Emily

They woke to the sound of a familiar voice saying,

'Come on, wake up, I haven't got all day you know.' They forced their eyes open and stared. Emily was standing in front of them wearing commando type pants and boots, a tiny black T shirt and a jauntily perched beret bearing an insignia they didn't recognise.

'You!' Ross exclaimed. 'You're behind all this?'

'Not exactly, although I have been in charge of the procedural side of things,' she said. Ross and Rachel struggled to sit up. They were still feeling very drugged. They could hear the sounds of waves lapping against the shore. Had they made it to their honeymoon destination after all? The hut they were in did not look like standard resort accommodation though. Sunlight was coming in through the many gaps in the walls.

'What's going on?' Rachel asked. 'You know we're married don't you? There's nothing you can do about it now,' she added bravely although she was a little scared. Emily's face was so unyielding. She didn't seem to be carrying a gun or any other type of weapon, but maybe that was because she felt so in control that she didn't need to.

'Of course I know you're married. That was the point,' Emily said, as though Rachel was stupid.

'What?' Ross asked, confused.

'This time you are going to stay married,' Emily added. Had the drug done something strange to their heads? This wasn't making any sense.

'Emily, this was arranged this to make sure that we were going to stay married?' Ross asked, mad as the question sounded.

'Yes.'

'Just who is behind all this?' Emily ticked them off on her fingers, left hand and then right hand.

'Julie, Tag, Paolo, Gavin, Danny, Mona, Mark, Bonnie, Janice, me of course,' she'd reached ten and was about to start over on the left hand, when Ross interrupted,

'Carol?'

'No, Susan.'

'Susan?'

'She has her reasons which will become clear.'

'I'm glad something will,' Ross said.

'Nearly all of these people are our exes, but Mark was never my ex,' Rachel said emphatically.

'Neither was Gunther, despite what he told me at that pretend party you threw for me,' Emily said.

'Gunther's involved?'

'Lots of people are involved,' Emily said. 'Perhaps it would be easier if I just said why.'

'Please,' Ross said. She was going to pay for whatever it was she had done to them, but he realised that he needed to know exactly what it was and they both needed a chance to get their strength back. He could move his legs, but at the moment, the movement was weak and he knew he wouldn't be able to stand up.

'First of all, you are on an island. I wouldn't say a desert island. It does rain here, quite a lot sometimes which can be rather a nuisance, and there are other people here, although I'm afraid they don't speak any English.' Rachel's heart pounded. This was the desert island Mona had talked about. Emily smiled. 'You could call it deserted.'

'Where is this and how did we get here?' Ross asked.

'Where? I'm not telling you that. No-one apart from a very select group of people even know this island exists. This is a rather special area, which doesn't appear on any maps and gets edited out of satellite pictures. It isn't the only place in the world like that. There's a lot more international co-operation than the ordinary person ever knows about,' Emily said, making it clear what kind of person she thought she was.

'And you're part of that select group of people?' Rachel asked. Emily nodded.

'Yes. I got recruited about five years ago.'

'Recruited to what? MI7? MU5?' Ross asked.

'I'd forgotten how insular you Americans are,' Emily sighed. 'It doesn't matter what I was recruited to because the organisation doesn't officially exist.'

'But how did you arrange this?' Rachel asked.

'I've done some good work recently and I was owed a few favours, so I arranged to bring you here.'

'But why?' Rachel asked.

'We think that the pair of you had done a lot of damage to the innocent people who had the misfortune to date you while you were trying to work out whether you wanted to be together or not. In fact while you were apart, you were really both quite a menace. The flow on effect from you two was disastrous – financial, relationship hangup, you name it. Unfortunately although you got married once, you got divorced again, and created more problems for other people. Your baby didn't seem to make much difference to your behaviour, more's the pity. There really must be something wrong with you.' Emily shook her head in disgust. 'A little girl needs a father and I really think you might have been a bit more responsible.'

'What?' Ross exclaimed, outraged, but since he was unable to follow through with any meaningful action, this fell flat and Emily continued as though he hadn't spoken,

'We decided that once you got back together, you would bloody well have to stay together and leave other people alone.'

'So that's why Julie was there, and Janice and…' Rachel said.

'Hold on,' Ross said, 'What's this got to do with Janice?'

'I don't know everyone's reasons for being involved, but a lot of your exes have become friends with each other, so some people are in it more for loyalty rather than for themselves,' Emily said. 'Janice is quite good friends with Mona you know.' They hadn't known – Janice was someone they had avoided where possible. How on earth had she come to know Mona? How on earth had they all managed to hook up like this?

'All these people conspired to do this?' Rachel asked.

'Yes. At first it was just talk, but Joshua -'

'Joshua?' Rachel interjected.

'He sympathises with our aims but he chose not to be involved. He's happily married again - to someone he proposed to and not the other way around. I had a most interesting conversation with him,' Emily said with a special glance at Rachel who blushed. 'He was one of the early members of the group, and he ran into me when he was visiting London and got me to join. Until then the discussions had been theoretical - there were some vague, impractical plans involving concrete shoes and other unsubtle stuff. Once I arrived, the discussions became more practical. Through me, we could plan.'

'But it wasn't just you?'

'I'm the only one who knows the extent of the operations, but some of the others had a role to play.'

'Including Chloe?' Ross asked in amazement. He hadn't seen her performance but he'd heard all about it in a hurried conversation with Chandler. His last conversation with him.

'Ha, no, she didn't have an actual role - she can just about be trusted to remember her own name. She thinks all of this is terribly romantic, but you know Chloe.'

'Romantic?' Rachel asked in amazement. 'We're stuck together on this, this desert island.'

'Quite.'

'But I don't understand what you're doing this for,' Ross said, 'It seems that you didn't intend to stop us getting married, and that in fact you wanted us to get married and to stay together. Of course we're going to stay together.' She was mad – they were all insane.

'We're not going to split up now that we've found each other,' Rachel said, emphatically.

'Until you have another series of rows and go on a break,' Emily mocked. Rachel shuddered.

'We'll never have a break again,' Rachel said fervently.

'Never!' said Ross.

'We don't trust you, so we decided that we needed to take extra steps to make sure you stayed together, forever,' Emily said coldly. Suddenly an awful thought occurred to both of them.

'You're going to kill us!' Rachel exclaimed, suddenly jumping up. She fell down again as her still weak legs buckled.