Page 19

EDDIE

I ’d thought that Mavis Coldwell and I had reached an understanding last night, but when I stepped inside her shop after barrelling all the way down the hill from the lighthouse, she folded her arms over her chest and stared at me with an adversarial gleam in her eye.

“Mr. Hawthorne,” she said.

“Hi, Mavis,” I said. “I need to get off this miserable fucking hellscape of an island. How do I do that?”

Okay, so maybe I was feeling a little adversarial myself.

On the way down into the village I’d run the gamut of emotions from shock to heartbreak to anger. It was a pretty short gamut; it only had those three things on it.

The diary was gone, and Joe was the only person who had a key to the chest it had been locked in.

Joe, who coincidentally—ha!—was also a direct descendant of the man whose reputation as a hero would be destroyed by the contents of that diary.

Not that anyone would care, except here .

Joe himself had tried to tell me how shit like that mattered to the people of Dauntless.

How it wasn’t just history, it was their entire identity.

It fitted. It fitted so well that I hated it.

But the part that fitted best, as smoothly as a key turning soundlessly in a fucking lock, was that yet again I’d put my trust in some guy I barely knew, and the universe had just jumped on the chance to show me how much of an idiot I was.

Hey, at least Kyle had only fucked a theology student, and not my career.

I needed to get off this fucking island right now, get back to Sydney, and hope that Theresa wouldn’t tear my balls off for losing the key primary fucking source that my entire thesis hinged on.

The book that was going to be the centrepiece of the museum exhibit I’d lovingly built over and over in my imagination.

Nobody was going to ooh and aah over a reproduction.

Jesus. My career as a historian was ruined before it had even begun.

I glared at Mavis and she glared at me.

“There’s no passage off the island until Wednesdays,” she said, “when Young Harry Barnes goes over to the mainland.”

“There must be other boats.”

“Of course there are.” She arched her eyebrows. “But none that do charters for tourists.”

I jabbed a finger in the direction of the harbour. “What about the fishing boats?”

“Those are for fishing . The clue is in the name, Mr. Hawthorne. If we used those for taxis, none of us would eat, would we?”

“There must be some way to get off this island!”

“Well, you could always swim.”

“I can’t swim all the way to Newcastle!”

“I never said you could,” she said with an evil smile, “but it would certainly get you off the island, wouldn’t it?”

“Fu— fine .” I sucked in a deep, edifying breath, only to find that it didn’t edify me at all. “Okay, since I’m stuck here until Wednesday, can you please tell me where I can camp?”

“This is a shop, Mr. Hawthorne, not the tourist information centre.”

“I know that, but the tourist information centre is closed!”

“That may be,” Mavis said, “but it doesn’t magically bestow the powers of the tourist information centre on me now, does it?”

“Oh my god. I just want to know where I can camp! Do you have any maps of the island?”

“No. John Coldwell has some at the museum, though.”

“Right. Excellent. Fine.” I turned and left, wrenching the door so hard the bells almost danced off their strings. Once I was outside, I jammed my hands in my pockets and strode towards the harbour and the museum.

It was another cool day. There was a bite to the wind that whipped in off the ocean.

The sandy grit of the road crunched under the soles of my boots.

I was angry—angry with Joe, angry with Dauntless, and angry with Mavis, but I was angriest with myself.

What did I think? That hot ginger lighthouse keepers were real ?

Well, they were, but that one of them would want me ?

Ha! No chance. I’d fallen for it. I’d fallen for him , and that was the dumbest thing of all, because you didn’t fall in love at first sight with the perfect guy unless you were a Disney princess.

And the last little bird I’d had any interaction with hadn’t helped me with my housework—it had shat on me at the bus stop.

I couldn’t fucking believe I’d been this stupid about a guy. Again.

An old man sitting on his front step watched me as I headed down to the harbour, and a little kid wearing a red beanie stared at me from behind a falling-down garden trellis. A dog, almost as big as the kid, stood with the kid. It wagged its tail when it saw me but didn’t leave the kid’s side.

When I reached the harbour wall, I turned at the tourist information centre.

I had no idea who was in charge, but it sucked they were closed and I’d have to go and see John Coldwell to grab a map.

All I wanted to know was where I could camp until Wednesday, and then I could get off this bloody island.

My gut twisted, because I’d loved Dauntless last night. I’d loved a lot of things last night, as it turned out, and I’d been wrong about all of them.

Out in the harbour, gulls wheeled in the sky.

There was a boat on the horizon, possibly one of the island’s trawlers.

Nets hung off poles at the back, so probably, but what the hell did I know about fishing?

My dad had tried to teach me how to cast a line once.

I’d got the hook caught in my hair. He’d thought I was screaming because I was injured, but it was really because I’d got bait in my hair.

That was the first and last time I’d gone fishing.

I stopped outside the museum and took a bracing breath of sea air. Then I took a few more. Then, when I realised I was procrastinating to the point of hyperventilation, I straightened my spine, pulled my shoulders back, and marched up to the front door. I rapped on it then pushed it open.

John Coldwell was seated behind the counter in the museum foyer. Today he had a plate of scones in front of him, complete with jam and cream. He gave a start as I stepped inside, and brushed crumbs off his jumper. “What are you doing here?”

“Hello,” I said, deciding to take a less hostile opening than I had with Mavis at the shop. “I would like to buy a tourist map of the island, please.”

“What for?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

“Is this them here?” I approached the rack of postcards, turning it to check out the pamphlets on the other side.

Most appeared to have been printed at someone’s home and unevenly folded into thirds to fit into the rack.

Island boat tours by Elias Dinsmore. Farmstays at Katrina Finch’s farm.

Julie Dinsmore’s B&B. A History of Dauntless Island by Short Clarry the Mayor—yes, that was the name he’d put on the front—printed in comic sans on lime green paper.

Jesus. And finally—success! A tourist map. I snatched it off the rack. “How much?”

“Two dollars,” he said warily.

I ferreted in my pack for a two-dollar coin and slapped it down on the counter. “Great.”

John Coldwell stared at me, and I stared at him, and then he extended his cupped hand like it was a hungry, hungry hippo and snapped it down over the coin. “What do you need a map for?”

“Camping,” I said. “It’s lovely camping weather.”

“No, it isn’t.” He screwed up his face, and then grinned slowly. “Oh, Red Joe’s finally had enough of your nonsense, has he, Hawthorne ? I’m not surprised. Coming here from the mainland, with all your filthy lies about Josiah Nesmith.”

“Okay, then,” I said, trying not to let any brittleness into my voice.

Did that nasty gleam in his eye mean he knew the diary had been stolen?

Had he planned this with Joe from the start?

I was almost sure John Coldwell was the man who’d attacked me.

Had he asked Joe to steal the diary when he hadn’t managed to get it the night of the storm?

Why the hell not? It was pretty obvious that nobody here actually liked me, and not a single one of them wanted the contents of the diary revealed.

John Coldwell said he didn’t believe a word of it, but he was lying.

He’d been lying from the beginning. He wouldn’t have been so angry about it if he’d thought it was bullshit.

Lies didn’t scare men like him, but the truth certainly did. “Thanks for the map. Bye!”

I hustled my arse out of the museum before John Coldwell could threaten me with hanging again.

I didn’t go back the way I’d come. I turned right instead of left, following the harbour wall and refusing to make eye contact even when I spotted a familiar face.

I passed Short Clarry’s house—his cat had glared at me from the window—and a few houses beyond that.

Then the harbour wall ran out, and I kept going anyway, walking up the scrubby, rocky ground and cresting the slope to leave the village behind me.

I walked for a few minutes longer, the clumps of spinifex slowly giving way to ferns and trees.

Then I sat down under the shade of a tree and unfolded my new map.

My map reading skills were right up there with my fishing abilities, but it was a typical tourist map, and it wasn’t like I could get lost on Dauntless anyway.

Not when you could see the lighthouse from almost everywhere.

Not that I looked at the lighthouse.

No, I kept my back to it and studied my map instead.

There were a few camping spots marked but no actual amenities, which wasn’t surprising.

I would definitely be pissing behind trees until Wednesday.

Which was fine. Totally doable. I didn’t dare think about shitting behind trees, which probably wouldn’t be as breezy.

Did I even have any toilet paper in my pack?

I had, before I’d been attacked, but was it still there?

Who knew? Also, why wasn’t there a single public toilet on Dauntless Island?

I thought of the pamphlet I’d seen for Katrina Finch’s farmstay.

And then I thought about the fact that I’d only chosen to stay in a tent to begin with because I couldn’t afford anything else.

Theresa had managed to scrounge enough money out of the department budget to pay for my ticket over here, but that was about it.

So I was going to be sleeping rough until Wednesday too.

Which was fine. It was definitely fine, and I was definitely not worried about it, because even though nights had been cold, they hadn’t been deathly cold, right?

And I had protein bars and snacks zipped into the inside pockets of my pack everywhere.

I’d overpacked snacks, so I wasn’t going to starve, and I wasn’t going to freeze, and?—

My eyes grew hot, and I willed the tears away before they started.

I wasn’t going to miss Red Joe Nesmith and his warm cottage and his hot cocoa and his friendly dog. And I wasn’t going to miss anything else about him either.

Definitely not.

I got up and kept walking, and about an hour or so later I found myself at Mayfair Bay, or possibly Seal Beach—the map was unclear.

Anyway, I found myself on a tussocky patch of ground with a rocky beach below, and plenty of bushes that made decent windbreaks.

I decided this was going to be my camping spot until I could get off Dauntless Island.

And then, because I had nothing else to do, I sat down and felt miserable all over again.

Tears threatened again.

God . The diary was everything. It wasn’t just about my career—though it mostly was.

It was also about setting the record straight for George Hawthorne, who deserved to be remembered as better than a tyrant.

And not just because he was related to me, but because the truth was important. But so, apparently, was the lie.

I lay on my back, using my pack as a pillow, and stared up at the brilliant sky.

It was beautiful here. I wondered if George Hawthorne had thought so too, before his own crew had turned on him and murdered him.

Funny how things shook out. I wasn’t the first Hawthorne to have a terrible time on Dauntless Island.

And, in fairness to George, he’d had a much worse time of it than I had.

I wondered if, two hundred years from now, some other hapless Hawthorne would come to Dauntless Island and have a miserable time, or if we’d finally have learned our lesson by then.

A seagull wandered up to see if I was edible.

“Maybe us Hawthornes are just doomed when it comes to Dauntless Island,” I said, and the seagull squawked, startled, and flapped away. I stared up at the sky again, refusing to blink until the brightness half-blinded me. “And maybe we’re doomed when it comes to Nesmiths in particular.”

Even though I didn’t believe in ghosts, I liked to imagine George Hawthorne’s lying beside me, arms behind his head, nodding in agreement.