Chapter 36

ZANA WAS CRYINGwhen she finished the final diary entry. She closed the notebook, and I wondered if she was going to let us see what she’d written.

I would have understood. What we were asking her to do—mine her own fears and feelings to save us all—it was a lot for anyone. But we had to know what she had said, we had to be able to back up her story if we were questioned on it.

I opened my mouth to say something—ask if she was okay, perhaps—but before I could speak, she shoved the book towards me, across the floor of the villa, and then stood and walked outside, her back to the door, facing the forest as if she couldn’t look at us while we read it.

I picked it up, glanced at Angel and Santana, and then began to read.

Bayer’s death… our growing thirst and desperation… Dan’s drowning… the water rationing… Joel’s disappearance… and then finally Conor’s own death. Seeing them all laid out like that, one after the other, was a visceral reminder of all we’d been through. But there was a strange distortion to it, reading them through the lens of what Zana was trying to do. It was like picking up the wrong glasses—everything was familiar, but wrong. The perspective was wonky, the distances false. Everything she wrote about had happened… but not quite as she had explained. In her version, Bayer had had some kind of fit. Dan’s death was an accidental drowning. Joel had committed suicide, survivor’s guilt, with no reference to what he’d done. Somehow, Zana had shifted the narrative to one where Conor was the hero, the person keeping it all together.

It was the last entry that had the greatest ring of honesty to it—in spite of it being the most false. But perhaps that was because the lies were stitched together with painful truths. Zana’s love for Conor, her grief, her guilt… all of that was real.

Conor is gone, and I don’t know how I can carry on.

I could hear the truth in those words, and the agony too.

When I had finished, I found there were tears in my eyes, and I pushed the book to Santana, wiping my eyes with my sleeve and swallowing hard.

Santana read it silently through, and then handed it to Angel, who read it in turn, and then nodded.

“Yes,” she said. There was a catch in her voice as if she too were fighting tears. “Yes. That is good.” She cleared her throat. “It was hard to read. It must have been hard—hard to write.”

“She’s bloody clever,” Santana said. “I mean… it’s all there, isn’t it. If the cameras turn out to be working, it’s all explained. The water rationing, Dan standing up to Conor—there’s an explanation for everything. It’s just…”

“Twisted,” I finished. “Yeah.”

And it was. Twisted into a narrative where Conor was the hero, not the villain. A hero who had sacrificed his life for the rest of us.

We were all sitting around, contemplating what Zana had written, when suddenly we heard her voice through the trees. It sounded a long way off, but it was coming closer, her words jerky, as if she was running.

“What did she say?” Angel said plaintively, and I shut my eyes, the better to listen.

“… here!” I heard. And then, much louder. “It’s here! The boat is here!”

I opened my eyes. In front of me, Angel was grinning like she’d just won the lottery, and Santana let out a whoop and punched the sky.

“It’s here.” Zana burst through the trees, into the clearing. She stood there, her hands on her hips, and for a moment I saw her, really saw her, as the sailors would have; her salt-matted hair, the sheen of dust and dirt, the scars on her arms and legs, the bruises and the black eye, and the way her skin cleaved to her sinews, every vein standing out of her water-starved muscles. She looked… wild. Emaciated. Like a survivor. But then she smiled, and her grin was as wide as Angel’s. “The boat. It’s here. We’re saved. We’re going home.”