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I had half been expecting that one couple would make a move to begin renovating one of the wrecked villas—probably Bayer, as he seemed most unhappy with the current arrangement, and in fact had twice spent the night in the ruined Ocean Bluff, sleeping under the stars. But what actually happened was something quite different—something none of us had predicted.
We didn’t notice it until we gathered at the cabana for supper one evening, and then it was Santana who spotted it. She was leaning over the railing of the cabana, looking out at the sunset, beyond the beach, when she gave an exclamation.
“Wait, who’s been rebuilding the jetty?”
“That would be me,” Conor said with a grin. “Cave man tools—a rock and scavenged nails—but it worked. Kind of.”
We all crowded to the wall and looked over, and I saw that Santana was right—someone, presumably Conor, had scoured the beach for the washed-up sections of decking, and had fastened the pieces back onto the upright struts that had survived the storm. It wasn’t remotely perfect—there were some very large gaps, and the planks were broken and uneven. And the rope handrail was long gone, along with the lights strung along it. But you could once again make your way out to the water villa without swimming.
“Zana and I will be sleeping there,” Conor said. He turned to Bayer and gave a little nod. “You can have Palm Tree Rest.”
“Oh I can, can I?” Bayer said sourly. He had plainly found some beer and had been drinking—we had been able to smell the beer coming off his breath the moment we sat down at the table with him, and Dan and I had had a whispered discussion about whether beer had been factored into the liquid allowance, and if not, how to raise it, before deciding now probably wasn’t the time.
“Bayer…” Angel said placatingly. She put one hand on his leg, and Bayer growled and turned away.
I was looking at Zana, who was sitting at the far end of the table, her hand in Conor’s. She looked pale and miserable, and I couldn’t help recalling the visceral terror she had displayed at getting over to the water villa first time round. How was she going to manage on a rickety, jerry-built gangway?
“How do you feel about that, Zana?” I asked, and she flinched.
“Fine.” Her voice was monotone, and so faint I could hardly hear it. She sounded almost comically unfine, in fact. I glanced curiously at Conor, to see what he made of all this, but there was no response from him. Yet he couldn’t be unaware of Zana’s phobia of water, could he?
“More cheerfully,” Dan said, with an effort at bringing the mood of the group back, “look what Lyla and I found this afternoon.”
He reached below the table and came up with a hand of bananas, plus three ripe and two unripe coconuts. We had tried the bananas in the forest and found they were smaller, starchier, and less sweet than the ones in the supermarket back home, with enormous black seeds you had to spit out, but they’d been tasty enough to eat, and beggars couldn’t afford to be choosers. The coconuts, we’d found on the ground. There were dozens of them lying around the forest, and when I found the first one I’d been jubilant—thinking that our water troubles were over—but Dan had shaken them, listening for the sound of sloshing, and had shaken his head. They were too ripe. If we wanted coconut water we needed the green unripe ones, which were, frustratingly, mostly still in the trees, tantalizingly high above our heads.
While Dan and I divided up the bananas, and Joel and Angel puzzled over how to break open the coconuts, Conor began measuring out the water. We’d agreed half a liter each morning and evening, but it turned out that in this heat, half a liter wasn’t a lot to get you through to supper, and now I found myself watching him greedily as he poured each person’s allowance into a tin can marked up for the purpose, and then decanted carefully into a mug. When he set mine down in front of me, I had to fight the urge to pick it up at once and down the lot—but I didn’t want to. I wanted to save it.
Bayer, on the other hand, put down the bagel he was chewing and took a giant gulp, wiping his mouth, and then bit into his banana. He made a face.
“Gross.” He spat a handful of seeds onto the ground. “Tastes like shit.”
I exchanged a glance with Dan. Thanks seemed like a more appropriate response given Bayer hadn’t brought anything to the table, but I could tell that neither of us were in a hurry to provoke him. He seemed to be spoiling for a fight.
The silence was broken by a cheer from Joel, and Angel standing, triumphantly holding up the coconut, which now had two small holes in the top, where they’d managed to pound a nail through the eyes.
“Et voilà! Coconut water!”
“Hold out your cups,” Joel said. He was grinning.
We all did, and Angel carefully drained a little of the liquid into each cup. It was cloudy and mixed with bits of shell and hair, but none of us cared about that—none of us, that is, other than Bayer, who pushed his cup away roughly as Angel poured the coconut water in.
“That’s disgusting. You’ve just poured a load of crap into my water.”
“It is not crap,” Angel said impatiently, rolling the r sarcastically on the last word. “It’s perfectly clean coconut hairs.”
“You drink it, then.” Bayer shoved the cup towards her, almost tipping it as he did. Angel raised one eyebrow.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” Bayer’s voice was truculent. “I don’t want this now you’ve filled it with dirt.”
Angel shrugged, picked up Bayer’s cup, and drained it.
I was expecting Bayer to make a fuss, say that he’d been joking, maybe even take Angel’s water from her. The idea of lasting all night without any more water wasn’t pleasant. But he did none of those. Instead, he pulled the big five-liter water bottle towards him, the one Conor had set down after carefully measuring out our rations, unscrewed the top, and took a long gulp.
For a moment there was absolute silence. We all just stared at Bayer, unsure what to do. Then, almost involuntarily, I found my eyes going to Conor.
“Put. That. Down.” Conor said very quietly. The words dropped like stones into the silence.
