Beti clears the table of the remains of my food. She hasn’t stopped moving.
‘So I trained my students in boatbuilding, and island survival. I bought what I needed and prepared. I researched uninhabited islands extensively, found this atoll in the South Pacific – perfect if Wildhaven became unsafe – and managed to make a trip out here. The day you and Poppy arrived, I had already asked Nygard to leave Wildhaven, yet there he was, again. The research was ours, but the running of Wildhaven and welfare of the candidates was my responsibility. He didn’t need to be there any more.
‘I went to the lab the day after you arrived, and found Nygard had collected vast banks of blood samples I knew nothing about. The lab was always his domain, the camp was mine, but I should have watched him more carefully. He’d been taking extra during routine checks for months. I destroyed them all, cleared the lab. I was now sure Nygard wanted to use your samples for something. He needed more, and he was going to find a way to get more. I had to get you to the atoll cleanly, quickly, before he could suspect anything. So I used the gas on the boat and you were dropped into the sea. I’m sorry it was so – distressing.’
‘I thought you were killing us,’ I blurt out, the harshness in my voice taking me by surprise. ‘Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing, that we needed to get away from him?’
‘Because if even one of you refused to leave, the whole project would be at risk.’
It’s so insane, I don’t even know what to say next.
‘So you discovered a cancer vaccine therapy and you used it on us, then destroyed it?’ I say, becoming more confused by the second.
‘Oh no. I have backed up all my research. I will go back to it, once enough time has passed to be sure of results.’
‘So we might still get cancer?’ I say.
‘The chances are infinitesimal. But to have any credibility, the study needs time.’
I grind my teeth. My aunt is ill. She’s suffering from a psychological illness, some sort of God complex. I press my thumb into the skin between the thumb and forefinger of my opposite hand until it hurts. I need to focus. She said she could get me to Poppy.
‘And you did all this by yourself ?’ says Beti.
‘Before we left Wildhaven I shared what was going to happen with a few of the oldest students, who helped.’
Beti stops sweeping and stares at the ground.
‘So why not simply sail to the island in the boat? Why the crazy life jackets?’ I say.
Iona nods. ‘Nygard was away on business for a week, but I knew he would come looking for us the moment he found out we were gone. The boat would have been detectable by plane. Jonathan is a very clever man and I had to be sure we weren’t followed, so I sailed to the island, and sunk the boat. I’d commissioned the life-saver jackets the same time I found the island; they were prototypes with a motor and sensing system to tow you to shallow waters. I rigged you to life support and released you, unconscious. You’d be impossible to trace that way.’
I look down at the marks on the inside of my wrists from the tubes, already scabbed over. Life support.
I stare at Iona. I was mistaken in ever thinking she was anything like my mum.
‘So you planned for everyone to live here. How long for?’ I say.
Iona raises one shoulder. ‘The atoll should be able to support us indefinitely. But I’d been thinking we could stay here for two, maybe three years.’
‘And if we want to leave, we’ll have to build a boat from what we have here?’
Iona nods.
I look down at the jellyfish stings across the back of my hands. When I straighten my fingers it tingles like sunburn and I remember the pain, my silent screams into the sea. I thought I was dying. For the second time.
We’re in the South Pacific, possibly thousands of miles from anywhere, no phones, no civilization. This atoll is her little cancer-free Eden.
‘Poppy and I did not consent to any of this,’ I say, my voice rising again.
Iona pauses. ‘I didn’t have time to explain everything to you, with the way Jonathan was behaving,’ she says, then meets my eyes, ‘but I knew it was what your mum would have wanted.’
My nails gouge into my palms. I want to scream at her, to lash out. She has no idea what Mum wanted, she wasn’t even there at the end. Another realization strikes me hard, cranking my heart rate and snatching my breath.
‘If you had this cure, this therapy, then why didn’t you treat Mum?’ I say.
‘The genes can only integrate into the cells before the cancer has taken hold. We hadn’t begun developing a treatment for existing sufferers, but it was going to be our next step. I believe it can be done, one day.’
I breathe through my nose. Bring the focus back to Poppy.
‘You can definitely get us to the others, to Poppy?’ I say, quietly. I hold my aunt’s gaze, her deep-set eyes, so like my little sister’s.
Iona lowers her chin and her mouth forms a determined line. ‘It’s my absolute priority.’
We nod at each other, then I look away.
‘Are you ready to tell us what happened to you?’ says Iona, gently.
I recall the indentations across the boy’s chest, behind his ears, opening to breathe seawater. I look out at the lagoon and wish they could see him for themselves. I remember swimming to the mangrove island, cutting my knee, the shark.
Sea Boy.
I take a deep breath.
‘. . . and the boy . . . he could breathe underwater. Through gills.’ I catch Iona and Beti’s expression. I’m babbling now, but I can’t stop. ‘He couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe on land. He bandaged my knee with seaweed stuff. He rode a . . . a manta ray . . .’
I falter. It sounds ridiculous. Iona slowly nods.
‘The sting toxin had a strong hallucinogenic effect. Combined with the shock of what you’ve seen . . .’
Iona doesn’t believe me.
‘The boy wasn’t a hallucination! He swam with his feet together, a dolphin kick, he wore rags but had spears and knives. I met him way before I even saw a jellyfish, before I was stung,’ I say, my words garbling together. The heat in my cheeks travels to my chest as I imagine how I must sound.
Sea Boy held me down beneath the jellyfish. If I hadn’t escaped him, I would have drowned. But I suspect he got me back to the island somehow, because how did I get back otherwise?
Did he bring Callum back too? Could he have had something to do with his death?
‘Jellyfish toxins are agonizing. Extreme pain can cause a break from reality, a state of delirium. Plus you’ve been under incredible stress, were dehydrated, possibly suffering from exposure—’
I release a barking laugh as I remember thinking the same things myself when I saw the boy’s impossible face through the water. I force my voice to be calm although I feel panic rising.
‘You have to believe me. Look,’ I say, lifting my knee. The cut is sealed and there’s no sign of how deep it was, or the sticky seaweed. The mark is almost lost in the scrawled purple stings all around it.
Iona meets my eyes and her sympathetic look makes my heart thump against my ribs.
She’s making out I’m crazy? She’s the one who experimented on us, who knocked us unconscious and brought us to the middle of nowhere. And now Callum is dead. If Callum can be dead then Poppy—
Don’t think it.
I pull down the neck of my swimsuit, ‘The boy’s gills were here,’ I say, tracing a shaking finger between my ribs, then behind my ears. ‘I saw them, up close, I know I did.’
Iona tries to take my hand but I snatch it away.
‘Aster – it seems likely that you and Callum were together when he was attacked, as his injuries were in the places you describe. One way for the brain to process a traumatic incident is to frame it in a fantastical way. His injuries were unusual, possibly made by a clawed animal. When you start to remember—’
‘I do remember. We weren’t together, I told you what happened. I know
where his injuries were,’ my voice hisses between my teeth, ‘because I saw him on the beach.’
I stare at Iona, then close my mouth. ‘I want to see him now.’
‘You were unconscious through the whole evening and night and most of today. We’ve already buried him, Aster,’ says Iona.
I stand abruptly, and sway, light-headed. This is my fault. I should have listened to Poppy. Why couldn’t I see there was something wrong about that camp, about what Iona was doing? I remember the glove I found in the crevice on the mangrove island and check my waist. I’m not even wearing the belt. I’m in the beige shorts and T-shirt from the first day.
‘I found a glove – on the small island . . .’ I trail off. Is there any chance she could be right, that I hallucinated all this?
Iona shakes her head, ‘I haven’t seen a glove, Aster. I’m sorry.’
She really does look sorry. Sorry for me. I can’t trust her, so I can’t trust Poppy is safe.
My breath hitches in my throat. The hissing sound fills my ears. The beach blurs, but a bright rim of light glows around Iona.
The urge to escape overwhelms me. This is the panic coming, but even as I recognize it, I can’t control it. There is nowhere to go. I want home. I need my mum.
Fear descends too fast. My heart pounds in my ears, and against my skull.
I lean over with my hands on my thighs, counting out loud through numb lips. I can’t get enough air in through my nose. Iona is talking but I can’t hear her. I stagger back, knocking into the table. My desperation to prevent the panic attack brings it on more quickly. Paralyzing, unfocused fear mounts with the inevitability of water building against a bulging dam. My palms are slippery with sweat.
All sound fades, replaced by an oxygen tank hiss inside my head.
Mum. The hospital. The hiss. I need it to stop, but I know what it means when it does.
Not enough . . . air. Every muscle trembles.
I have to find shelter. Dark. I give in to the flight response and I sprint.
The sand flicking up behind me hits the back of my legs and I’m overwhelmed by the terror that someone is chasing me down.
My field of vision narrows, my throat closes. I can’t breathe. I’m dying. This is how my full panic attacks feel – I know that – but I can’t convince myself that I’ve been through this before and survived. This time feels different, worse. I tell myself it always feels worse, but there’s a vicious war raging in my mind, and reasonable thought is collateral damage.
I slam into the rocks at the west end of the beach and collapse against them, gasping. The world spins and bile burns the back of my throat. I find a crevice and squash into it, rolling myself into a ball, rocking back and forth in the tiny amount of space it allows me. I press my fingers to my lips, but there’s no feeling there. My heart batters my ribcage, struggling, jumping. My body is failing me. I’m not dying – yet the larger part of me believes I am. The noise in my ears rises to a scream, but over it I hear a voice.
‘Aster, listen to me. Concentrate on my voice.’
I try to focus on the sound, vaguely aware I am whimpering.
‘Look around you, touch the rock, listen to the sea.’
I do as Iona says, running my hypersensitive fingertips over the rough boulder. It brings me back enough that I can start to count my breaths. Three in. Six out.
The noise in my head fades. My senses are so heightened I hear Iona’s lips moving as she counts with me. Sensation tingles into my own lips again. Like a cat that has finished toying with a mouse, the fear releases me and I become aware of my surroundings. I’m jammed into a crevice like a cornered fox. A cold, damp blanket of shame settles over me. Callum is dead because he swam after me. This place isn’t safe; I have to get to Poppy. They won’t believe me about Sea Boy. Why would they?
‘I’ll give you some space.’
The sand scrunches beneath Iona’s bare feet as she walks away.
I shiver in the aftermath of the adrenaline, a metallic taste in my mouth. I’m a wreck of what I used to be. A liability with my paranoia, anxiety and panic attacks. I can’t even think about my mum. Maybe Poppy is better off on the other island without me.
The last time I spoke to Callum he was sitting on the cool sand in the moonlight. He had hinted that he’d follow Iona anywhere, but in reality, he had no one else and nowhere else to go.
Iona might have got consent from the others, but Iona didn’t give any of us a real choice.
That thought reignites my anger and jerks me out of self-pity.
I’m all Poppy’s got and this place might look beautiful, but it is dangerous, deadly. We are both here because I didn’t listen to my sister and I will not let her down again.
Sam finishes his lunch break and unlocks the door to the mountain bike shop. He’s picked up some extra shifts during the holidays and has been left alone for a few hours while his boss runs some errands. Tuesday is a quiet day and he’s spent most of the morning watching reviews of the latest bikes on his laptop. He enters the shop and stops still. It looks just as he left it, bikes lined up along the front window, accessories on wall brackets, everything in its place. Yet something is different. A breath of breeze touches his face although the front door is closed behind him. The door to the stockroom sways. Did he leave the back door open? It only leads to a tiny yard containing the bins, his boss keeps it locked, and the keys are in the till.
Sam’s muscles tense and an electric feeling passes over his skin.
‘Jake?’ He calls his boss’s name, not liking the quaver in his voice. No answer. The stockroom door swings again.
If there’s someone out there, Sam knows he should leave and call the police. He grips the phone in his jeans pocket and strides over to the till, eyes still on the door. Jake could have forgotten to close the back door earlier. No big deal, in a minute he will laugh about how jumpy he got over nothing.
The till is closed, as he left it.
Gripping his phone like a lifeline, Sam pushes open the door to the stockroom and switches on the light quickly, like he did when he woke up as a kid, scared of the dark. The white glow from the fluorescent strip floods the room. Sam sighs. The back door is swinging.
This isn’t right.
Sam looks closer. There’s a large gouge out of the wood next to the lock. The doorframe is splintered. Someone was in here.
Sam spins around. There’s no one here now. Everything looks the same as when he tidied it before lunch. They could still be out the back. Prickles travel down his neck, he wants to run. He grabs a spanner.
‘Hello?’ he says.
What is he doing? Greeting the burglar? He knows he should run straight out the front of the shop, but he grips the cold metal of the spanner out in front of him and steps forward to the damaged back door. He kicks it wide open, hurting his toe through his Converse. The door slams against the wall. He waits. Trembling. Nothing. He peers around the door. Nothing in the yard. Bins, cardboard.
‘They’re gone. They’re gone,’ he whispers to himself, his heart rate slowing.
Sam’s hands shake as he surveys the splintered door and doorframe.
He calls Jake. Leaves a message, babbling, not really aware of what he is saying. He calls 111 and asks for the police. When they assure him someone is on their way, he surveys the stockroom. There really is no evidence anyone has been in here, nothing stolen, nothing knocked off the racks. He turns back to the door. It doesn’t look like they even attempted to pick the lock, simply levered it open with a tool, cracking both the door and the frame open.
Sam imagines the force, determination and planning required to do that and feels sick. He walks back into the shop and as he passes the counter he stops. His laptop was under there.
Sam knows before he looks. His laptop, stowed on the narrow shelf under the counter, out of sight, is gone. He runs his hand beneath the counter and checks the drawers beneath, although he knows exactly where he left it.
Sam’s laptop is
the only thing that has been taken.
The police say the break-in seemed professional, even though there were thousands of dollars’ worth of bikes ripe for the picking, and they only took his old laptop.
Whoever did it only wanted that one item. They targeted Sam.
Nygard must have sensed Sam was holding something back. He was desperate to find the people from the camp.
Was he that desperate?
But who else could it be? If this was Nygard, he’ll see Sam’s browsing history and know Sam’s been researching him. Sam took out the girl’s memory card and left it at home. Nygard won’t know he has the photos or the phone.
The doctor didn’t seem like the type to do something like this, but if those kids were in danger and he really had lost the research for a cancer cure then Sam guessed that would be reason enough to steal a laptop. He hadn’t hurt anyone, hadn’t even caused much damage.
Sam waits outside the shop as the police officer finishes dusting for fingerprints.
He could never tell the police about Nygard, Iona Wright, the girls, the camp, and he can’t accuse Nygard directly. It would sound paranoid and crazy, he has no real evidence . . .
He desperately wants to speak to Granda. Sam is about to call his mobile, but sees four missed calls from his mum so he calls her instead. She doesn’t answer right away.
Mum answers. ‘Sam, thank goodness. Don’t panic, but Granda is in the intensive care unit. We’re at the hospital.’
Iwalk along the shallows of the lagoon, paddling my feet, scooping up water to splash on my arms and cool off. This morning’s work on the sailing canoe was heavy going; we had to drag the last of the timbers we need from inland, and my back and legs ache.
We started working on the sailing canoe right away, the night after my panic attack. In the last few days we’ve collected all the timber we need and the skeleton of the craft is built. I avoid meeting Iona’s eyes, and speak to her only when I have to. I blame myself for Callum, but she’s to blame for this whole mess. It’s awkward because we need to make the boat together, live in this deserted place, together. So I tell myself to be quiet, don’t think, try not to feel, do the work, find Poppy.
Secret Deep Page 11
