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Something at the heart of me fractures when I see the fear in my daughter’s eyes. I can’t fathom how I let this happen, how I let her stray into such danger without noticing. I am astounded at the unlikelihood of bringing my children to a place so remote and still having something so terrible happen to her. Maybe it is not unlikely at all. Where men go there is harm. I have failed her, and I have to do better. I have to be better.

I wish I had killed Hank, but I didn’t, and now there’s a problem to be dealt with. I’ll need to radio the mainland, get some authorities down here to pick up the bastard. But when I walk up to the comms tower, I find every piece of equipment dead, as if it has been gone at by some kind of rabid animal. Wires have been cut, instruments have been cracked, holes have been punched. I try a few buttons but there’s nothing, no response from any of it, and I can already see that this is well beyond my capacity to fix. If there is any part of this job I’m not great at, it’s the electricals.

It’s not difficult to piece together what’s happened. Hank didn’t want anyone to be able to call for help before he’d finished destroying what’s in the vault. Or murdering my daughter.

I go back to the lighthouse and gently try to explain it to Fen. I consider not, but I think she deserves to know.

She flinches. “So we’re trapped here with him? We’re just going to be stuck on this island with him for two more months?”

“I’m not letting him anywhere near you,” I promise her. “You’re safe.”

But she is shaking her head and I can see she doesn’t believe me. Why would she?

I go to the hospital. Raff, Alex, Tom, and Naija are all sitting outside in frantic discussion. When they see me approaching, they stand up. Raff comes to head me off, and I realize they are worried I am here to make another attack. I raise my hands, show them I mean no harm.

“How is he?” I ask. Not because I give a fuck how the asshole is, but because I need to ascertain when he’ll be well enough to be on his feet, at which point I will need to contain him.

“Not good,” Naija snaps. She is looking at me like I am a monster, and maybe I am.

“Right, so he’s sabotaged the satellite and radio equipment.”

“ What? ”

“It’s out. I’ll start trying to repair it, but it’s not gonna be working for a while, okay. So when he starts to come good you let me know.”

“Why?”

“Because we’ll need to move him somewhere he can’t escape from.”

“I beg your pardon?” she says.

“Okay, hang on,” Tom says. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Of course,” I say calmly. “Let’s talk.”

They are all still reeling from the news of the radios—it is a spine-tingling feeling to know you have no way to call for help, to know you are truly stranded. It will take a while for that to sink in, but right now, we have a more urgent problem.

When nobody says anything, I lay it out for them. “We have a man here. He’s had some kind of breakdown. He’s decided he has to drown all the seeds in that bank, and he’s also decided he has to drown my seventeen-year-old daughter. We don’t have any way to contact the police. We’ve got eight weeks until a ship comes for us. So what would you like to do with him?”

Hank gets out of the hospital twice, and twice he makes his way down to the vault and starts throwing packets of seeds into the ocean. No amount of reasoning will get through to him, and it takes it happening a third time before the others agree he needs to be contained.

It’s Orly who tells us about the storage room.

All he knows is that something is wrong with Hank, that he’s sick and a threat to the seeds, which Orly cares about more than anything. He tells us of a room Hank showed him when they were down here together (I live in a state of rolling nausea at the thought of how much time I let that man spend alone with my children). There is a lot of arguing. Talk of it being inhumane. Worse than a prison cell. Not to mention right beneath the seeds he’s trying to destroy. There is also talk of it being the only place we can be sure is secure. I don’t bother getting involved, I wait it out, knowing he’s going down in that cement hole whether the others agree to it or not. My mind is made up the moment I explain the idea to Fen and see relief in her eyes.

So we come up with a regimen. He needs to be toileted and fed, he needs to be able to wash, he needs company, he needs his health and well-being checked on, he needs books and things to do. Naija is very clear on this: we will try to make him as comfortable as we can. But we will not be letting him out. Not until the ship comes.

Soon they are dead. Naija and Tom first, and then Alex. And my children and I are digging graves and keeping our prisoner alive, and we are barely holding our heads above water and that’s when a woman washes ashore, seeking to find this man and set him free.