She woke on the second day to a leak. In the corner of the store, where all the candy bars had been left on the shelves, rain was coming through a patch on the ceiling.
During the night, she must have cried because tears had dried on her cheeks, like trails of frost. Hardly a minute passed without her thinking about her girls, even when she was almost asleep. Her absence would be making them frantic and confused. And even though they weren’t old enough to process it all, part of them might think Rebekah had deliberately abandoned them.
‘I haven’t, I promise,’ she muttered. ‘I wouldn’t.’
Never.
She’d spent the first part of the night in the Jeep, running the engine and the heaters, but then she’d started to worry about burning through the gas still in the tank. She had no idea if there was any left in the pumps at the station, and trying to find out would involve starting the generator, which probably meant breaking into the office on the forecourt. Until her first night here, when she’d sought shelter inside the store, she’d never broken into anywhere.
She was near-certain a rescue was coming, near-certain that Noella or Gareth had reported her missing by now and that it would be just a matter of time before the cops arrived on the island – and, yet, there was still a sliver of doubt in her, two nights on. She knew she might need a Plan B.
One way or another, she had to get home.
She had to get back to Kyra and Chloe.
In the here and now that meant fresh clothes. It meant food that wasn’t just chocolate. It meant a water source because she’d already been through four of the eight remaining soda cans left in the store. To keep warm, she needed a heater, some blankets. From what she could remember, Johnny had said there weren’t any hotels or bed-and-breakfasts or, at least, none that weren’t boarded up or abandoned long ago. Anyone who stayed for any length of time used the hostels built for the fishermen. There, she might find a mattress and a blanket.
She needed to get a proper idea of the geography of the island too, so she could find her way around: there were no maps in the store, but if she could find one, it might help her get an idea of where Johnny had gone, and where she might find food. She could have used the GPS in the Jeep, but only roads were marked on that. She needed a bigger, more detailed overview.
She moved to the window, looking out at the sky: it was raining again. She could hear the ocean, though the window was too high for her to see it.
Stay calm, she told herself.
This hell will only be temporary.