‘Can’t really feel it now,’ Brenda says. ‘Red and white and yellow and pink.’ She giggles. Then her legs seem to collapse from under her. Amelia makes a grab for her, but she’s a dead weight. ‘James—’
James is there in a flash, grabbing Brenda under the armpits, half dragging, half walking her over towards Lucy, to the area where they’ve kept themselves warm wrapped in the blankets. As he lays her on the floor, her shorts ride up her legs and she starts to scream.
‘Shit.’ James steps away, points at her leg. ‘That does not look good. Jeez, Brenda, I thought you said it didn’t bite you?’
‘She lied, didn’t she?’ Scott says. ‘She told me, then we partied for a while. She’s pretty good fun for an old lady.’
Amelia ignores him. ‘This is bad.’ She crouches down and inspects Brenda’s leg. It’s swollen up like a balloon, the shorts sticking to her clammy skin. The bite area is leaking yellow pus. ‘It looks like an infection.’ She leans forward and puts a hand to Brenda’s forehead. She’s burning up. Amelia frowns. ‘We need to lower her temperature. Has anyone got any paracetamol?’ She stares out of the mouth of the cave, then turns to James. ‘Soak one of the blankets in the rain, then wring it out. I need a cold compress.’
Scott limps towards her, holding out his plastic bag. ‘That’s Tylenol, right? The red gel ones are the rapid release. Maybe you could burst it and squeeze it into her mouth.’
Amelia raises her eyebrows at his sensible suggestion. Not shocked that he has a bag of random mixed drugs and knows what they all are by sight, but that he’s realised they might struggle to get Brenda to swallow a pill right now. There’s just one problem. ‘What did you give her before, Scott? I want to reduce her fever, but I don’t want to kill her with a drug reaction.’
Scott snorts. ‘Funny you should say that. Most of the lunatics who come in for vitamin infusions have ended up in the emergency room after doing something like that. People pop these like they’re candy, but you gotta know what you’re doing.’
‘Scott, I’m not looking for a lesson in illegal pharmaceutical combination therapy and its consequences. I just need to know if she’s already had any paracetamol, because I think the state her body is in right now, her liver won’t handle it.’
He shakes his head. ‘She’s had fentanyl and Demerol. I was going to give her a Percocet but she was already out of it.’
‘Wow.’ A drenched James has come back in from the rain. He stands at the entrance, wringing out the blanket and rolling it tight. ‘Really going for it there, mate.’ He hands the blanket to Amelia and raises an eyebrow.
‘Whatever, buddy,’ Scott shoots back. ‘Don’t make out like you’re the innocent. I can see it in your eyes.’
Amelia lays the blanket over Brenda’s leg, and she murmurs something incoherent. Amelia has managed to squeeze a couple of the capsules into Brenda’s mouth, and now with that and the compress, all they can do is wait it out.
‘They’re not coming to help us, are they?’ Lucy says. Her voice is flat. Emotionless. Amelia had almost forgotten she was there.
‘Maybe we need to just ask,’ James suggests. ‘You know, like they keep telling us to?’ He shrugs. ‘I know it seems mad, but it does work. They’re watching us. Listening to us. Whether it’s via the trackers or more hidden cameras doesn’t really matter.’
‘They’re not coming,’ Lucy says again. ‘If they can see us and hear us. If they can track us. If the tracker is measuring our bodily functions . . . they already know how sick Brenda is. They know we’re all sitting here cold and tired. They know that whatever they’re doing is triggering our worst ever memories, or biggest fears, the most awful things we’ve ever done. They know all this, and they don’t care.’ She pulls her blanket tighter. ‘They want to destroy us.’
‘Why, though?’ James says. ‘Why us?’
‘It doesn’t matter. People who do stuff like this? It doesn’t matter.’
Scott slaps a palm on his forehead. ‘I didn’t tell you this yet, guys. The phones. Remember earlier, Tiggy said she used her phone to text Giles – that she was linked to their Wi-Fi? Well, I’m the only other one with a phone. I was linked too.’ He runs a hand through his wet hair. ‘After the boat came, I sent a message to a friend of mine. Someone I thought could get us out of this mess. He messaged me back when I was alone with Brenda. Only . . . only it wasn’t him. It was a reply as if it came from his number. But it wasn’t him.’
‘How do you know? What did it say?’
Scott shakes his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. I just know it wasn’t him. They’re messing with us—’
‘Wait, so when Tiggy got a message from Giles saying he was OK – that wasn’t from Giles?’ Lucy pulls her knees up to her chest. ‘So we don’t know when Giles was last OK. We don’t know if he was OK when Tiggy left him.’
‘And where is Tiggy?’ Scott says.
‘She went on the boat,’ Amelia says. ‘She’s with Harvey – presumably others too – at the big house. With Giles.’ She lifts the compress to check on Brenda’s leg, and Brenda groans again. Her eyes are closed, sweat is dripping off her brow. Her fever is still raging, and there’s nothing Amelia can do to fix it. ‘Look, we need to get help. Can someone please tap their tracker and ask?’ She looks back at Brenda. ‘I really don’t know how much longer she’s going to last.’
Lucy
Scott limps towards the entrance and taps his tracker, shouts: ‘We need help here, you bunch of sick fucks!’ He stays there, staring out into the darkness.
‘Giles, Tiggy and now Brenda. We’re dropping like flies.’ Lucy’s voice is still wavering slightly. She’s embarrassed about her breakdown, after she’d told her story to Amelia and James. Thankfully, they were sympathetic – as much as they could be, under the circumstances. She’s been living with this for long enough. Having a couple of people know her secret doesn’t change it. It’s still a secret. It’s still the thing that coats her heart, making it impossible for her to form any kind of bond with anyone, or anything, ever again. She’d bought a dog – a small terrier cross-breed – thinking that having something in her house that relied on her might help her come to some sort of peace within herself. But the dog had seen right through her. Shied away from her touch. It was back in the dog’s home before the week was out, and she hadn’t even given it a name, other than ‘Dog’ – which to someone with a functioning heart might have come across as cute and ironic. But it just reminded her that she was too hardened to even find affection for an animal, much less earn any in return.
She looks around the cave at the sorry bunch she’s been lumbered with, and wonders what the point is anymore. She should walk out of here right now. Walk to the end of the island, where that crumbling lighthouse stands, and throw herself into the sea.
No one is going to mourn the death of a cynical, washed-up gossip columnist.