Page 66 of Beautiful Ugly

Ilike to think of myself as a cheerful pessimist. Life is less depressing if you accept that people will always disappoint you. I don’t think I ran out of petrol; I’m convinced I had half a tank when I arrived in the village.Someonedid this to me, I’m sure of it. But as soon as I have the thought I feel less certain. I don’t know how someone could have, unless they siphoned the fuel while I was in the shop. But why would anyone do that?

To stop me from leaving the island.

Delusions and paranoia can be common with insomnia. Confusion and memory loss can contribute to untrue beliefs, not grounded in reality, but which feel entirely real. Iknowthis. I just don’t know if that is what is happening to me. Can everything that has occurred since I arrived on Amberly really be due to lack of sleep? Or even bog myrtle tea? I don’t think so anymore. I just heard them speaking about me on the walkie-talkie, I didn’t imagine that.

I get Columbo out of the car and grab the walkie-talkie in case I catch them talking about me again. It’s a shame I can’t use it to contact someone on the mainland. As we start to leave the village the old red phone box catches my eye, the one that has been convertedinto a library. What if itdoeswork? What if the islanders just told me it didn’t for reasons I don’t yet understand? What if it isn’t really “a library” at all?

I run to it and when I pull the door open I feel dizzy and unsteady on my feet.

It is still full of books, but they are all mine.

Every single book on every shelf has the name Grady Green on the spine.

There are multiple copies of every book I’ve ever written, as though the whole island has been reading them. This is too much. This island, these people, everything about this place feels wrong. I’m not crazy,theyare. I pick up the handset with trembling fingers and almost cry tears of joy when I hear a dial tone. Itdoeswork. I only know two mobile numbers off by heart: my wife and my agent. So I call Kitty. I keep looking over my shoulder in case someone comes to try to stop me, but the village is as deserted as always.

The phone rings once...

Twice...

Three times...

“Hello?” says a voice.

“Kitty, it’s me. Grady. I really need to—”

“Hello? Is anyone there? This is a very bad line,” she says, sounding impatient.

The phone crackles and I speak a little louder.

“Kitty, it’s Grady. Can you hear me?”

“Grady, is that you?”

“Yes! I need your help—”

“Grady, this is a terrible line. Can you call me back? I am glad that you’ve called though, I really need to talk to you. I’m so sorry I sent you to the island, you need to leave as soon as you can. I don’t think it is safe for you to be there. Since you left London I found out that—”

The line goes dead.

“Kitty?”

I stab the buttons, all of them, but nothing works. There isn’t even a dial tone anymore. It’s almost as though someone has cut the phone line.

Maybe they have.

I don’t think I’m being paranoid anymore.

Kitty just said that I was in danger so Ihaven’tbeen imagining it.

I grab Columbo’s lead and we start to run.

RUNNING SCARED

We run out of the village and toward the main road, then take the turning that leads to the south of the island. I have never sailed a ferry, but this is a very small one, it has to be worth a go. At the very least, there might be some equipment on board that I could use to contact the mainland. Try to reach Kitty again. We don’t have to run too much farther to see where the ferry is docked, I remember the wooden pier well.

But there is no ferry there.

I can’t see any boats at all.