Rose’s anxiety ratchets up instantly.
‘Have you seen India? Or Dan?’ asks Keera breathlessly, coming to a halt beside them and panting in the late afternoon heat.
‘No,’ Rose says.
‘India went out with Dan for a hike, that’s more than three hours ago,’ pants Keera, ‘and they’re still not back! No way they planned to be out that long. India was going to come into Xanthe with me later. She’s not answering her phone.’
Rose feels her heart lurch. This is serious. Three hours! They are clearly lost.
‘Search party?’ she says, turning to the two Greek men. Christos and Stavros exchange worried glances.
Christos does not need to say anything. People have died on the islands in the past years. The hills can be treacherous to anyone not used to walking here. There are rocks, jagged ravines – all places where the unwary can fall and break limbs. And more than anything, the heat can kill.
Rose stands perfectly still, thinking, her eyes focused in the distance. Nothing betrays the way her heart is racing with panic.
‘They’re young,’ says Christos. ‘That matters.’
‘We did warn them about going off without enough liquids, with maps, didn’t we?’ Rose asks.
Christos nods. ‘Dan is clever,’ he says. ‘Plus, there are two of them,’ he says.
But he takes out his mobile phone.
‘I’ll ring the police.’
India is sitting on a rock under the shade of a large cypress tree, draining the last of her water and glaring at Dan.
‘That was a brilliant plan, wasn’t it?’ she snarls at Dan, who is holding India’s phone high above his head trying to get coverage.
Phone detox much?
He had used an eSIM so he could easily connect to the local phone companies but India had not.
‘You have no signal,’ he says lamely, wondering where the hell they are. ‘If there were stars, we could navigate our way back—’ he begins.
‘Stars! I don’t want to be here at night!’ she shrieks.
‘We won’t,’ says Dan firmly. ‘I promise.’
‘But how do you know? You don’t, do you? Nobody knows anything.’
India feels the exhaustion rise up in her and meet the fear head-on. They’re stuck somewhere in Corfu, which is almost six hundred square kilometres, as Dan has told her.
His vast knowledge is absolutely useless right now.
Anything could happen. Anything!
Are there mad wild animals here? Wolves?
India has no clue. She only concentrated on the nice part of Greece, not any scary bits.
They have no food, nothing left to drink, her phone isn’t working.
India starts to scream.
‘Help! Help!’ she yells into the still air, doing nothing but stopping the insect life from making noise for a brief, startled moment.
Dan stares at her in alarm.
