‘I’ll stay. I’m gonna stay with you.’

‘No. Nobody’s staying. Not you, not me.’

‘He’s gonna die! He’s gonna die and it’s my fucking fault, but it’s a little bit yours too!’

Booker tries to wrap me up in big bear arms but I’m running on rage and that’s always been fuel I know how to use. One of his hands is too close to my neck and I dig my teeth into it until I taste pennies and run.

Run. One leg in front of the other. My body is a machine and I run on rainwater and everything that’s ever hurt me and there is enough of that to run to the other side of this island and back. A root almost trips me up and I stumble but keep on pressing forward. Rain splashes into my eyes. Howling in my ears. Can’t see. Running. Black. Rain. My shoulder scrapes against the rough bark of a tree. I’ve still got my flashlight and I’m shining it but the field of vision is too small and I can’t breathe so I stop and back up against a dip in a hill.

Ellis’s name becomes mine.

‘Mona!’ Booker screams and it almost hurts. Almost. It doesn’t hurt quite as much as the thought of Ellis dying all alone out here. He screams it again and again and again, and once he screams it almost right beside me because he doesn’t know I’m here, because if I can’t see three feet to either side of me in these woods then neither can he. The trees are too close together and now it’s almost dark and he won’t find me. I hear him move and again, from maybe twenty feet to my left, he speaks into the walkie-talkie, out of breath and fragmented. ‘Ah, uh, I, uh, lost her. I lost the girl.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She didn’t want to leave Ellis, ran off deeper in; I can’t find her anywhere.’

‘Christ. Her choice, Booker. Add another casualty if you want but this can’t wait for you.’