Alice looked at him with alarm but he shook his head. “I’m fine. I’ll let Shen take a look at it later, but I’m fine. Let’s stick with the subject of food.” Before she could respond, they took off their backpacks and started to empty their harvest.

It was only now that Joel came over and said, “Glad you could join us, Tom.”

It was an attempt at understated humor so Tom smiled and said, “Well, I heard you were having a party.”

“Yes.” He smiled too, awkwardly, then looked down at the cache of food they’d harvested. “What’s all this?”

Kate said, “That’s papaya, and the things that look like coconuts are actually full of brazil nuts.”

Shen and Alice were already crouched down inspecting them, but Joel said, “I’m not sure how wise that would be. You know, a lot of the things here might look familiar but could be poisonous. We were even warned about that, before leaving.”

“Well, that’ll be your choice, Joel. You can trust me and eat, or you can go hungry.”

“No, I didn’t mean to question—”

She didn’t wait for him to finish but turned to Shen and said, “And if we’re likely to be here for a day or two, tomorrow we can fish. I’ll use one of the mosquito nets.”

Joel looked skeptical, but didn’t say anything and drifted off to oversee the fire. Emma called Kate and she went over to her and then Tom spotted Alice and Shen exchanging a glance.

He looked questioningly at them and Shen said quietly, “We should have been here hours ago. Joel kept heading in the wrong direction this morning. It took a lot to persuade him that we were going off course.”

Alice added, “In the end, George climbed a tree to get a view, and then Joel had to admit we’d been going the wrong way and we needed to backtrack. It’s been a tough day on everyone.”

“It shows.” He looked around the camp that was forming, a circle of backpacks and the two boat cases around the fire, the little makeshift hospital tent off to one side. Mila was sitting nursing her ankle, Nick looked pale and sickly, Oscar had crashed against his backpack, his hair sweat-slicked and plastered to his head. Yesterday had been rough for Tom, but he felt bad for the rest of them. “As long as we can eat and drink, a day recovering here might be a good thing.”

Alice said, “We’ll get to work on some food right away.”