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“I mean, if the storm was a big deal, it’ll have made the news in the UK. People will want to know we’re okay, and when they can’t contact Baz, they’ll start to get worried. Family members will start making a fuss. Contacting Real TV. But if it was just a local thing…”
“Shit.” Suddenly my hands felt cold, in spite of the rising heat of the day. “If no one in the UK knows what happened, they may not know to send out searches.”
“Exactly. I mean… how long was filming supposed to last? Six weeks? Eight? And we told everyone not to expect to hear from us while we were on the island. If they don’t hear from us for a couple of months, do you think they’ll be concerned? Or will they just think we made it to the winning pair?”
“I think my boss would be,” I said slowly. “Concerned, I mean. I only took two weeks off.” But even as I said the words, I wondered… would he? Or would he just think I’d become despondent about my job and jacked it in? And even if he was concerned, would he know whom to contact? Had I told him anything about the production? He might ring my mum, I supposed. She was down as next of kin on the university pension database. She knew about the show, and about my plan to bail out early, but she also knew that it was supposed to last up to ten weeks. What if she assumed I’d changed my mind and decided to stay on? I thought of the brief WhatsApp message I’d sent before giving up my phone, saying I’d be out of contact for a few weeks, and not to worry if she didn’t hear from me. That now seemed monumentally stupid.
“Surely Baz must be checking in with someone?” I said at last. “He’s got to be sending footage home, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” Conor said simply. “I have no idea.”
“You knew him though, right?” I asked, though I realized even as I said the words that I had slipped into the past tense, a past tense that I wasn’t yet ready to apply to Nico.
“Baz?” For the first time, Conor’s gaze shifted away from my face, towards the horizon. In the harsh light his pupils had contracted to pinpricks, and his eyes looked almost pure ice gray. It was so extremely obvious that I’d been talking about Baz that the question seemed incongruous, like a way of giving himself time to think about his reply. “I mean… yeah, kind of. We had… people in common, I guess. But that’s not much to hang our survival on.”
Our survival. The two words hung in the air, pushing out all other considerations. No one had set it out so starkly until now—but it was true, that’s what we were talking about. Our life or death, everything or nothing, last-roll-of-the-dice survival.
And below all of that was the unspoken truth that if the boat didn’t come, then Nico was probably already dead.
I pushed my hands through my salt-tangled hair as if I could push that thought out of my head.
“How long do you think we can last?” I said instead, as much to distract myself from thoughts of Nico as anything else. Conor shrugged.
“It depends what we can scavenge from the island,” he said at last. “Bananas. Coconuts. Fish. Maybe bats, if we can catch them. Have you seen those fruitbats hanging in the trees at night? They’re huge—easily the size of a rabbit.”
Bats. Even the idea gave me a jolt of revulsion, but I knew on some level, he might be right.
“We’ve got a ton of food though,” I said, trying not to sound like I was arguing back. “I mean, there’s boxes and boxes of brioche and croissant, and all those tins. I know it’s not exactly gourmet cuisine, but…”
“There’s eight of us,” Conor said rather flatly. “Eight. So even if we limit ourselves to a couple of pieces of carb and a tin of something per day, that’s still well over a hundred bagels or whatever per week. I did a rough count, and we’re talking… a few weeks. If that.”
I felt the color drain from my face. When he put it like that… our predicament was stark. I hadn’t counted either, but I doubted there were more than a couple of hundred muffins and Danish, and probably less than that of tins. And two Danish a day didn’t feel like much to survive on. The question of what happened when we ran out of food was something I didn’t want to think about. But Conor was still speaking.
“I’m actually more worried about the water. You’re supposed to have a minimum of two liters a day or thereabouts, but let’s say we can keep it to one. Which won’t be fun in this heat, but it’ll probably keep us alive. That’s eight liters for all of us, just under two of those big water bottles per day. And I don’t think we’ve got more than about forty of those. We drank at least three yesterday, maybe four. So we’re talking…”
“About three weeks,” I finished. There was a hollow sensation in my stomach. I thought of the liters of water I’d poured down the drain when sluicing Santana’s leg and felt more than a little sick. “Unless we can get the desalination plant going.”
Conor shook his head.
“Did you look at it? It was missing great big chunks of stuff that must have been washed out to sea. I don’t think even an engineer could get that working. But we should set up water butts and stuff, in case it rains.”
We both looked up at the cloudless sky. There didn’t seem to be much to say. I swallowed. I felt suddenly very thirsty.
BACK UP AT the cabana, the others had woken up and had been busy making breakfast. There was a little driftwood fire smoldering in the sand just off the corner of the decking, and Dan and Santana were drinking cups of something that looked and smelled a lot like black coffee. Angel was picking at a tin of fruit salad, and Bayer had unscrewed the lid of one of the water bottles and was chugging directly from the neck, water running down his chin. Joel was nibbling a brioche. On the far side of the clearing a bird was sitting in a tree, balefully nibbling on a brioche it must have stolen when no one was looking. Only Zana wasn’t eating or drinking.
“Look, I found coffee!” Santana called as we came closer, holding up her cup. “You want some?”
“Put that down,” Conor said flatly. Santana set down her coffee cup.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Not you, him.” He nodded at Bayer, who lowered the water bottle with menacing slowness.
“What did you say?” His voice was full of a pent-up aggression that made me pause in my ascent of the steps, but Conor didn’t blink. He walked up to the table and sat, his demeanor calm.
“Look, we should have talked about this last night, but we need to start rationing our supplies. Particularly water. Lyla and I were just down at the cove. There’s no sign of the boat, and we have to assume we might be in this for the long haul.”
“What do you mean, particularly water?” Angel raised one eyebrow. “We have liters and liters of water. We spent all day hauling the stupid stuff up from the staff quarters.”
