Chapter 21

“HE IS Apsychopath, 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.

“I’m going up to the cabana,” Santana said. “Start the fire for supper.”

“I’ll meet you there in a sec,” I said. “I need to use the bathroom.”

The toilets were the one part of the island infrastructure that was still working—possibly temporarily, we weren’t sure, but as long as they were operational, I was going to make the most of a proper loo. There was no water to flush, but pouring a bucket of seawater into the pan did the job fine, and seawater was the one thing we had in abundance. Presumably somewhere on the island was a septic tank that would eventually fill up—but I suspected if we weren’t rescued before then, we’d have bigger problems to worry about. Water, for a start. And Santana’s insulin.

When I entered the villa something seemed odd, and it took me a minute to realize what it was—the door, which we usually kept carefully shut to help keep out snakes and mosquitoes, was standing open. I frowned. Had Dan come back?

“Dan?” I called as I entered the villa, but there was no one there, just the flick of a gecko’s tail as it disappeared into the rafters.

Feeling a little puzzled, I peed, washed my hands in the bucket of seawater standing in the shower tray, and then made my way back to the cabana.

Santana was there alone, crouching over a little fire of driftwood, blowing on the embers. She looked up when she saw me.

“Hey. Angel’s lighter’s getting really low, you know. Do you think we should reserve it, in case a ship comes?”

“To light the beacon, you mean?” I thought about it. “I guess so… but I suppose the lighter fluid won’t last forever so there’s probably no point in hoarding it indefinitely. I take your point though—it’s going to run out either way. What can we use instead?”

“Joel’s glasses?” Santana said, and then laughed. “Bit Lord of the Flies, I know. Or does anyone know how to do that stick-rubbing thing?”

Down on the beach I could see Angel had crossed to the water villa and was crouching down, talking to Zana.

“Do you think she’s being abused?” I said to Santana, who sighed and stood up.

“I don’t know. I only know…” She stopped, and I looked at her, puzzled.

“What?”

“Well, look, I didn’t say anything because it seemed weird but… I knew his ex.”

“Whose? Conor’s?” I was puzzled. Santana nodded.

“I was at school with her—she was in the year below me. She was seventeen when they got together. He was twenty-four, which at the time sounded quite glamorous, but looking back… I mean, it’s borderline creepy if you ask me. Seven years is a lot when you’re seventeen.”

I nodded. I could see that. Seventeen-year-olds aren’t even adults—they can’t legally drink, they can’t vote, they can’t buy cigarettes. Twenty-four-year-olds are in a different world.

“What was he like back then?” I asked. Santana shrugged.

“That’s the thing—I never met him. I just heard about him from Cally. It was Conor says this, Conor says that. You’d have thought he could walk on water.”

“So how did you join the dots?” I asked, wondering where this was going. There was something about Santana’s tone I didn’t like. “I mean, there’s a lot of Conors. Are you sure it’s the same guy?”

“When we got the information for the show, I realized I knew his name. I asked around, and one of Cally’s sisters confirmed it was him. And she also told me what had happened to Cally.”

“Which was?” I asked, a little puzzled by her reluctance to get to the point.

“She’s dead,” Santana said flatly. She paused and swallowed, but I didn’t get the impression she was holding out on me, more that she was trying to gear herself up for how to say something upsetting. “She—she committed suicide. Two days after her nineteenth birthday. Two days after he left her.”

“Oh my God, Santana, that’s awful.”

“I know. Nineteen, Lyla. Nineteen.”

“Fuck.” I tried to process what that meant. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Say what?” Santana said unhappily. She turned back to the fire, poking at it with a little stick, though it didn’t really need tending. She seemed more to be avoiding my gaze. “Oh, you don’t know me, but I went to school with your ex who killed herself? It’s not really something to bring up over dinner, is it.”

“No.” I ran my hands through my salt-stiffened hair. “No, God, no I can see that. But do you think—” I stopped, unsure where I was going with my train of thought. Santana waited for me to continue, and then when I didn’t, she finished the question for me.

“Do I think she killed herself because he was an abusive piece of shit? I have no idea. I honestly haven’t got a clue. He could have been a model boyfriend whose girlfriend tragically couldn’t deal with their breakup. But at the very least it shows a pattern, doesn’t it? A pattern of picking emotionally fragile younger women and making them very, very dependent on him.”

I looked out to sea, where Angel had taken hold of Zana’s arm and was coaxing her, plank by plank across the fragile jetty.

And I couldn’t deny Santana was right.

AFTER SUPPER, WEwashed the plates down at the shore, kneeling on the rocks at what was fast becoming the dishwashing station. It was just us girls—though of course we weren’t girls, any of us, any more than the men on the island were boys. We were adult men and women. But somehow, without meaning to, I had fallen into the Perfect Couple lingo. The Girls, the Boys, the Lads, the Islanders. We were still falling into teams, playing the parts assigned to us by the production company. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Bayer and Romi were dead—not just eliminated from the competition like Nico. But then… as I stared out at the vast, empty ocean, turning orange in the setting sun, I forced myself to admit it: there was every chance that Nico was dead too.

Joel and Conor were up at the cabana, talking earnestly about something. Joel had sketched out a map of the island in sand on the tabletop and was pointing at the various bays. Conor was nodding. Watching the two of them together made me feel uneasy in a way that I couldn’t explain. I shouldn’t want Conor and Zana to be isolated from the rest of us. Having such deep divisions among the islanders wasn’t good for anyone, particularly given Conor still had all the food and water held hostage out at the water villa.

But seeing Joel acting so pally with the man who had—no two ways about it—stolen our supplies and been responsible for Bayer’s death, was somehow deeply unsettling. Didn’t he care? Dan did. In fact, he still hadn’t returned, and that was another thing keeping me on edge. Here we were, looking like something out of a travel brochure, four bikini-clad girls, tanned, beautiful, kneeling in the surf and silhouetted against the most stunning sunset I had ever seen—and yet all I could think about was the darkness beneath the picture, the rifts pulling our little community apart.

“Angel,” I said now, as she rinsed out the last cup and wiped it carefully on a towel. “I really don’t like thinking of you all alone down at Palm Tree Rest. Are you sure you don’t want to bring your mattress up to our villa? There’s room, isn’t there?” I looked at Santana, and she nodded vigorously.

“Yes! Absolutely. Plenty of room.”

Angel was looking thoughtful.

“I must admit,” she said at last, “I did not enjoy last night. It’s not that I’m afraid of being alone, you understand. But…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. We all knew what she meant. It was at night that the thousands of miles of empty ocean stretched out the longest, and the fears came crowding hardest: What if we’re never rescued? What if the water runs out? What if we die here, like Romi, like Bayer, like the poor woman whose name we didn’t even know, lying in an unmarked grave?

Having someone else’s snoring to distract you from those what-ifs… well, even just the presence of another warm body was immensely comforting.

“What about you, Zana?” Santana asked. “You know, if Angel is moving in with us, you and Conor wouldn’t have to stay in that water villa. You could take back Palm Tree Rest.”

But Zana was shaking her head, and I knew the answer before she spoke: Conor would never allow it. He would never abandon the food and water, no matter what it cost Zana, who was already looking sick with nerves at the prospect of making the crossing to the water villa.

Truth to tell, I wouldn’t have fancied it much myself—and I had no fear of water. Down here at the water’s edge, you could see all too clearly how rickety Conor’s makeshift jetty was—just salvaged planks and pieces of driftwood cobbled together with nails bashed in using a rock. I had seen Zana and Angel cross it earlier, watched them totter from one piece of wood to another, Zana’s hand gripping Angel’s like it was the only thing keeping her from death. It was barely functional, let alone safe, and for someone with a fear of water it would be a nightmare.

“Zana, he can’t make you stay there,” Santana said now. She took Zana’s hand, opening her mouth to say something else, but as she gripped Zana’s wrist, not roughly, but firmly, Zana winced and pulled it back.

All three of us—me, Santana, and Angel—looked down at Zana’s hand. She had balled it up and now she plunged it in the water, scrubbing the last of the dishes with unnecessary energy.

It was too late though. We had all seen it. A small, distinct black bruise on the inside of her wrist, as if someone had pinched her there, very hard.

“Zana—” Santana began, and then stopped, as if at a loss for what to say. She glanced at the two of us as if urging us to step in, but Angel didn’t meet her look. She was staring, stricken, at Zana’s wrist, her face as pale as if she had seen a ghost.

“Are you okay?” I asked at last. It was pitifully inadequate. It wasn’t what I wanted to say. Is he hurting you? was what I wanted to ask.

“I’m fine,” Zana said. She stood up, holding the plates to her chest as if to protect herself from our collective gaze. “I mean, as fine as anyone can be in this situation. And I don’t need to move. I’m very—” She swallowed, as if the lie was hard to say. “Very happy. At the water villa. We’re very happy. It’s beautiful.”

But her voice wasn’t remotely convincing, and as she turned and began walking back up the beach to Conor and Joel, I could hear the plates she was carrying chinking together, as though her hands were trembling.

THE SUN WASfully set, the island in rustling moonlit darkness as we made our way along the pebbled path from Palm Tree Rest, Angel’s blankets slung over my arm, her clothes and washbag in her own. Santana was up ahead, holding Dan’s water and food from supper. He still hadn’t returned.

We were rounding a turn in the path, the route made strange and unpredictable by the sharp moonshadows crisscrossing the ground, when there was a sound in the bushes up ahead, and a figure appeared, silhouetted against the trees, dark against dark.

“Joel?” I said uncertainly, but the shape wasn’t right. It was a man, but not Joel; it was someone stockier, more muscled.

“Dan?” Santana was peering into the shadows, and then she gave a kind of choke of relief and ran forward. “Dan! You absolute fucker. Where have you been? I was going out of my mind.”

“I’m fine,” Dan said, but he didn’t sound fine. His voice was rough and croaky. “Is that water mine? I’m so thirsty.”

“Yes, it’s yours. And so’s the food. It’s your ration from supper. Hey, don’t down it like that. You’ll make yourself sick.” Dan had tipped the canister up to his lips and was gulping the water like a man who hadn’t drunk a drop since breakfast—which he probably hadn’t. “Where the hell were you?”

“Up the other end of the island. Where’s Conor?” Dan’s voice was still hoarse. I exchanged an uneasy look with Santana.

“He’s still at the cabana,” Santana said at last. “Talking with Joel and Zana.”

Although that was not strictly accurate. Zana hadn’t said a word since we washed up the dishes, and when we had left the three of them, she had been sitting, staring out at the water villa like someone sentenced to execution staring at the gallows.

“I don’t like it,” Dan said. “I don’t like it at all. He’s taking his side. Did you hear him last night? He wouldn’t listen to my point at all. Just kept defending Conor.”

I realized, with a sinking feeling, that he was talking about Joel.

“Dan, that’s not fair,” I began, but Dan was in no mood to listen.

“What’s not fair,” he spat, “is that fucker hoarding all our food and water, and Joel backing him up. If he’d taken our side…”

Ugh. There it was. Our side. Them and us. The rifts were becoming irreparable.

“I don’t think he was trying to take anyone’s side,” I said desperately. “He was trying to be fair to everyone. Look”—as I saw Dan was about to explode again—“I take your point, I do. And I’m not saying I disagree. I feel bloody uncomfortable about the whole thing—about Conor, about Zana, about the food—everything. But we have to live with each other for the foreseeable future. We can’t afford to tear this island in half.”

“May I remind you,” Angel said stiffly, her accent as French as I had ever heard, “that Conor killed my boyfriend? Fuck his stupid YouTube videos. He is a murderer.”

I shut my eyes, gritted my teeth. It was true—and I couldn’t deny it to Angel’s face. Conor had killed Bayer. There was no two ways about it. But murderer felt like a stretch. Because it was also true that Bayer had picked the fight, and Bayer had swung first. In a court of law… well, I would have put even odds on Conor getting off on self-defense. But we weren’t in a court of law. We were a long way from any kind of justice at all. And we had all stood by and watched Conor beat a man to death.

“Look, there’s nothing we can do about it tonight,” Santana said. “And as far as we know, Joel is still sleeping here, so please, let’s try not to pick another fight when he gets here. Our issue is with Conor, not Joel. And definitely not Zana.”

Angel nodded. Dan merely looked mutinous.

We were almost at the clearing for the villa and Santana said, with the air of trying to change the subject, “Enough of that anyway. Angel, where do you want to sleep? Do you want the bed with me?”

“Don’t you and Dan want the bed?” Angel asked, looking puzzled, and I realized—she still didn’t know. Dan gave a laugh, a slightly bitter one.

“Haven’t you heard? I bat for the other team. No one was supposed to know, but I don’t suppose it matters now. Gay or straight, we’ll all be dead before the boat gets here.”

“Dan—” Santana broke in, and he turned to her.

“What? It’s true. There’s no point in kidding ourselves. If we were going to be rescued, we would have been by now. The boat isn’t coming. It’s probably at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and no one knows we’re here.”

“Dan, we’ve been here for—” I stopped, realizing I wasn’t sure, and mentally counted. “Nine… ten days, maybe? That’s all. We have enough water for at least two or three more weeks. Nearly a month. A lot could happen in a month. I mean, what about the septic tank? Presumably someone has to come past to empty it. Or to service the desalination plant. Someone will come. I’m sure of it. We just have to hang in there.”

We had reached the villa now, and Santana opened the door. It was dark inside of course, as it had been every night since the storm, but there was a full moon illuminating the clearing, and Santana waved a hand around the room, from my mattress wedged in the corner next to the bathroom, to the big double bed she had been sharing with Dan, to Joel’s mattress on the far side, next to the veranda.

“Here we are. Home sweet home. If you want your own space, we could probably fit a third mattress at the foot of the bed, or if you don’t fancy dragging a king-size all the way from Palm Tree Rest, I could kick Dan out and you could double up with me.”

“Or me,” I volunteered. “I don’t need a double all to myself.”

“I will share with Lyla for tonight,” Angel said decisively. “I’m sure Dan doesn’t want to share with Joel.”

We all exchanged glances. It was a good point, although the subtext was… unless Joel didn’t come back. Maybe he was Team Conor now.

“Okay,” Santana said. “And then tomorrow we can figure out if there’s space for a third mattress.”

We all nodded, and Santana began moving belongings around to give Angel and me a little more space. She was just pushing the little fridge farther back against the wall, when she stopped.

“Huh. That’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” I asked, but Santana didn’t answer. She had dropped to her knees and was peering inside the little fridge. Then she yanked it out from the wall and put both hands inside, feeling around. When she stood up, I could see, even in the moonlight, her face was pale and stricken.

“Dan, Lyla, did either of you touch my insulin?”

“Your insulin?” I was puzzled. “No, of course not.”

“Me either,” Dan said. “How come?”

“Because it’s… it’s not there.” I could tell she was trying to stay calm, but there was a tremble in her voice that belied her level tone.

“It’s not there?” Dan sprang across the room, picking the fridge up and tilting it as if he didn’t believe Santana, but of course she was right—all that fell out was a metal shelf. Dan swore and threw the fridge down, causing Angel to wince, and Santana to protest.

“Dan, for fuck’s sake, there’s no need to smash the place up. There must be some explanation. It’s no use to anyone but me.”

“But why would anyone move it?” Angel asked. She was frowning. “Who would mess with another’s medication? It seems very strange.”

“It’s him.” Dan’s expression was murderous. “Conor. It’s fucking him. This is his way of getting back at me for this morning—by punishing Santana.”

There was silence from the rest of us as we tried to make sense of this possibility, and he swung round to face first me, then Angel, then finally Santana.

“It’s him. Admit it! It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Angel folded her arms and gave a very Gallic shrug.

“I am in accord with you, Dan. There is only one psychopath on the island, and it is him.”

“When I came back earlier, before dinner,” I said slowly. “The door was open. I thought it must have blown open, but that must have been whoever took it.”

“Fuck whoever, it’s fucking him,” Dan yelled. There was a vein standing out on his forehead. “I’m going to confront him.”

“Dan, no,” Santana said urgently. “Listen to me, my pump is full, I have at least three days before I need to start worrying, maybe more. Let’s take tonight to figure out—”

“I’m taking nothing.” Dan was shaking with rage. “I’m going down to confront him.”

“Dan, please!” Santana said, but Dan was already heading towards the door. “Dan!”

She ran after him, grabbing for his hand.

“Santana, stop it.” Dan’s voice was hard. “This is between me and him—”

“It’s my fucking insulin!”

“This isn’t about the insulin. The insulin is just one more way for him to control all of us, and I’m not having it.”

“We don’t know it’s him,” Santana said desperately. “Dan, please. Dan!”

But Dan shook her hand off and headed out into the night.

Santana burst into tears. Angel went to comfort her, and I stood, uncertainly, looking from the weeping Santana to the track leading into the dark forest where Dan had disappeared. Fuck. Fuck. This was all going so wrong. And where was Joel?

The question had hardly occurred to me, when I saw a shape moving through the trees. My first idea was that it was Dan, having second thoughts, and I felt a rush of relief, but as the shape moved closer I saw it was Joel. I ran out to him.

“Joel, did you see Dan?”

“Dan? No. How come?”

“Fuck. He—he’s gone to confront Conor. He thinks Conor has Santana’s insulin.”

“What?” Joel looked more confused than anything.

“Her insulin. It’s gone missing. Dan thinks Conor took it as retaliation for their argument this morning. He’s gone down to have it out with Conor. We need to go after him—stop him.”

But Joel was looking uncomfortable.

“I—look, I mean, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Dan’s pretty pissed off with me—I’m not sure me popping up to tell him to chill out would really help.”

“Well, what do we do? We can’t sit here and wait for him to come back with a smashed face.”

“No, you’re right. Shit.” Joel ran his hand through his hair. “So what do we do? The thing is, if I interfere, that’s not likely to calm him down. Maybe we should just let him say his piece—get it off his chest.”

“That didn’t exactly work out for Bayer,” I said shortly. My pulse was hammering, my mouth was dry, and I felt light-headed—a mix of fear for Dan and exhaustion from the day’s work. I was fairly sure we were all chronically dehydrated now and had been for days. What that was doing to our stretched nerves, I had no idea.

“Hey,” Joel said sharply. He looked at me in the moonlight, frowning. “Bayer punched Conor, remember? He swung first. If Dan doesn’t assault anyone, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

But I was remembering Dan’s voice, shaking with rage as he stormed off into the night. And I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t let his anger get the better of him, as Bayer had.

“I’m going to go down,” I said, making up my mind. “If nothing else—”

If nothing else, my presence might hold both Conor and Dan back from doing anything stupid, was what I was thinking, though that had hardly helped with Bayer.

“If nothing else?” Joel asked.

“Nothing. Just—just look after Santa. I’ll be back. Hopefully soon.”

Joel nodded, and I headed off into the dark.

IN THE CLEARINGthe moon had seemed astonishingly, almost preternaturally bright. But as I entered the forest, the palm trees and banana bushes blocked out most of the sky, letting only flickers of white light through in a confusing crosshatch of moonlight and shadow that was more disorienting than complete darkness. I found I was feeling my way, more than seeing, and it was a relief when I noticed a break in the trees and groped my way out of the thick cover onto the moonlit beach.

I had come out farther down the beach than I had meant to—I must have taken a wrong turn in the darkness—and now as I walked slowly along the sand I strained my ears to listen for any disagreement coming from the water villa, but I could hear nothing, just the rhythmic shush of the waves.

When I got to the jetty, I had to stop and steel myself for what was coming. The makeshift, gappy planks were bad enough by daylight, but now, in the shifting unreliable moonlight, they looked positively lethal.

“Conor?” I called across the wide stretch of water, but there was no sound from the villa. No door cracked open. No head appeared on the veranda. I took a deep breath and set foot on the first plank. It shifted and creaked, but held, and I stepped to the next.

As a journey, it wasn’t quite as terrifying as when Joel and I had swum across the roaring, wind-tossed stretch of water in the aftermath of the storm, principally because this time, if I fell in, I was fairly sure I could just swim back to land. But all the same, the idea of falling into the dark water, likely full of submerged pikes and broken debris from the storm-wrecked jetty, was not enticing, and I held my breath as I stepped from rocking plank to creaking pile, feeling the splinters and mismatched fastenings beneath my bare feet, never sure if the next step would be the one that drove a nail deep into my heel, or sent me falling into the black waves beneath.

I was shaking by the time I reached the water villa, wondering how Zana could bring herself to make the journey every morning. She must be terrified, every single time. Maybe once you’d done it a few times it felt better, but I had no fear of water, and the thought of making the same journey back was if anything worse, now I knew how slippery and bendy the jerry-rigged planks really were.

But there was no point in dwelling on that. I was here to find Dan, and for the moment at least, I was safely on the solid surface of the veranda. Stepping forward, I banged firmly on the glass door of the water villa.

For a long moment nothing happened. I banged again, and then cupped my hands around my face, peering into the darkness inside. Nothing was moving, and I felt a twinge of anxiety. Then I saw a shape rise from the bed, and a figure—it looked like a man—swing something white around his middle. He came over to the door, opened it, and I saw Conor standing there, his hair wet and tousled, a towel wrapped around his hips.

“Lyla?” He sounded genuinely confused. “Is everything okay?”

“I came to ask you the same thing.” My fears about Dan were ebbing away and being replaced with a very different kind of anxiety. “Have you seen Dan?”

“Dan? No. Why?”

“Because—” I stopped. Should I come out with it? Because he was marching over here to accuse you of stealing Santana’s insulin.

No. That wasn’t why I was here. I was here for Dan, to make sure he was okay. We could figure out the insulin tomorrow. Tonight was about making sure Dan and Conor didn’t come to blows.

“He was coming here,” I said instead. “To talk to you.”

“I haven’t seen him.” Conor looked puzzled. “I was asleep, as you can see.” He waved a hand at the interior of the villa, where I could just make out Zana sitting up in bed, the sheets clutched to her bare chest.

“Is everything okay?” she said. “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Lyla. Listen, are you telling me Dan didn’t come here?”

“He’s never set foot here,” Conor said. “I swear it.” He looked as bemused as I felt. “Did he actually say he was coming out here?”

“More or less.” I had turned away from the water villa, and was scanning the beach, feeling more and more worried by the second. “Where the hell could he be?”

“Maybe he changed his mind and turned back. The jetty isn’t for the faint-hearted at night.”

“Maybe.” I bit my lip, trying to figure out what to do. It was true the jetty had looked terrifying in the darkness. And it was also true that I hadn’t come the most direct route down to the beach. Had Dan and I crossed in the forest? Maybe he was back at the villa right now, wondering where I was. I half turned, ready to cross back to the island, and then paused and said, “Listen, if Dan does turn up here—”

I stopped. What could I say?

“Yes?”

“Tell him…” I racked my brain for something, anything, that would deflect Dan’s intent to have it out with Conor. “Tell him I was here, and that Santana needs him back at the villa, okay?” It was the only thing I could think of, the only thing that might stop Dan in his tracks, if he thought Santana was in trouble.

“I’ll tell him,” Conor said. He watched me as I made my way back to the jetty and stepped cautiously onto the first plank. It rocked, alarmingly, and I froze, waiting for it to stabilize. “Will you be okay? Getting across, I mean?”

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” I said a little tersely. I didn’t want to waste any more time. I wanted to get back, find Dan, and make sure he was okay. Still, I felt Conor’s eyes on me as I crossed plank by plank, listening as they creaked and groaned under my weight, and he didn’t move until I set foot onto the sand. Then, with a wave of one arm, he turned and headed back into the water villa, and I trudged up the beach towards home.