looks me up and down. ‘I mean, I guess. It’s a fair walk, though. Are you sure you’re feeling up to it?’
I nod, though I’m not sure I am. I can’t quite believe that the whole island is uninhabited. Sariah – or maybe it was George – said it was only a couple of miles long. I can make that if I take it slowly.
We veer off the path towards a bank covered in tall reeds, stiff and unyielding as horse whips, then pick our way through an overgrown lemon grove. I suspect Joe is keen to march a good deal faster, but he waits patiently for me to keep up, holding back the branches and vines for me to pass through. This part of the island resembles a jungle, all tangled branches and rotting citrus fruit underfoot. I reach up and pluck one of the fruits that looks like a small green plum. It has a sour taste, and when I bite into it a walnut drops out. There are mounds of cacti with spiny paddles, and despite all my efforts to give them a wide berth I end up getting pricked in the legs.
I’m still barefoot – my shoes must have been lost at sea – so I have to tread carefully across the soil, which is surprisingly warm. What I do wish for, though, is a pair of sunglasses. The sun is piercingly bright out here, with virtually no shade.
‘Do you think you’ll publish a book after this?’ I ask Joe, more to keep up the conversation than anything else. ‘Is that what the retreat is for?’
He shrugs and tosses the rind. ‘I don’t know.’ He stops and looks down at me, then removes his sunglasses. ‘Here,’ he says, handing them to me. ‘You seem bothered by the light.’
‘Are you sure?’ I say, reluctant to take them.
‘Absolutely.’ He plucks his spectacles from a pocket and puts them back on his face. ‘Can hardly see without these on, anyway.’ He surveys the coast behind me. ‘I think I’ll try one of the caves to write in today. I won’t need them in there.’
He stops and points at an inlet on the west side of the island. ‘You might not see them, but if you look past the Cyprus trees there’s a row of black dots. They’re ancient caves. Pretty cool. Atmospheric. I can take you, if you like.’
I’m already feeling a lot weaker than I expected, so I tell him that maybe I will in a day or so.
‘Well, we’re close to Bone Beach,’ he says.
‘We are?’
A nod. ‘It’s a bit of a climb down. I’m not sure you’re well enough to manage it.’
I tell him I can manage, but he insists on my taking his arm before negotiating a narrow pathway that leads down to a rocky outcrop. A few moments later, I’m gazing down at calm, azure waters, gently lapping at the rocks below.
‘The tide is in,’ I say, straining to see any sign of a boat.
He grins. ‘No such thing as a tide here.’
‘No tide?’
‘Not really. Something to do with the Mediterranean not being affected by the Atlantic.’
I think back to the other night. ‘I definitely saw waves crashing against the rocks.’
He nods. ‘Yeah, it’s the currents between Crete and Libya. We get big cruise ships passing by every now and then, too. Causes waves. Or it might have been the storm. Here, take my arm again.’ He crooks a pale elbow at me. ‘Bone Beach isn’t much further.’
He reveals a path to the right of the outcrop that drops down to another level. He tells me to be careful and follow behind as he presses against the rockface and moves along. Finally, he stops and turns carefully.
‘There is a faster route, but I don’t think you’d make it today. Some climbing involved. Look down to the right.’
I see a chalky beach about twenty feet below. The name of the beach is immediately clear – the rocks do resemble bones. They are muscular and ribbed, the colour of old teeth. From here it looks as though a giant is pushing upward out of the ground, two white rocks the shape of shoulder bones on either side of a strip of small rocks mimicking a spine. And there, right at the edge of the water, is a wooden boat, two long masts jutting from the centre. Red sails splay out across the milky sand like the huge wings of a Jurassic butterfly.
‘Does that help you remember?’ Joe asks.
‘That’s the boat I came in?’ I say, and his silence confirms it. Astonishment doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel. I have no memory, nothing, that indicates a link between me and that boat. It may as well be a spacecraft as a boat.
‘Are you all right?’ Joe asks.
I tell him that I’m fine, but I feel scared and dazed. I guess I’d expected everything to come together upon seeing the boat. The fact I feel nothing, remember nothing, despite being able to see the very vessel that brought me here, is deeply troubling.
I turn and look up at the cliff path that leads back to the farmhouse. It looks treacherous.
‘How on earth did I get up there?’
‘George carried you,’ Joe explains. ‘I gave you mouth-to-mouth.’ He shrugs. ‘Like I said, you were lucky.’
Further out to sea are shadows of other islands, boats, a cruise ship. The possibilities for my origins are daunting, endless. I feel panicky again, like I can’t get my breath.
‘I’m glad Nikodemos is coming,’ I say. ‘I need to find out where I’ve come from. Who I am.’
‘Still no memory of your name, then?’
I shake my head.
‘Have you considered that perhaps you don’t want to remember?’
I turn and try to read his expression, the tone of his voice, but I don’t know him well enough to work out whether he’s joking.
‘That sounds dramatic. Why wouldn’t I want to remember?’
He shrugs and looks back down at the boat, unaware of how stricken I am.
‘I’d say that the fact that you were on a boat in the middle of nowhere suggests you were running from something. Or sailing, rather. And there’s no other island nearby that you might have been headed for. Why would you come to this island?’
I think about this for a long minute, willing the answer to come to mind.
‘I really don’t know.’
‘Can I make a suggestion?’
‘Of course.’
A smile. ‘Why don’t you try writing?’
‘Writing?’
He nods. ‘It really does stir up the subconscious. As therapy, for want of a better description. It’s helped me with a lot of stuff. Childhood stuff.’ He bites his lip and looks down, a shadow passing across his face. ‘Anyway. It might help you remember your name.’
‘I’ll give it a go,’ I say with a shrug.
He
