Twenty-One

I drive back and the whole way all I can think of is Lisa, frozen blue and dead in the car. Or eaten by a Creature, or any one of a dozen different fates. I turn the heater on and my fingers begin to thaw as I drive. Pins and needles shoot up my arms.

It doesn’t take long to get back to where I left Lisa. I pull up close and climb out. I can see her, hunched in the back, unmoving. When I open the door she turns to me, blinks sleepily. “David. Look, David.” It’s as though she’s sick or something, like she can’t quite focus. I help her out of the stopped car and into the warm interior of the new one, then turn the heater up as far as it will go. It hurts me how much she’s shaking.

“Are you okay?” I ask. She nods stiffly. I sit with her and hug her against me to warm her up. She’s soft and cold and trembly. I hold her hands in between mine and notice that she’s clutching a piece of paper between her fingers.

“Look what I found, David. On the dashboard.” Oddly, she’s smiling. Taking the crumpled scrap of paper I smooth it out and see that it’s a letter, hastily scrawled in blue ink.

Gina darling, it reads. I met some people. I don’t know what’s going on. You said you’d come back but it’s been three days. I can’t wait here any longer. I’m going to leave with these men. They say they have an island just off the coast. They say there’s no Creatures there. I am sorry. I have marked the island on our map. I hope you are still alive. I want to believe you are. With all my love, Simon.

I can’t take it in all at once. I have to read it twice before I can work out why Lisa’s so excited.

“There was a map in the glove compartment,” says Lisa, and she holds it up. “It’s marked, just like it says in the letter.”

“Do you think . . .?”

“We have to try.”

“But we don’t know when it was written.”

“We have to try.” She’s staring fiercely at me. As she warms up in the car she stops shaking. I hold her and listen to her breathing. She says it again, and I know she’s thinking of the baby. “David, we have to try.”