TOBY WILLIAMS
Somewhere off the coast of Iceland
Day 241
July 1, 2026
It’s me again. Maybe I should write Dear Diary. I understand why people write that now. It helps to make you less self-conscious. I’ll be more precise. Dear member of the Icelandic Coast Guard who is the poor bastard to find my dead body in this room along with my notes of my time stranded on this boat to hell. I’m sorry for the smell, it’s probably appalling.
That’s sad. It should be Dear Frances really, shouldn’t it? In my defense I’ve written her so many “When you get this, know that I loved you” letters that I’m getting bored of them. She’ll read them all going, “Could you have maybe changed it up a bit, Toby, these are quite one-note, you know.”
We’re down to 201 now. Ninety-nine dead, 201 left standing. Not standing actually. We spend a lot of time sitting. When you’re on an extreme low-calorie starvation diet you don’t spend a lot of time walking about. Funny that.
There have been nine more suicides, although a bigger range of methods than at the beginning. Five more have thrown themselves off the boat （can’t say that’s how I’d do it, but I’ve always been very suspicious of sharks and killer whales）， three have used knives （the captain’s locked those away now） and one had the audacity to use a stash of pills none of us knew he had and a full liter of whiskey. The bastard. We could have enjoyed that booze.
Bella died two weeks ago, which was a surprise, actually. I thought her rage would sustain her. I wonder what happened to her husband, son and baby Carolina. None of us have had phone reception for months so there’s no way of knowing. I hope her husband was okay and her children are safe.
It’s odd seeing people die of starvation. We’re all eating roughly the same amount now. The dietitian died a few weeks ago so we don’t have a system anymore other than the captain giving us just enough to keep us alive, or so we hope.
I don’t know why some of us are alive and others aren’t. It’s just luck, I imagine. I was a bit pudgy when I got on the boat. Mark was a good two stone heavier than me so we’re both still plodding along. Less plodding than when we first got on the boat though. I’m much lighter in step now. He’s keeping me sane, Mark is. He’s always been the quieter one of us two and he watches people very closely.
“You all right?” he’ll ask when I’m having a bad day and I’ll go, “Yeah, been better,” and he’ll say, “What could be better?” and we’ll talk about all the things we miss, the food and the sex （me with Frances, him with Sally）， the wine, the warmth, the friends. All of our old lives. And then he’ll say, “We’ll have those things again, Toby, you’ll see,” and even though we’re in the same place and he knows the same amount I do about the future, a bit of me relaxes and goes, yeah, we will.
I miss steak. So much. Jesus Christ. I would kill for a steak. Would I kill for a steak? Maybe. I’d have put the dietitian out of his misery twenty-four hours before he died for a steak. I wouldn’t kill the captain for a steak. He’s the one keeping this whole operation together. I don’t know what he does in that control room of his all day but I’m still alive and the ship hasn’t sunk so he’s still doing better than the captain of the Titanic as far as I’m concerned.
Oh God, and beer. I crave beer. I’ve never even been much of a beer drinker but the idea of a cold ale in a glass slippery with condensation, outside in the garden, talking to Frances as the grandkids play in the paddling pool makes me want to weep with need. And pick ’n’ mix. It’s weird the things your brain decides it wants. Pick ’n’ mix makes me think of the cinema, that’s it. Seeing superhero movies with Mark and watching Maisy go on her first date when she was thirteen, too young to be on their own because they couldn’t drive and the buses were a nightmare so I “dropped off” her and Ryan at the cinema and then went in and sat fifteen rows behind them. She told me years later, once her and Ryan had gotten married and had Isabel, that she had seen me at the cinema and she had liked knowing I was there. Although it did delay their first kiss by a few days. I wonder if Ryan’s still alive?