Stranded (22 page)

‘Maybe, maybe,’ Gene says. ‘But all the same. It’s a no from us. Don’t worry – you guys do what you like. I can see you’re all excited by the change of scene. We’ll be neighbours. Keep a fire burning on both beaches, double our chances.’

Katy is worried. ‘We’ll come and visit you. We’ll bring you fish.’

‘We’ll bring
you
fish, more like,’ Gene says with a laugh. ‘I’ll split the rods with you. Come over in the afternoon to compare notes. Cocktail hour.’

Nobody says anything for a while. Splitting up like this seems to be madness, but neither side is going to back down.

‘If he comes for you,’ Cherry says, hesitantly, ‘you will come and fetch us?’

There is a tense moment, before both Gene and Jean laugh.

‘Of course we will, darling. You idiot.’

After that, the tension is broken, and we start on the process of moving most of the camp.

By afternoon, the freshness of the rain-drenched jungle has gone: everything is, if anything, more humid than before. It is hard to breathe because the air is so stultifying.

The move involves attempting to build a new fire, despite the fact that everything on the island is still soaked through by the rain, and transporting one of the two ice boxes from one beach to the other. We have our water container, and Jean and Gene have theirs. Already there are resentments building: they have one for the two of them, whereas the rest of us have one between five. However, they will have to make the long walk to the spring to collect their water every day, whereas we now have our own well, and it seems to work.

I stand back and watch Mark pulling up a very old-looking rope. At last a bucket appears on the end of it; it was probably once red, but now it is a faded and patchy pink, with areas that have been bleached competely white. Water is dribbling out of a crack in the side of it, but not fast enough for that to be a problem.

Cherry holds up the ice box and he pours the water into it. They grin at one another. It is painfully obvious that Mark and Cherry have resolved their differences. They are almost back to the way they used to be, when all they seemed to do was rip each other’s clothes off in public. They, like me, appear to have given up all hope of rescue entirely, to be making the best of the world they have.

‘We have a water supply!’ Mark shouts, and I smile at Katy, who grins back.

‘What do you think, then?’ I ask her quietly, gesturing around. She steps closer and leans in towards me, confiding.

‘It’s a change. It’s something to do, I suppose. I want to have a good look round those huts before I commit myself. I might go and join the oldies if it’s too grim inside. I mean, we’ve not really checked them out as bedrooms, have we? And I’m not sure it’s going to be an improvement on sleeping on the sand.’ She pauses. ‘I suppose you’ll be sharing with Edward?’

I feel slightly awkward about the fact that Katy is the only one of us who is alone.

‘Mmm,’ I say, nodding slightly. ‘Anyway, shall we have a poke around?’

The six cabins are in various states of disrepair, and as we walk from one to the next, it is instantly clear that four of them are unusable. The floors are rotten through, and as they are raised above the ground on stilts, they have gaping holes with two-metre drops. The wood is smelly and horrible. Sleeping on the sand would be a far better option than trying to make a home in one of those hovels.

The two that are closest to the dilapidated main building, however, have new-looking floors made out of a far hardier wood. They are sturdy and perfectly habitable, with a bit of remedial cleaning.

‘One for the American lovers,’ says Katy drily. ‘The other for you and Ed, I suppose.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I say. ‘We’ll sleep on the sand, and you have this one.’

I hope she will refuse this offer, but she does not reply at all. She paces around the interior of the hut. It is just a floor, a roof and four walls with two windows. There was never a bathroom or anything here. Yet as I picture it with the animal poo removed, the torn-up paper taken out of the corner, the whole place washed down on the inside, I realise how much I have missed shelter. The idea of having a place of one’s own is fundamental. The fact remains, however, that three habitable huts would have been better than two.

Katy is standing by the glassless window. I look at her back. We have all been wearing the same clothes for so long that I cannot imagine Katy without her blue T-shirt and cream shorts. Her T-shirt has faded as the days have passed, and now it is pale blue with white lines in it where sea salt and sweat have dried out. Her shorts are no longer at all cream.

‘Share this hut with us,’ I say quickly. ‘We’re all in this together. Share with Ed and me.’

I am not sure what Ed will say about this, but there is no other option. I have held off from actual sex with him because I am scared. This, I know, is the perfect continuing excuse. Katy turns around and pushes her fringe back out of her eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she says with a small smile. ‘That’s kind of you. It would be hard to sleep on the sand on my own, I think.’

‘We’ll make it as homely as we can.’

‘Yes. I’m not sure how, but we will.’ She walks closer to me. ‘You can tell Daisy about this, Esther,’ she says, ‘when you’re back,’ and her kindness makes hot tears spring to my eyes.

‘I wish I believed that,’ I say, struggling suddenly. ‘I did at first. Now I don’t think I’m ever going to see her again. I can’t bear to think about it. Daisy. You know, she sleeps with her polar bear at night. He’s called Poley. When Chris and I split up, he bought her a new one that was exactly the same as the old one, so she has a Poley at both our houses.’

Katy’s hand is on my shoulder.

‘Did she mind the new one?’

‘No. She was fine with it.’

I hear her draw in a long breath.

‘Esther? I wish we could find some kind of spiritual comfort in all this. Do you believe in God at all?’

I swallow hard. ‘No. I sort of wish I did.’

‘Can you believe in something? The Fates, maybe? But I think that the universe, that God in some form, will take care of us. And I’m certain that we’ll be all right, you know. I think we’re all here for a reason. Those two’ – she gestures towards the distant sound of Mark and Cherry’s laughter – ‘because they were behaving terribly badly. It’s been a wake-up call, though admittedly they both appear to have learned to override it now. Still, when this is over and they have to go home, they will have learned some lessons and they will have to deal with the consequences of their behaviour. Gene and Jean will be finding peace with each other and with their son. They’re getting there, they really are. You – well you told me, didn’t you, about what your life was like in Brighton, the way you lost control and let Daisy see you fighting with your ex. So this will end up doing you a world of good. I can see it already, Esther. You’re learning to rely on yourself and trust your instincts. And you’ve found Ed, and happiness. You wouldn’t have let down your barriers enough for that to have happened if you weren’t here, would you? I don’t know enough about Ed, but he’s clearly strong and this will not do him any harm, even if it ends up just being a great story to tell. I truly think all of us have washed up here for a reason.’

I ask the obvious question: ‘What about you? What’s your reason?’

I hope my scepticism is not too obvious. I think Katy is talking rubbish and I wish I hadn’t offered to share a room with her, because I am now afraid she is going to start going on about karma and spirituality. I am sure that if she had a child, she would not see any benefit in being washed up on a random island indefinitely.

‘Me? Oh, to test me in every way,’ she says lightly. ‘And also . . .’ She looks at me and smiles warmly. ‘The relationship I was in, that I mentioned? Well, since I’ve been here, I’ve been thinking about her a lot. It all seems simple with this perspective. Of course I love her. I love her completely. So I’m going to go back, when the opportunity arises – which I firmly believe it will – and give the relationship everything that I’ve got. I can do that, I think.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘OK. That sounds good.’

‘Oh, it is,’ she says, beaming. ‘It really is. The world is a wonderful place. I know we’re hungry all the time and we all have diarrhoea and every day’s a struggle for food and all that. But the fact is, seven of us, none of whom have any survival skills or medical training, have managed to survive this far, however many days it’s been. It’s got to have been two weeks. And we’re all skinny and sunburned, but we have been given fresh water and trees that are laden down with fruit, and we’re surrounded by an ocean filled with swimming protein. Imagine getting stranded in Antarctica, say. We’d have been dead the first night. Nature is looking after us.’

I laugh, and head for the steps down to the beach, because I want to find Ed.

‘That’s true,’ I admit. ‘Remind me never to go on holiday to the South Pole, or if I do, never to go out on a day trip with someone who’s forgotten his matches.’

Mark and Cherry have been exploring the biggest of the huts. It must once have been the admin centre and restaurant, but now it is almost completely rotten, with a peeling painted sign with the words ‘Moonlight Beach’ just about legible on it. There is a big open area up a ladder, and I can imagine it dotted with plastic tables and chairs, little candles on the tables at night and Malaysian cuisine served by waiting staff who would have been almost entirely taken for granted by the customers. This is such a long way from the mainland: did people come all the way here for a holiday? Perhaps, I think, we are not as far from civilisation as we think. Samad could have brought us in a loop.

Now there are huge holes in the floorboards, and creepers from the nearby jungle have pushed through every gap and crevice. This building, more than any of the others, has been reclaimed by nature.

A lot of the rotten wood is now laid in rows on the sand, drying out until it is ready to be used as fuel. They have methodically pulled away everything that can be pulled. Ed is not here: according to Cherry, he went back to the old beach to check on Jean and Gene.

I join in, wrenching old wood away from nails, and adding it to the rows on the sand. It is strangely exhilarating. I am aware as I work that I am hungry, that we have not eaten for a while, but the excitement of our new surroundings makes me keep postponing the boring business of looking for food.

Cherry is nearby, doing the same job as me, while Mark tries to get a fire going. Suddenly she cries out.

‘Esther! Oh my GOD!’

I run to her. It takes me a while to process her discovery. It seems so incongruous here.

‘Look at that,’ I whisper. She takes my hand, and I squeeze her small, rough one in mine.

‘Food,’ she says reverently.

Cherry, it seems, wrenched the spongy door off a larder which was stocked with tinned food. There were eleven tins in it, left behind, I suppose, when the operation was abandoned. Either they were forgotten, or they were not considered worth bringing.

We now own four cans of plum tomatoes, two cans of peas and five incongruous tins of baked beans in tomato sauce. While there is not a tin opener visible anywhere, Mark has found some cutlery and gets to work with the sharpest knife he can locate.

‘I’m going to trust you to do this,’ I say to him, ‘because I cannot bear the idea of having tinned food and not being able to access it.’

‘Fear not,’ he assures me. ‘I will get to these peas if it’s the very last thing I do.’ And although it takes him several hours, he does.

By the time Ed comes back, carrying two mackerel as a present from the Australians, it is nearly dark. We have a puny spluttering fire, because nothing has really dried out enough to burn convincingly, and we are heating up baked beans on it.

Ed is gratifyingly impressed.

‘No way!’ he says. ‘Fish and baked beans? All we’re missing are the chips.’

To sit under the stars eating just-warm baked beans from a tin with a fork feels like the ultimate luxury. I lean on Ed, and smile at him, and take comfort from the warmth of his arm around my shoulders, and I can almost forget the bigger picture. I am nearly happy.

‘Oh dear,’ says Katy, lying on her back. ‘I could eat all of that twenty times over, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ Mark agrees. ‘I know what you mean. I was wondering if we could catch one of those giant fuck-off lizards tomorrow. Roast it on the fire, actually have something to eat with some substance to it.’

Nobody protests at this plan. Instead we fall into a discussion about the best way to go about trapping such a creature.

Cathy

July 1988

D-Day

WOW.

Pull yourself together, Cathy.

Get a grip.

Stop crying.

I am in Isleworth. It turns out to be a place with lots of terraced houses in lots of streets, and some shops and a station. It is, I suppose, normal, though what do I know about that?

I am going to stay with Michelle and Steve for as long as I need to. That’s what they said. I think they were a bit shocked when they met me, because I heard Michelle saying to Sarah’s mum: ‘Are you sure she’s sixteen?’ Apparently I look younger. I don’t think I do, though. Probably I looked younger right then because we were drinking coffee (disgusting, it turns out) at a noisy, smelly place which was the motorway services, and everything had the texture of a dream. I must have looked like a child because I felt like one.

I want to wake up from that dream now. I miss home. At the Village, we had so much green space, and it kept us away from other people. This room I’m in now is a ‘box room’, apparently, and it feels like a box itself. I’m living inside a box. At the Village there are log cabins that the founders built in a circle, and you knew everyone who was close to you. Here, I know there are strangers on the other side of one of my walls, and that’s weird. And the other people in the house are almost strangers, too.

But I have to be strong. Even though I feel I want to go back, I know really that I don’t.

The plan almost went completely wrong at the last minute. I was ready to abort it (now a part of me wishes we had).