The Last Resort(41)

Not that most of them are much use. Most of them are weak – it’s too easy to just go along with the rules.

But George doesn’t like the rules.

Sometimes Father tells George that if they aren’t careful, he will row them all over to the island and lock them in the lighthouse with a madman, just like Grand-Father did to Father, all those years ago.

As Father gets older, he becomes more and more like Grand-Father, and everyone is scared now . . . and everyone wants to leave – even if they’ll never admit it. And sometimes some of the mothers whisper together, while washing the clothes or beating the rugs, ‘One of these days he’s going to kill us, you know.’

And George sits quietly, helping with the chores, and thinks: Not if I kill him first.





Amelia

‘Oh God, what now?’ Amelia starts to run and James follows. ‘Lucy, please can you stay with the others?’ she calls over her shoulder.

She can see Tiggy beyond the rocks, but she has no idea why she is screaming. Her heart thumps as she clambers up the rocks, using her hands for balance, then feeling James’s palms on her back, guiding her. She pulls away and climbs faster, her breath coming out in ragged gasps.

Tiggy is standing still, her hands clutching the sides of her head. She’s screaming so loudly Amelia can almost feel the vibrations of the sound in her own chest. Something guttural and terrifying. Something that has made every nerve ending in her body start to tingle.

‘What is it, Tiggy? What’s happened?’ She reaches the cliff path and bolts up the hill, hardly daring to look down at the harsh drop to the inlet. It’s smaller than the bay they’ve just left, and with shingle instead of sand – and a dank smell that makes her want to turn back and get as far away from this place as she can. She keeps Tiggy in her sights, because Tiggy is standing too close to the edge. As she gets closer, a small flurry of stones tumbles off the side of the hill and down the deep drop below. She hears James close behind, the sound of his trainers hitting the loose dirt of the path.

As she reaches her, Tiggy stops screaming. Instead she starts to shake uncontrollably before collapsing to her knees, sending more stones skittering over the side.

James moves past Amelia and throws an arm around Tiggy, pulling her gently back from danger. ‘Tiggy! What—’

Amelia sees it at the same time as James does. There’s no mistaking it’s a body, face down and trapped among the rocks in the inlet. Even from their vantage point high up on the hill, it’s obvious that it’s Giles, his T-shirt ripped across the back, a dark, open wound visible through the billowing fabric.

Is Giles . . . dead?

Tiggy starts to make a high-pitched keening sound as she rocks back and forth on her knees. ‘Oh my God,’ she wails. ‘No! We need to get down there . . .’

James tries to pull her back to the side of the hill. She’s still too close to the edge.

He turns to Amelia, his face ashen. ‘We need to call someone.’

‘I . . . I don’t have my phone. It’s in my bag. On the plane.’ Amelia takes a few careful steps back in the direction she came from, checking on the others. They are halfway up the rocks. Lucy is guiding Brenda by the elbow. Scott is slightly in front, his face pink with exertion. He’s practically on all fours, dragging his bad foot behind him.

She turns back to Tiggy and James. ‘Tiggy, do you have your phone? You said you had Wi-Fi earlier. Can we—’

‘Jesus, Amelia!’ James’s moment of calm has been replaced with panic. ‘Who can we call? We don’t have an emergency contact for this damn place.’

Amelia glances around. ‘There are probably cameras here, right? They can see us. Surely they’ll send help for us now. They can’t leave us like this. They can’t leave Giles—’

‘Aww, hell.’ Scott has made it over the last cluster of rocks and onto the cliff path, and he’s seen it straight away. ‘Is that . . . ?’ He doesn’t bother to finish. Just shakes his head. Then turns away, stretching out an arm and leaning towards the rocks, taking Brenda’s hand to help her make the last push onto the path beside him.

Lucy is right behind her. ‘What’s all the commotion here then?’ She makes the final scramble by herself. ‘Has Tiggy broken a nail?’

Amelia tips her head towards the inlet. ‘We, uh . . .’ She pauses. ‘We found Giles.’

Lucy casts her gaze down to where Amelia is gesturing, holding a hand up to her forehead to block the sun, which has sunk lower now. The day is running away from them faster than they can reach their destination.

‘Oh, shit,’ she says. ‘Now what?’

While the others stand in shocked silence, listening to Tiggy’s whimpering, Amelia is already thinking of the practicalities. This is not her first on-trip casualty. It’s not that she is a cold person, but she’s become slightly immune to death over the years. Working in places where death is as commonplace as running out of milk to make porridge for a hundred starving children, it becomes just another thing to deal with. To process and move on from.

She tried to explain this to her family once, and they said they understood – that her job must be so tough, and that she must need to deal with it this way – but her mum had come to her afterwards, as she was picking up her bag to leave for another trip, and told her that maybe she needed to talk to someone about all this. That it wasn’t normal to be so indifferent to death. Amelia hadn’t gone home much after that, instead choosing to spend time at friends’ houses when she wasn’t in some third-world country. Friends who’d seen the same as she had. Who understood.