Molly and Roddy tried their phones. Nothing. Adam looked up at the snowclouds then out to sea. It was starting to get dark.

‘What time is it?’

Roddy looked at him. ‘Your pulse gizmo fucked?’

Adam nodded and Roddy smirked. ‘How are you going to cope without knowing how stressed you are?’

Molly looked at her phone. ‘Ten past four.’

‘Shit, we were unconscious for over an hour,’ said Adam, trying to ignore Roddy. ‘Ethan and Luke could be in a bad way.’

‘We should split up and look for them,’ said Molly.

Roddy leaned on a rock, then slid down onto his arse. ‘Think I need to rest for a bit.’ He fingered his shoulder. ‘Feeling a bit dodge.’

‘Should one of us try to get help?’ said Adam.

Molly shook her head. ‘It’s freezing, the snow could get worse and it’ll be dark soon. We need to find Ethan and Luke before we do anything else. Adam, you go left and I’ll head right. After a couple of hundred yards head up the slope then work your way back along. I’ll meet you up on the ledge if we haven’t found anything.’

‘OK.’

‘I’ll hold the fort here,’ said Roddy, trying to laugh through laboured breaths.

Adam and Molly headed off along the beach. It was rough terrain, boulders and rocks everywhere, slippery kelp draped over low-lying stones.

Adam scrambled over the rocks as best he could, slithering around puddles and pools. He shouted for Luke and Ethan and heard Molly and Roddy doing the same, then as he cleared a large shelf of stone he spotted something. It was a body face down in a rockpool twenty yards away. He recognised the Berghaus fleece.

‘Ethan,’ he yelled, clambering over. He turned round briefly. ‘Molly, over here, I’ve found Ethan.’ He waited to see Molly wave in acknowledgement and change direction, then he clambered over to the body.

Something was badly wrong. The left arm and head were at impossible angles to the torso, which was slumped in half a foot of water. Adam turned him over, then staggered back with the force of lifting him. He sat next to the pool and looked at Ethan’s face, one half of which was bloody and collapsed, the skull crushed, exposed empty eye socket glaring back at him.

He vomited into the water. His body shook as he heard Molly shouting to him. He looked up at Ethan again and winced. He edged towards the body and held Ethan’s wrist with his own shaking hand. Freezing cold and no pulse. Fucking hell. Fucking, fucking hell.

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Molly behind him.

Adam dropped the hand and scuttled backwards.

Roddy appeared behind Molly. ‘Holy fuck,’ he said, turning away.

Adam sat on the ground shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

Roddy looked at the body. ‘Poor bastard.’

‘Poor bastard?’ said Adam, standing up. ‘Roddy, this is all your fault.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘If you hadn’t been driving like a total maniac we wouldn’t have come over that cliff and Ethan wouldn’t be lying there with half his face missing.’

‘If you hadn’t punched me in the fucking ear when I was driving …’

‘So this is my fault?’

‘Fucking right it is.’

‘You never take responsibility, do you?’

‘Not if it’s not my fault.’

‘Bastard!’ Adam shouted, rushing towards Roddy and swinging for him.

Roddy stumbled backwards clutching his shoulder and fell to the ground as Adam threw punches at his head and body. Roddy covered his face with his good arm, ducking out the way of the fists as best he could.

‘Adam,’ cried Molly, pulling at him. ‘Leave him.’

Roddy brought his knee up into Adam’s groin, making him collapse, then slid out from underneath, pinning him with his knees and punching with his left hand. Molly was forced back by the struggle as they swore and raged at each other like boys in the playground.

‘What the hell are you guys doing?’

The voice was quiet but it made them stop and turn.

Luke was standing on a rock above them. He made an agile leap down as Roddy and Adam rolled apart, wheezing and coughing.

Luke was about to speak when he saw Ethan’s body. He walked over and knelt down next to him. He touched Ethan’s neck in a tender gesture then put a hand on his own brow. ‘Jesus.’

He shook his head and walked back to where they were standing.

‘What happened, man?’

‘We came over that cliff,’ said Molly. ‘Adam came round first and got me and Roddy out of the car. You and Ethan must’ve been thrown clear. Where were you?’

Luke nodded behind her. ‘Up the slope, thick heather.’ He looked at Ethan. ‘I was lucky, I guess.’ He noticed Roddy’s shoulder. ‘What happened to you?’

‘That’s the last time I buy a fucking Audi,’ said Roddy. ‘Came apart like balsa wood.’

‘Looks sore, man.’

‘Correct, Einstein.’ Roddy grimaced. ‘Give the man a medical degree. So I guess we go get help now.’

‘Fucking hell,’ said Adam.

‘What?’

‘Ethan’s lying there dead, for Christ’s sake.’

‘So what?’ said Roddy. ‘We’re supposed to sit around and grieve? Nothing we do changes what’s happened. But we have to start thinking about getting the fuck out of here and saving ourselves.’

‘You heartless bastard.’

‘Heartless doesn’t come into it. He’s dead, that’s that.’

‘Jesus, someone is going to have to tell Debs,’ said Adam.

They all stood in silence looking at the body.

‘We have to get rescued first,’ said Luke eventually. ‘Phones?’

‘Nothing,’ said Molly.

‘So what do we do now?’ said Roddy.

‘We need to think logically,’ said Molly. ‘Option number one is to stay by the car and wait to get spotted.’

‘What are the chances of that happening?’ said Adam.

Molly shrugged. ‘Not great. We’re very remote, and I don’t think you can see the bottom of the cliff from the road. We could light a fire, that might get some attention, but not if there’s no one nearby to see it.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Roddy. ‘We need to do something. I’m not sitting around on my arse waiting to freeze to death.’

Molly nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

She looked up at the cliff face. It was completely unclimbable.

‘Well, there’s no chance of getting back up that way,’ she said, and turned to look both ways along the coast. ‘Looks like we’ll have to start walking, but it’s not going to be easy.’

‘Why not?’ said Roddy.

‘It’s freezing cold, almost dark and the tide is coming in. Judging by where the grass starts, the water could come up another thirty yards.’

They all looked along the coastline. The shelf in the cliff petered out in both directions after a few hundred yards. Lower down, the beach was peppered with huge boulders in one direction, and hidden by a jutting headland in the other.

‘We need to do something,’ said Luke.

‘Let’s just start walking,’ said Roddy.

‘Which way?’ said Adam.

‘Well,’ said Molly. She pointed in the boulder-strewn direction. ‘That’s east, so Port Ellen is that way, but it’s quite a few miles away, and I’ve no idea what the coast is like between here and there. What we can see from here doesn’t look too easy to get across.’

She turned towards the headland. ‘That way is the American Monument, it’s definitely closer. I know there’s a farm near it, Upper Killeyan, and a clifftop path at the monument, but I don’t know if there’s a way up from the beach.’

‘What about mobile reception?’ said Luke. ‘Which way’s better for getting a signal?’

Molly shook her head. ‘There’s no reception anywhere on the Oa. Hardly anyone lives here, there’s never been a need.’

Roddy turned to Adam and laughed. ‘You were going to start up your own business in a place that doesn’t even have mobile reception? Jesus Christ.’

Adam glared at him.

‘Oh, fuck you,’ said Roddy, getting his coke tin out and tooting a line.

‘I don’t think that’ll help,’ said Adam.

‘Fuck off, I need it for the pain.’ Roddy waved the box around. ‘Anyone want a line?’

They all stared at him, incredulous.

‘Suit yourselves.’

‘So which way?’ said Luke eventually.

Snowflakes disappeared as they hit the wet ground around them, but left a thin white layer on their shoulders.

Adam shrugged.

‘I think west,’ said Molly, turning. ‘The terrain looks easier and we know there’s a farmhouse not too far away.’

‘West it is,’ said Roddy, snorting another line and sniffing.