Chapter 16

WHEN I AWOKEthe next day, it was to a sense of complete disorientation, followed by a wash of dread.

The disorientation was from the realization that I was not in my own bed, or even in a bed, but once again lying on a mattress on the floor of Forest Retreat, surrounded by the snores of Joel, Dan, and Santana.

The wash of dread was when I realized another twenty-four hours had gone by, and there was no producer banging on the door of the villa demanding to know if we were okay, no Camille panting up the path from the bay. And with every hour that passed, it seemed more likely that something terrible had happened to both the Over Easy… and Nico.

I wasn’t sure how early it was, but the thought had chased away all sleep, so I got up, pulled on my shoes, and then let myself quietly out of the villa, closing the door behind me.

The first thing I did was walk to the far shore of the island, where the boat had anchored that first day, in the faint hope that it might be, if not there, at least a shape in the far distance, coming closer. But there was nothing at all—not so much as a fishing boat on the horizon—just uninterrupted blue as far as the eye could see and, high above, a single contrail of a jet marring the scorchingly blue sky.

I felt all the hope drain out of me.

“Watching the horizon too, huh?” came a voice from behind me, and I swung around to see Conor standing there, bare chested. He had his hand up, shading his eyes, and the movement made the eagle wings stretch and ripple across his torso, like a bird about to take flight.

“God, you startled me.”

“Sorry. I had the same… well, I don’t want to say hope, because I’m not sure I really believed there would be anything there, but I had to check.”

“What are we going to do, Conor?” I blurted out. I was surprised at the desperation in my own voice. I’d been working so hard to keep the terror in check, keep focusing on the practicalities of solving each obstacle as it arose—but that pitiless blue was somehow worse than anything I’d imagined. Blue—just blue as far as the eye could see. Not a boat, not an island, not even a piece of driftwood. “If the boat doesn’t come, I mean? What the fuck do we do?”

Conor shrugged.

“We… survive, I guess. That’s all we can do. Someone is going to come looking eventually. They must know where we were heading.”

“You think?”

“They must do. Baz hired this island off someone. There has to be a production company back in the UK. When they don’t hear anything, someone will check in, follow the breadcrumbs.”

“And how long will that take? Especially if the storm was as bad or worse on the mainland. They may not have the local resources to be out looking for a parcel of idiot reality TV show contestants.”

“I don’t know,” Conor said quietly. “Obviously I hope this hurricane wasn’t too destructive, but if it wasn’t a big deal on the other islands… well, put it this way, I’m almost more worried about that possibility.”

“What do you mean?” I was puzzled. “You’re worried the storm wasn’t bad enough? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I mean, if the storm was a big deal, it’ll have made the news in the UK. People will want to know we’re okay, and when they can’t contact Baz, they’ll start to get worried. Family members will start making a fuss. Contacting Real TV. But if it was just a local thing…”

“Shit.” Suddenly my hands felt cold, in spite of the rising heat of the day. “If no one in the UK knows what happened, they may not know to send out searches.”

“Exactly. I mean… how long was filming supposed to last? Six weeks? Eight? And we told everyone not to expect to hear from us while we were on the island. If they don’t hear from us for a couple of months, do you think they’ll be concerned? Or will they just think we made it to the winning pair?”

“I think my boss would be,” I said slowly. “Concerned, I mean. I only took two weeks off.” But even as I said the words, I wondered… would he? Or would he just think I’d become despondent about my job and jacked it in? And even if he was concerned, would he know whom to contact? Had I told him anything about the production? He might ring my mum, I supposed. She was down as next of kin on the university pension database. She knew about the show, and about my plan to bail out early, but she also knew that it was supposed to last up to ten weeks. What if she assumed I’d changed my mind and decided to stay on? I thought of the brief WhatsApp message I’d sent before giving up my phone, saying I’d be out of contact for a few weeks, and not to worry if she didn’t hear from me. That now seemed monumentally stupid.

“Surely Baz must be checking in with someone?” I said at last. “He’s got to be sending footage home, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” Conor said simply. “I have no idea.”

“You knew him though, right?” I asked, though I realized even as I said the words that I had slipped into the past tense, a past tense that I wasn’t yet ready to apply to Nico.

“Baz?” For the first time, Conor’s gaze shifted away from my face, towards the horizon. In the harsh light his pupils had contracted to pinpricks, and his eyes looked almost pure ice gray. It was so extremely obvious that I’d been talking about Baz that the question seemed incongruous, like a way of giving himself time to think about his reply. “I mean… yeah, kind of. We had… people in common, I guess. But that’s not much to hang our survival on.”

Our survival. The two words hung in the air, pushing out all other considerations. No one had set it out so starkly until now—but it was true, that’s what we were talking about. Our life or death, everything or nothing, last-roll-of-the-dice survival.

And below all of that was the unspoken truth that if the boat didn’t come, then Nico was probably already dead.

I pushed my hands through my salt-tangled hair as if I could push that thought out of my head.

“How long do you think we can last?” I said instead, as much to distract myself from thoughts of Nico as anything else. Conor shrugged.

“It depends what we can scavenge from the island,” he said at last. “Bananas. Coconuts. Fish. Maybe bats, if we can catch them. Have you seen those fruitbats hanging in the trees at night? They’re huge—easily the size of a rabbit.”

Bats. Even the idea gave me a jolt of revulsion, but I knew on some level, he might be right.

“We’ve got a ton of food though,” I said, trying not to sound like I was arguing back. “I mean, there’s boxes and boxes of brioche and croissant, and all those tins. I know it’s not exactly gourmet cuisine, but…”

“There’s eight of us,” Conor said rather flatly. “Eight. So even if we limit ourselves to a couple of pieces of carb and a tin of something per day, that’s still well over a hundred bagels or whatever per week. I did a rough count, and we’re talking… a few weeks. If that.”

I felt the color drain from my face. When he put it like that… our predicament was stark. I hadn’t counted either, but I doubted there were more than a couple of hundred muffins and Danish, and probably less than that of tins. And two Danish a day didn’t feel like much to survive on. The question of what happened when we ran out of food was something I didn’t want to think about. But Conor was still speaking.

“I’m actually more worried about the water. You’re supposed to have a minimum of two liters a day or thereabouts, but let’s say we can keep it to one. Which won’t be fun in this heat, but it’ll probably keep us alive. That’s eight liters for all of us, just under two of those big water bottles per day. And I don’t think we’ve got more than about forty of those. We drank at least three yesterday, maybe four. So we’re talking…”

“About three weeks,” I finished. There was a hollow sensation in my stomach. I thought of the liters of water I’d poured down the drain when sluicing Santana’s leg and felt more than a little sick. “Unless we can get the desalination plant going.”

Conor shook his head.

“Did you look at it? It was missing great big chunks of stuff that must have been washed out to sea. I don’t think even an engineer could get that working. But we should set up water butts and stuff, in case it rains.”

We both looked up at the cloudless sky. There didn’t seem to be much to say. I swallowed. I felt suddenly very thirsty.

BACK UP ATthe cabana, the others had woken up and had been busy making breakfast. There was a little driftwood fire smoldering in the sand just off the corner of the decking, and Dan and Santana were drinking cups of something that looked and smelled a lot like black coffee. Angel was picking at a tin of fruit salad, and Bayer had unscrewed the lid of one of the water bottles and was chugging directly from the neck, water running down his chin. Joel was nibbling a brioche. On the far side of the clearing a bird was sitting in a tree, balefully nibbling on a brioche it must have stolen when no one was looking. Only Zana wasn’t eating or drinking.

“Look, I found coffee!” Santana called as we came closer, holding up her cup. “You want some?”

“Put that down,” Conor said flatly. Santana set down her coffee cup.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not you, him.” He nodded at Bayer, who lowered the water bottle with menacing slowness.

“What did you say?” His voice was full of a pent-up aggression that made me pause in my ascent of the steps, but Conor didn’t blink. He walked up to the table and sat, his demeanor calm.

“Look, we should have talked about this last night, but we need to start rationing our supplies. Particularly water. Lyla and I were just down at the cove. There’s no sign of the boat, and we have to assume we might be in this for the long haul.”

“What do you mean, particularly water?” Angel raised one eyebrow. “We have liters and liters of water. We spent all day hauling the stupid stuff up from the staff quarters.”

“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.”