She would do it for the dead who crowded into the boat with her. Not because she wanted to, but because if she didn’t do it, no one else would. Maybe then the ghost balloons would float away.

A few minutes was up.

‘What are you going to do, when we get to the shore?’ Rory asked as she once again choked the engine, put the motor to neutral and grasped the handle on the pull rope, pulling it back until all the slack was gone.

What would she do?

Once the contents of the memory stick were out in the world, what would she do then?

She was a burning tree. She wouldn’t let that fire go out. If they made it, she would sleep the hours she was meant to sleep whenever she was meant to sleep them. She would stop battling and instead accept it as a part of her, much like the shape of her nose or the colour of her hair. In those hours in which she was awake, she would live for once.

Not hollowed out anymore.

The rope tightened and Thea yanked the handle back, her eyes on Rory, both of them praying to a god in which they did not believe that the engine would splutter and start.

It coughed.

And again.

And then it chugged into life. They sat there for a second, staring at it, and then they both did something they hadn’t done for what seemed like a lifetime – they smiled. But Thea realized that what she really wanted to do was scream, loud and long, until she was doubled over with no breath left, so hoarse it hurt.

They carefully edged the boat out into the sea, Thea keeping her eyes on a mainland she knew would soon start to appear out of the haze.

‘What am I going to do?’ she said lightly, not looking back at the island as they came out of the shadow of its cliffs.

She smiled again.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, paused and her smile widened. ‘Yet.’

Behind them, the island paled into the background, a dissolving watercolour. But Thea didn’t look behind her, she gazed straight ahead, watching the white ripples of water being pushed from the boat’s prow.

She kept her eyes on the mainland.

Chapter 65

The map took up one entire wall. It was a map of the world, coloured black and outlined in white; on it, little red dots shone like hellish stars.

The barefoot man, dressed in unbleached cream cotton, didn’t have to have the map beamed on the wall, it was not as if he needed it.

He liked it.

A warm breeze billowed out the white voile that hung over the terrace doors.

The terrace led to the pool where, that morning, he had already swum his allotted lengths and, next to it, he had eaten his carefully compiled breakfast, swallowing the accompanying tablets.