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was getting what I wanted. What I needed. I was getting away.
‘Eric and Ryan here will be staying on the island with you in a little command centre – but don’t worry, you won’t be seeing them and they’ll stay right out of your way. We want this as authentic as possible. To that end, you’ll each get a body camera to film each other with, and a solar power bank to keep them up and running. As you know, I do need to collect your mobile phones. Not that they’d work out there, but we can’t have you distracted, playing games or making outside recordings. They’ll be returned when we collect you from the island. There is, however, a communications set-up in the
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Andrew had thick brown dreadlocks coiled into a bun. They were startlingly long and would probably have reached his waist otherwise. Tattoos encircled one bicep and he had on a pair of ratty dungarees. His accent gave nothing away but, much like Zoe, he could have been from any suitably cool university town in England. Frank on the other hand belonged in a pub, propping up the bar with a whippet at his feet and a red-top paper in front of his nose. His canvas fishing vest sported an alarming number of St. George flag patches and the frown he sent Zoe’s way felt very much like disapproval. In
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Really, I wouldn’t miss anyone, much. The only people I knew in the city were those I’d worked with and I did everything I could to avoid them outside the office. It wasn’t that they were bad people, it was just exhausting trying to seem normal to them. To pretend I knew about or was interested in the TV they watched or the diets they followed. To listen to their stories of children and husbands and have only anecdotes about my small life to offer in exchange.
Part of wanting to leave the outside world behind was me wanting to let go of that anger. I wanted to be kinder, to myself as much as to everyone else. I wanted to push myself past my boundaries, so I could stop blaming my parents and let go of all that wasted time. So far I at least felt freer, if not yet happier.
Looking back, it almost makes me sick. To think how naïve I was to consider the building of the hut, together, as a sign of things to come.
One last test of strength, one last battle to win, and I’ll be free. I’m done running. Tomorrow, I face the world.
I had tried. The only person I had control over was myself. I wasn’t going to be the one constantly coming down on people for their shitty behaviour. Not if no one was going to stand with me.
We were in a time of plenty. Plenty would seem a foreign concept within a few short months. I looked back on that time a lot and bitterly regretted every leaf, root and berry left ungathered. Every scrap wasted. It was a task too great for any one person. Had anyone thought to help me bring it all in, had they not deprived me of food, of fuel to do my work, we might have had more. Had enough. Things might have been different. Lives could have been saved.
‘You’ve got to fight back, Mads. The only way you can get that cow to leave you alone is to get back at her, better and smarter than she got at you.’
‘Forgive, but don’t forget,’ I said, one of Auntie Ruth’s other aphorisms. ‘I always try to remember that. Because if someone can hurt you once, they can do it again.’
Hating me was the only thing they had holding them together. Without me I think they would have turned on each other much sooner. Not that it made any difference … No matter what we did, we were doomed as soon as that boat dropped us there.
‘I’d lost hope by then. No, I might have given up holding on to my delusion that somehow we were all still civilised people at heart. I might have tried to get them before they came for me.’
I think after the first hour we all knew something was wrong.
Unless we’d both independently miscounted, this was the agreed date, our final day on the island. So where was the boat?
‘After so long there, living as we were … it was almost like they were a separate species, certainly a separate community. Their deaths were worrying, but only insofar as they related to us. To our situation. I don’t think we spared much thought for them as people, terrible as that is to say. It was a luxury we didn’t have room for, mourning people we didn’t know. No … I think the worst part of it all, for us, was not having that influence anymore – those representatives of the outside world.’
‘Without them there we didn’t have anyone to go to, no arbiter holding us accountable … It was just us, or rather, just them … and me.’
‘I think … there were things we all could have done differently. But, given who was with us and what they had already done … I think violence was inevitable.’
And getting caught meant … what? I had run for my life to reach the cave. It had felt like being seen, being captured, meant death. Was that just my paranoia, my fear from being chased screaming in my veins? Would the others really kill me if I strayed outside?
It was like they weren’t talking about a person, not really. They said my name like it belonged to a thing, a thing that was less than human. A thing they might use and break as easily as if I were a can to be emptied and crushed. Any thought that I might have overreacted at the beach left me. If they caught me, I would not be safe.
If it was to be survival of the fittest, I would play to win.
Why had no one stumbled across us? We’d seen no boats, not even in the distance. Why was the world just pretending we didn’t exist?
‘To live like an animal, less than an animal … It’s beyond anything I thought I could endure. But the alternative was death. I was surprised what I’d do to avoid that, even at my lowest.’
‘There’s this … compulsion, bred into us. To be polite, to be civilised, as if by ignoring a threat we’re somehow safe from whoever or whatever is out to get us. That as long as we stay silent, as long as no one acknowledges the fear we feel or what might happen … it won’t.’
‘It’s bullshit.’
‘There was a moment where I had to choose between everything I’d ever been taught about how to stay safe, and reality. I had to either play the game of appeasement, negotiating just how much I was going to be hurt, or believe my instincts and try to save myself, whatever the cost. And if I hadn’t trusted that part of myself … I wouldn’t be here.’
My world, already small, shrank until it was just me, alone. I carried with me the terrible ache of that loss. Yet I never spoke about it. I didn’t look directly into that absence because I didn’t dare. If I did, I knew it would consume me.
Andrew’s words kept going round and around in my head. Nowhere to go. Nothing out there. What gets us first. Suicide. I’d heard someone say once that ‘suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem’. I was willing to bet that person had not been trapped on an island with a murderer and no hope of escape.
The next day the clay woman was on the grave. I had no memory of putting it there.
I had to remember Auntie Ruth’s advice: get back at them, better and smarter than they got at you. I had to be clever. That was the only way to save myself. I had to stop them before they could hurt me.
Fortunately I have learned that there is no justice, aside from what we make for ourselves. There is only survival, and the victor tells the story.
