Stranded (24 page)

‘I’m almost tempted,’ he says, ‘to make something up, just to give me some more cred. But I won’t. I’m the middle one out of five boys.’

‘Are you? That’s interesting already. Five boys?’

‘Yes. And I suppose I’m the classic useless middle child. Patrick, David, Edward, James and Joshua, that’s us. James and Josh are twins. My parents never planned to have five. They only planned to have three, I think, but then they decided to go for one more, after I turned out to be so disappointingly male. They wanted the wee girlie, but they got twin boys instead. There was a certain crashing inevitability about that, wasn’t there? Patch and Dave are the super-achievers, the alpha boys. Patch is thirty-six now, getting married this summer to Alice, his fiancée. They both work in finance, and in spite of the recession and all that shit, they’re loaded. I like Alice and I like Patch, but I kind of despise them both too, I think, because they just know they’re the greatest. They’re so confident. He’s six foot three, head boy at school, Oxford degree, nice flat in Clapham, has always had a cleaner, never done his own dirty work, all that sort of thing. Massive sense of entitlement, and the world has duly stepped up and handed him everything he was expecting. Alice has the long blonde hair, the skinny jeans; she looks like she’d snap in half if there was a bit of a wind, but she wouldn’t, of course, she’s as tough as anything and she gets exactly what she wants from life. Anyway, that’s them, and in fact, that’s when the family will notice I’m not there: the wedding, on May the seventeenth. It can’t be May yet, can it? It was only the middle of April. But if we were still here on May the seventeenth, they’d find themselves one usher down, and they’d start to say, “Actually, has anyone
heard
from Ed?”

‘So Patch is a banker type. Dave is a maths teacher and housemaster at our old school. Loves it. Loved the place, still does. He’s a weirdo for being obsessed with his old school, but the kids adore him, and he’s a brilliant teacher apparently. On track for headmaster. So that’s his thing: he’s devoted to school, though I’ve always wished he’d managed to push himself a bit further and make a difference to less privileged lives. He has girlfriends, but, as he always says “no one serious”, and I actually suspect him of being somewhat closeted. We’ll skip over me, because you know me, and we reach the twins. Also known as “Mummy and Daddy’s ickle boysies”. They’re massively subsidised and indulged, and they get to do whatever they like. They must be twenty-eight now, but you’d never know it.’

I am fascinated. ‘Really? Where do they live? What do they do?’

‘Oh, Mum and Dad bought them a flat in Edinburgh,’ he says, and without looking at him, I can hear his smile. ‘God, I forget how privileged life is until I hear myself saying a thing like that. It’s a nice flat, too, New Town, big windows, high ceilings. Dad said something about “all the money we’re not spending on school fees any more” to justify it. They have four bedrooms, because they “need a study each”. God, it’s ridiculous, and the parents don’t even flinch. You would never in a million years have caught them doing that for any of the rest of us. Oh, and because the parents live an hour and a half’s drive away, near Pitlochry, Mum pays for a cleaner to go in twice a week, since she can’t manage to keep popping in herself. And since the twins are so fucking useless.’

‘No way!’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘Who does their washing and all that?’

‘The cleaner. And their ironing, too.’

‘And do they work?’ I laugh as I say it, because I know the answer.

‘Do you think they work? Do they sound like hard-working people? Of course they do, officially, “work”. James is “an artist”, and Josh is “a screenwriter”. They lounge around smoking and drinking and shopping, but James has an easel and a load of expensive paints in his “studio”, and Josh is constantly getting a new Mac with all the gadgets, but keeps forgetting to use it to write his long-trailed Hollywood blockbuster. They are the living embodiment of why the word “spoiled” is so apt. Both parents mollycoddled them so much that they’ll never be able to do a thing for themselves. As human beings, they have properly been spoiled. Ruined. Destroyed. I should feel sorry for them and relieved it wasn’t me, but somehow I’ve never got there.’

‘That is weird,’ I say. ‘Your parents can afford to subsidise them that much?’

‘Yeah. While I’m filling you in on my delightful family, I should tell you that the money comes from evil, not from good. At least, Dad’s an executive at an oil company. One of the massive ones. He runs their European operations. We all went to good old Scottish boarding school and had music lessons and did a million different activities and all that, but with me, Patch and Dave, they did that spartan, stand-on-your-own-two-feet thing. By the time the twins came along, it had somehow changed. There had been marital ructions that I’ve never quite put together, mainly because I haven’t wanted to. But the end result was Mum pouring everything into the babies, and Dad guiltily paying for it all. I presume he had an affair, but it’s equally possible that she did. Cherry’s story made me see that. And it’s not really a thing you want to think about your parents doing anyway, is it? So I’m happy to gloss over it and accept that the family dynamic was different by the time Josh and James showed up, for one reason or another.’

I turn to him, and put my face up close to his.

‘And still, Ed,’ I say. ‘Still. Now I know all about your brothers, and your parents. And I still don’t know about you. What’s happened in your life? Boarding school, lots of activities. Then what?’

‘Oh, I’m not interesting,’ he says. ‘I keep trying to tell you that, Esther. I’m Mr Average. I did OK at school. I went to university in Glasgow. I studied French and history. Spent a year in Paris. That was cool. I got some lovely French girls while I was out there and I probably had a glimpse of the possibilities that could exist for me away from my family. But I wasn’t brave enough. I moved to London, worked and had an average sort of time for my entire twenties. Never quite settled. Never pushed myself forward. I felt I was doing all right if I just . . . got by. Stuck to the rules. I wish I had a grand drama to share. I really do. The rest of you – you’ve all been out there and made life happen.

‘I think that’s what I did by coming out here. I’d been going out with Ellie for a while, and then I knew we were getting to a point where we should be starting to think about settling down, and that sooner or later we should want a baby. Not that she expressed much interest, but I knew it was the next conventional step. That scared the life out of me. Because I like babies, but the last thing I want is one of my own. My own stupid family have stopped me wanting anything like that. I’d have no idea how to be with a child. Whether to ignore them or coddle them, and whether or not there’s anything in between. I discovered, thanks to the Ellie situation, that I don’t want children, so that was something good, and it gave me the push that, perhaps, I needed. It got me running fast away from responsibility. I actually did something, for the first time in my life. I gave notice on my flat, sold some things, bought myself a ticket to Asia.’

‘What did your parents think of that?’

He shakes his head. ‘Honestly? They barely noticed. I half hoped they’d be furious and tell me I was throwing my life away. If I’d been Patch or Dave chucking it all in to go travelling, they would have gone apeshit. If I’d been Josh or James they would have nodded approvingly and given them a credit card. But it was just me. They never really care what happens to me.’

‘Ed! They must do, really.’

‘Maybe. They keep it well hidden, if so.’

‘It must be partly because they trust you, and they know they don’t have to worry about you.’

‘Hmm. It’s true they’ve never worried about me. Perhaps I should have tried harder to give them cause for concern. If I had a different character, I’d have played the hellraiser and forced them to factor me into the family. But I just wanted everyone to approve. And I’ve never been as accomplished as the big boys, or as cute as the small ones. I told you I was boring.’

‘You’re not boring.’

‘I am. I can see it in your face. Completely fucking dull.’

‘No! That’s not what you’re seeing in my face at all.’

‘So what am I seeing?’

‘You’re seeing respect. Appreciation. The realisation that if we were to get off this island, which I am completely certain we won’t, then you and I might actually have had a chance together. You’re the person I need, Ed. I can say this because it’s just a dream, but I need someone grounded, like you, who hasn’t had a random and crazy life. And you need someone like me, because I will be the person who makes you see how special you are. Sorry for the cliché, but it’s true. Also, you don’t want a baby. I certainly don’t want a baby. I have the most amazing one already, and she’d love you. That is what you’re seeing in my face. Realisation.’

He does not reply to that. When I look at him properly, I think he might be close to tears. Then he laughs.

‘Oh, it’s great, isn’t it? You meet the perfect person, and you don’t get to see if you can make it happen. I want to do everything with you. I want us to go to films and plays, and walk around London and Brighton and visit bars and cafés, and hang out with Daisy taking people’s dogs out, and everything. I want to do everything with you that people who are together do. And instead . . .’ He is laughing too much to be able to speak. ‘Instead . . .’

I am giggling too.

‘Instead,’ I finish for him, ‘we’re washed up on a tropical island. The precise thing we would be wishing for if we were squeezing on to a rush-hour Tube train, or walking someone’s dog in the rain.’

‘We’d be saying: “Oh, if only we could go to an island where it was always warm, and there was white sand and balmy water, and no shops.”’

‘“And nothing to do,”’ I continue, ‘“and a rainforest fringed with the most spectacular beaches, and we could get our water from a well.”’

‘“And catch fish from the sea, and eat bananas from the trees! Wouldn’t that be blissful.”’

We look at each other in the moonlight, and the hysteria builds up in me, and then I am laughing so hard that I am worried about waking Katy and Mark and Cherry. Ed and I laugh until we cry at the absurdity of our situation, and then I fall asleep cuddled up to him, our bones jarring against each other whenever we get too close.

When I wake up, Mark and Cherry are also lying around the dead fire, sleeping. I surmise that only Katy was hardy enough to make the cabin into the magical new home we all wanted it to be.

The sun is surprisingly high in the sky. Ed is not here. The other two are dozing. I feel happy, properly happy, for the first time. Whatever happens, Ed and I could work together. This is the first relationship that has felt this way for me: at the grand old age of just-forty, I have found the right person. That certainty puts a spring in my step and a smile on my face, in spite of everything.

I shake out my sarong and head to the jungle, towards what passes for the toilet facilities. As soon as I get to the edge of the forest, however, I hear someone crashing towards me.

She is out of breath, and looks stricken. I am aware of something in her hand, but I only want to look at her face.

‘Jean?’ I say. ‘Are you all right? Is Gene OK?’

‘Oh yes, yes.’ She sounds impatient. ‘Well, in a way. But look. Everybody. Where are the rest of them? Oh, sleeping. Well they need to wake up. Where is that young man of yours? We need to get everyone together, Esther. And now. Because this . . .’ She holds it up. It is a telephone, but it is bigger than a normal mobile, and there is a huge antenna sticking out of the top of it at an angle. ‘This object. Is a satellite phone. Found it buried in the rainforest. Purely by chance. A phone. And my bet is, somebody here knows a lot more than they have been letting on.’

I do not hear a single word beyond the phrase ‘satellite phone’.

‘It’s a phone,’ I whisper. ‘Jean. Does it . . . ?’ I cannot finish the sentence. A phone. An actual phone.

‘It doesn’t work,’ she says over her shoulder as she strides to the bones of the fire. ‘No batteries in it. Sorry, Esther. We were excited too. But the question, of course, is . . .’ Jean claps her hands, twice, three times, impatience on her face as she watches the Americans stir.

‘Wake up,’ she snaps at them. ‘Come on. Wake up. Wake up and tell us if you know anything about this.’

I watch both of their faces as they attempt to focus on the phone. Cherry’s mouth forms a perfect ‘o’ when she sees the handset, but she does not say a word. Mark frowns at it, then leaps to his feet in one bound.

‘That’s a sat phone!’ he says. ‘Have you tried it?’

‘No batteries,’ Jean tells him, staring into his face as if they were playing poker, apparently gauging his reaction. ‘Though we can only assume that there are some, somewhere on this island. Because this is not an old satellite phone.’

Cherry is on her feet too. The four of us stand around the phone and gaze at it. It looks very like a normal mobile. Only its antenna marks it out as different.

‘Where did you find it?’ I manage to ask.

‘Yeah, there’s the thing.’ Jean nods to me. ‘We found it by the purest happenstance. The rest of the crew, you people, were gone, and Gene is not steady on his feet. In fact, the walk over here and back as good as finished him off, where his legs are concerned. All he wants to do now is sit by the fire and talk to Ben, aloud, until either he dies or that bloody boat arrives. So I thought, to save his poor legs, I would make a new lavatory area, closer to the beach. After all, the rest of you are not there to complain about hygiene or whatnot. I went into the forest and found a place where the soil was soft and it looked as though it would be easy to dig. I started digging at it with a stick, but in fact the earth was so loose that I was able to pull it away with my hands. I thought nothing of it. I assumed some ants or similar had been through. It was only when my fingers hit the metal that I realised there was something buried.’

‘And then you pulled out that baby.’ Mark’s eyes are shining. ‘What the fuck?’