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“The radio. The fucking radio. The battery is dead!”
“Are you sure?” Joel asked, and Angel turned on him savagely.
“Sure? Of course I’m sure, you idiot. Yesterday there was a light, today there is not! And yes, I checked the connection, but we all knew the battery wouldn’t last forever.”
“Shit.” Santana had lost all color again. “Is there nothing we can do? Can’t we—I don’t know. You know when your torch runs out and you put the batteries in your armpit to warm them up. Can’t we… can’t we warm up the battery?”
“We could try again tomorrow at midday,” I said wearily. “When the sun’s on the shack. But I don’t know if that’s how those big car batteries work. They’re lead acid, aren’t they?”
“They could be radioactive,” Angel said. Her voice was stony. “And it would not change the facts. The thing is dead, and even if we manage to get a trickle of charge from it tomorrow, it will be dead after that. We are all completely screwed.”
“Look—” Joel said, at the same time as we all heard a shout from the beach.
“Hey! Hey, come here, come quick.”
We stopped, frozen in the actions we’d been performing, like children playing statues. It was Conor’s voice, but he didn’t sound excited, as if he’d seen a ship. He sounded… afraid.
“Can someone please come!” Conor yelled again.
And then, as if released by his words, we all jolted into action and began running down the path towards the beach, as fast as we could in the thick velvet dark.
I could see Angel’s pale dress fluttering in front of me and hear Joel panting at the rear. It took only a few moments, and then we broke out into the moonlight and saw Conor standing far up on the shore, a dark shape at his feet.
“What is it?” Zana called. She had pulled off her Birkenstocks and was running through the sand with surprising speed. “Have you found something?”
“Has something washed up?” Joel asked. But Conor didn’t say anything, he just stood there, staring down at the thing at his feet.
It was Santana who saw it first, and even then I didn’t understand the scream that ripped out of the throat, the way she gathered up her skirts and began to run haltingly down the beach towards where Conor was standing.
And then, I knew, and I was running too, falling to my knees in the surf beside the thing that had been Dan.
He had been badly torn up—whether by sharks, or just by the action of the coral, I wasn’t sure. His face was unrecognizable, but the clothes were his, from the Bermuda shorts to the thin red string tied around one wrist. One arm was flung beseechingly out on the sand, while the other was curled into his body, as if protecting himself from a blow. Most heartbreaking of all—where his shirt had been ripped I could see a very small tattoo, just above his hip. Mickey Mouse—the matching companion to Santana’s Minnie.
It was that simple little thing that undid me, and I put my hand over my mouth, holding back the sob that threatened to erupt. Santana had lost it entirely—she was kneeling over him, holding his outstretched hand, weeping in violent, choking gasps, until Zana led her gently away to try to comfort her.
Joel, Conor, Angel, and I dragged the body up the beach. There was nothing to do except begin the now familiar macabre ritual of digging a grave in the clearing beside the others. We couldn’t leave him out here overnight for the birds to continue what the fish had started.
When the hole was deep enough, the four of us each took a limb, ready to lower the body into the makeshift grave. Conor and Angel were holding his ankles, Joel his left arm, and I his right.
We were slowly lowering him into the grave, trying for something more respectful than simply dropping him, when my grip on his wrist gave, his hand slipping through mine, and I clutched at his fingers, breaking the rigor mortis. The joints gave with a horrible crunching noise, but I managed to grab hold of his hand, and as I did, I felt something in it, something hard and round and smooth against my palm, as if Dan were passing it to me. A pebble, maybe. Or a fragment of the rocks he’d slipped from.
It was only when Dan’s body was stretched out below us, covered with a sheet, that I looked down at what I was now holding. At first I didn’t recognize it, and when I did, I didn’t understand it. It was more on instinct than by calculation that I slipped it quickly into the pocket of my shorts, hiding it from view.
All through the makeshift ceremony, the object gnawed at my mind, whispering questions beneath the sound of Santana’s tearing sobs. What did it mean, this thing that Dan had been holding on to so desperately as his body was swept out to sea?
It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. The question was, what should I do now?
CHAPTER 24
NONE OF US could sleep. Santana was lying in the bed that had been hers and Dan’s, weeping slowly but steadily into the pillow, a low, tearing moan of grief.
Angel was lying behind her, stroking her back in a soft rhythm, whispering soft words in a French none of us could understand, but which were no less comforting for that.
Joel, I could see was standing outside the villa, leaning on the veranda rail, staring out into the darkness.
And I was lying there, fully awake, feeling the small, hard presence of the object I had found in Dan’s hand, now gripped in my own.
At last, worn out by Santana’s grief, I got up and went outside to join Joel, shutting the door gently behind myself as I did.
