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“He and Conor are very close,” Angel said thoughtfully. “He helped him take the food, after all. They are… what’s the English expression for friends like pigs?”
“Friends like pigs?” Santana looked at her blankly.
“Yes, ils sont copains comme cochons. Very good friends. Thick like thieves, that is the expression!”
“Thick as thieves,” Santana corrected, and Angel rolled her eyes. I couldn’t blame her. Her English was about a hundred times better than my French—or presumably Santana’s.
“Who’s thick as thieves?” Joel’s sleepy voice came from behind us, and we all jumped guiltily. My eyes met Santana’s, wondering what to say. She opened her mouth, and then closed it again, and I knew she was wondering the same thing I was: Should we ask him directly whether he had taken the insulin? But at the same time, this was Joel—Joel, who had slept side by side with us for days now. Joel, who had wept over Romi and hugged us and listened as we cried out in the night with bad dreams.
He had denied knowing anything about the insulin last night, and to ask him directly now was to say to his face, more or less, that we suspected him of lying.
More to the point, if Joel really had taken Santana’s insulin, presumably to give to Conor, we were highly unlikely to get it back for the asking.
“We were just talking about English expressions,” Angel said at last. She shot me and Santana a look, as though inviting us to back her up. I felt a coldness around my heart. She didn’t trust Joel. And the worst thing was… I wasn’t sure I did either now. Because her logic made sense. Someone had taken that insulin, and I couldn’t see how it could have been Conor. Which meant someone on the island had betrayed us.
Dan is back. Thank God. We were all so worried about him. He just appeared out of the forest while we were all fishing and swimming and apologized to the group for worrying everyone and for losing his shit over the water. Then he drank down the whole allocation we’d saved up for him while he was away.
We told him we understood—of course we did. Poor Dan. None of us blame him. It’s hard. I could be the next person to lose it—or Lyla. Or even Conor, though that’s hard to imagine.
We all hugged him, and Conor said, “Don’t do that again, okay, mate? It’d break our hearts to—”
He stopped, but we all knew what he was going to say. To lose another person, after Romi and Bayer.
Dan didn’t say anything, he just nodded. But I could see he’d been crying. I hope he’s okay.
CHAPTER 23
THE FOUR OF us spent the rest of the day looking for Dan, spreading out across the island, calling his name, but as far as we could make out, he wasn’t there.
It was impossible to be sure, of course. At the villa end of the island the forest was relatively manicured, punctuated by paths and little artificial clearings. But at the far end it was wilder and much more untouched, and it was impossible to penetrate some of the thickets without a machete and protective clothing. None of us wanted to hack our way through untouched forest in shorts and flip-flops—who knew what snakes and spiders might be waiting for us.
It was hard to believe that Dan could be in there though. And even if he was, surely he would have called out when he heard us. One thing seemed certain, if he was on the island, he didn’t want to be found.
When sunset came, we trailed back to the cabana, Santana limping a little now, though her leg was much better than it had been, and she was no longer wearing my makeshift bandage. We drank the meager ration of water and stared at the pile of breads and croissants in the center of the table. There was mold on one, I saw. We had stripped all the bananas that were even remotely ripe days ago, and we had all been so focused on looking for Dan that no one had had time to fish today. We were down to stale pastries and the last few tins of fruit salad. Santana simply sat, staring at the plate in front of her, and then she put her head in her hands and burst into tears.
We all clustered around, trying our best to comfort her, but it was Zana who knelt in front of her, putting her hands either side of her face, speaking to her directly, who managed to calm her.
“Hey,” she kept saying. “Hey, Santana, hold on, okay? Just hold on. It’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” Santana said. She looked up at the sky, turning a deep indigo now, spattered with stars that were brighter and more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen in London. Her eyes were huge and full of tears. “You have no idea if that’s true. We’re going to die here.”
“We still have the radio,” Zana said. “And Lyla’s right about the septic tank and the services on the island, someone is bound to come past eventually, they have to, we just have to hold out until they come.”
But Angel had given a start at the word radio.
“We didn’t radio today,” she said. “With everything about Dan— I am going down to the shack to try.”
“Good idea,” Conor said. “I’m going down to the shore. I have this theory boats might be easier to spot at night, with their lights. And they’d see our beacon better too if we tried to signal.”
Angel nodded and set off for the radio shack, while Zana and I tried to persuade Santana to eat something. Only Joel did nothing. He was sitting with his head in his hands, looking more despondent than I had seen him since Romi died.
Santana had stopped crying and had managed to swallow some croissant, with the moldy parts picked off, and eat some chunks of coconut, when we heard Angel coming back up the path from the shack. I don’t know how, but just the sound of her footsteps was ominous, and I looked up to see her face was set and grim as she came towards the fire.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It is dead.” Angel’s voice was flat.
“What?”
