Chapter 22

“NO, WHAT THEfuck are you talking about? Of course he’s not here.” Santana’s face was white and strained in the moonlight, and I bit back what I wanted to retort, which was to please not swear at me, I was the person who’d been doing my best to track him down. “I’m sorry,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have sworn at you. I’m just—what the hell is he doing, pissing around in the forest? First he disappears all day—now this.”

“The main thing is, he thought better of going to the water jetty,” I said, trying to keep hold of the positives. “So he’s not having it out with Conor. Anything’s better than that.”

“You’re right… I guess.” Santana sounded unhappy. “I just—what a fucking idiot though.”

She walked to the door, opened it, and yelled out into the night, “Dan! Daaaaan! Where are you?”

There was no response, just the shushing of wind in the trees and the sound of the sea.

“Dan?” Again, nothing.

“Daniel!” It was Angel, her voice a yell of irritation that sent the birds cawing in angry sympathy. “Get back here, you stupid espèce de merde. We want to go to bed!”

We all waited. It wasn’t the approach I would have taken, but I had to admit, if anything was likely to bring him storming back out of the trees, it was that—if only to tell Angel to shove it. But as the forest died back into silence, no footsteps sounded from the dark. No answering irritated voice called back, asking who was calling who a piece of shit.

Nothing. Just… nothing.

At last Joel cleared his throat.

“Look… I mean… there’s nothing we can do until morning. Even if we wanted to go after him, we’d never find him in the dark. Shall we just go to bed?”

There was a long silence. Then Santana let out a breath that shuddered, as if she was very close to tears.

“Okay. I don’t want to, but I don’t know what else we can do. You’re right, we won’t find him in this. Oh, Dan, what the fuck are you doing?”

Her voice wobbled on the last word, and I put my arm around her. It occurred to me that she and Dan were the last couple left on the island, aside from Conor and Zana. Everyone else had lost their other half. But until tonight, Santana had always had Dan in her corner. And now he seemed to have disappeared too.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” I said, trying to imbue my words with a confidence I didn’t really feel. “He was at the other end of the island before, wasn’t he? He’s probably gone back there to cool off.”

“Why though?” Santana said. Her voice sounded tight, as if she was trying not to give way to the tears I could hear hovering at the edges of her words. “Why wouldn’t he come back here? Did he get lost?”

I shrugged. Unlikely though it seemed, it wasn’t impossible. The island wasn’t big, but at night the twisting paths and dense trees made the paths disorienting.

“I don’t know. But the island isn’t that big—if he wants to come back, he’ll find his way eventually. If not, well, worst-case scenario is he spends a night in the open.”

Getting bitten by God knows what, was the subtext, but I didn’t voice those doubts. The slim green snake I had seen on the first day kept floating through my head. I had no idea whether it was poisonous or not, but I didn’t want to find out.

“Lyla’s right,” Joel put in, though he sounded uneasy. “We can’t do any good sitting up worrying like this. He could be safely tucked up at Palm Tree Rest, for all we know. Let’s get some sleep, and we can be up at first light to look for him.”

There was a long silence, and then Santana said, in a defeated-sounding voice, “Okay.” It was only one word, but her voice wobbled.

“Yeah?” I squeezed her shoulders again, more tightly, and felt her nod her head. “Come on then, let’s get to bed. Ten to one, Dan will be lying beside you in the morning, snoring his head off.”

“Yeah,” Santana said. “I hope you’re right.”

But I wasn’t.

WHEN I AWOKEthe next day, it was to the sound of Santana pacing back and forth on the veranda, her footsteps making the wooden boards shake, and I knew before I opened my eyes that something was wrong.

I could smell my own sweat, feel the dry cracking of my lips, and the salty itching of skin that hadn’t seen fresh water for over a week, and I felt a sudden visceral longing for a shower—for the warm water running down my body, splashing over my face—but I pushed that thought aside, hauled myself to my feet, and went out to where Santana was still pacing, staring sightlessly out into the forest.

“I take it—” I said, and then realized my throat was dry as dust and my voice barely audible. I coughed, tried to moisten my lips, and tried again. “I take it Dan’s not back?”

Santana’s head had whipped around at the sound of my cough, but at the sight of me she seemed to deflate. Now she shook her head.

“No.” Her voice was as croaky as mine. “I’ve gone over all the accessible parts of the island—the staff quarters, the empty villas, the cabana—nothing. I’m really worried, Lyla. What if something’s happened to him?”

I bit my lip. What I wanted to say was that if something had happened to him, he was probably fucked. But then, that increasingly seeming like it was true for all of us—the only question was how fast.

“Good morning,” we heard from behind us, and both Santana and I turned to see Angel standing there, stretching to the sky. She looked improbably coiffed, her hair wrapped up in a headscarf that gave her face the look of a queen: all sculpted cheekbones and tilted eyes.

“Angel. How did you sleep?”

“Okay. It was good to have company.” Her face was somber. “Have you heard from Dan?”

Santana shook her head. There were tears brimming at the corners of her eyes, and I thought perhaps she didn’t trust herself to speak.

“I’m really scared,” she said at last. “Wh-what if he went after Conor and something happened?”

“I really don’t think he did, Santa.” I put my hand on her arm. “I went out there last night, and he looked genuinely like he’d been asleep.”

“Did you ask him about the insulin?” Santana asked, and I shook my head.

“No, I thought about it—but I didn’t want to start something in the middle of the night while we were still looking for Dan.”

“But also…” Angel said, and then stopped.

“But also?” I prompted.

“But also… well, I have been thinking about the insulin. It was here, yes? In the villa?”

Santana nodded.

“If Lyla is right and the person who took the insulin was also the person who left open the villa door, evidently it must have been taken after breakfast and before supper. Correct?”

I looked at Santana and we both nodded. I wasn’t quite sure where Angel was going with this. But Angel spread her hands, a look of pantomime astonishment on her face that we were being so stupid.

“Mais, dis donc, it could not have been Conor. He was on the beach all day, no? We would have seen him from the place where we were building the bonfire.”

I frowned. My brain felt like it was running at half speed—a mixture of lack of sleep and dehydration, I suspected, but I forced myself to think back to the day before—and from what I could recall, Angel was right. Angel, Santana, and I had been up on the headland all day, watching the sea, and we would have seen Conor if he’d headed into the forest. Santana was frowning too.

“I… I’m trying to remember but… look, he must have gone somewhere. He must have taken a piss or something, surely? Was he really in the water all day?”

“He went into the water villa,” Angel said. Her voice was patient as if she was speaking to small but stupid children. “Two times. But he did not go into the forest. I would have noticed. I do not trust that man. I keep my eye upon him.” She wisely tapped at the corner of her eye, and then folded her arms, as if that proved her point.

“You’re right,” I said slowly. “As far as it goes. But it depends if I’m right about the door. It might be unconnected. What if he took it yesterday?”

“Before Dan argued with him about the water?” Angel was looking skeptical, but Santana was shaking her head.

“No, not possible. I refilled my pump yesterday morning, straight after breakfast. All the vials were there then. It must have been taken some time after we went up to the headland to build the bonfire. And Conor was already fishing by the time we got there.” Angel opened her mouth to speak, but Santana was warming to her theme, “But also, and this is maybe more to the point, how would Conor have known it was there? He’s never been in our villa as far as I know—was anything else moved, Lyla?”

I shrugged.

“Not that I could see. It didn’t look like any of our bags had been searched.”

“Right. So, whoever took it, went straight for the insulin. Like they knew where it was.”

There was a sudden, ugly silence, and our eyes, all of them, turned to Joel’s sleeping form, sprawled out across his mattress, as if drawn by magnets.

“No,” Santana whispered. “No. He wouldn’t.”

“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.