‘Human. Faeces. In my. Bed.’
Oh boy, she’s really on one today.
‘Who did?’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t, like, on purpose, babe,’ Honey says as she rubs Camilla’s back, trying to soothe her.
Accidental or not, it sounds like a horrible thing to wake up to.
‘He said it was a present! The sick freak,’ Camilla goes on. ‘Then he disappeared into the jungle. Probably knew I’d go mad – probably off collecting more. Ew!’
Lockie and I exchange a look.
‘Who are we talking about?’ I ask her.
‘Tony, obviously,’ she snaps.
Ozzy is already in the water, fishing, which means Lockie is the ‘man of the house’. I look at him and smile, letting him know it’s him who needs to investigate.
‘I’ll have a look then, shall I?’ he says reluctantly.
He crouches beside the bed and takes a look. Then he prods it with a finger.
‘Oh my God, ew, don’t touch it!’ Camilla says before gagging dramatically.
Lockie laughs as he picks it up.
‘Well, it’s not faeces,’ he tells her. ‘Look – it’s a fossil. A really fancy one, actually. See…’
‘Oh,’ Camilla says simply.
We all lean in to look. He’s right. It’s a little spiral-shaped stone – probably from some prehistoric sea creature. It really is beautiful.
‘He probably found it to replace your crystal,’ I say. ‘So you’d have something to hold. Something pretty from the earth, you were saying how much you missed it, for grounding you…’
She chews her lip and, and for the first time since we met, she looks like she feels genuinely guilty.
‘I… may have screamed at him,’ she says. ‘I called him a freak and told him to get lost and never come back. I thought he was pranking me.’
‘Don’t worry, Cleo and I will go find him, we’ll talk to him,’ Lockie reassures her. ‘We’ll get him to come back, to talk to you, and it will all be okay.’
‘He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body,’ I tell her. ‘He’ll forgive you.’
‘Yeah, okay, thanks,’ she says, her voice much softer than usual.
‘Come on then,’ Lockie says. ‘Let’s go find our boy.’
We call Tony’s name down the winding jungle path. It doesn’t take long before we find him – sort of like when a kid runs away from home, but hides out in the tree house in the garden. Then again, we’re on a small island, so how far can he run?
Eventually, a voice calls back. ‘Stay away!’
‘Mate, we just want to talk to you,’ Lockie calls back.
‘Fine. But don’t come too close,’ Tony replies.
Odd.
We follow his voice and find him sitting on a fallen tree, probably taken out by the storm. He’s hunched over, like a sad garden gnome, and… oh, God.
