As I fell back into bed I noticed that Peter was asleep, as was Johnny. Only Honey was not there.
I woke again — properly — at midday. Mamoru had left some food and water, but I did not feel like eating. Johnny was sitting some way along the beach under a tree; Peter was swimming in the sea. He saw me step gingerly onto the sand and walked towards me.
“What a party,” he said. “I feel awful. What about you?”
“Worse than death,” I said, and he laughed. When I laughed my whole body hurt.
“Poor thing,” he said. “First time is always the worst. Trust me, next time you have a glass of wine, you’ll adore it.”
I smiled. “Where’s Mamoru?”
“Not sure. He said he was off to find Honey. I’m keeping my head firmly below the parapet, though — I’m certainly not his favourite person.”
“Where’s Honey?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Didn’t he come back for you last night? I thought I heard him say he was going back to keep an eye on you.”
“Darling, that was the wine speaking to you. I saw him go back to the camp with you and that was it. I passed out on the steps and didn’t wake up until it was nearly dawn. God only knows how I found my way back to the camp.”
“Oh,” I said. “My head really hurts.”
STILL NO SIGN OF HONEY. Mamoru is getting very worried.
“I can’t understand what the fuss is about,” Peter said
when he returned from another fruitless search of the island. “He’ll turn up eventually.”
“He’s always running off on his own,” Johnny said.
Mamoru remained silent. He has hardly spoken since Peter’s party, not even to me.
MY DIARY IS BEING DISTRURBED. I know this for certain. I do not know who is reading it, but someone is. This morning I began to write but after a few minutes I felt a stabbing pain in my abdomen. (I have not felt right since the day of Peter’s party.) I closed my diary and placed a stone on top of it before walking up the beach to relieve myself. I do not know how long I was away — not more than ten minutes, at most. When I came back the diary was open, its pages fanning gently in the breeze. I must have startled the ghostly reader. Yet I knew for sure that Mamoru, Johnny, and Peter had all been engaged in one activity or another. As I stood there I could see, with my own eyes, Peter splashing in the shallows dressed in his shirtsleeves as always. Johnny was building a small house from shells. They had both been doing that when I left. Mamoru was on the other side of the island searching for Honey (who is still missing). Mamoru’s expeditions last for hours; often he does not return till dark. I did not know which phantom had been reading my diary.
My hands trembled as I sat down. The nightly wailing may continue but this cannot.
IT WAS JOHNNY who woke us up. He took us half a mile up the beach in the pale dawn and showed us what he had found.
There, left stranded on the shore by the retreating tide, lay Honey. The occasional wave licked at his body as it faded into the sand. He was still fully clothed, his wristwatch glinting softly as it caught the light. His neck appeared black, badly bruised, and his shirt was torn in several places. Nothing remained of his face.
“It’s been eaten by fish,” Peter said quietly.
Mamoru dug a grave at the top of the beach, under the trees beyond reach of the tide. We buried Honey, and Peter said a few words of Christian prayer.
We went back to the camp but none of us was hungry for breakfast.
MAMORU SAYS HONEY must have been so intoxicated with wine that he must have somehow fallen into the sea. We have not spoken about Honey much, though I know that we are all thinking of how Honey could have died. Mamoru’s explanation is convincing, but the truth of it is that no one really knows what happened. No one knows anything anymore.
I FORCE MYSELF TO RECORD THIS.
Circumstances left me with no choice. I could not stop myself.
Finally, I accept my fate.
Last night I decided I could no longer bear this emptiness. I saw Mamoru disappear into the darkened woods. He has taken to doing this every evening, after we eat our supper in terrible silence. Each time he leaves I long to follow him, yet I have been afraid to incur his wrath. What do I have to lose? I don’t know. It feels as if I have lost everything, and yet when I look at Mamoru I still feel the faint pulse of hope, the scent of something new.
In the end I could contain myself no longer. I saw him melt into the trees and I followed him.
