The Last Resort(55)

‘Giles, Tiggy and now Brenda. We’re dropping like flies.’ Lucy’s voice is still wavering slightly. She’s embarrassed about her breakdown, after she’d told her story to Amelia and James. Thankfully, they were sympathetic – as much as they could be, under the circumstances. She’s been living with this for long enough. Having a couple of people know her secret doesn’t change it. It’s still a secret. It’s still the thing that coats her heart, making it impossible for her to form any kind of bond with anyone, or anything, ever again. She’d bought a dog – a small terrier cross-breed – thinking that having something in her house that relied on her might help her come to some sort of peace within herself. But the dog had seen right through her. Shied away from her touch. It was back in the dog’s home before the week was out, and she hadn’t even given it a name, other than ‘Dog’ – which to someone with a functioning heart might have come across as cute and ironic. But it just reminded her that she was too hardened to even find affection for an animal, much less earn any in return.

She looks around the cave at the sorry bunch she’s been lumbered with, and wonders what the point is anymore. She should walk out of here right now. Walk to the end of the island, where that crumbling lighthouse stands, and throw herself into the sea.

No one is going to mourn the death of a cynical, washed-up gossip columnist.

Amelia clears her throat. ‘Brenda is going to be fine.’

It’s obviously a lie. Brenda’s leg is festering before their eyes, and her temperature is so high Lucy can feel the heat radiating from four feet away.

She wants to say that she doesn’t think Brenda is going to be fine, and that neither are the rest of them, but she decides to change tack. ‘You know, I’m thinking we all need to sue the organisers of this thing. Once we get out of here. The invite said “luxury”, and here we all are, huddled together in a cave. Sheltering from the rain while one of us battles a serious infection. Two of our party are gone and we don’t know where . . .’

‘I think Giles and Tiggy are being looked after,’ James says. ‘I want to believe that, at least.’

‘It didn’t work out so well for anyone who went to Fyre Festival though, did it? Thousands of dollars for supposed luxury, but they ended up with collapsing tents, their belongings looted, barely anything to eat . . .’

‘We didn’t pay for this though, did we?’ Amelia says. ‘We were all willing to come here and be pampered for free. We’ve all got our reasons for being here. We all hoped to get something out of it.’

‘Sure,’ Lucy says. ‘I tried to check them out, remember? I told you all this. There was nothing on their website. Nothing at all in any search engines. It’s like Timeo doesn’t even exist, or if it does, they’re keeping themselves way below the radar—’

‘You saw the presentation.’ James raises his palms. ‘That’s the whole point of them. They make stuff and sell the copyright. They don’t want people to know who they are. These tech companies with all their innovations need to sell the dream that they’ve invented their own products. They assign credit to the people they want to assign it to – the people that are the best “fronts” for the company. In fact’ – he pauses, takes a breath – ‘I’m pretty impressed. All the things that Timeo has come up with—’

‘But how do we even know it’s true?’ Lucy says. ‘How do we know anything is true? You know . . . Giles looked pretty dead to me, lying face down in that inlet.’ She nods at Amelia. ‘But you say they told you on the beach that he was going to be looked after?’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t trust a word they say. They’ve forbidden us from sharing things with each other, unless on their say so, and now they’re picking us off, one by one . . .’

Brenda’s eyes fly open and she cries out in pain. Then she murmurs something, too quiet and garbled for them to make sense of. Her eyes close again.

‘Brenda?’ Amelia crouches again and wipes the woman’s brow. ‘Stay with us. We’ll be home soon.’ She turns round to the others. ‘Did anyone ask for help yet?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Amelia,’ Lucy spits. ‘No one is going to help us.’

‘OK, OK, let’s calm down,’ Scott says, limping back to the group and lowering himself to the ground. ‘I asked already. Didn’t you hear me over by the entrance?’ He taps his tracker and yells at the roof of the cave. ‘OK, guys, the fun’s over. Maybe you didn’t much like me cursing at you before, and I am real sorry about that, OK? But Brenda really needs your help. In fact, I think we all do. Can someone come and get us now? Please?’

Another scream of pain from Brenda, and she sits bolt upright. ‘The island! I remember, I remember. No, no, no, no, no! Cornwall – I was there . . . so long ago. On the news . . . a man died . . . a child gone. All the stories . . . scared. Everyone scared . . .’ Then she closes her eyes and collapses back onto the floor.

Amelia leans down and grabs her by the shoulders. ‘Brenda? What are you talking about? Are you OK? Answer me! I want to help you—’

‘Of course she’s not OK,’ Lucy says. ‘She’s got a fever that will probably kill her, if the infection doesn’t shut down her organs first. She’s out of her mind. She doesn’t know who she is, never mind who you are. Or where we are. Cornwall? We’re not in bloody Cornwall.’