Day one:

She had woken up underwater, with blood from a cut on her head staining the sea around her, so dizzy she didn't know how she had got there or which way was up. She kicked out, felt her feet hit something and pushed against it to launch herself towards the light. She didn't know how long she'd been under, but her lungs strained as she kicked and waved her arms, wishing she had thought to take more swimming lessons, but seeing the patch of light through the shimmering blue above her growing bigger, nearer.

Her head broke the surface, water clinging to her and pouring off her at the same time, as she took sweet gulps of oxygen and prayed that she was still alive. Faith shook wet hair out of her eyes, sound crashing down around her, the opposite to the tranquil silence under the water. As she struggled towards the shore, blinking salty water from her eyes, she was aware of people running to and fro in front of her, screaming loved ones names.

Someone saw her in the sea and splashed out to meet her a few yards from the beach, but her vision was so blurred she couldn't make out what he looked like. He was speaking to her with an American accent, asking her questions which Faith's groggy mind could barely comprehend, and only answer with nods and shakes of her head. Was she OK? How many fingers was he holding up? Was she travelling alone, where was her family? The last question hit home as she remembered what had happened…

Turbulence shook the plane, people thrown across the aisle, cold fear freezing her hand on its way to her seatbelt. Somehow there had been a mix-up with the tickets; one seat was five rows behind the other three, and her father had volunteered to sit on his own during the long flight, so that her mother could sit with Faith and her younger sister.

She didn't see the back half of the plane rip off in mid-air, just felt cold air snatch at her as she tried to turn her head, stinging her eyes. The row behind her was barely there, the passengers clinging to each other and the seats in front as they were sucked out backwards. The rows after that were gone.

She hadn't comprehended the meaning of this before the front half of the plane jerked, the nose twisting upwards, and she saw the ground looming towards them through the gaping hole where the back of the plane had been. Faith had let go of the useless seatbelt to grab onto the seat in front, but her hands were snatched away by the wind. She screamed, but her mother was sitting very still two seats away side, blood streaming from under her hair where a case had fallen from the overhead. Her sister screamed; eyes squeezed tight shut, arms wrapped tightly around the motionless form beside her, not seeing Faith struggling on the other side of her. Her last thought before she was grappled into thin air was annoyance; they had never noticed her before this, it was just typical-

Her head had clipped against something as she was flung out of the back of the plane, knocking her out cold an instant before the freezing water pummelled into her. She had been taking a breath to scream, and when she came round a few seconds later it was this precious scrap of oxygen that enabled her to get to the surface.

Faith came back to her senses, as the man holding her asked the questions again, sitting her down on sand, gently opening her eyes to shine a flashlight in them. She tried to speak, shaking her head, but the sound of screams jolted the man to his feet. Faith followed his gaze to see a girl in her early twenties, on her hands and knees, clearly extremely pregnant and in some pain.

'Don't move!' The man shouted, stumbling towards the blonde girl, his designer suit torn and soaking, missing his tie, blood running from a cut on his handsome face and from a cut just below his close-cropped hair. She nodded, unable to move if she had wanted to, watching him talking earnestly to the girl, before noticing the fuselage of the plane, missing the nose and back half, embedded on its side in the sand fifty yards away, the wing still attached, straining under its own weight.

Filled with a new resolve, Faith heaved herself to her feet, forcing herself over to the back of the front section, clamping a hand over her nose and mouth at the stench that hit her, gagging on the cheap flight meal she had been served. She forced it down and took another step into the darkness, wishing she'd brought a torch. She remembered where she had been sitting; the middle section, near the right, and made her way trough the twisted wreckage of seats at the back to her own seat number, almost not daring to look next to her own dark blue plane seat.

But she willed her head to turn, letting her hand drop from her face as she saw her mother and sister, coughing violently as the reek from the dead blasted into her again. She stumbled backwards, falling to the sand a few steps away from the fuselage, tears streaming down her face as sobs racked through her. Faith turned onto her side, scratching her face into the sand, trying to force the image of their broken bodies from her mind, but no matter how hard she shut her eyes, the image was stamped against her mind.

Suddenly a crash shook the ground near her, and something heavy plummeted to the ground behind her. She hastily scrambled away, turning to see the plane, still shuddering, but now missing the wing, which had hit the ground barely ten feet away. She sighed, flopping back down into the sand, not caring about how close to death she had come. As far as she was concerned, she may as well be already dead.

Half an hour of sobbing later, Faith pulled herself together and sat up, rubbing a hand over her tear-stained face, taking deep breaths to ward off the overwhelming hopelessness that threatened to consume her. It took her a few minutes to realise that she was being watched, quickly turning her head to meet the gaze of a bald man in his fifties, sitting motionless in the sand a few yards away. He was staring at her; one of his pale eyes seemingly cut in half by a thin, bloody scar from his forehead to his cheek. Faith felt strangely intrigued by the serious, calm expression on his face.

'What's up?' He asked, speaking with an American accent, the trace of a smile in his voice, though none showed on his face.

Faith slowly got to her feet, warily eyeing the strange man, whose gaze never faltered as he steadily examined her torn jeans and face wet with tears.

'You being serious?' Her voice came out in a croak; she could taste metallic blood and sand on her tongue, and was dying for a drink of water.

He didn't move, didn't smile, but there was the same undertone of humour in his voice as he spoke again, glancing round at their surroundings. 'Things could be worse.'

'How?' Her voice cracked as she said it, remembering her mother's glassy, staring eyes and twisted limbs. 'What could be worse than this?' Faith waved half-heartedly at their surroundings, almost hitting another survivor, a young man in a striped shirt who hurried past without noticing her, his mind on other things.

'We're alive.' The bald man suggested after a minute, sounding surprised he even had to say it. 'We've got dry land, enough food and water to last until we get rescued.'

Faith nodded wearily, sitting down beside him on a scrap of the plane wreckage, which creaked under her added weight.

'So what's your name?' He asked after a moment of her gloomy silence, smiling kindly at her.

'My name? Oh…Faith.'

'That's a good name.' He commented. 'We all need a little faith.'

She nodded again, not really listening, still seeing the bodies from the fuselage. Around her, the survivors were starting to calm down, building fires and stringing up temporary shelters to last until morning; they surely couldn't be here for much longer than a few hours. They would soon be found.

Wouldn't they?