PRAISE FOR ROSS ARMSTRONG

‘Addictive and eerie, you’ll finish the book wanting to chat about it’

– Closer Magazine, Must Read

‘A twisted homage to Hitchcock set in a recognisably post-Brexit broken Britain. Tense, fast-moving and with an increasingly unreliable narrator, The Watcher has all the hallmarks of a winner.’

– Martyn Waites

‘Ross Armstrong will feed your appetite for suspense’

– Evening Standard

‘Unreliable narrator + Rear Window-esque plot = sure-fire hit’

– The Sun

‘Brilliantly written… this psychological thriller is definitely one that will keep you up to the early hours. Five Stars.’

– Heat, Book of the Week

‘A dark, unsettling page turner’

– Claire Douglas, author of Local Girl Missing

‘Creepy and compelling’

– Debbie Howells, author of The Bones of You

‘The Watcher is an intense, unsettling read… one that had me feeling like I needed to keep checking over my shoulder as I read.’

– Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me

ROSS ARMSTRONG is an actor and writer based in North London. He studied English Literature at Warwick University and acting at RADA. As a stage and screen actor he has performed in the West End, Broadway and in upcoming shows for HBO and Netflix. Ross’ debut title The Watcher was a top-twenty bestseller and has been longlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.

Also by Ross Armstrong

The Watcher

The Girls Beneath

Beach Bodies: Part One
ROSS ARMSTRONG

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Ross Armstrong 2019

Ross Armstrong asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008361358

Version: 2019-05-16

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Quote

3.06 p.m.

Tommy: Before

3.16 p.m.

Zack: Before

3.26 p.m.

Justine: Before

3.56 p.m.

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading…

Dear Reader …

End Page

About the Publisher

For my wonderful mother, who barely watches TV and falls asleep in the cinema.

‘Let me sing to you now, about how people turn into other things’

Ovid, The Metamorphoses

3.06 p.m.

Sly, Liv and Summer smoke cigarettes on the sun deck as they discuss what to do about Zack’s wild mood swings, and more than that: about his habit of stealing the girls’ clothes, his insistence on spraying everyone with water every five minutes ‘cos it’s jokes’, and his constant attempts to get everyone to wrestle.

He has become bannoying: a phrase coined by Summer to describe that point where boring becomes annoying.

Sly flicks his long mop of wet-look mohawk to one side as he listens to both women speak, peering over his purple half-moon shades like a black Nineties vampire. His look is augmented by a nose ring; he was picked by the producers as ‘the edgy one’. Though this refers purely to his look. His personality, by contrast, is very simple. He’s either a man at peace with his inner thoughts, or one that doesn’t have many.

Liv talks passionately, sawing the air with her hands, as she explains that she feels that Zack’s not being real. She suggests they confront him in a peaceful but firm way and give him a fair hearing, a kind of intervention, that would allow him to understand their views in a non-confrontational way. ‘A kind of non-confrontational confrontation, if that makes sense,’ she adds, pushing her dark hair away from her olive-green eyes.

She believes Zack should be given a chance to come out of himself.

Summer, however, is more concerned Zack is being himself. And the last thing she wants is for him to come out of himself any more. Summer’s Sly’s girl, and he takes a long draw on his cigarette as he watches her push out her chest when she pulls her long blonde hair back and ties it up with that artful flourish of fingers he has come to adore.

Sly has practised the art of speaking little and agreeing with all. He nods and says nothing. Everyone is happy they’re on the same page: Zack gives them the ick, he’s being totally extra and they need to tell him to play it low key.

Sly nods again as he pushes up his shades to rub his eye. It still stings.

*

Curls of smoke carry up, swim eastward on a breeze. They drift through an open window, their charcoal scent turned invisible as it dances under the nostrils of Justine and Roberto as they have yet another tearful conversation, this time in the bathroom. Him: backside against the tiles, next to the toilet, his chin resting on his right knee. Her: standing over him in a crouch, the kind used to greet a toddler at the climax of their first toddle. A pose you’d call sympathetic if there wasn’t another grace note being played in her stillness. Her expectancy. She’s waiting. She wants him to admit something.

Justine is French and has told Roberto she is not used to men being so emotional. He has told her that’s how Welshmen are and he can’t help being a bit ‘emo’. It’s just another piece of slang Justine doesn’t understand, but she catches the drift and sometimes the drift is enough. She tries not to ask too many questions now. One particular query about his tattoos led to an hour-long psycho-drama about whether she liked one in particular; a bouquet of skulls and roses, out of which emerged the head of a bulldog. This heated conversation climaxed with her asking how a man so muscular could be so afraid of everything. Which didn’t go down well. So now she keeps her questions to herself.

Except this one. This one, she needs an answer to.

Roberto opens his mouth to speak.

*

Beneath the floorboards, past all manner of dusty cables, Zack is in the video room putting his side of the story across for the people watching at home, following the spat with Sly that ended, bizarrely, in flung fruit. A scandal that has been dubbed on social media: #watermelongate.

It started when Sly explained that Liv didn’t like it when Zack came outside wearing one of her dresses and proceeded to bomb into the pool, soaking everyone on the periphery. Sly told Zack that ‘it wasn’t funny’. And not in the way people usually use that phrase. It literally wasn’t funny.

Most things could be justified if they’re at least a bit funny but this was, as Sly put it, ‘just awks’.

He told Zack the best thing for most people in here is to forget that the cameras exist, but that in Zack’s case, he should probably try and bear them in mind a bit more. Because everyone felt embarrassed for him. Especially Liv.

Which led Zack to ask how Sly was such an expert on how Liv felt.

To which Sly said, ‘I just talked to her mate and that’s what she said.’ And around they went in a maypole dance of passive-aggression; nonsensical, repetitive and quintessentially British.

Until eventually a conversation that seemed like a non-starter in terms of creating TV drama, became an argument that could’ve ended anywhere, but no one was betting on improvised ballistics composed of watermelon innards.

Zack tells the camera the pink flesh, black pips and juice that hit Sly’s face were the result of a purely accidental mishandling of the fruit. ‘I was gesturing and the melon just slipped from my hand,’ Zack says. ‘And that’s bible.’

Sly, and the tweeting masses, have voiced their doubts.

*

Beyond the wall, across the grass and into the water, Tabitha floats in the infinity pool, trying to find the perfect point where her ears aren’t submerged but her torso is fully sunned.

She soon gives in, dipping her lobes to feel that tingle before the ear caverns fill with cool liquid and she finds her balance. The sound of murmuring voices choking out into a dull nothing as the small of her back relaxes.

Tabs manages to stay out of most disputes by looking vacant, but when she does enter the fray she has found she wields some authority on the basis that she’s more well-spoken than the others. She tries to use as much slang as she can to tone herself down for the other ‘Beachers’, as the contestants are known, but still fears her co-stars see her as a cross between a lady on whose manor they all work and a talking tiara.

She’s not even that posh. Her grandfather happens to own a good amount of Hammersmith, but she maintains that doesn’t make her posh. Though what does make one posh, she isn’t clear on. Something about what you call your bathroom, but she can’t remember what term denotes what. Except for the fact that ‘the shitter’ is definitely a no-no.

She levels out, feet pointing towards the villa, her dusty blonde bob pointing to the sand-coloured mountains. Her body in perfect balance, the water exactly cool enough, the air precisely hot enough. And she bathes in the newfound bliss around her from the excellent temperature and the thrill of a recent decision she has made.

Her sun cream, freshly applied and shimmering, mingles with the air and its scent travels past the outdoor gym and over to the relaxation area…

*

Lance and Dawn are getting to know each other better on the outside bed, talking of sexual positions and mutual friends in Ibiza.

Lance knows a lot of ‘proper lads’ that run clubs out there and Dawn knows several yoga teachers on the island. The beautiful folk tend to find each other somehow or other. Dawn also knows several girls who have gone out there to give out shots to entice people into clubs, and Lance spent one summer sleeping with most of those girls so it was unlikely he wouldn’t know at least one of them.

It was like a game of battleships in which he’d had too many goes to miss.

After a long hiatus in conversation, Dawn mentions she likes Lance’s tan. She explains that Roberto is a deep mahogany hue while Tommy, her current partner in the villa, is the colour of ham, but Lance is the shade of a school desk and she thinks that’s just right.

He laughs but he’s secretly really pleased with that. He replies that he likes her lack of tan. She is auburn-haired and mostly tries to avoid the sun altogether. She tells him that a tan is not something she covets anymore…

‘I’m working hard on being happy just the way I am,’ she says.

‘I’m the right bloke to teach you how,’ he says, looking around the garden. ‘Know why?’

‘Why?’

‘Cos I’m already happy with just the way you are.’

It doesn’t entirely make sense and is the kind of line Zack might describe as ‘weak chat’. He’s called Lance out on that kind of thing before. But Dawn seems to like it just fine.

She places her hand on Lance’s large, gleaming arm and nods her head to the pounding bassline of the dreamy music coming from the speakers on the other side of the garden, as she looks into his eyes.

*

Tommy’s head hits the lounger, while his body, some metres above, leans limp, halfway out of the Love Nest window. That private camera-less room the couples have to be voted into to spend the night in.

Every other member of the villa hears the sound and stops instantly.

The sound of the head hitting the taut material of the lounger caused the comfortable orange polyester to vibrate like a drum. And if the first noise hadn’t drawn their attention, the following bounce back onto the patio slabs definitely would’ve. That heavy thump and tumble, that squelch, both dry and wet, as Tommy’s head slowly rolls to rest.

‘What the shit was that?’ shouts Justine through the bathroom window above, as Roberto appears next to her.

On the decking, Liv pushes back her hair, a cigarette frozen between her red lips, as Sly and Summer dash past the pool, screaming as if there was anyone within hearing distance that might make this situation any better.

But Dawn’s howls eclipse even theirs, as she gathers her quaking alabaster limbs, moving closer to what she slowly realises is the worst possible thing that could be lying directly in front of her.

The brutal sun drenches Zack as he sees it, having wandered back outside from the darkness of the diary room; his knees buckle underneath him as his gaze meets Tommy’s vacant eyes.

Lance, taking a more direct and less scream-y route towards Tommy’s head, quells the other villa dwellers as he approaches like he knows exactly what to do in scenarios such as this. He bends over the head of the best friend he had in this place. The most ‘together geezer in here’, he claimed yesterday, though, of course, the subsequent irony of that statement has inevitably passed him by. With his middle finger and thumb, as softly as he might touch butterfly wings, he pushes Tommy’s eyelids shut.

Meanwhile, two floors up, Tommy’s feet dangle two inches above the terracotta tiles of the Love Nest, his torso cantilevered against the window ledge, his headless body leaning half in, half out of the villa, having found that perfect balance point, like a can of fizzy drink just full enough to lean on its rim.

It can be assumed that Tommy’s head has been given assistance in finding itself two floors from his body. As cutting one’s own head off is not only an unusual method of leaving the villa and this fragile existence, but, certainly in this case, physically impossible due to the force required to sever one’s own spine just below the cranium.

Tabitha, in the pool, barely sees the shadows, having imagined the whack to be something to do with Zack larking about with that watermelon again. The sun swells above her. The feet that beat the grass and concrete, and even the cries of her new friends, are dampened and blurred by the water that engulfs her ears.

She contemplates that strange thing Tommy said to her just before lunch.

Tommy: Before

He hugs his little sister one last time. Tommy’s mum, stepdad and sister Scout say their farewells before he passes through customs, tearfully putting his laptop into the grey X-ray container, but forgetting to take his change out of his pocket, then forgetting to take off his belt, then forgetting his house keys are in his back pocket, then realising he has put his change back in his pocket.

The whole episode takes a full four attempts, so many in fact that he hears one of the suited officials mutter the word ‘suspicious’.

Which only serves to prove that they do not know Tommy. A man who, four years ago, at the tender age of 18 and bereft of his house keys decided to barge down the back door of his Edinburgh family home using only his shoulder and a short run-up. It took him eleven separate attacks. And when the door did give way it was due to his understanding stepfather opening it, who was rather less understanding the next day when he saw the damage Tommy had done to the door jamb. Particularly as one minute after opening it, Tommy realised that his house keys were in his back pocket the whole time.

If looks could strangle.

This same look greets Tommy like an old friend as the customs lady brushes his person with some contraption that he believes is intended to remove lint from his designer polo shirt. He decides to soothe her in the usual manner, by offering his pearly whites and that resonant voice of his. ‘Sorry, I’m excited, I’m going on Sex on the Beach, you know.’

But she must be one of the few people in Britain who haven’t heard of it, because with a tilt of her head she ushers him away without so much as an ‘oh my god, oh my god, oh my god’.

He fares rather better with the pink-haired girl at the coffee shop:

‘Hi, I’m Tommy, can I have a coffee I’m going on Sex on the Beach, you know.’

While she doesn’t appear to believe him, she still gifts him with a free flat white, which is lucky because the only money he has with him – the change his mother gave him – is currently sitting in a grey tray on the other side of the scanners where he left it.

The pink-haired girl even seems to have written his name on the coffee cup. But why? Is it flirting? Best not to smash one on her straight away as he normally would, Tommy tells himself. Keep your powder dry early, son, his stepdad has advised him. The airport would certainly be too soon.

The woman with the fringe at the currency exchange seems like she might be of use too. And he notes she’s particularly taken with his accent – he’s become adept at noticing that – as he runs his hand across his close-cut bottle-blonde hair and says:

‘Could you help me out with some money? I’m going on Sex on the Beach, you know.’

‘Really?’ she says, eyebrows raised and voice climbing.

‘I’m no’ beggin’. I’ll give you some money, for the money.’

‘I mean, you’re really going on Sex on the Beach?’ she says.

‘You’ve heard of it?’

‘Of course I’ve heard of it. Really?’

Tommy wonders how much longer her saying ‘really’ will go on for. He got up at 3.30 a.m. and doesn’t have much oomph left in him. What oomph he does have, he is saving for the island.

‘Yes, really,’ he says.

‘Well, wow. Good luck! I’ll be watching! Now, can I ask what currency you need?’ she says.

‘You can ask,’ he says. ‘But, you see, I was going to ask you the same thing. I’m dyspraxic, you see.’

Tommy has been told this is to do with spatial awareness rather than numbers or facts, but he has come to believe there may be a link between all these things, and after twenty-two years of his existence his mother has come to believe that too.

‘Err,’ she says. ‘Where is it that you’re going?’

‘Tris… tan Da Cunha,’ he says, like he’s navigating broken glass in bare feet.

‘Where’s that then?’ she says, resting her chin on her knuckles.

He blows out his lips, before he’s interrupted. ‘Tommy?’ comes a voice to his right. ‘I thought it was you!’

Hugs. A kiss on both cheeks. He lifts the girl with the dusty blonde bob off the floor, her feet dangling. He kisses her on both cheeks again. Flashes the pearly whites, places his hands on her shoulders, all as he considers when might be the right time to ask exactly who she is.

‘So psyched to see you…’ he says.

‘Oh my gosh, I knew you’d get through. All the producers thought you were so finessed at the final audish. I’m V excited. I’m literally buzzing. We’re gonna be on Sex on the Beach!’ she says.

What is her name? A classy girl. Posh. From London or one of the posh bits near there that Tommy’s never been to. His mind is working not so much overtime as over time. But she can’t see it ticking away, the magic happening unseen, for he is not dyspraxic when it comes to women. Oh, he knows where everything is in that respect; he has been told as much by the 67 or 177 women he has slept with (the number adaptable depending on whether he’s talking to men or women).

‘Tab… itha!’ he says, almost without missing a beat.

‘It’s just Tabs,’ she says, an air of triggered seriousness in her eyes.

Tommy notes she’s one of those people who has tried all available options and is very clear on how her name must be delivered. Branding is everything.

It suddenly feels to Tommy like the show has already begun.

‘Got it,’ he says, tapping his temple. ‘Locked in.’

‘So, what are you doing here, you nutcase?’ she shouts with a smile.

‘I coulda flown from Edinburgh, but I told them I’d go from Heathrow. Don’t know why. Wanted to keep things convenient. Thought it’d play well for me.’

‘But you’d already been picked by the time they were booking your flights, surely?’ she says, thumbs through her jean loops.

‘Yeah. Guess I got nervous. Still, my family drove me down here anyway. It’s no’ far.’

Tabs leaves the geography of that claim alone and goes back to her original line of questioning. ‘I actually meant, what are you doing getting currency? They’ll give us everything we need when we touch down in Cape Town.’

‘Oh, really?’ he says, looking as delighted as a Labrador shown a ball, and the possibility of generous per diems.

‘Yes, did you read the online pack?’

‘Oh yeah. Yeah I did.’ No, he didn’t. ‘Anyway, what currency do they take in… Cunha Da—’

‘Shh,’ she says, drawing him away from the booth. ‘You know we’re not allowed to tell people which island we’re on this year. It was in the pack?’

‘Oh yeah. Course. I won’t do that then.’ Tommy’s eyes drift towards the rubbernecking Currency Lady and back to Tabs.

‘There was too much press last time, too much local interest. It ended in tears, which was great, but it also ended in spoilers, and this show is way too big for spoilers. You heard fans found the villa last time, right?’

‘Yes.’ He didn’t.

‘Well, now they’ve gone supes remomo.’ Tommy frowns. ‘Super remote. It’s an archipelago.’

Lego? Tommy thinks. Keep quiet.

‘It’s the farthest flung British territory, Tristan Da Cunha, the largest of a group of islands in the South Atlantic. There’re penguins in winter, but it’ll be about twenty-eight degrees while we’re there. Some focus groups thought the show was all a bit sanitised, they could tell that stylists came in to do hair, designers lent out clothes and that there were breaks when the cameras were turned off. So it’s all change. They wanted us to feel far from home and out of our depths. This place is volcanic!’

‘Well, I’m sure there’ll be a few eruptions,’ he says, eyebrows raised.

I’m not even sure that counts as an innuendo, Tabs thinks.

‘Doesn’t even have an airport,’ she says, grabbing onto his arm. ‘It’s a long boat trip from Cape Town.’

‘Of course,’ Tommy says, like he knew all of that and just needed a reminder.

She takes his arm and they wander through the concourse, two gleaming specimens in a sea of grey and shuffling travellers. He takes her cabin bag, rolling it in front of him, slinging his one onto his toned shoulder. The white glow of the terminal lighting playing off their perfect skin, as these two perfectly cast beings strut their perfect bodies, as if in an advert for their own lives.

‘I love airports,’ Tommy muses.

‘Oh yeah. Totes love. It’s the independence. It’s totes adulting,’ she says.

Tommy says, ‘It’s the possibility of everything. Where’s he going? And him? And him?’ The last man Tommy points at has to take evasive action to avoid getting poked in the eye. Dyspraxia. ‘Who’s waiting for him wherever he’s going? And why does he look so good? Like a model.’

‘I’ve actually done a bit of modelling—’

‘Everyone’s classy in airports. Everything’s cleaner. People are formal, admirable, sexual. Everywhere should be an airport.’

Tabs leaves a silence to adjust her approach to this new contemplative side of him.

‘You’d have loved my grandad. He used to dress up for travel, wore a three-piece suit, every time. Always smelt of some dark scent. So handsome, even at 60.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me. Cos most people are only classy in airports, but you, you’re classy everywhere, Tabs,’ he twinkles.

She blushes.

Then he checks his Storm watch. ‘Least for the approximately… 131 minutes I’ve known you.’

Two hours on final audition day. Eleven minutes today.

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