‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
She smiles sympathetically. ‘We’ve still got a lot to cover and plenty of sessions in which to do that.’
Danny twists his hands together in his lap. There’s a question he’s been wanting to ask his psychiatrist all session but he’s afraid of her answer.
‘What is it?’ she asks softly, as though sensing his dilemma. ‘What’s troubling you?’
‘Am I…’ He forces himself to look up at her. ‘Am I a monster? Am I a psychopath?’
She shakes her head gently. ‘No, Danny. You’re not.’
And that makes him cry.
Chapter 37
JESSIE
Six weeks after the escape from the island
I crouch down beside the grave and trace a finger over my brother’s grave.
THOMAS ARTHUR HARPER
BELOVED SON AND BROTHER
It’s the first time I’ve seen his grave since he died. I haven’t been able to face it before but it feels right today, in the spring sunshine with the sun gently warming my cheeks and new leaves budding on the trees.
‘I know you don’t particularly like flowers.’ I crouch down and lay the small posy of daffodils and tulips on the cropped green grass. ‘But I wanted to bring you something.’
I thought, when I got up this morning, suddenly certain that today was the day I wanted to visit my brother, that I’d have so much to say to him, but now that I’m here all the words and phrases that were spinning in my head on the bus have grown still and faded away. Instead my heart is beating out its own message to my brother, each pulse steady and weighted with love.
Danny isn’t the only one who’s been to see a counsellor. I’ve been seeing one too. I spent a lot of time talking, and even more crying. For the first few sessions I was angry. Angry with Tom, angry with myself, and angry with the counsellor for not giving me a salve that I could use to heal my grief. But there is no salve or sticking plaster that can take away the pain of loss, and time doesn’t heal. But I am learning how to reconnect with my feelings without feeling crushed by the weight of them. I am relearning how to trust and to love, not just others but myself too.
As I stand up I sense someone watching me and turn to see Milo walking down the path towards me, his hands in his pockets and an uncertain smile on his face. He looks relieved when I smile back. It’s still new, our relationship, and we’re treading lightly, getting to know each other slowly rather than rushing in, giving each other the space we both need. I look back at my brother’s grave. Today is my eighteenth birthday. As a child he’d always be the first one to rush into my room and jump on my bed and shout ‘Happy birthday!’ in my ear. I had to come and see him today. He had to be the first person I shared my birthday with.
I close my eyes and I picture my brother. I see the gentle wave of his hair, the rough stubble on his jaw and the bright blue of his eyes. And then I see him smile.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to my amazing editor Emily Kitchin, who understood the story I was trying to tell in The Island and whose editorial notes really helped me up the tension, conflict and the mystery in the book. Thank you for being such a pleasure to work with and for being such a champion of Young Adult novels, and of The Island in particular. Thanks also to the team at HQ HarperCollins for all their support and hard work particularly Katrina Smedley, Isabel Smith and Melanie Hayes. I’d also like to thank Jon Appleton for doing such good work on the copyedit. Huge thanks to Kate Oakley for creating such a vivid and eye-catching cover. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it.
Thanks as always to my incredible agent Madeleine Milburn and everyone at the agency, particularly Hayley Steed, Liane-Louise Smith and Alice Sutherland-Hawes, for your belief in me and my books, and all your hard work.
I’d like to thank all the book bloggers, librarians, booksellers and reviewers who adore young adult fiction as much as I do and who help spread the word. And thank you to the readers who took the time to contact me to let me know how much they enjoyed my previous book The Treatment. It’s been a bit of a wait between books but I hope you think it’s worth it.
Finally, all my love to my amazing family – Jenny and Reg Taylor for reading everything I write, to my brother and sister David and Rebecca Taylor for pimping my books on social media, to their partners Sami Eaton and Lou Foley for putting up with them, to my nieces and nephews Sophie Taylor, Rose Taylor, Frazer Eaton, Oliver Eaton and Mia Taylor (Sophie and Frazer, I expect you to read this book!), to my amazing in-laws Ana Hall, James Loach, Angela Hall and Steve and Guinevere Hall. And last but by no means least, my own amazing family, Chris and Seth. Thank you for letting me witter on about my plot lines over the dinner table and for chiming in with ideas and thoughts. I mostly ignore your suggestions but it’s good to talk! I love you more than you can ever know.
For anyone who’d like to keep up to date with my books do please join my mailing list: https://cltaylorauthor.com/newsletter/ or get in touch on social media.
Thank you for reading The Island. I hope you enjoyed it.
Cally
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Keep on reading for an extract from the gripping and twisty YA debut from C.L. Taylor, The Treatment…
Chapter One
They’re still following me. I can hear their footsteps. They think I can’t hear them because I put my headphones on the second I walked through the school gates. But they’re not plugged in. I heard every word they said as I walked down Somerset Road.
‘Why are you walking so fast, Drew? Don’t you want to talk to us?’
‘She can’t hear us.’
‘Yes she can.’
‘Oi, Drew. Andrew!’
Lacey and her gang of sheep think it winds me up, calling me Andrew, they think it’s funny. I don’t. My dad gave me my name because my hazel eyes and chubby cheeks reminded him of the child actress in the film E.T. He thought it was a pretty name, unusual too. Drew Finch. My name is all I’ve got to remember him by other than a folder of digital photographs on my computer.
Mum doesn’t talk about Dad any more – she hasn’t since she married Tony. Mason, my fifteen-year-old brother, refuses to talk about Dad too. Not that Mason’s here to chat to. He’s been sent to a school hundreds of miles away, hopefully to learn how to stop being so irritating. It’s weird, my brother not being at home. He was never much of a conversationalist but God was he noisy. He’d bang and crash his way into the house, kick his shoes off, stomp up the stairs and then slam his door. Then his music would start up. It’s eerie how quiet it is now. I can hear myself breathe. I think the silence unsettles Mum too. She’s always tapping on my door, asking if I’m OK. Or maybe she feels guilty about sending Mason away.