Chapter Ten
Jules
First thing in the morning, Mathieu and I go to the ocean to wash. Every small movement sends pain rocketing through the base of my skull. I sink until cool water covers my neck. I don’t know if there’s anything medicinal in it, but it sure feels like it.
I keep an eye out for jellyfish, like Seán suggested, but can’t spot any. What I do see is an abundance of fish, and a little way out, the dark mounds of rocks. They look similar to the rocks you find mussels growing on at home, though I can’t exactly tell from this distance.
“Should we try and catch fish?” Mathieu asks.
I glance his way and end up stuck staring.
His shirt is off, and he’s scrubbing it clean against itself.
His tanned shoulders are broader and more muscled than I realised.
Then again, he was fairly strong manhandling me in the hallway of that club…
I can’t believe our situation has changed so much in a few days.
I was freaking out about hooking up with Mathieu after two years of nothing but Darren, and now we’re shipwrecked, and Mathieu is this beacon of resilient niceness, golden hair a halo.
I float towards him, drawn in like a fly to honey. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Surprise shoots across his face. That’s probably such a bizarre thing to hear from me.
We weren’t even close in college. Mathieu was part of the group, and Darren always invited him to our hangouts, but I kept my distance.
For the same reason I kept my distance from Cillian.
It’s rude to talk to people you’re attracted to when dating someone else.
“That’s awful to say, isn’t it? I just mean, you’re very pleasant.
” It sounds so lukewarm phrased like that.
“I don’t mean that either. The situation is terrible, but you’re not.
” Not terrible isn’t much of an improvement either!
“I always knew you had a good personality, but I didn’t realise that there’s steel behind your niceness. Does that make sense?”
Mathieu watches me as I ramble, and my face grows hot. I groan and dip myself into the ocean, praying it will cool me off. Hands cup my face and draw me back out.
I blink the water from my lashes.
Mathieu is grinning. His face is very close to mine. I look at his dimples and then at his mouth. He’s got a soft indent in his full bottom lip, right in the middle.
“Hey guys,” Mary calls.
Mathieu holds my gaze for a few more seconds, something warm and conspiratorial in the look, and then turns to the shoreline, hands on my cheeks sliding away.
Charles has Mary on his back, and Willow is walking next to them.
Her gaze darts between Mathieu and me. I drift away from him, tipping my head once more into the cool ocean.
Mary is delighted once she’s in the water and her foot can float.
We wash, forming a loose circle. We discuss how we’d go about catching fish.
Charles suggests a spear, Mary thinks she could weave together a net from thin vines, and Willow reckons that a grub stuck onto the end of one of the sharp thorns that cut up her legs yesterday could be used as a fishing hook.
“We could do all three,” I say. “Our odds would be better that way.”
“I could do with something other than fruit,” Charles says. “I can feel my muscles eating themselves.”
My stomach is similarly empty. After two days of having nothing but fruit, I’m craving all sorts of things.
I study the rocks in the water again. Are they mussels?
I’m not sure how I’d go about cooking them, but Cillian and Seán would probably magic something up for us.
Half a coconut shell as a pot? With white wine and garlic sauce…
“I would kill someone for a vape,” Willow says wistfully.
“I want bread,” Mary says. “A slice of bread with butter on it.”
“Curry cheese chips,” I contribute.
“Cheese sounds lovely…” Mathieu says.
We revel in our daydreams. The horizon is empty except for our lonely yacht breaking the flat line.
For a while, nobody speaks. It feels extra quiet.
Isolating. I push down that flare of fear.
It won’t be long now. Rescue could turn up at any moment.
They probably don’t search at night, but maybe by this evening.
The wet wood Cillian threw on the fire first thing this morning is sending smoke high into the air, plainly visible against the clear blue sky.
“It’s already warm,” Willow says.
The sun has only just risen, and the humidity is intense.
“What are the logistics of making a comfortable bed?” I wonder.
“Stack up a load of leaves?” Mary suggests. “I wouldn’t mind a bit more cushioning myself… I’d like to hear an engine rumbling even more.”
Everyone murmurs their agreement.
Mathieu catches my wrist. I turn to him, and he smiles gently. “You’re drifting out.”
I was letting myself. We’re a little way from the others. “I want to check that rock, see if those are mussels growing on it.”
Mathieu looks past me, studying the rocks. “Will you hold this?” He hands me his wet shirt. “Wait here.”
Before I can object, he’s past me. He has to swim a far stretch—the rocks are further out than they looked—and he grabs a breath before diving.
I worry abruptly as his hands reach for the rock, imagining sea urchin spines, venomous sea snakes, triggerfish, stonefish and other creatures I don’t know the names of.
Mathieu grabs something. He swims up and angles towards the shore. He’s slower coming back. When we’re side by side, the anxiety in my stomach releases.
Mathieu opens his right hand. “There are mussels, but they’re a funny colour.”
It’s a decent-sized mussel. Green.
I take it from him, turning it over. Mathieu’s left fist disappears into his pocket and returns empty. He retrieves his shirt.
“Do you have green mussels in France?” I ask. “I’ve only ever seen black ones.”
“Ours are black too,” Mathieu says. “Let’s ask Seán.”
Mathieu and I return to camp. I move lethargically up the beach, stiff and tired, even though I’ve just woken up.
I actually got some sleep too, with Cillian at my side.
I’m so glad that he did that. That he didn’t make a big deal of it, or let it become a situation where I was causing a fuss over nothing.
We show Seán the mussel for inspection. “Green mussels are super common in Thailand,” he explains. There’s reluctance in the twist of his mouth.
“It’s a no-go?” I ask.
“I won’t say a hard ‘no’, but with mussels you’re meant to make sure you’re gathering from an area where the water has been tested. They filter water, so anything bad in the ocean around them ends up in their bodies. Which, if we eat them, ends up in ours.”
It’s so empty here, no sign of civilisation. Surely the water is clean?
“Let’s shelve this under maybe for now, just to be safe.”
I feel incredibly ungrateful taking Seán’s alternative offering of a banana and gooseberries and lie back down in the shade of the lean-to after eating. Darren looks me over, that sardonic look creeping over his face. I shut my eyes and ignore it.
I dated Darren for two years. I met him in second year, first as part of mutual friend groups, and then as a regular hook-up on nights out.
Thinking back to those early days, when Darren asked that we stop seeing other people at all and only be with each other, I find it hard to reconcile that memory with how acidic things have become between us.
He used to be sweet and thoughtful. And sure, he had a jealous streak, but that only came out if I talked to other guys.
I remember the first time he called me a slut.
I was arranging for a postgraduate student to give final essay preparation help to my small Classics class—most of us were citing books in other languages that had been thrown through translation apps, and we were struggling with how to approach quotes.
I don’t think I was being flirty. The postgraduate student was attractive, sure, but I wasn’t interested in him.
Darren overheard me talking on the phone, confirming the time and place of the lesson, and the moment I hung up, he went off on me. I was so stunned by the sudden cursing that I didn’t say a word to defend myself. I wish now that I had.
The heat of the day intensifies. Cillian and Seán head off, but everyone else hangs around camp, resting in the shade.
Mary and Charles are working together to build her net—Charles is providing vines and moral support, since he’s rather clumsy—while Mathieu, Darren and Willow have teamed up to try to make hooks for a fishing line.
I hate lying down uselessly as everyone works. I brace a palm beneath me. Pain pulses through my neck before I can lift my shoulders, and I sink back down.
Mathieu comes and kneels next to me, fingers feathering against my shoulder. “I’m going to take a dip. Will you come with me?”
“Not this time.”
“Let’s sit you up so you can have some water at least.” Mathieu glances behind him, and it’s Darren of all people who comes to help.
They get me sitting, and I feel stiffer and more unwieldy than I ever have in my life.
The closest was when I got a raging fever during my first month at university, and my glands were so swollen I could barely move my neck.
I drink water. Lie back down. I dream of cooling rain arriving to relieve us.
The worried hum of voices wakes me from my half-aware daze. It’s dusk, and the light is coming almost entirely from the fire. People are gathered around it, backs and shoulders tight with tension.
I force myself up. “What’s wrong?”
“Cillian and Seán aren’t back yet,” Mathieu says.
I tense. “When did they go?”
“This morning, sleeping beauty,” Darren answers.
I grimace but let the comment pass. I can’t even remember what Cillian and Seán said they were doing.
“What direction did they go?”
Darren lets out a big sigh. “Do you want us to rehash the last thirty minutes of our conversation or what?”
Mathieu shoots Darren a distinctly irritated look before turning to me. “They said they were going to explore further into the jungle to forage.”
Possibilities race through my mind. They could both have been bitten by snakes, or venomous spiders, or maybe they ate something bad. Maybe they went up that hill in the centre of the island to get a vantage point and didn’t leave themselves enough time to get back. Maybe they fell off it.
I pick up one of the longer, thinner sticks in the pile and dip one end of it into the fire. I wait for it to light and then withdraw it, making sure it stays lit.
“Where did they go in?” I ask Mathieu.
“I’ll show you.”
“Going in after them is stupid,” Darren says. “You’ll get lost, and then there will be three people missing. And unlike you, Cillian and Seán can handle themselves.”
“I’m not going in after them,” I say, furious and stung. “But maybe they’ll be able to spot the fire through the trees if they’re lost? I don’t know. There’s no harm in going there and calling their names at least.”
I leave as quickly as my stiff body permits but stop where trees give way to beach. I don’t know whether to go left or right. I physically can’t make myself turn around and ask.
“I’ll join you,” Mathieu calls. “Unless you think I can’t handle that, Darren? No? Nothing to say?” He trots to me and guides me right. We walk in silence until Mathieu slows, gesturing towards the trees. “It’s hard to see in the dark, but it was roughly here.”
We call until our throats give out. Eventually, we grab dead branches from the litter on the jungle floor and get a small fire going on the sand. We sit next to it, facing the trees.
“You know one thing I really like about Ireland?” Mathieu says. “You have beautiful stars. I studied at Paris University for three years, and you’d need a city-wide blackout to see the stars.”
I stare at the wall of black trees.
“Jules.” Mathieu scoots next to me. “He’s just being nasty.”
“I spent the entire day lying down.”
“You should be spending the entire month lying down,” Mathieu says. “It’s easy for him to be snide, but he’s not the one who’s injured. We can all see how sore you are, and Mary’s in the same boat as you. Except in her case, she’s not had the bad luck of being shipwrecked with her ex-boyfriend.”
The knot in my stomach eases.
I lean into Mathieu. I don’t have the manoeuvrability in my neck to rest my head on his shoulder, so I twist my torso. Press my forehead to his temple. My nose brushes against his cheek. His curls tickle the right side of my face.
Mathieu’s arm encircles my back.
“They could be hurt out there.” A different sort of tension fills my body. A torturous what-if. I’ve known and been friends with Seán for years, but my concern for Cillian looms just as large. I’m not sure I’d be as okay as I am now if not for his steadiness.
The moon is high in the sky, and Mathieu and I are huddled close when the bushes rustle.
Two forms stumble from the underbrush. I’m in Cillian’s space, locking my arms around him before he can even get free of the treeline.