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“Well, it’s probably a good idea to do that first, see if we can pick anything up. If we can’t, just pick some frequencies you can remember, Joel, and we’ll try different ones tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Joel said. He picked up the receiver and began turning the dial, listening intently as the static ebbed and rose.
“The rest of us will take one more set of supplies up to the cabana, and then we’ll break for lunch.”
Joel nodded. He had run through the full spectrum of the dial now, and as we walked away from the hut to pick up a last set of supplies, I could hear him beginning to broadcast.
“Hello, my name is Joel Richards, this is… God, I’m not sure. Maybe our third Mayday call? Please, if you can hear us, send urgent help. We’re stranded on an island about twenty hours southwest of Indonesia. Twenty hours by boat that is—we came here by boat.”
His voice was getting fainter as I picked up a box of tinned tuna salad and added some vacuum-packed croissants on top.
“There are people here with serious injuries….” I heard, as I walked away from the clearing, up the path to the cabana. “If anyone can hear me, please respond or send help. We don’t know how long they will last.”
Today is 17 February—three days since the storm, and I think the gravity of the situation we are in has begun to sink in. Something must have happened to the boat—which is a terrifying thought.
Yesterday we had a group meeting and totted up all of our water and food supplies. Bayer worked out that we have just over two hundred litres of water, plus some liquid from the tins, and whatever we can forage from coconuts and so on. It’s not a lot. Even if we restrict ourselves to a liter a day—which Lyla says is barely what you need to survive in heat like this—we’re talking eight liters a day between all of us, which is about a twenty-five-day supply. Less than a month.
Today was the first day we tried the new allocation, and God it was hard. Breakfast was fine, but by the evening I was so thirsty, I couldn’t think of anything apart from water. I was fantasizing about it, about taking big glugs from a jug, or standing in a shower and letting it pour down my body. We had agreed to dole out the evening allocation when the sun hit this tall palm to the west of the island, but as we watched it inch over the forest I nearly cracked and begged for my allowance early. I think if it hadn’t been for Conor I would have—but he talked me through it. We played this game—I closed my eyes and imagined myself walking through the rooms of my childhood house, describing each one to him. It felt so incredibly real. And when I opened my eyes, I realized that the sun was almost setting, touching the tip of the palm tree.
I nearly ran to the cabana. I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life as Bayer handing out the cups of water.
I am dreading how much harder it’s going to get. But I can’t think about that yet. Someone will come. Someone has to come.
CHAPTER 16
WHEN I AWOKE the next day, it was to a sense of complete disorientation, followed by a wash of dread.
The disorientation was from the realization that I was not in my own bed, or even in a bed, but once again lying on a mattress on the floor of Forest Retreat, surrounded by the snores of Joel, Dan, and Santana.
The wash of dread was when I realized another twenty-four hours had gone by, and there was no producer banging on the door of the villa demanding to know if we were okay, no Camille panting up the path from the bay. And with every hour that passed, it seemed more likely that something terrible had happened to both the Over Easy… and Nico.
I wasn’t sure how early it was, but the thought had chased away all sleep, so I got up, pulled on my shoes, and then let myself quietly out of the villa, closing the door behind me.
The first thing I did was walk to the far shore of the island, where the boat had anchored that first day, in the faint hope that it might be, if not there, at least a shape in the far distance, coming closer. But there was nothing at all—not so much as a fishing boat on the horizon—just uninterrupted blue as far as the eye could see and, high above, a single contrail of a jet marring the scorchingly blue sky.
I felt all the hope drain out of me.
“Watching the horizon too, huh?” came a voice from behind me, and I swung around to see Conor standing there, bare chested. He had his hand up, shading his eyes, and the movement made the eagle wings stretch and ripple across his torso, like a bird about to take flight.
“God, you startled me.”
“Sorry. I had the same… well, I don’t want to say hope, because I’m not sure I really believed there would be anything there, but I had to check.”
“What are we going to do, Conor?” I blurted out. I was surprised at the desperation in my own voice. I’d been working so hard to keep the terror in check, keep focusing on the practicalities of solving each obstacle as it arose—but that pitiless blue was somehow worse than anything I’d imagined. Blue—just blue as far as the eye could see. Not a boat, not an island, not even a piece of driftwood. “If the boat doesn’t come, I mean? What the fuck do we do?”
Conor shrugged.
“We… survive, I guess. That’s all we can do. Someone is going to come looking eventually. They must know where we were heading.”
“You think?”
“They must do. Baz hired this island off someone. There has to be a production company back in the UK. When they don’t hear anything, someone will check in, follow the breadcrumbs.”
“And how long will that take? Especially if the storm was as bad or worse on the mainland. They may not have the local resources to be out looking for a parcel of idiot reality TV show contestants.”
“I don’t know,” Conor said quietly. “Obviously I hope this hurricane wasn’t too destructive, but if it wasn’t a big deal on the other islands… well, put it this way, I’m almost more worried about that possibility.”
“What do you mean?” I was puzzled. “You’re worried the storm wasn’t bad enough? That doesn’t make sense.”
