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“No,” Dan said. “No. You’re not. Joel?”
He turned to look at Joel, who looked like he wanted to melt through the floor.
“Dan,” he said, very quietly, “I don’t think this is the right way to handle this.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Dan said. I had the strong impression he was trying not to cry, though I had no idea whether it was tears of anger or betrayal that he was holding back. He turned back to Conor and stabbed his finger towards him. “And fuck you too. Watch your back, mate.”
Then he stalked off into the trees.
There was a long silence, and then, from the opposite direction, we heard the sound of a long, slow hand clap.
We all turned, and Angel was standing in the clearing in a long white dress that billowed in the sea breeze.
“Bravo, Dan,” she said, but she was looking at Conor as she said the words. “Someone has finally to stand up to the murderer.”
Conor smiled, showing all his white teeth. Santana put her head in her hands. Joel looked like he was about to burst into tears himself. Suddenly I couldn’t take it any longer. It wasn’t just the atmosphere in the cabana, it wasn’t even just the fact that Conor was now nakedly holding our water hostage and not even pretending to the contrary. It was everything. The fact that I was trapped on this island with a group of people preparing to tear each other apart. The fact that Nico was very likely dead. The fact that with every day that passed, our situation was getting more and more desperate.
“I’m going to the radio shack,” I said. Joel opened his mouth to say something, but I held up my hand, trying to signal with that one gesture that no, I didn’t want company, I didn’t want his advice, I didn’t want anyone. I just wanted ten minutes to myself, nursing the fantasy that someone out there was going to pick up our Mayday call.
Because someone, somewhere had to be looking for us. Didn’t they?
I couldn’t sleep last night. I was so thirsty, but it was more than that—I kept running over all the what-ifs everyone has been so carefully staving off, trying not to think about. What if the boat doesn’t come? How long will our water last? What if Santana runs out of insulin? I was trying not to cry, but the tears came in the end, and woke Conor up, and… God, he was amazing. He just held me, and sang to me, hour after hour, all our favourite songs and some I’d never heard before. And the whole time he was telling me that it was going to be okay—it was all going to be okay, we just had to stay strong, look after each other, hang in there until help arrives.
And eventually, some time before dawn, I drifted off to sleep with him holding me. I don’t know if he slept himself.
Conor’s arms are the only place I feel safe now—the only place I feel as if nothing can harm me—but even that makes me feel scared. Because what if something happens to him? I feel like he’s the only thing on this island keeping me from falling apart.
It’s not just me. Everyone’s tempers are fracturing. This morning, at breakfast, Dan broke down and demanded more water—and when everyone banded together to tell him he couldn’t have it, that we were all as thirsty as he was, he stormed off. We haven’t seen him all day. We’re all just praying he’s okay.
The truth is, it’s just… it’s just getting to us, in a way it didn’t before.
CHAPTER 21
“HE IS A psychopath, of course.” Angel said the word psychopath matter-of-factly, but it was somehow the of course that had the most chilling effect. The casual acceptance of something I hadn’t even begun to consider. “Or perhaps a sociopath. The difference is probably academic in this situation. But then, he is a Gemini. They are notorious serial killers. The duplicity comes naturally to them.”
Santana and I looked at each other, and then back out to sea, where Joel and Conor were fishing in the shallow reef just off the water villa.
Dan was nowhere to be seen, and hadn’t been seen for hours, not since the fight at breakfast. He hadn’t even drunk his morning water allocation, which was now sitting, covered with a leaf, up at the cabana, and I could only hope that he had taken something with him to drill coconuts, otherwise he’d be dangerously dehydrated by the time he reappeared.
Angel, Santana, and I had spent the day on the little headland that had been the site of Angel and Bayer’s villa, Ocean Bluff, before it had been destroyed in the storm. It had been Angel’s suggestion to use the palm frond roof and timber from the broken villa to build a bonfire, ready to light if a ship came past.
“Will they realize it’s a distress signal though?” Santana had asked, doubtfully. “What if they just think it’s holidaymakers having a beach barbecue?”
Angel had shrugged.
“It is possible of course. But what can we do? We have to try.”
And I saw her point of view. It was a long shot, but it was better than doing nothing, and the radio display was getting increasingly faint, which made me suspect the battery was dying.
It had taken us most of the day to round up the pieces of roof that had blown across the beach and dry them on the sun-scorched rocks, but now we were tired, sunburnt, and had a huge pile of hopefully highly flammable material weighted down by rocks and timbers to stop it from blowing away. Angel straightened up from placing the last beam, stretched, and looked across to the water villa, where you could just make out Zana sitting on the deck, pulling apart one of her shirts to make something—fishing line, I guessed.
“I am going to ask her to come and join us,” she said now. “It isn’t good, to have her isolated like that, and it’s time we ate. Hoy!” She called across to Joel, who was wading intently through the reef, staring down into the water with a sharpened piece of bamboo in one hand. “Hoy! Joel! Did you catch anything? We want to eat!”
“I don’t know if she’ll come,” I said. “She’s terrified of water. She only crosses the gangway when Conor makes her.”
“See?” Angel said, shrugging. “What kind of man deliberately puts his woman through that? I will tell you. A psychopath.”
Down on the shore, Joel was holding up a stick with three long fish skewered on it. He waved it triumphantly.
