I don’t turn to her but by the rasping of her breath I imagine she’s seething. ‘Sure. Whatever you say. I’m late to see Liam, anyway. Bye.’ She leaves quickly, her bag nearly falling from her shoulder in the process, and shuts the door too hard.

I’m lost in my thoughts until Ellis arrives. Of course I want to look up the answer to this new question myself but I think it’s important that he’s here, and I can hardly make myself wait, but thank God the inhabited portion of this island is practically a square metre because he’s at my dorm in ten minutes.

I tell him what I’ve realized and he pulls up a Morse translator on his phone.

‘Ready?’ I ask.

We play it back, click by click.

‘Long, short, short, short,’ I say.

‘Uh, long, short, short, short … B.’

My heart, too, is beating with the irregularity of the code.

‘Short, long?’

Short, long … A.

Long, short, short, short … B.

‘Ellis, if the next one is what I think it is, then –’

Long, short, long, long … Y.

Ellis and I share a look.

‘No fucking way.’

‘Keep going.’

And it finishes as we expect.

B. L. U. E.

Baby Blue.

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 26

The look Ellis shoots me is delicious. All at once, his wonder and fear and well-meaning confusion plastered across his face. He rakes his hands through his hair. ‘I m-mean, of course that’s crazy, b-b-but I don’t know what that means.’

I’m angry more than anything – that I’ve had this information, hidden though it was, the whole time; that I hadn’t thought to check. But why was Mary Anne sending this, and to who? Why this phrase?

‘We need to get into her office,’ I say, without thinking of the implications of the statement, the potential consequences that could follow. Maybe it was naive of me to want to stick to the process when I first arrived here, to play nicely. Maybe that isn’t how the world works. Maybe playing by the rules doesn’t ever get you what you want.

Maybe I should always have known that.

‘We need to go now,’ I say.

Ellis’s eyes widen. ‘Now?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Mona, it’s like, nine in the morning. The diner is literally open right now.’

He’s completely right, of course. My sense of time has been obliterated. ‘Fine. Meet me here at midnight.’

‘I don’t know – I don’t know if I can.’

‘I mean, you don’t have to. But it’d be nice to have you there.’

Ellis nods resolutely. Good soldier. ‘I’ll think about it.’