Page 29 of Shipwrecked

“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.