Stranded

by Sarah Goodwin

  STRANDED

  Sarah Goodwin

  Copyright

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  Copyright © Sarah Goodwin 2021

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Sarah Goodwin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008467364

  Ebook Edition © September 2021 ISBN: 9780008467371

  Version: 2021-07-20

  Dedication

  To my parents, for believing I could do anything.

  Even (especially) when I didn’t agree.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Frozen to the bone, I stumble from the boat and look around me at the village. It’s not Creel, but some place exactly like it; houses tumbling like rocks down towards the hungry sea. Fishing boats and cracked concrete. I stand there, swaying slightly with the motion of the boat I’ve left behind. There’s no sound or movement from the houses.

  Somehow, despite coming so far, through so much, the idea of going up to one of the doors and knocking, being confronted by a stranger, has me frozen. What is waiting in those houses? Is there even anyone there?

  ‘Are you all right, Poppet?’

  I turn so fast I nearly fall over. On the doorstep of a tiny cottage is an old woman in a wool skirt and fluffy slippers. Her eyes are wide and she has a wire cage of milk bottles in one hand, her back still half stooped to put it on the doorstep.

  As I turn, her eyes fall to the strap of the rifle and she drops the bottles. They smash, throwing glass over the concrete step. Fear is etched on her face as I remove the rifle and lay it on the ground.

  I rise and glance down at my ripped and muddy clothing, hanging off my skeletal body. With effort I part my sticky, salt-crusted lips.

  ‘I need the police.’

  Chapter 1

  ‘Maddy?’

  I blinked, suddenly aware of how long it must have been since they’d asked the question I was fumbling to answer. I adjusted the laptop on my knees and looked at my image on screen. The fluorescent kitchen light made me look greenish on the rubbish webcam. My hair was ratty even though I’d brushed it out before the video call. My recent weight gain bloated my face like a toad. Had I not been blinking I might have looked dead.

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ I said. ‘What got me into botany, uh … Well, it was my dad really. He was a gardener. Not as his job. We had a garden – a vegetable garden.’ I was babbling, and I hated myself for it. On screen the woman interviewing me, Sasha, had a fixed smile on her face. She was in a glass cube of an office, crisp black suit jacket standing out against the white wall.

  I forced myself to take a breath. ‘My dad, he and Mum taught me at home. So everything I learned about biology, about plants, that came from him. He was very involved in his garden.’

  ‘So you were home-schooled? That’s quite unusual – were you ever at a … traditional school?’ she said, skipping over the word ‘normal’.

  I bit my lip. ‘Um, yes. I wasn’t home-schooled until I was eleven. Before then I went to the village primary school. After that everyone moved on to the secondary in town.’

  I remembered in vivid detail my first day at the big secondary school. The laughter at my cartoon-dog lunchbox, playmates melting away into the crowds, abandoning me in the new, bigger pond we found ourselves in. Girls much older than me with lipstick and cigarettes chasing me out of the toilets. I’d cried in the car all the way home. Mum had taken one look at me and gathered me up in floury arms.

  ‘There, what did I tell you?’ she’d said to Dad. ‘That place is far too rough for her.’

  Within a few weeks it was all arranged and I never went to school again. At the time I was glad, but later I wished I’d hidden my feelings better. Whenever I wanted to do something new, away from the house – Brownies, ballet, horse riding – Mum was quick to remind me what had happened ‘last time’. That incident gave her the last word in every argument.

  Sasha cocked her sleek blonde head to one side and frowned, designer glasses slipping down her nose. ‘Was there any specific reason? I think our viewers would be very interested to find out more about your background.’

  ‘Nothing specific,’ I said, mustering a smile. ‘They just didn’t like the school nearest us. Out that far in the country there aren’t many options.’

  ‘That must have made it hard, finding friends?’

  I sensed the danger I was in. To be chosen I had to be a joiner, an adventurous optimist with an ‘openness to new experiences and ideas’. It was on the website. I’d memorised it. This was not ‘joiner’ talk. This was too close to the truth.

  ‘Not really,’ I breezed, ‘it wasn’t that long until I went off to university and that was all very different. Exciting.’

  She smiled and I cringed internally. Yes, university had been different. I’d been on my own. No cosy night-time reading by the fire with Mum. No long walks with Dad and the dogs. Just music and celebrities I’d never heard of, wearing clothes decades too old for me and thinking nine at night was for bed and books, not shots and a staggering run for the bus to town.

  ‘You must be really close with your family,’ she said, as if she could see into my mind and read every one of those lonely nights on the phone to Mum. ‘Will you miss them, while you’re away?’

  ‘No … I mean, obviously I will, but … it’s fine.’ I forced myself not to look at t
he lone card on my bookshelf. The one drooping lily on it and the slightly cross-eyed dove conveying the deepest sympathies of my manager and a handful of colleagues. ‘The, uh, website said the show is about the end of the world – how does it end in the version you’ve dreamt up? Does the country get bombed or is there a famine, a war?’

  Sasha smiled. ‘That’s actually one of the questions I was going to ask you. We’re deliberately leaving it open-ended, to provoke discussion amongst the contestants. There are so many things happening in the world right now. Everyone has their own theories about the end of the world. What do you think it will look like?’

  At the back of my throat was a sour taste. My world, such as it was, had already ended.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe … Well, I did one of my dissertations on the dangers of monocultures. If we grow exclusively one type of plant and a pest arises that decimates it, that could spell disaster for our food supply.’ I saw her eyebrows go up and immediately wished I’d said something less textbook. ‘But I’d have to go with zombies,’ I added, hastily, with a little laugh. ‘I think most people would be disappointed if the apocalypse came and it didn’t somehow feature zombies.’

  She laughed and I breathed a sigh of relief, slowly, so it wouldn’t be obvious on camera.

  ‘So, what are you most looking forward to, should you get chosen to take part in The Last Refuge?’

  This time my answer was genuine, unconsidered. ‘The escape.’

  From my life, my grief, from myself.

  I just had to get away.

  *

  When the email came to tell me I’d been accepted my first reaction was disbelief. When that wore off I cried even as my heart raced with excitement. I was getting what I wanted. What I needed. I was getting away.

  I went to a new doctor for a letter to say I was healthy enough to take part in the show. I was, aside from the therapy I was avoiding and the tablets I had to take, but she didn’t have to know about that. Then I was up to London for official interviews, the kind that would be on television when the rest of the show aired. They had someone do my hair and makeup. Sasha asked me questions; apparently they hadn’t hired a presenter to do that part yet. That felt like an oversight, but what did I know? Anyway, I didn’t want to think about the end product too much. I wanted to be on that island. What came after, the broadcast, the interviews, returning to my life; I didn’t want to think about it.

  We’d be going to the island in two groups, boys and girls. That’s what Sasha called us. Boys and girls. Like we were kids off on a Famous Five adventure. I didn’t say that, though. Sasha didn’t look like the kind of person to remember Enid Blyton.

  I met my three travelling companions at Glasgow station. I was already exhausted from dragging my laden bags across the country. We’d been told to expect some building supplies on the island and tools as well as food caches. It wasn’t until I’d been tipping botany books and rolls of toilet paper into my bag that I’d realised how little I could actually take with me.

  I paused a short way from the meeting place – a taxi rank under a plastic shelter. There were three women already there, dressed similarly to me and carrying the same bulging bags of stuff. Two appeared older than me, the third was younger, glued to an iPhone. My first instinct was to turn around and run away. After my long journey these would be the first people I had to make conversation with. We were going to be sharing an island, a home, for almost a year. My anxiety levels skyrocketed, and I had to force myself to walk towards them, feeling again like it was my first day of school.

  ‘Are you with us?’ trilled the first of them to spot me. She had streaky hair clipped short with a long fringe. Her skin was wrinkled and deeply tanned, her smile glistening with pearly pink lipstick. She kissed me on each cheek. ‘We were starting to think you’d never get here, weren’t we, ladies?’

  ‘Sorry. The coach got delayed. Roadworks.’

  ‘Ah, we all came by train. I’m Gill, by the way – and you are?’

  ‘Maddy,’ I said, feeling already like I’d disappointed in some way.

  I guessed Gill was in her forties, yet she seemed much younger and livelier than me despite being over a decade older. She spoke loudly, not caring that people nearby were staring. She was also cheerfully ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ sign in the shelter.

  ‘This is Maxine and Zoe,’ Gill said, gesturing with her cigarette and sending ash scattering over the bag I’d just put down. ‘Maxine’s a retired teacher and Zoe’s from India.’

  ‘County Kerry actually,’ Zoe said, raising an eyebrow.

  Gill bared her teeth in a smile. ‘I’ll see about getting us a taxi, hmm?’

  As Gill bustled off, Maxine stepped forward with a small smile. She was slightly older than Gill, maybe early fifties. She had straight grey hair and a fleece jacket that sported embroidered badges. She shook my hand and I felt the roughness of her palm, smelled a wisp of lavender. She reminded me instantly of Mum.

  ‘Cold, isn’t it?’ she said, glancing up at the forbidding grey sky. ‘I packed thermals, but I didn’t think I’d need them before we got to the island.’

  ‘It’ll be colder by the sea,’ I said. ‘Still, at least there we can light a fire. Can’t really do that in the middle of the station.’

  Zoe snorted a laugh and shoved her phone into her pocket. ‘Can you imagine, busting out the marshmallows by the loading bay?’ From her bag she pulled out a jumbo pack of fluffy white marshmallows and waved them at me. ‘Housewarming present,’ she said, grinning. I smiled back.

  She was a few years younger than me, probably early twenties, and wearing a bright silk head wrap, thick-rimmed glasses and a nose ring. I guessed she was a student or artist. She packed the sweets away and offered her hennaed hand. I shook it, already feeling overwhelmed by her effortless style.

  Gill came blaring back into view, hands cupped around her mouth. ‘Over here! Bring my bag!’

  We traipsed over and found her still haggling with a minicab driver. Apparently our destination was not somewhere he cared to go. I couldn’t blame him. On the map the village of Creel was just a dot and a name, about as far west from Glasgow as it was possible to get without a boat. Eventually, whether because of Gill’s cajoling or the growing number of crumpled notes we managed to find in our luggage, the driver agreed to take us. We piled into the car, squashed between our bags. Maxine offered round some sherbet lemons and we left the station behind.

  ‘I wonder what it’s going to be like, out there,’ Zoe said, after taking a few selfies in the taxi. ‘Tell you one thing, I’m starting to regret bringing a bikini.’

  I noticed Maxine’s part surprised, part scornful look at that. A bikini on a Scottish island – not much use unless global warming really upped its game in the coming months. Still, Zoe didn’t seem to be taking herself too seriously as she said it.

  ‘What I want to know is, when do we meet the boys?’ Gill said. ‘Where’s their boat leaving from?’

  ‘No idea,’ Maxine said. ‘I imagine somewhere just up the coast from where we’re going. I don’t really see the point. We’re all going to the same place.’

  ‘It’s fun though, isn’t it? Not knowing who’s going to be there,’ Zoe said. ‘I hope they’re nice. Not too blokey or anything.’

  ‘Blokey enough to build a house though,’ Gill put in. ‘I’m not really into camping out for a whole year.’

  ‘Are you sure you picked the right show?’ Maxine asked, sounding mostly playful.

  ‘Oh, I like the outdoors. I love gardening and soaking up the sun, but give me four solid walls and a floor over a nylon bag any day,’ Gill said.

  ‘I love camping. Been to Glasto four times and it’s so nice to not be worried about all that domestic stuff – just mud and glitter and a pint of cider,’ Zoe giggled. ‘What about you, Maddy?’

  I blinked, surprised to be pulled so directly into their conversation. I’d been quite happy listening and watching the world scroll by.

 
‘Oh … I like camping. I used to go with my parents when I was younger. You get a lot of reading done, when there’s no distractions.’ We always went out of season to save money. Even if there were other kids around, Mum would forbid me from following them to the play area or pool. She wanted me close by; there was no telling what might happen if I went off alone.

  The three of them chatted as we drove. The air in the back of the cab grew warm and humid as their breath fogged up the windows. The driver turned the radio up every ten minutes or so, glancing back at them in the mirror with a deeper frown each time. I rested my forehead on the chilly glass and closed my eyes.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Freezing out here,’ Zoe said, pulling her oversized army surplus jacket more firmly around her. ‘Where’s this boat at then?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ I said. ‘Maybe they’re late?’

  Zoe produced her iPhone. Its case was layered with charms. ‘No missed calls.’

  I pulled a concerned face and looked out to sea again. No sign of a boat or of anything else on the horizon. It was half an hour past the time the letter from the production company said to be there. I was already cold down to my bones. I wondered if the other four prospective islanders had been collected yet. Had they already set foot on the unmarked sand of our deserted home?

  Glancing at the others I saw that Gill was still chain-smoking, drumming her foot. Maxine had a brand-new-looking thermos and was sipping something.

  I put down my holdall by the iron railings at the edge of the seafront. As I leant over to get a good look at the churning sea, I noted the fucus vesiculosus, aka bladder wrack. A dark seaweed with large blisters on it. At least we’d not starve. Even if the idea of eating the stuff made me shudder.

  As expected, Creel seemed to be a fishing village. Even to call it a village was pushing it; five weather-beaten houses leaning together around a cobbled square with a concrete ramp down to the sea. Two of the houses had ‘For Sale’ signs in the windows that looked homemade and had been bleached by the sun.

  Despite the weathered buildings and the absence of life, I liked the place. It felt wild and semi-reclaimed by the sea. Even the concrete front was weathered and pitted from storms. It was as if these houses and this small bit of harbour had been left behind and the waves were stealing it back with hungry fingers of foam.