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I was too scared to go back to my hut and too scared to go back up the mountain. So I made my way back up to Ula’s place. She opened the door as soon as I approached it as though she had been waiting for me. I stepped inside and fell onto the mattress, leaving a gap on the other side so that Ula could lie down too.
‘What will happen to me?’ I whispered into the dark.
‘You’re like me now. If you try to leave, she will kill you.’
51
THEN
I woke thinking of Avril and Adi curled into one another, my mind racing with questions.
Avril and Adi.
Ula and Deny.
Ula and Deny had been a couple. Deny was Adi’s father. Deny was dead.
I remembered what the mothers had said, that Adi had been abandoned and how they talked of Avril spending weeks away at a time. She had never wanted Adi; she had never wanted to be a mother.
If it was Deny who had committed the crime against Avril, what did Cupcake do? I hadn’t thought about the other men. I had been so consumed in Cupcake but suddenly I needed to see the rest of them. I crept from Ula’s bed, hearing her stir slightly as I did, then I almost ran all the way to Camp Z. It was stillearly. The sun had risen and most of the men were in their huts. I took a stick and began running it along the cages, shouting for them all to get up. Men began to emerge bleary-eyed and confused. I went to the furthest cage and a young man stood there staring at me as though I were mad.
‘Hold out your arm,’ I commanded. He looked bewildered and a little scared but eventually he lifted his left arm and held it close to the bars. I grabbed his wrist and pulled it closer to me, and there on the bottom was the same branding: a cupcake.
I dropped his arm and moved on to the next cage, demanding the man push his arm through the bars. Again, the same rudimentary cupcake on his arm. I checked another three or four until eventually I raced round to Cupcake’s cage.
‘You all have them,’ I said. ‘She gave you all the cupcake tattoo.’
Cupcake nodded.
‘What is your name?’ I exhaled.
‘Kai.’
‘What was your crime, Kai?’
He looked at me, his eyes bleary from the morning light. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
It wasn’t just the men who were prisoners; I, too, like Ula, was a prisoner. She had not been complicit in Avril’s plan. She must have loved Deny and had never gotten over what Avril did. Maybe she had known what he had done to Avril, and that too made it impossible to come to terms with.
Avril. She was punishing every man for the crime that had been committed against her. And now with no more cages left,she was simply sacrificing them. And according to Ula, had been for some time. Kai had told me to warn James and his friend, but I had not done it; I was too late. It was my fault they were dead.
I ran and ran back through the woods until I neared camp and ran straight into Avril.
‘Sadie.’ Her voice was low and husky. Her eyes bored into mine. ‘You’re up early,’ she said as though nothing had happened last night.
‘Yes, up doing my job, checking on the prisoners. I’m going to bring them their daily rations.’ I tried to keep my voice calm and steady.
Avril looked at me conspiratorially then she rubbed her head. She looked tired.
‘I’m sorry you had to find out about everything through that stupid diary I wrote,’ she said yielding to my lies. ‘I was not well. After everything that happened to me.’ She pulled her arms around herself. ‘He was feral from the day he was born. I didn’t know how to maintain that, how to be a good mother. Only this last year has he allowed me to become close to him, as he has pushed more for his freedom, he still returns to me. I know he is safe up there. He’s not like the other children, is he? He’s different. That’s the curse. The curse that was put on me when he had his way with me.’
I didn’t dare utter Deny’s name.
I didn’t try and discuss how each and every man who was locked up here was innocent of any crime.
‘You understand that things are changing?’ She moved in closer to me. ‘The job I was set here to do, to be a pig farmer.’ She laughed.
I have managed many years here, no one has ever come. A long as I delivered them a dead pig every now and then, they left me alone. It’s all coming to an end, Sadie. They are coming to reclaim it. And we need to get out,’ she whispered. ‘I have an island full of men. They all need to go. And you need to help me.’