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“We actually don’t have that much,” I said, a little diffidently. I sat down beside Joel. “Conor and I were just running through the maths and… he’s right. We’re going to need about eight liters a day just to survive. At that rate, we’ll be through the water in two or three weeks.”
“Sorry, but eight liters is ridiculous,” Santana said with a smile. “Even the biggest hydration freak wouldn’t drink that much. We don’t need to wash with bottled water, we can use the sea for that.”
“Not eight liters a person,” Conor spelled it out. “Eight liters for all of us. A liter each. Per day.”
“What?” Dan looked confused. “But—that’s not enough to survive? Not in this heat.”
“Unless it rains, it’ll have to be. I went all over this island and there’s no water supply.”
“We could dig a well?” Santana said uncertainly. Conor shook his head.
“We’re basically a big sand bar in the middle of the ocean. Any well is just going to be seawater, and we’ve got plenty of that already.”
“Fuck.” Bayer banged the big bottle down on the table so hard the water splashed and spattered the surface. Everybody winced. I caught Joel staring at the droplets, watching as they evaporated from the hot surface of the wood.
“We’ve got the tins of fruit salad,” Conor was saying. “They have a fair amount of liquid we can use to pad out the water. But no more coffee.” He nodded at Santana and Dan’s cups. “It wastes too much in the grounds.”
“But wait,” Santana said, “two or three weeks, the boat has to be back by then, doesn’t it?”
I exchanged a glance with Conor.
“I think…” He was speaking slowly, and for the first time I got the impression he wasn’t sure how to put into words what he wanted to say. “I think if the boat were coming… it would have been here by now.”
There was an instant hubbub of protest and disbelief, and Conor raised his voice, speaking above the others.
“I’m sorry, I know it’s not what anyone wants to hear, but wherever they were going, they were supposed to be there and back in twelve hours. It’s been more than thirty-six since they left, and the sea’s been calm as a pond for twenty-four hours of that. Even if you give them a generous stretch of extra time for getting blown off course, if they were coming, they would have been here already.”
“What if the boat’s damaged?” Santana said. “They might have had to stop for repairs.”
“Then why haven’t they sent help?”
“Maybe everyone’s busy! Or maybe they’ve run out of fuel and they’re floating somewhere waiting for people to come find them. Or maybe—”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Conor broke in impatiently. “There’s a ton of possible explanations, but none of them are certain enough to gamble our survival on.” Survival. It was the same word he’d used down at the beach, and it gave me the same jolt hearing it for the second time. “We have to act like they won’t be coming, otherwise we could be sitting here in a week’s time looking at a row of empty bottles.”
“But what’s the long-term plan?” It was Zana’s voice, so unexpected that we all, all of us turned to look at her. She was sitting at the corner of the table, and she looked, if anything, even thinner and more fragile than she had the night before, a kind of desperation and fear in her eyes that made me flinch to see it. “I mean, what you’re saying, it makes sense. But what difference does it make if we’re sitting here in a week, looking at the empty bottles, or in three weeks? We’re still screwed either way.”
“It gives us more time,” Conor said. He moved to the other end of the table and took one of her hands in his. “In three weeks, anything could happen. A fishing boat could come past. Someone in the UK could figure out what’s wrong and charter a helicopter. It could rain.”
There was a long, long silence. Then Joel ran his hands through his hair, so it stood up, stiff and tangled with salt.
“Fuck. I hope you’re right. I really, really hope you’re right.”
Today is Wednesday, the 21st—exactly one week since the storm. When I woke up this morning and the boat still wasn’t there, I felt… I don’t know. Something close to despair. A week. Even if the boat had broken down, surely, surely they would have raised the alarm by now. Something terrible must have happened.
If I think about it too much, I feel like I might go mad. The only thing that’s keeping me sane is the fact that I’m here with Conor. He’s so calm, so strong, even in a situation like this. And he’s practical too. He was the one who thought of rounding up all the food and water from the staff quarters and figuring out how long we could ration it out to survive.
I’m writing this in the water villa—that’s where we’re living now, me and Conor. It’s not ideal, the jetty is very rickety, but there were only three villas left standing after the storm—ours, Lyla’s, and the water villa, so we didn’t have much choice. In some ways it would have made more sense for me and Conor to stay in our original villa, but Bayer’s shoulder was dislocated in the storm, and since then he hasn’t been doing so well.
We had a private chat, Conor and I, and he asked whether I’d be prepared to offer Bayer and Angel our villa—give the two of them some space and give Bayer some peace and quiet to recuperate. I’m not so keen on water, but I agreed that it wouldn’t be safe for Bayer to try to make it out here every night. If he fell in, I don’t know if he could swim with his bad shoulder.
So in spite of my misgivings, I told Conor to go for it—to tell Bayer and Angel to take Palm Tree Rest. And you know what, I’m glad I did. The water villa—it’s beautiful. And somehow, out here, surrounded by the waves, I’m not so scared anymore. But the real reason I said yes was for Conor. He makes me want to be a better person. God, I love him so much.
CHAPTER 17
OVER THE NEXT few days, we fell into an uneasy rhythm. In the mornings we gathered at the cabana for breakfast, then someone, usually me or Joel, would make our way back to the staff quarters to try the radio. The rest of the day we would spend fishing, exploring the island and then, as the heat grew more unbearable, everyone would retreat for the afternoon to the shade of the villas, playing cards, sleeping, and trying to ignore our growing thirst—waiting impatiently for the sun to touch the leaves of what we’d started to call the Water Palm on the tip of the island, when Conor doled out the evening ration.
Conor, Zana, Angel, and Bayer seemed at first to have established themselves in Palm Tree Rest, the villa Nico and I were to have had, but after the altercation between Conor and Bayer over breakfast, it quickly became apparent that that wasn’t going to be an arrangement that could stick, long-term.
