The Island: The addictive new YA thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of STRANGERS

by C. L. Taylor

  He carefully clambers down the tree, listening for the sound of human voices, searching the darkness for danger, then he runs down the short stretch of path that leads to the camp. There’s no one there, no one on the beach either – or at least, not on the tiny sliver of beach he can see. He moves carefully over the sand, slowing his pace as the rocks rise up to meet him; huge, black, jagged boulders, slippery with seaweed and wet from the spray of the sea. He climbs slowly, carefully, trying to remember the route they’d taken to go fishing, gripping the slimy surface with his fingers and toes.

  As he reaches the highest point of the rock he blinks into the darkness. He can see the small stretch of sea that fills the tiny cove but there’s no sound of splashing and no one calling for help. Terror reaches its dark fingers into his heart and squeezes. Silence isn’t good. Silence means that whoever fell into the water isn’t going to make it out.

  Please, he prays. Please don’t let it be one of our group.

  Shaking with fear he carefully slides down the rocks, feet first, feeling around for flat planes.

  Maybe it wasn’t a person who fell, he thinks as he eases himself onto the next rock. Maybe whoever shouted threw something off the cliff?

  He extends his leg again, the screwdriver clamped between his teeth.

  And someone grabs hold of his foot.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Danny breathes, up to his chest in water. ‘Did you have to pull me in too? I nearly shat myself.’

  ‘I couldn’t risk you yelling.’ Jeffers, dripping wet and shivering, eases himself out of the water and onto the rock and then reaches out a hand.

  Danny takes it, then, breathing shallowly in short, sharp bursts, his heart thudding against his ribs, clambers up onto the rock beside him. He studies Jefferson’s pale, pinched face and feels an unusual rush of affection, all thoughts of the phobias gone. He’s never been so glad to see him. ‘I thought they’d got you.’

  ‘Same.’ Jefferson breaks eye contact and rubs his hands over his face. ‘Sorry, man,’ he says as he looks back at Danny.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Leaving you behind.’ He shakes his head ruefully. ‘The first rule of survival is to stick together but the adrenaline was pumping so hard I just… I…’

  Danny touches his wet sleeve. ‘It’s cool. Don’t beat yourself up.’

  ‘I am, though. What I did was cowardly. I tried to find you, once I’d shaken them off, but it was dark and…’

  ‘Honestly, man. It’s fine. We’re both OK. For now anyway.’

  They both sigh heavily and neither of them says anything for a couple of seconds. Danny stares out to sea. The sun is creeping over the horizon and there’s the tiniest sliver of orange light where the sky meets the sea.

  He glances up at the cliff face. ‘What happened up there?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure.’ As Jeffers runs a hand through his wet hair Danny notices there’s something different about him.

  ‘You’ve lost your glasses.’ He glances down into the dark sea. ‘I’d offer to look for them for you but…’

  ‘You wouldn’t find them anyway. I got whacked round the face by a branch as I was running and they came off. I didn’t have time to stop. I had to keep running.’

  ‘Why’d you jump? Off the cliff, I mean.’

  ‘I didn’t. After I gave those twats the slip I climbed a tree and—’

  ‘I did that too!’

  Jefferson grins then raises his hand for a high five. Danny slaps it.

  ‘So anyway,’ Jeffers continues. ‘I was camped out in a tree for a bit but I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d head back to the camp to see if the others were there.’ He shakes his head. ‘It had been trashed.’ He swears under his breath. ‘I grabbed some water and headed up to the cliff top instead, to wait it out until the sun came up. I had no idea the others were already there.’

  ‘Honor’s up there?’ Danny scrambles to his feet, puts a hand to his eyes to shield them from the sun and squints up towards the clearing.

  ‘I assume so. I could just about make out a big lump of bags and what looked like four people lying around them, I was going to wake someone up but I heard a noise, a rustling from a bush near the edge of the cliff. I thought it might be the brothers, preparing to ambush us so I went to investigate. I didn’t realize how close to the edge I was and I…’

  ‘Fell.’

  ‘I just…’ He shivers. ‘I plummeted into darkness. I thought I was going to die. I really thought that was it.’

  Danny’s blood runs cold as a memory of the first night on the island flashes up in his mind – Jefferson talking about heights and sharp drops and how much they scared him. That’s three now. First snakes, then spiders and now heights. Another phobia has come true. And whoever, or whatever, was rustling in the bushes made it happen.

  Chapter 21

  JESSIE

  Milo’s forearm presses against mine. His skin is warm and sticky with sweat. ‘Can you see anything?’ he asks.

  Honor, beside him, turns to look at me. ‘Are you sure it was Jefferson?’

  Meg sighs noisily. ‘There’s no one in the bush.’

  The questions and comments come thick and fast as I stare down from the cliff edge into the dark sea, searching the water for any sign of Jefferson. I’m lying on my stomach with Meg, Milo and Honor crowded close.

  ‘Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?’ Meg asks, on her hands and knees beside me. ‘I didn’t hear anything and I’m a light sleeper.’

  ‘No.’ I look at her. ‘Definitely not. There was someone up here, walking around the clearing. They heard the noise in the bush too. I thought it was one of the brothers and I was going to push him over the edge but then he spoke.’

  ‘Who spoke?’

  ‘Jeffers. It was him. I’m sure of it. I tried to grab him but he… I couldn’t. It was too late.’

  ‘But why would he jump off the cliff?’ Honor asks. ‘He hates heights.’

  ‘There!’ Milo hisses, pointing downwards. ‘I just saw movement. There are two people down on the rocks.’

  ‘Where?’

  I squint down at the dark mass that seems to loom out of the sea. There’s nothing there. Milo must be—

  ‘I see them!’ As the weak dawn sun lights up the edge of the rocks two shapes emerge from the gloom. ‘There! Right on the edge of the rocks, one standing, one sitting.’

  ‘Is it Jeffers and Danny?’ Honor asks.

  ‘Shout out their names!’ Meg says.

  ‘No!’ I hiss. ‘No one shout anything. We don’t know for sure that it’s them.’

  ‘I thought you said you were sure it was Jeffers.’

  ‘I was. But…’ I squint into the darkness, ‘what if I’m wrong? What if we shout and it’s Jack and Josh?’

  Milo makes a dismissive noise. ‘Screw it, I’m shouting.’

  But before he can, one of the people on the rock turns towards us and waves both arms.

  ‘It’s Danny,’ Honor breathes. ‘It’s definitely him.’

  Twenty minutes later we all crowd around Danny and Jeffers and hug the hell out of them as they emerge, puffing and panting, from the jungle.

  ‘Why are you wet too?’ Honor asks Danny.

  ‘Someone pulled me in with him!’

  ‘Sit down, sit down.’ Milo shepherds them towards the centre of the clearing where our bags are stacked. Jeffers hangs back.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I touch a hand to the damp sleeve of his T-shirt as he stares past the rucksacks to the cliff edge. ‘I’m so sorry. I tried to stop you, but by the time I realized it was you, it was too late.’

  ‘I thought I was going to die.’ He looks at me, his pupils huge and black despite the light creeping over the horizon.

  ‘Oh, Jeffers.’ I reach out and hug him, feeling his body trembling in my arms. Neither of us says a word for several seconds then he pulls away and runs his hands through his hair.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks. ‘They didn’t hurt you, did they? The
brothers. They didn’t…’ he tails off.

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Josh made some pretty nasty threats but Jack warned him off.’

  ‘Are you talking about who I think you’re talking about?’ Danny sidles up to us, his arm around Honor’s waist.

  ‘Do you think they’ve always been here?’ Honor asks. ‘Do you think they cut the boat cord and…?’ She shudders, ‘Did the thing with the spiders?’

  I shrug. ‘I don’t know. When I searched their boat all I found were little rucksacks, the sort you’d use for day trips. And they both looked really fresh – clean clothes, clean hair – they definitely didn’t look like they’d been here for a while.’

  Milo walks over to us too. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck then moves his head to the left then the right, stretching out the muscles at the top of his shoulders. He looks as tense and exhausted as I feel. ‘I think we should do what Meg suggested and take their boat.’

  ‘We can’t. I’ve already told you, they’ve got the keys.’ Milo looks around our small group. ‘There’s six of us and we’re armed now. Jeffers, have you still got your knife?’

  ‘Yep.’ He reaches down and pulls it out of the top of his boots.

  ‘I’ve got a screwdriver.’ Danny reaches into the deep pocket in his cargo shorts.

  ‘And we’ve got a fruit knife and two spears,’ Honor says.

  ‘Guys,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure about this.’

  ‘No one’s suggesting we kill anyone,’ Milo says. ‘We just want to scare them into handing over the keys.’

  ‘That’s assuming they’re still here,’ Jeffers says.

  We all look at each other. There’s only one way to find out.

  ‘It’s gone.’

  I don’t know whether I’m relieved or disappointed as we step out of the jungle onto the ‘new beach’ and stare out to sea. There’s no boat bobbing on the water. Other than two pairs of footprints that lead from the jungle to the sea, there’s no sign that Josh and Jack were ever here.

  ‘Well, I guess that’s that.’ Milo sighs heavily then drops onto the sand and stretches out his arms and legs as he stares up the sky. ‘We’re stuck here for another two nights.’

  Meg nudges him with the edge of her flip-flop. ‘At least no one got hurt.’

  As Honor and Danny wander towards the sea, and Meg makes noises about looking for fruit and heads back into the jungle with Jefferson, I plop myself onto the sand next to Milo. He turns to look at me.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Are you?’

  He smiles. ‘I asked first.’

  The truth is I don’t know how I feel. I’m glad there wasn’t a fight, but I can’t relax. I still feel on edge.

  ‘I just want to get off this island, Milo. I feel like something bad’s going to happen. First you fall into that pit, then Honor gets covered in spiders, then Jefferson falls off the cliff. He was lucky he landed in the sea, not on the rocks.’

  He flips onto his stomach and watches Meg and Jefferson as they disappear into the jungle. ‘Do you think my sister’s OK?’

  I follow his gaze. ‘I don’t think anyone’s OK.’

  ‘I just… I dunno. One minute she’s sniping at me, the next she’s acting all concerned.’

  ‘Isn’t that always the way it’s been between you?’

  ‘Well, yeah, pretty much. But something’s bugging her and she won’t tell me what it is. Whenever I try and talk to her she shrugs me off. Has she said anything to you?’

  ‘Not a word.’ This is probably where I should tell him what Jeffers and Danny told me, about Meg saying he’s still in love with his ex, but I don’t feel ready to have that conversation. Particularly not now, after the night we’ve all had.

  Instead I look towards the sea where Danny and Honor are walking hand in hand through the shallow water. ‘Honor’s so different when she’s with him.’

  Milo sighs. ‘He can’t see it but he’s smothering her.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s been very overprotective this holiday. Was he like this last year?’

  Milo nods. ‘Yeah, not quite this bad though.’

  ‘I keep seeing flashes of the old Honor,’ I say, ‘like when she wanted to play water polo back at the hotel, and earlier at the old camp, when she told you to shove your sexism up your arse.’

  Milo laughs.

  ‘But the rest of the time, when she’s with Danny, she’s irritated, quiet or weepy. Something’s not right but she won’t talk about it.’

  ‘Seems like we’re all keeping quiet about something.’

  ‘Are you?’

  He meets my gaze, his dark eyes serious and intense. His lips part, as though he’s about to say something then looks back at the sparkling sea. ‘Nah.’

  We lapse into silence for a few seconds then Milo says, ‘Are you sure that Jack and Josh haven’t been here the whole time?’

  ‘Pretty sure. Their clothes were really clean. They looked like they’d just arrived.’

  ‘But most of us have still got clean clothes in our rucksacks. We just haven’t been arsed to change into them. For all we know Dick One and Dick Two could have been camped out on the other side of the island.’

  ‘But we’d have seen them, wouldn’t we? If they’d arrived at the same time as us. Our camp was right on the beach. We’d have seen their boat.’

  ‘Not if we were in the woods with Anuman collecting fruit and chopping down trees for the shelter.’

  I consider it. We were probably setting up camp for a good two or three hours on the first day, but it does seem like a bit of a coincidence that that’s when they chose to arrive – in that tiny window of time when we couldn’t see them.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Say we go with that theory, that they camped on the other side of the island on day one. How do we know that’s not where they are now? With their boat?’

  ‘We don’t.’

  ‘Oh God.’ I sit up and rest my head in my hands. ‘So they could come back.’

  Milo props himself up on one elbow. ‘There is one way to test my theory.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘How much energy have you got?’

  I laugh dryly. ‘None. Why?’

  He nods his head towards the trees as Meg and Jeffers reappear with armfuls of coconuts, mangos and bananas. ‘What if you fill yourself up with some fruit?’

  ‘Milo! Stop being so obscure. What are you suggesting?’

  ‘That we go for a swim.’

  Chapter 22

  DANNY

  Danny throws an arm across Honor’s shoulders as they walk, side by side, along the shore, the waves lapping at their feet. Honor hugs herself tightly, but she doesn’t shrug him off. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

  She sighs deeply. ‘I just want to go home, Danny. I can’t take much more of this.’

  He squeezes her shoulder. ‘I know, but we’ll get through this together. Two more nights and they’ll send someone to look for us.’

  ‘Two more nights?’ She laughs dryly. ‘I don’t think I’ve slept properly since we got here. None of us have. I feel like a zombie.’

  ‘A beautiful zombie, though.’

  ‘Yeah. I really must get a selfie of my spotty, mosquito-bitten face for Instagram.’

  Now it’s Danny’s turn to sigh. He knows better than to argue the point, but it hurts to see her so utterly miserable. There was a time when just knowing she was going to see him in the evening was enough to stop her worrying about an exam or forget about a friend she’d fallen out with. But on the island nothing he does, nothing he says cheers her up. She’s by his side but, emotionally, she’s completely unreachable.

  ‘One day,’ he says, casting an arm wide, ‘all this will just be a memory. We’ve just got to get through the next forty-eight hours.’

  Honor stops walking and rubs a hand over her forehead. She moans softly.

  ‘What’s up?’ Danny asks.

  ‘I’ve got the most horrible headache. I left my sunglasses in the
first camp and the sun’s killing my eyes.’

  ‘I’ll go and get them for you, if you want.’

  ‘Would you?’ She smiles gratefully up at him.

  ‘Of course. Come on, let’s get you into the shade.’

  He feels something inside him lighten as they walk, hand in hand, over the hot sand towards the shade of the trees. She still needs him, she still appreciates him and he’s pretty sure she still loves him. Getting her sunglasses is nothing. He’d walk over hot coals if it made her smile.

  Danny stands waist deep in the sea and steadies himself. According to Jessie, the swim round the rocks to their first camp isn’t too arduous but he’s still nervous. He needs to swim far enough out that his feet won’t touch the floor. That wouldn’t worry him in a pool, or if he was surfing back in the UK, but there aren’t man-eating sharks off the coast of Cornwall. Anuman reassured them, on the boat over, that although bull and tiger sharks had occasionally been spotted in the Thai waters they preferred to stay at depth. But how deep was deep?

  ‘Danny!’ Jeffers comes running towards him, waving an arm. ‘If you’re going back to our old camp could you have a look in the boat to see if you can find any fishing hooks or twine?’

  ‘The boat? Anuman’s boat?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m going to set some animal traps and Meg’s up for a bit of fishing.’

  ‘But… but Anuman’s still in there.’

  Jeffers shrugs. ‘I know. Dan, it’ll be fine. There’s a sheet over him.’

  ‘But he’ll…’

  ‘Hold your nose then. Come on. Do it for her if no one else. She needs a decent meal.’ Jefferson inclines his head towards Honor, sitting with her back against a palm tree and her eyes shut.

  ‘OK, OK. I’ll do it.’

  ‘Good man.’

  As Jeffers ambles away Danny thumps himself on the chest with a clenched fist. Come on! You can do this, he tells himself. He thumps himself again then again, then he wades deeper into the water and begins to swim.

  He has to fight against angry currents that threaten to hurl him into the rocks but he makes it past successfully then swims his way into the shallows and lowers his feet onto the soft, fine sand and walks out of the sea and onto the beach.