‘What will you do when you get home?’ Sasha had asked. ‘Do you have any plans for what comes next, after the show?’
I didn’t even have plans for once the interviews were over. There was nothing for me to do except go home and wait. What would I do when it was all over, when I had nothing to wait for?
‘I don’t know, is the honest answer,’ I’d said, too tired and stressed to concoct a lie. ‘I hope I’ll come out of this … different, somehow. Maybe I’ll learn something about myself. Maybe I’ll have made some new friends. I think what I most want is to learn to be kinder – to not judge myself so harshly, to not assume the worst. Mostly, I’m looking to find myself.’
I’d looked away from the camera to find Sasha checking her phone, not listening.
It was over.
*
The day I saw the plane debris and medical stuff wash up on the beach, I’d realised there was a chance the others might return to the island. If the outside world was damaged enough for crash debris and bloody gauze to be bobbing in the sea, the others might start to miss the island, their last refuge. As the idea had taken root, I’d started to imagine what that might mean. The danger that would bring for me.
There was no fighting them, I’d proven that. There were more of them and they were stronger than me. No. I had to remember Auntie Ruth’s advice: get back at them, better and smarter than they got at you. I had to be clever. That was the only way to save myself. I had to stop them before they could hurt me.
I don’t know which one of us had the idea. I was sitting at the table, eating my evening meal. The firelight made the bottle of brandy glow. I’d not done anything with it. The idea of making tinctures had sort of faded from my mind. But looking at it then, I thought I heard a whisper, a sigh from the shadows.
‘There,’ I said, and realised I was holding the bottle. ‘I said this would be useful.’
I’d accidently poisoned the others once, after all. I could do it again. Purposefully.
I went into the woods the next day to hunt out the plants I habitually ignored. The poisonous cousins and sisters of things I ate every day. I crushed each one with a stone and steeped them in a pot of brandy. A veritable witch’s brew: adder’s root, avenging angel, deadly nightshade, devil’s bread.
After a few days I strained out the wilted plants and funnelled the liquid back into the bottle. Once I’d done that I just kept it on the table. Anyone going into the hut couldn’t fail to notice it. I’d trusted greed, luck and the witch to do the rest.
I picked up the fallen rifle and took Andrew’s seat with it across my lap. I felt Duncan’s eyes on me the whole time. When I looked up I saw he was sweating, eyes bulging. It looked like he was trying to move but his legs weren’t obeying him. He was breathing hard, afraid.
I wasn’t sure how I’d expected to feel. Perhaps I’d thought the sight of him being scared of me would feel … empowering. Mostly I was just tired, now that the danger had lessened somewhat. Tired and oddly sad. I let out a steadying breath.
‘We should have some time to talk,’ I said. ‘Depending on how much you had.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Not much. Just poisoned a bottle of brandy. Waited.’
‘Poisoned it with what?’ he asked, voice rising an octave or so.
‘A few things.’ At the sight of his widened eyes, I relented. ‘Principally hemlock. It causes ascending paralysis, among other things. Right now you can’t move your legs; soon, your arms and then your respiratory system will shut down and you’ll suffocate … like Andrew. There’s some other stuff in there, should make it pretty quick.’
‘You can fix it?’
‘… No. Even if I wanted to there isn’t anything I could do for you here.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ I was on my feet before I knew it, holding the rifle so tightly it hurt my hands. ‘Why? Seriously? Because you tried to kill me. Because you buried me alive. How about because after everything, you thought you could trick me into helping you cover up what you did. And then what? You’d shoot me in the back of the head and bury me too. Why,’ I scoffed. ‘Jesus, do you honestly have no idea?’
‘You killed Shaun, that’s why we shut you away. You crazy bitch.’
‘Do you really believe that I killed him? That he didn’t just fall?’ It had not occurred to me before that Duncan might seriously believe I had done it deliberately. ‘It’s just the two of us, and you’ll be dead in a few minutes so … no point in lying. Not now,’ I said, as gently as possible.
His face creased and I watched as his eyes welled with frightened tears. He didn’t say anything but shook his head. No, he didn’t think I’d murdered Shaun.
‘So why? Why did you tell them I did? Why did you do it? Any of it?’
He shook his head harder but said nothing. Whether he could speak I didn’t know. Gurgling sobs escaped him, spit bubbles bursting between his lips.
‘We didn’t really talk much, not as friends, equals. The thing is, I came here, to this island because I didn’t like my life. I didn’t like myself. Couldn’t forgive myself. I wanted to be better, kinder … happy.’
Duncan spluttered and tipped over, falling partway off the bed. His head lolled towards the floor.
‘For a while I thought nothing would help. I felt all this guilt over one horrible, cruel accident. But … the thing is, all the terrible things that happened, all the things you did, the things that happened to me – I know now it wasn’t my fault, it was out of my control. And “happy”, what is that exactly? There’s contentment, safety, comfort. But happiness? I don’t think it’s real, not like those other things. Or maybe they just matter more. As for kindness … Well. There were a lot of things I could have put in that bottle. Things like what one of you gave those camera guys. Things that would have had you liquefying from the inside out. But despite everything you did … I made it painless, as painless as it could be.’
His breathing rattled against the dirt floor, stirring the dry ferns. I waited and eventually it stopped entirely. Then everything was still and quiet. I closed my eyes and let out a breath that had been stagnating in my lungs. After setting the rifle aside I got to my feet and found that my legs were shaky. I felt as though I’d taken a few swigs from the brandy bottle myself.
I got my water bottle and drank deeply, suddenly aware of the dryness in my mouth. Slowly it began to sink in that I’d killed two people. Although I told myself that I hadn’t made them drink the brandy, it made little difference. I’d poisoned Andrew and Duncan, then watched them die. I would have to carry that. I wondered if I could, if I would crack. Only time would tell. Then again, perhaps I had cracked already.
‘Perhaps.’
I turned at once. The voice was not my own, but it was clear, close and very real.
Behind me stood the witch, fully and in the flesh. She wore black for the occasion. With her came the bitter, graveyard smell of yew and ivy. My first feeling on seeing her wasn’t fear, or even concern. It was relief. The others were dead, but I wasn’t alone. She was with me.
‘And so it ends,’ she said in her crow-like voice.
‘I should bury them.’
‘Not with the others.’
‘No … Somewhere else … somewhere hidden,’ I said, already knowing exactly where.
She nodded approvingly, knowing my intent. I noticed for the first time that she was wearing a necklace: a holed stone on a length of grey wool. The necklace I’d made to remember the island by, months ago. Where it was now I had no idea. Perhaps I’d lost it when I fled the beach, or it rotted off in the cave. Wherever it was, I didn’t need it. I would never forget the island, or anything that had happened there.
But I was going to leave.
I dragged both bodies outside. They were too heavy to take far but the place I had in mind was workable. It had long since become dark outside. After building a small fire to see by I started to dig a hole. A pit, right under the compost heap.
‘Will you go now?’ she asked from behind me.
‘I have to. The truth needs to get out, and I’m the only one that can tell it.’
Her cloak was green as the leaves, the hood pushed back. Beneath it her face was comfortingly familiar, and the mouth curved in an approving smile.
It was my own.
Epilogue
I pause to take a sip of water. It tastes of pipes and dead, cold steel. I’d never realised that water had a taste before. Having drunk from streams and rain, from dripping roots and wet rocks, I can now identify water as others do coffee or wine.
Rosie says nothing. Throughout the studio there’s no sound at all. At some point all the milling figures paused and then remained rooted. I put the glass down and shift in my seat. As if released from a spell Rosie blinks and glances towards the cameras and their mute, motionless operators.
It felt the same way the first time I told my story, to a policewoman in the back of an ambulance. The same silence, the shock and unnatural stillness of those who don’t know how to react or what to say. Then came the stream of meetings with a solicitor, more questions, more interviews.
I kept things vague on the subject of Andrew and Duncan. Though I didn’t lie outright. I tempered the truth with ignorance and seasoned it with innocence. I said only that they returned to the island, that I found their boat and escaped. No one asked what happened between those two events; finding the boat and leaving on it. No one thought of them as separate things at all.
They looked for them, obviously. Sent boatloads of police and dogs to Buidseach to sniff them out. I was even slightly worried for a while, but the witch has a grip on that place. A way of keeping her secrets. They found no trace of them. In the end they assumed they’d tried to swim for it and drowned. It was suicide to attempt it, after all.
During the investigation the other bodies on the island were exhumed. Once the police had remains, they set their sights on someone to blame. They’re to be buried again, elsewhere, now that the trial is over. I’m glad. They deserve a proper memorial. At least, Zoe and her baby do. Perhaps Shaun too. Frank I’m not too bothered about.
The show runners had copies of all the recordings, taken from the servers, but after viewing them, made sure they were deleted. All except one. The one they kept as insurance. It didn’t matter in the end, of course; they’d neglected to destroy the servers themselves, too busy herding half-feral islanders onto the boat. All the recordings were eventually recovered. The cover-up, just like everything else they’d done, was slapdash.
I saw their recording in court, though; the last piece of the puzzle. Gill with Duncan, Andrew and Shaun, drinking the stolen whisky. Heard them wish me gone from the island. Duncan had told me what she’d said, almost. When he’d tried to drag me from the cave. Gill told them, joked, that they should knock me out and leave me to drown in the sea. The part he omitted, was what she said next; ‘It worked before.’
I saw the moment Gill realised what she’d said. That she had, at least in her mind, confessed to murdering her mother; those three words the complete story of a supposed stroke and accidental drowning. Why had she done it? Freedom, I suppose; from caring for her, from missing out on a TV show because she was the daughter with no family, no husband. Nothing better to do than take care of her mother.
I understood what she’d done, in a strange way. Had I not lost my parents, I might have ended up like Gill. Hating and resenting them for needing me as I’d needed them. Still, had she not tried and failed to cover up her mistake by passing off deadly mushrooms as a legal high to the camera crew, we might have had the means to call for help. Had she not left their equipment on when she went back to attempt to erase the footage of her confession, the generator wouldn’t have been drained. Without the crew to request more fuel, we were stuck without a line to the mainland. That one act condemned us to months of desperate starvation and violence.
When charges were pressed and she was called to testify, Maxine took her own life. I don’t think it was guilt so much as shame that drove her. Guilt requires remorse, and I don’t think she ever felt that. I think, to her, Zoe and I deserved everything we got. It was other people knowing what she’d done that she couldn’t stand.
I was one of two people to survive the island and everything that came after. Not that I got to speak to Gill. She was convicted for the deaths of Ryan and Eric; their names finally brought back to me by the court proceedings. Despite her ‘confession’ there wasn’t enough evidence for a charge on her mother’s murder. She’d killed two men and damned us all, for nothing. I saw that knowledge hit home as she stood in the dock, weeping.
In court I hardly recognised her. Gill wasn’t as skeletal as I was, having escaped the island before me, but she retained a haunted, skull-like look. Her red hair had grown out and been cut back to its roots, leaving her with grey wisps. She looked like a corpse under the fluorescents in the coolly modern courtroom. I stared at her while giving my testimony; she didn’t meet my eyes once.
Those responsible for extending our stay on the island were also found guilty; of false imprisonment, endangerment, manslaughter and a host of other things. I don’t suppose any of them had any real idea of what they were condemning us to. To them it was just a show, just one or two extra months that they could pay us off for later if we made a fuss. I was surprised that I didn’t blame them. No one outside of that place could have known what it would do to us to be left there. It was beyond imagination.
I heard some interesting things in court. The text chains and emails between Sasha and Adrian where they’d broken down our interviews and decided who to condemn to a year on the island. They’d described Zoe as ‘flighty and insubstantial’, Duncan as ‘bull-headedly competitive’ and Frank as ‘the perfect balance of racist, sexist and old soak for the Brexit demographic’. I felt it like a slap when they got to me. ‘Madeline Holinstead – mousy, stuck-up and awkward. Clearly maladjusted lone wolf trying to fit in. Perfect love-to-hate character.’
All the effort I’d made to convince them I was a good fit, but they’d known all along. Seen it in me. They’d put me on that island to be ostracised, to be my own worst enemy against people chosen to resent me. I almost laughed, right there in the gallery, the shock of it percolating into something near hysteria. It was the final peek behind the curtain at the mechanisms behind the worst year of my life.
Around the studio people begin to move again. They take my mic off and I’m shepherded to a waiting taxi. The space between everyone there and me seems to yawn, full of things they have no response to, no platitudes to cover. I don’t mind. I’ve become used to silence.
I kept my secret and told no one about the witch. The apparition with my face. Away from the island I was certain she was a figment of my imagination. A symptom of the horrors of that place. Still, sometimes I think I see her, briefly, a shadow in the corner of my eye. A friendly face in a crowd of strangers.
At the train station I board and sit, unruffled by the crowds. I look through the dark mirror of the foggy window. Just like Mum wanted, I’m on my way home, at last. Not to stay, but to sell. I’ve already found a beautiful piece of land and a cottage with a view of the sea.
I suppose it’s ironic that of all those involved in the Buidseach disaster, I’ve escaped with my freedom. If there was any justice in the world, I probably would have been tried for murder. I don’t deny that’s what it was. Although I acted in self-defence, I still killed two people. Had I not covered it up, I might even have been convicted. No jury of my peers could have understood what it was like
, out there, on the island.
Fortunately I have learned that there is no justice, aside from what we make for ourselves. There is only survival, and the victor tells the story.
Acknowledgements
This book would not exist were it not for the constant support of Vander, the best friend any writer could ask for. From answering questions like ‘am I perhaps killing off too many characters?’ to providing editorial input, cover art and praise for my self-published work, as well as tea, sympathy, therapy, tarot readings and sheer unbridled optimism. You are too good for words. Without your belief in me, I probably would have given up on my dreams a long time ago. I’m so glad I hit you with that desk on the first day of school. It was the start of something truly special.
Likewise, were it not for the unceasing support of my parents, this book would never have been written. Thank you for instilling a love of reading in me and for taking me to so many places that fuelled my imagination. Even though you didn’t always understand what I was doing, you always let me get on with it and helped me every step of the way. Without your help and guidance I would never have been able to go back to university, write this novel, or walk out of so many terrible jobs.
To Jack, my long-suffering brother, thank you for always listening to my stories and for putting up with my ‘witchy’ rubbish and very pungent scented candles. A special thanks for all the cups of coffee you made during this whole process. I couldn’t imagine life without you.
I owe my agent, Laura Williams, enormous gratitude for picking my first novel up and giving me a chance. Though it’s been an arduous journey, I’m happy to have been on it with you. Whenever I can’t quite work out what’s off about a scene, you always manage to find what needs changing, and turn even the most insurmountable issues, into easy fixes. Thank you for talking me down from some of my wilder ideas! I don’t think Stranded would be half the book it is without your input and enthusiasm.
Stranded Page 27