He glances at the remains of the first-aid kit – the wadding and the tape – lying against the cold cave wall. Earlier, when he stood outside the cave and screamed, no one on the beach heard a thing. He picks up the tape and gauze. The others will send out a search party once they realize that Honor is missing. He can’t risk Meg hearing Honor shouting for help.
‘You need to drink some water,’ he says placing the plastic bottles next to his sobbing girlfriend. ‘And have a bit of food.’
Honor stares at the tape and gauze in his hand and whimpers in fear, twisting her bound hands behind her back. ‘No, Danny, please. Don’t do this. Dan, please.’
He unscrews the water and holds it to her lips. Honor shakes her head violently and pulls away from him. ‘No?’ he says and rips the top off the dried beef. ‘Do you want food first? Babe, it’s really important that you drink and eat something. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to come back again.’
‘Danny, please,’ Honor begs as he pulls a piece of biltong out of the packet. ‘Whatever it is you think I’ve done I swear I didn’t do it. I love you.’
‘Done?’ He looks at her in shock. ‘You haven’t done anything! I’m doing this to keep you safe.’
‘How does tying me up keep me safe? Danny, this is insane. Untie me and take me back to the others! The boys from the hotel have gone. We’re safe now. We’re all safe.’
‘Oh, Honor.’ He shakes his head sadly. ‘You have no idea how much danger you’re in.’
‘Untie me!’ she begs. ‘Danny, please. Why are you doing this? Is it because I’ve been off with you? Because I have, I know I have. I haven’t been happy for a while I just… I just… I didn’t know how to tell you. I was scared of how you’d react.’
‘Scared?’ he looks at her in confusion. ‘Why would you be scared of me?’
‘I know you love me, Danny, but you can be really controlling and I just… I didn’t know how to talk to you, to tell you how unhappy I’ve been. I didn’t want to upset you.’
Danny’s confusion morphs into surprise. ‘Controlling? I’ve never stopped you from doing anything.’
‘Not physically no, but… you always want to know where I am and who I’m with. You text me all the time and if I don’t reply, you ring and ring and leave voicemail after voicemail and…’ Tears well in her eyes. ‘It’s too much, Danny. I can’t take it anymore.’
‘But… but that’s not controlling. That’s me making sure you’re OK. I worry when I don’t hear from you. I think something bad’s happened. I can’t sleep if you haven’t sent me a photo of you in your room at night. I just need to know that you’re safe.’
‘I get that, I do. But it’s not just the texts and the calls. It’s the paranoia too, the way you look at me when I talk to other boys. I can’t even joke around with Milo these days without worrying that you’re going to give me a dirty look or freeze me out. It’s not right and it’s not healthy for us to be joined at the hip the whole time. I think you should talk to someone when we get back to the UK. You know you’ve been talking about your mum in your sleep again and—’
‘No.’ Danny holds up a hand. ‘You don’t talk about her. Do you understand? You DO NOT talk about her.’
‘OK, OK. I’m sorry. But we can talk about us, can’t we? We can talk about what’s been going wrong and put it right.’ She shrieks as he tears a piece of tape off the roll with his teeth. ‘You can’t do this. I’ll suffocate. It’s going to get dark soon and there are creatures in the jungle. There’s spid—’
‘You’ll be fine.’ He gives her what he hopes is a reassuring look. She’s trying to talk her way out of the cave, manipulating him into letting her go but it’s not going to happen. She didn’t see the message on the beach. She has no idea how much danger she’s in. She’ll thank him for saving her life one day. He just needs to keep her safe until help arrives and then it’ll all be over.
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he says. ‘I’ll check on you a couple of times a day to give you food and water.’
She tries to scream as he sits astride her and pushes her down so she’s lying flat on the cave floor. Before the sound can leave her mouth he smothers it with his hand.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he says as he gently pushes the gauze into her mouth then secures the tape over the top.
She’ll be fine, he reassures himself as he scrabbles back out of the cave, leaving Honor lying on her back, frantically kicking and twisting as she tries to sit up. We’re both going to get off this island alive.
Chapter 33
JESSIE
Now
We head in the opposite direction to Milo and Jefferson, whose cries of ‘Danny! Honor!’ creep through the gaps between the trees. We walk in single file, Meg first, carrying a flaming torch, then me. Before we left camp, as Meg hunted around for her water bottle, Milo reached for my hand. He didn’t get the chance to do more than squeeze it before his sister returned but it was enough; the smallest of gestures to check I was OK.
‘I’ve never, ever seen Danny react like that.’ Meg’s voice, barely more than a whisper, drifts towards me on the hot, humid air. ‘When I opened my bag he took off like a rocket.’
‘I know. I’ve never seen anyone look as terrified. His scream!’
‘It’s this place. This island… we shouldn’t have come here. It was a stupid idea. And it was a mistake to sit it out and wait for help. Honor was right, we should have made oars and tried to row back to the mainland.’
‘We’ll find her, and Danny.’ Even to my ears my voice sounds strained. ‘And even if we don’t, this place will be crawling with adults when our parents get here. We’ll all be back on a boat to the mainland in no time.’
We’re seventeen years old, months away from being adults ourselves, but I’ve never felt more like a child. We don’t know what we’re doing, playing at survival, making fires, spearing fish. We’ve been biding our time until we’re rescued, knowing that we won’t really starve and, sooner or later, we’ll be tucked up in fresh, crisp sheets with running water on tap and cool showers to wash the grimy memories from our skin. But not Anuman. No one’s going to rescue him and return him to his family. He’s never going to see them again. Even with everything that’s been going on I haven’t forgotten about him. I think about him every time I see the boat gently bobbing on the shore with Anuman’s boots poking out from beneath the tarpaulin. I try to block out the fact that he’s dead. I can’t think about death – that final black hole of a full stop that we fall into at the end of our lives – without feeling as though I’m spinning, untethered, a hundred miles above the Earth.
Meg swears under her breath and slaps at one of her arms. ‘If I never see another sand fly again it’ll be too soon.’
‘I don’t think I’ve got a single inch of skin that isn’t covered in bites,’ I say.