He turns sharply and looks round, expecting to see her slim frame hovering uncertainly behind him. But she’s not there. He spins around on the sand and scans the beach and the shoreline, but there’s no sign of his girlfriend.
‘Meg, have you seen Honor?’
She looks up, her dark head bent over Jeffers. ‘Nope.’
‘But she—’
He looks back towards the shelters and the jungle beyond them. Logically he knows she can’t have gone far. She probably walked to the stream to have a cry in private, or found somewhere out of sight to have a wee; but his mind is still on high alert and he can’t bear the thought of anything happening to her. They all need to stay together. They’re safer that way.
‘Is he OK?’ Jessie crouches down on the sand beside Meg and Jeffers. She’s stopped making that strange rasping noise but her voice is as thick as sandpaper. She sounds like a forty-a-day smoker.
‘He’ll be fine.’ Meg smiles up at her. ‘Won’t you, Jeffers?’
Jefferson struggles to sit up, batting away Meg’s hands as she tries to stop him. ‘You saved my life, Jess. I thought I was dead.’
Jessie says nothing, instead she stares at him with the strangest expression on her face. Up close Danny can see the scars she’s been trying to hide all holiday. The skin on her hands is lumpen and shiny and the burns twist up her wrists and arms to her neck like thick red snakes. She flinches, as though sensing his eyes on her body, and shrinks away from Milo so the arm he has around her shoulders falls away.
‘You nearly killed me,’ she snaps at Jefferson. ‘The next time you do something idiotic try not to drown the person who’s saving you. OK?’
Danny’s shocked but says nothing. Neither do any of the others, and when Jessie announces that she’s going back to camp to get some dry clothes, the only sound is the sharp cry of gulls circling overhead. As she disappears into the shelter Milo crouches down beside Jefferson.
‘She didn’t mean that. She’s still in shock.’
‘No, I deserved it.’ Jeffers peels off his wet T-shirt and rests his arms on his knees. ‘There’s no way I could have swum all the way to the mainland, even if I hadn’t got cramp in my leg.’
‘And there was me thinking Action Man was invincible.’
‘None of us are,’ Meg says grimly. ‘We need to remember that.’
Back at the camp, while everyone apart from Jessie – who’s lying in the shelter with her eyes closed – congregates around the fire, Danny rummages in his rucksack for his bottle of water.
‘Where are you off to?’ Milo asks as he heads towards the jungle.
‘Gonna look for Honor.’
‘But she’s—’ Milo glances around, startled, as though he’s only just realized she’s missing. ‘Oh. Where is she?’
Meg shakes her head. ‘I haven’t seen her for a while.’
‘Want me to help you look?’ Milo asks Danny.
‘No, no. I’m sure she’s just gone to get water.’ Danny fights to keep his tone light. A new, unsettling thought had hit him as they walked back to the shelter. What if Honor hadn’t run off because she was upset about Jessie and Jefferson getting into trouble in the sea? What if she just wanted to get away from him? Last night she’d screamed at him that she was sick of him accusing her of flirting with Milo and wanted to leave. And now she’s stuck on the island with him for the rest of the week.
Danny heads for the waterfall first, certain Honor won’t have ventured far into the jungle – not with her fear of spiders – but the only visitors to the waterfall are a couple of macaque monkeys who take one look at him, whoop with fear and leap into the trees and disappear. He heads left, along the rough path Anuman created by chopping at the plants and bushes with his machete when they had been looking for trees to fell.
Anuman.
Just thinking about his guide makes Danny’s stomach clench. It was terrifying how quickly death had claimed him. One second he was walking out of the jungle with an armful of fruit, and the next he was staring at Danny with fear in his eyes as the stroke dragged at his face and twisted his lips. Had he known what was coming? Was he afraid? Danny stops in his tracks as his own mortality hits him full force. He doesn’t believe in heaven or an afterlife. Death is final, a full stop. It’s eternal darkness, nothingness, a void. When he was six years old he was told that his grandfather had died after he’d fallen into a deep sleep and never woke up. Years later Danny was told that his grandfather had suffered from heart failure and fallen into a coma, but Little Danny didn’t know that. He became too scared to fall asleep in case death claimed him too. He spent night after sleepless night trying to imagine how it felt to no longer exist, winding himself up so much his breath would catch in his throat and he’d sit up in bed, gulping in air.
Just remembering it makes his chest tighten and he rests a hand against a tree, fighting to take a deep, steadying breath as sweat beads on his forehead and rolls down his face.
I’m not going to die, he tells himself. It’s just a panic attack. It’s just a panic attack.
Movement in the corner of his eye makes him jump, but it’s just a large brown lizard, tongue extended, scuttling out of his way. The distraction, and flood of adrenaline, snaps him out of his negative spiral and he heads off again, focusing on the surrounding objects, saying their names aloud to stop the dark thoughts from creeping back in again.
‘Honor!’ As he reaches the small clearing and the circle of tree stumps that surrounds it, he shouts his girlfriend’s name. ‘Where are you?’
He hears the squawk of birds and the treetops above his head rustle as two beautiful blue and orange kingfishers make their escape. But there’s no human reply to his shout. Honor’s either ignoring him or she’s further away than he thought. Danny pulls the bottom of his T-shirt up to his forehead and rubs it over his face, then swigs from his water bottle. It’s not as hot in the jungle as it is on the beach under the constant glare of the sun, but it’s humid as hell and his body is slick with sweat. He looks around the small space, searching for footprints or tunnels made through the undergrowth, any sign that his girlfriend has passed this way, but there’s nothing. He’d have to battle through the thick foliage to find a way through. He turns and heads back towards the waterfall, pausing at the bottom of a small dirt track that leads up out of the jungle to the cliff tops above. Could she have headed up there?
There’s only one way to find out, he thinks as he starts to walk.
The worry Danny felt as he set off to find Honor has morphed into irritation. It took him for ever to scale the rough, stony route to the cliff top and now that he’s reached it, it’s obvious that Honor’s not up here. He sits on the edge of the brown rock, legs dangling, and stares down at the green-blue sea twenty metres below. He can hear voices on the beach, down to his right, but he can’t see anything because his view is blocked by the green bushes that cling to the cliff face.
‘Danny!’ He hears his name being called but doesn’t respond. Instead he lifts his foot and examines the sole. He slipped on the walk up the cliff and one of his flip-flops came off. He cut his foot on a sharp sliver of rock as he stopped to retrieve it. His foot’s still bleeding. The blood rolls off his heel and drips, disappearing before it hits the water below.