Read The Island for Free Online

I make it to an overhang, where a bent tree clings and grapples for the sky.
    I hold on to the tree for support and look down across the bay.
    For some reason my heart is stuttering and jerking. I take deep breaths to clear my head, tighten my hands on the tree trunk.
    I see that I’m no way near to the highest point – not even a little. The mountain rears behind me, impossibly high. But I’m at the top of the cliff and I can see well enough, despite the sun-spots blinding my eyes.
    I crouch on the dry, scabby ground and look over my new world.
    There is only endless sea and sky and the huddled jungle. The sun pulses. Below me, the sea winks and twinkles.
    I am on an island.
    It is small and high and rocky.
    It is joined to another, smaller one.
    No houses. No huts. No signs of life.
    I am totally and completely

alone.
    Â 
    Would You Rather?
    â€˜Would you rather: sniff a tramp’s bum or eat a dog-poo sandwich?’
    Me and Johnny always play the same game going up Sydenham Hill. We get off at the train station and walk past the housing estate and the big posh houses.
    As always, I wonder what it’d be like to break inside, to have a wander round, maybe drink a little something from the cocktail cabinet, make myself a salad from their well-stocked American-style fridge; have a little swim in their pool, use their gym.
    â€˜Would you rather,’ Johnny repeats, ‘sniff a tramp’s bum or eat a dog-poo sandwich? Tell me, Frannie.’
    â€˜Hmmm…’ I pretend to consider, but inside I’m in the kitchen of one of these houses, shoes off, Ella crackling out of the top-of-the-range speakers, a nice glass of Pinot on the go. ‘The tramp’s bum,’ I say. ‘Every time. Much as I like eating dog poo.’
    Johnny goes off into gales of giggles and then falls silent as he thinks up another one. This takes him till we get to the play park, where he has to have a go on the witch’s hat.
    â€˜Got one,’ he says.
    â€˜OK, Monkey,’ I say, spinning him. ‘This had better be good. The last one was way too easy.’
    â€˜It is, it is. Would you rather: spend the night in a deep, dark wood all alone or…kiss Big Wayne with tongues?’
    I stop the witch’s hat and turn him round to face me. ‘You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you, Monkey?’
    I’m keeping my voice light but inside I’m thinking of Big Wayne with his oily black hair and those hands that he’s always shoving into bags of cheese ’n’ onion crisps.
    â€˜You’re gorgeous, you know that?’ he said to me once, when Cassie was asleep, running his hands through my hair. ‘You could be my backing singer, love. You’ve only got to ask.’
    And he was playing his own music on the stereo, his own crappy band and crappy voice crooning away, curling round us like fag smoke. His cheese ’n’ onion breath and cheese ’n’ onion fingers.
    â€˜Kiss Big Wayne?’ I say. ‘Ugh. It’s got to be the deep, dark woods. Anyway,’ I say, ruffling his hair, ‘I wouldn’t be alone, would I? I’d have
you.
’
    â€˜No, no,’ Johnny says, ‘that’s cheating. You’ve got to be on your own.
All
alone or it doesn’t count.’
    â€˜We-ell, I’d be thinking of you and you’d be thinking of me and that would be the next best thing, yeah?’
    â€˜Yeah, Frannie. Spin me again?’
    â€˜Only if you let me on too.’
    And I climb on and sit facing him and our legs are intertwined and the sunlight is spinning and our smiles are flying and, just for this moment, I am, we are, truly, truly happy.
    Â 
    Space Girl
    The beach has a single tree on it, right in the middle and separate from the forest.
    One Tree Beach.
    My new home.
    Climbing down the way I’ve come seems impossible in this sun so I walk along the top of the cliffs instead, banked by the