Stranded

Prologue
I roll over on to my back and open my eyes. The world has not ended overnight: the cloudless sky is pink where the sun is rising over the sea. I squeeze my eyes tight shut and try again. If I concentrate hard enough, perhaps I will be able to wake up at home.
I try with all my might to create my own bedroom in Brighton around me. The sand under my back becomes a mattress, the tatty sarong a duvet. The shifting, snoring people around me are transformed into my beautiful Daisy, sleeping just across the landing.
Much of the time I do not believe life on this island is real. I am strangely certain that I could pull myself home if I tried hard enough. I give it everything I have, this morning. If I wake up at home, I will appreciate everything I have like never before.
It doesn’t work, of course. It never does. The beach is still there. The water that imprisons us here is still lapping on the shore like something from a travel agent’s twisted brochure. I pull myself into a sitting position and look around. The sea is glimmering in the breaking dawn, and it is flat. This morning’s air is perfectly still. The sand is exactly the way it always is. No boat is visible on the horizon. No one has come in the night to rescue us. Nothing has changed. We have been stuck here for many days. Nobody has counted; the time has drifted by. We are still alive, all seven of us, though one is ill and at least one other is mad. The rest of them are still sleeping, so I stand up and pad away, savouring time on my own. I walk to the edge of the jungle, listening to its sounds. Everything in there is waking up. The rainforest teems with life. From the smallest insect to the giant lumbering dinosaur lizards, the inhabitants of the island’s interior are harmless, to us if not each other. There are no tigers in there, no rabid monkeys. What peril there is probably comes from the mosquitoes.
My hair is straw. I dread to think how leathery my face has become: it is peeling in places, though we still have a little sunscreen left. I am wearing the bikini and sarong I happened to have on when this started. If I had known what I was heading towards, I would have worn something sturdier and brought supplies. The sarong used to be pink with gold lamé at the edge. I was pleased when I bought it in Accessorize at Gatwick. Now it is greyish and the gold thread is broken and sticking out everywhere. There are three holes in it. This is a rubbish sarong. I never expected, when I bought it, that it would become the sole thing I owned.
If it weren’t for Daisy, back at home wondering what has become of me, I would set out into the sea and swim until my body gave up. As it is, I just have to wait.
The day stretches ahead. All we do is find food and fetch water. We have no energy for anything but the struggle to stay alive. This is no life at all. I lean against a tree and sob. This is where I will die. We will all die here, and we know it. I hope it happens soon.