work in the fields, the few acres of land left to her by her grandmother who had passed on a few years ago God bless her; a very strong woman, she was the man and woman of the house since grandpa had gone to the other islands to find work, she was her gran’s favourite grandchild, and had spent most of her childhood following gran about the place, learning about herbs and their uses, now here she was digging the red soil and planting herbs for the kitchen and natural medicine. This was very different from working as a secretary or the various other jobs she was accustomed to doing in England. There were lilies of different colours and shape and her roses, to keep her in business. It was hard, very hard indeed. It was not so bad in the early hours of the day when she would leave the house in her truck and head for the garden. Everything would be cool and dandy until it got to midday, which is when the heat started to get unbearable and she would prefer to sit down and relax under a mango tree with a tall glass of ice-cold lime juice...