Author: admin

“Things affect people in different ways.” I wait for him to find the words to tell me what’s wrong, or to decide he is sleepy after all. “This morning,” he says haltingly, “before we went to the boat.” “Yeah.” “Rowan was asking me about Hank.” My stomach plummets and I am back to despising her,…

Jane Eyre. She opens the worn and yellowed pages to see words underlined in pencil and notes scrawled in her mum’s handwriting in the margins. It makes her ache, to see this handwriting, to read the neat little thoughts. Dom has brought these items from the mainland. He collects more each time he goes back…

“I’ll drop you to shore and circle back,” Fen says. “No,” I say, and she looks at me. “We’re going home now.” “What? No, I can make it.” I hold her eyes. “We’re going home now. It’s alright.” Her mouth opens but whatever she was going to say dissolves and her shoulders slump. “But we…

“You were just a shape,” she admits. “Tangled in driftwood and kelp. I didn’t think you’d be alive.” I don’t know how to thank her, how to convey the enormity of my gratitude. “Come on,” she says before I can try. She leads Orly and me to a wooden hut on stilts in the water….

“Hank?” Orly thinks. “He was nice. Everyone liked him.” “Mates with your dad?” “Oh no, not Dad.” I look sideways at him. “Really? Why not?” “I dunno.” “Did they not like each other?” I press. “Dad said once that he could see through Hank.” Orly looks at me. “What does that mean?” “Just…” I try…

I meet his eyes. “Dom. How are we gonna get me off this island?” I climb onto the quad bike behind him, making sure to keep a gap between our bodies. The second we take off over the rough terrain I have instant regret: it is so rough it feels as though my body might…

“What kind of house?” “Just a house. My sisters helped a bit, but mostly I did it myself. It took a long time, a lot of years. It had a garden.” I stop, because I don’t know how to talk about this garden, or really this house either. My life. “Where was it?” he asks,…

Before I can go in search of her: bed, again. My body’s glad of it. I have left the curtains open to the eerie nighttime sunlight. My fingers reach to my pocket. For the photo within. I draw it out and look at his face. The handsome lines of it, the light behind his eyes,…

I must look unimpressed because he laughs and that’s when I see it: there is something remarkable after all. It’s his smile and that laugh, the warmth of it. “Can I explain over a coffee?” “I don’t have coffee. I don’t have a kitchen.” He peers up the hill at the worksite. “Incredible spot you’ve…

I lift my head to look him in the face. His eyes, which I thought were dark brown, are actually a greenish gray; I can see them in the light from the window. A sense of danger prickles my skin. All my life I have had more than a healthy dose of fear working at…