Chapter 2
DANNY
Day one on the island
Danny Armstrong isn’t sure what to make of Jessie Harper. There’s a part of him that’s grateful that she stopped that little creep Josh from manhandling Honor the night before, but there’s another, bigger, part that feels awkward about spending a week alone on an island with her. The first few days of the NCT holidays are always a bit weird; these guys might be his oldest friends but, apart from Honor who lives a short train-ride away, the others are all spread around the country. They don’t get to see each other much between holidays, and everyone’s always a bit wary and awkward initially. But then the banter starts up and the group relaxes. It’s like they haven’t spent a day apart.
Only Jessie hasn’t loosened up yet. She’s so tense, so tightly coiled that it makes Danny nervous. That thing with the chair leg last night? There’s no way she would have done something like that before. It’s like there’s an emotional bomb ticking away in her chest – at any moment she might go off – and that scares him. Scares the others too from the way they all seem to be tiptoeing around her, none of them daring to mention why her hands and arms are all scarred up. OK, so he won’t be alone on the island with Jessie, strictly speaking. Honor, Meg, Milo and Jeffers will be there too, along with Anuman, their Thai survival guide who’s currently sitting at the far end of the small motorized boat, guiding it through the crystal-clear water. But they’re a hell of a long way from the mainland already. They’ve been on the boat for over an hour.
Danny tightens his grip on Honor’s shoulder, pulling her into his body, and kisses her on the top of her head. Jessie, sitting nearest Anuman with Jeffers beside her, is staring out to sea, her long brown hair streaming behind her. Danny didn’t expect her to show up for the trip. She wasn’t waiting in the lobby of the hotel with the others when he traipsed down the stairs with his backpack at 6 a.m. She was too embarrassed, he assumed, about what had happened the night before. Or maybe her parents had been told about what she’d done and had banned her from the trip.
When it all kicked off the night before, he was at the bar with Milo – eating peanuts and talking crap. There was an anguished shout from the pool then Honor screamed his name. He knocked over his drink in his haste to get back to her and his blood ran cold as he rounded the palm trees and spotted her hugging her knees to her chest by the side of the pool. There were two lads crouched together a couple of feet away – one of them screaming and nursing his hand to his chest – and Jessie, sopping wet and fully clothed, climbing the ladder at the far end of the pool. She didn’t seem to be the slightest bit bothered by the commotion behind her. Instead she nonchalantly headed for the entrance to the hotel. As Danny gathered Honor in his arms one of the lads pointed over at Jessie and shouted something about payback, while the other lad, the smaller one, groaned about needing a doctor. As they headed off towards reception Danny asked Honor over and over again what the matter was. She was crying so much she couldn’t speak, and it wasn’t until he got her back into her apartment, after her mum had wrapped her in a blanket and given her a long hard hug, that she finally opened up. Danny was off like a shot then, speeding back down the stairs to reception, but it was deserted. The lads, whoever they were, were long gone.
Now, he stifles a yawn. He barely slept last night he was so angry. How dare that arsehole put his hands all over his girlfriend? He’ll kill him if he ever sees him again.
A sudden squeal from Meg wipes the thought from his mind.
‘Oh my God! Is that a squid?’ She points over the side of the boat. ‘It’s enormous.’
‘Don’t touch it!’ Milo shouts as Meg puts a hand in the water. ‘It’s a jellyfish. Remember when Tom stood on one on the beach in Cornwall and his foot swelled up so much he had to go to hospital?’
At the mention of Tom’s name Danny inhales sharply and a strange expectant silence fills the boat. Everyone stares at Jessie, waiting for a reaction. She doesn’t say a word. Instead she continues to gaze out to sea, a muscle pulsing in her cheek, as though she’s repeatedly clenching and unclenching her jaw. The tension is more than Danny can bear and he searches his brain for something, anything, he can say to lighten the mood but the best he can manage is:
‘Aren’t you hot wearing all that, Jeffers?’
Unlike the others, dressed in vests or T-shirts or light summery clothes, Jeffers looks kitted out to go to war in the desert in his black sunglasses, hat, sandy-coloured long trousers, bulky waistcoat and boots and a huge great rucksack propped up beside him.
He shakes his head. ‘Not at all. Everything I’m wearing is either lightweight or breathable, or it wicks the sweat away.’
Danny shakes his head. How can one of his friends be seventeen years old and sound like a fifty-year-old man? Jefferson wasn’t always so weird – tactless and insensitive definitely – but not weird. He was perfectly normal until two summers ago when he turned up to their holiday in Norfolk wittering away about a new group of friends he’d met on the internet who’d opened his eyes to how screwed-up we’d be in the event of natural disasters, petrol shortages, war or acts of terrorism and how important it is to prepare for such an event. Danny mostly uses the internet to access PornHub, not that he’d ever admit that with Honor in the same room.
‘We are here!’ Anuman announces as the boat creaks and putts as it slows down and Danny looks around in surprise. They’re in the shallows and stretched before him is a long, white beach framed with palm trees; beyond them, dense jungle and huge, jagged cliffs. They’ve arrived on the only privately owned island off the coast of Thailand – Ko Kār p̄hcỵ phạy. His breath catches in his throat as he spots a couple of macaque monkeys jumping and playing at the edge of the forest. It’s like they’ve just arrived in paradise.
‘The island of adventure,’ Anuman had told them as he’d shepherded them out of the hotel when Jessie finally rocked up, hiding her face behind sunglasses and an oversized hat. ‘Not many people get to go, and not alone. You very lucky.’
Lucky, Danny thinks cynically as Anuman jumps out of the boat and into the sparkling, clear sea – or stinking rich. Thailand is by far and away the most exotic – and expensive – holiday they’ve had as a group since Milo and Meg’s parents first mooted the idea that they should have an antenatal group getaway when they were all little more than a year old. They spent a week in a shared house on the Cornish coast. He’s not entirely sure what Jefferson’s dad does for a living but it’s something to do with banking and investments. Enough, anyway, that he’s rented Ko Kār p̄hcỵ phạy, and a survival expert, for a week to celebrate Jefferson’s seventeenth birthday. When Danny’s dad heard where they’d be holidaying this year he went pale. Unlike some of the other parents, his dad isn’t loaded. He’s a freelance sound engineer and work is sporadic – a three-month tour here and there and then nothing for months on end. Danny hates the way his dad is always so stressed about money, and when the Thailand trip was mentioned he told him that he wasn’t fussed about going. But then Honor voice-messaged him, squeaky with excitement, and his stomach twisted into a tight knot. He hadn’t been apart from her for more than a week since they got together on the day of his fifteenth birthday and he couldn’t bear the thought of being without her for a whole fortnight. He’d help pay for the holiday, he told his dad; get a job washing pots in a local restaurant after school, or working in a café at the weekend. He didn’t have to do any of those things in the end; his dad was offered a gig and couldn’t make the holiday and Honor’s mum, Thea, stepped in to say she was happy for Danny to share their apartment. He’d be on the sofa, of course, but the offer was a godsend. It meant they only had to stump up enough money for one return flight.