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 Three

Ross Armstrong

Copyright

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 © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008361372

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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

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

‘My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange!’

Ovid, The Metamorphoses

(trans. Brookes Moore)

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Previously in Beach Bodies…

8.41 p.m.

London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…

10.10 p.m.

London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…

11.08 p.m.

Zack: Outside

00.32 a.m.

Zack: Afloat

01.01 a.m.

London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…

01.33 a.m.

02.10 a.m.

02.52 a.m.

04.44 a.m.: London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…

Far away. But not so, so far…

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader

About the Publisher

Previously in Beach Bodies…

 - Tommy’s head hits the sun-lounger, while his body leans against the Love Nest window high above.

 - Every single contestant on the show is in some way accounted for when it happens.

 - To further the mystery, Tommy is said to be the most universally loved of the group.

 - The only other person in the villa, Simon, their handler and psychiatrist, finally appears from his office below the building to tell them the show is over and they will be picked up in fourteen hours. They just had to see out the night. He explains that because the motion-intuitive cameras were still feeding back to London, the villa is, as strange as it may seem, the safest place to be.

 - However, during a session with Justine, she sees that the feed is actually down. But has he sold them this lie to keep them safe, or is he making excuses to keep them here? And what’s the cause of the meltdown he has when a local fisherman brings them wood for the fire?

 - During this episode a tense Liv brandishes a knife, which has a whisper of blood on it. She also has a small cut on her hand. Liv claims the wound got there when she cut herself on a different knife while chopping vegetables with Tabs, but others think this is the murder weapon and Liv could’ve injured herself on it in the act of killing Tommy.

 - Lance, however, has turned his attentions from Zack to Simon, whom he accompanies to his office, along with Dawn, to review camera footage depicting Liv’s story about the knife.

 - In the living room above, Liv tries to rally Sly and Summer to take a look at the body upstairs. But Sly in particular is reticent to do this. Not least because the only place there are no cameras, which he believes are still on and keeping them safe, is the Love Nest.

 - In the basement office, footage seems to indict Liv, but when they rewind the images and watch a second time, they do indeed show her cutting herself. Now Dawn definitely thinks that something ‘surreal’ is going on.

 - Zack heads out into the storm to try and locate the police on the island, as the group grow increasingly nervous that Simon hasn’t contacted anyone about the murder at all.

 - Liv’s suspicions about Lance deepen when she, Sly and Summer find no trace of a body in the Love Nest.

 - Far below, Lance, still suspicious of Simon after he seems to be trying to get the women alone, comes within an inch of strangling the doctor to death. As he lies on the carpet of the office, they find a piece of footage that shows Sly arguing with Tommy shortly before Tommy was killed.

 - When the power goes out, Sly goes missing.

 - We learn about Sly telling Simon stories about his military background.

 - Down in the office, Simon reveals he is not technically a doctor. He and Lance fight over a moleskin Simon has been using to take notes on them all. But it is Lance that gets shut out behind a thick panic room door, leaving Simon and Dawn alone together.

 - Justine finds Lance at the foot of the door exhausted from trying to get in. She slaps him hard and takes him back upstairs.

 - When the group come back to find Tabs alone breathing heavily and apparently in trauma, she reacts wildly to being patronised or cast as weak.

 - Simon and Dawn have sex in the office below. They have, in a bizarre twist of love and logic, been having an affair for some time.

 - The lights come back on. Sly’s body lies on a broken sun-lounger in the garden, his body thrown from a height and his throat slashed with what looks like the same serrated knife as the one in the kitchen drawer.

 - The group find fresh blood on it, but have no idea how anyone managed to spirit it away, let alone sneak it back into the drawer, without anyone seeing.

 - Out in the storm, Zack sees that there is no dormant volcano on the island, as Simon had claimed.

 - We learn that Tommy secretly kissed Liv late one night.

 - When we last left the villa, one of the group had woken up in a strange white room.

 - Lance had rallied Roberto and Summer to help him locate a low window to Simon’s office outside, so they can save Dawn from whatever Simon is doing to her.

 - And as the rain lashed down outside, they were coming for him…

8.41 p.m.

Outside, Lance smashes the side gate in with one big kick of his size twelves, gaining some manliness back after he failed to even make Simon’s office door aware of his existence.

He leads Summer and Roberto, who are engaged in another whispered argument, down the corridor-like path the window looks out on.

The window that has metal shutters, just in case. Shutters that Simon took pains to close lest anyone see Dawn and he ensconced in that secret of their own. But, these three bodies, beaten by wind and rain, terrified by the volume of the thunder cracks violating the clouds, don’t know that yet.

While Zack at least managed to grab his yellow mac from the hallway, these three are making do with the thin maxi dresses and tight T-shirts they were wearing when the day began, before any of this was even vaguely foreseeable, to all but one of them.

The bedroom where their warmer clothes lie is exactly where Tabs, Liv and Justine are heading, having instantly opted to stay pro-active, and stay together. The three women turn the opposite way at the top of the stairs, away from the Love Nest, and down a slim corridor.

As sheet lightning continues in the distance, Tabs proceeds to remind them how little she wanted to come up here, but not wanting to be left on her own again, felt she had no option.

Cold air hits even before they get to the bedroom. Air they are all in need of; the extent to which smoke had filled the room from the fire was only visible when the power came on again. They’re thankful the dark is no longer adding to their high anxiety, but the foreboding of the cold shooting at them as they enter the bedroom confirms their suspicions.

These are strange days when the world turns upside down. When day becomes night. Black becomes white. When the sun turns cold. And it rains indoors.

The swirling rain pours onto them through the broken window. Liv is drawn to it immediately, joined by Justine, who whispers to herself in French as together they look down at the trajectory the body took and its landing point.

The wind claws at Liv, beckoning her out to join him. But Justine holds her hand, as they look out to the sea pounding against the rocks, mere metres beyond the boundary of the garden.

But Tabs stays back, hands partially over her eyes, looking at the two of them, their forms low lit by the mood lighting in the bedroom and occasional sparks from the heavens. She doesn’t think she can join the coven. Because she doesn’t trust all of its constituent parts. She ponders her way out of all this. And seeing only dead ends and bodies, she sprawls a hand over her mouth, and tears fall from her eyes.

Summer leads them around the small lip of wall, towards the window, and she sees it immediately.

Something. Poking out of it. It’s been soaked by rain until the matter is difficult to recognise. It resembles a piece of material, rag-dolled, muddied and bloodied by the elements.

Lance ducks down to see what it is in the darkness. It’s the eyes that give it away. Eyes he’s looked into in passion, eyes like stone, drained by lack of oxygen and fluid.

As Lance’s cries ring out, Roberto holds him and Summer kneels to get a closer look.

She mutters gentle words to Dawn as she examines her, but it’s no good. She’s half in, half out of that window, but resolutely the whole way out of this fragile world; her head nearly cut off by the shutters which have cleaved into her neck, until the bone and cartilage jammed the mechanism.

These shutters aren’t made to stop. They’re made to stop intruders.

Summer strokes the curls of hair she’d helped her highlight the same shade as her own. She kisses Dawn’s forehead. It’s one of those things that mammals do. A show of love when the dark around them suggests nothing but animal imperative and coldness. Which, after Lance kisses her head, running his thumb along a chicken pox mark still visible on her neck, they know they must get out of.

As they descend the stairs, having confirmed that Sly was indeed pushed from the communal bedroom window, Liv and Justine hold Tabs’ hands, as they too battle to grab some human warmth from the brutal end they have just witnessed.

Perhaps there are words, maybe thoughts and wishes to calm each other, touches that are intended to sooth, but none feel them. It’s like it’s happening to other people, as each woman falls into a state of stilled panic. It’s all rendered in slow motion, only the reality of the steps beneath them reminding them that this is happening now. That it’s real. That they are alive, and that that is a thing to be clung to, like a raft in a storm, for as long as they possibly can.

In the living room, they see wet footsteps lead to the sofa, where in front of the fire, a figure turns their head. The blinds are drawn, so the body can no longer be seen. The fire has had extra logs added to it for its health.

And warming his hands, wet shoes and socks strewn out in front of the fire, sits Simon who, as if without a care in the world, looks up at the three women and gives a gleeful smile.

London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…

Far away. But then, not really so, so far. The night watchman takes over from the day concierge.

‘Anything happening?’ says the Night man.

‘In this place?’ says Day.

‘Yeah. Any trouble?’

‘A hell of a lot. It never stops,’ laughs Day.

‘Sure,’ chuckles Night.

It’s an in-joke between the two. Not a hilarious one, by any measure, but a joke all the same. They’ve exchanged these exact words nearly a hundred times.

It’s not funny because of the content, not anymore. The content has faded away and the humour is in the repetition. The words have become sound; a musical leitmotif that describes their relationship. They allow themselves this moment of kinship, at 8 p.m. whenever the two meet: eight days out of every month.

You have to rotate people a lot in a place like this. Because concentration is difficult. It’s been worn away by smartphones and rolling news and constant content. And these guys need to stay ready, stay awake. Just in case.

The work isn’t strenuous. You just have to check around once in a while. Shine a torch around. It’s a waiting game unless the worst happens. Then it’s life and death.

So they rotate between six guys. But these two guys, they get on best.

What makes Day laugh even more, is that Night’s last name is actually Knight. Which would be even funnier if Day’s surname was actually Day. They have laughed about this many times. But it isn’t. It’s Lambert or Butler or Hedges or Rothman. Some brand of old cigarettes anyway. Knight can never remember which.

Knight takes a seat and assumes the posture, waving Day away. Years ago, he might’ve stuck his feet up on the desk, but these days a higher standard is expected, and someone is always watching.

Instead, he trains his mind. Mr Knight clears his inner chambers from intrusive thoughts and focuses on the phone, because sometimes it rings and it looks good if you pick up straight away. The odd phone call from some suit who wants you to check on a few things.

Some mad question, they always ask. Do this, do that. Makes a change from sitting watching the thing. They use an old white phone, a real one, from days gone by. It’s a professional joke, Mr Knight has been told. And he enjoys the opportunity to interact with old technology. He likes handling the thing. It feels cold against his ear. The weight, the ceremony of it all. It’s this sort of thing that made him take the job in the first place. It’s one of the little privileges.

He doesn’t have to be here. He gets his Basic Income. He could take that and use it to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Not quite a tropical island, but not too far off. But he likes being here. And it’s nice to have a purpose. At his age.

Mr Knight takes the phone off the hook and puts it to his ear, just for the feeling of it. He mimes a few words into it that no one will ever hear; he’s from a generation that never grew up. Then he puts it down and stares at it, indulging in the most basic pleasure there is: breathing, feeling well, and feeling time pass by.

Four hours later, the thing rings and Mr Knight picks up immediately.

10.10 p.m.

The heat from the fire reaches Roberto and Justine first, the flames licking out towards his granite biceps and her sculpted figure.

The heat moves on to the next two bodies; Summer and Liv, the former recently widowed by the body that lies beyond the patio glass. Summer rests her head in Liv’s lap, and Liv strokes her hair.

The heat, now downgraded to a subtle warmth, then reaches Lance and Tabitha. Lance placed his hand on her back a few minutes ago, but Tabs wriggled away. She’s the only one who hasn’t found herself in intimate contact with anyone in the time they’ve been cooped up in this place, and she’s not about to start now.

In the middle of the room, Simon leans limp against the sofa, his arms fixed to his side, tied up with an orange extension cord Lance found under the sink.

After Simon’s appearance was met with a volley of screams, he had to be shown through the patio window the fresh body he had apparently missed in the garden. When he turned back, his ashen face was met with the pounding fist of Lance. The punch looked like it could’ve taken Simon’s head off, as Lance had charged, barely breaking stride, before making the connection.

As Simon comes to, he meets Lance’s eye and tries to stand on impulse, falling back down into the tiles when he realises his legs don’t work as well when bound with two metres of extension cord.

‘We do not want to hurt you, we want to talk,’ says Justine.

Simon breathes hard, blood ribboning from both of his nostrils, his eyes darting around to assess the danger level of the situation.

Roberto’s eyes flick to Lance’s. ‘Well, some of us do want to hurt you. But they won’t be allowed to. For now.’

Simon avoids Lance’s malevolent gaze as his mind rattles through the chain of events that led him here. ‘It’s not supposed to go like this,’ Simon whispers.

Liv, in particular, is disturbed by these words, her mind spinning off down a host of avenues in search of possible meanings.

‘Don’t play punch-drunk,’ says Lance. ‘I only gave you a tap. If I’d really wanted to hit you, you would’ve known about it.’

‘Please – I don’t know what’s going on,’ says Simon.

‘Don’t worry, we’ve pieced it together for you, mate,’ says Roberto. ‘We just need you to fill in the last couple of blanks. If you do that for us, we won’t hurt you. We’ll hand you over to the police once that boat comes, and you can deal with—’

‘We don’t even know if he called anyone. If there even is a boat coming,’ Summer says.

‘There is a boat coming. It’ll be with us at… 5 a.m.,’ says Simon, struggling to check his little round watch on his bound wrist. ‘That’s less than seven hours.’

‘Lie,’ says Lance. ‘That’s his first lie.’

‘How do you know?’ says Tabs.

‘I can tell. When you’ve worked the doors, you can tell a lie: I found the pills on the floor, I was just brushing up against her, this ain’t my Bowie knife. Trust me, I can sniff this shit out.’

‘I’m not lying,’ says Simon. ‘If you believe nothing else, hang on to this. I really don’t know how this is going to go. But if I don’t make it, remember, you just have to make it to 5 a.m.’

The group want to be buoyed by this, but any glimmer they’ve had in the past few hours has been quickly snuffed out.

‘Okay, mate, here’s the meat of it,’ says Roberto. ‘We know you locked Dawn inside that office with you, and when she tried to escape you killed her with the shutter.’ Simon’s eyes look like they’re doing long division. ‘Then we figure you made your way upstairs without anyone noticing, saw Sly was apart from the group, you slit his throat and pushed him through the window. But how did you get the knife back into the kitchen without any of us noticing?’

Simon lowers his head. They can’t see his eyes – he could be laughing or crying. ‘No, no, no,’ he says. ‘Dawn’s dead?’

He moans, heaving large sighs.

‘Oh, give the man an Oscar,’ shouts Lance. ‘It’s you that ended her!’

‘Can’t be dead. Not her,’ he mutters.

‘Don’t act like you care!’ Lance shouts, Tabs holding on to him as he leans in further. ‘What d’you care?’

Then Simon pushes his face towards Lance, their heads almost touching.

‘Because I lo…’ In the briefest fraction of a second Simon gives a rueful smile, then shakes his head again. ‘Because… she was a sweet and beautiful person. And this isn’t what was supposed to happen. It’s not…’

Lance sits down, a look of triumph on his face. ‘I know you wanted to finish your plan, you probably had some order you wanted to pick us off in. But we got to you first.’

‘Someone’s making you look like fools. Someone here. But it isn’t me,’ says Simon.

Uncomfortable glances get passed around as Simon spits, his mouth filled with blood, his chest with grief.

‘Dawn and I were locked safe in the office,’ says Simon. ‘I thought for a moment we could stay there together. Until the boat came. But I knew the one person who didn’t do this was her, which meant we were leaving all of you in the dark with a murderer. She said we had to do something. The least I could do was get those lights back on using the back-up generator.’

‘A real heart of gold, eh?’ says Lance.

But he’s soon met with shushes, from the others.

‘So I opened up the shutter, climbed out the window into the rain, and told Dawn to wait for me and that she should pull down the shutter immediately if anyone else came. I found the generator and got everything working again. You didn’t think about how those lights came back on?’

‘But then you came back into the living room. You didn’t go straight back to Dawn, where it was safe. Why?’ says Tabs.

‘Conscience got the better of me,’ he says. ‘I brought you all here, and I know each and every one of you, maybe… better than you know yourselves.’ This isn’t a sentiment that sits well with any of them. ‘I am responsible for you. I decided I couldn’t very well leave you to fend for yourselves. I had to come back. But Dawn was safe and that was enough.’

‘Only she wasn’t, was she?’ Roberto scoffs, his tone getting him cold looks. He remembers it’s best not to stick your head above the parapet. Heads on display in this place have had a habit of being detached from their owners.

Liv recalls a phrase she once heard: ‘The weak speak too much.’ Or perhaps it wasn’t a phrase, perhaps it was something her dad once said. But it was still true.

‘So,’ says Justine, picking up the pieces. ‘Tell us how a woman gets killed, when she’s all alone in a locked room.’

And all eyes stay on Simon.

London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…

The phone rings and Mr Knight picks up immediately.

Check the temperature, he’s told. Never done that before but he knows where the meter is and is thrilled to be asked.

All controlled remotely of course, what happens in there, but you need to have someone look over the hard copies. Cos although everything can be everywhere, everything is really only somewhere. And these things are here. The hard copies.

As he taps the readout – tactile, real, a nice feeling – Mr Knight notices the darkness in the cold storage room. So little light in a place of such importance. His eyes wander, picking out the interruptions to the dark. Shelves, lit by neon, a line of small drawers, almost like the ones Mr Knight remembers as a kid, that held index cards or public records, before all of that really was placed elsewhere and the real things destroyed. Because you don’t need hard copies of everything. Only some things.

The only other light in there seems to be coming from a screen. He cranes his neck to see. It’s a smaller one that he’s used to seeing, that reminds him of old times. And there are old illusions flickering away on it.

Mr Knight remembers they’ll be waiting for the okay at headquarters. One of the oldest and best tech companies around. He stretches his arms, his back, gives his neck a crack as his feet tap on the gleaming floor, the noises echoing around, his lonely reflection staring back at him in the glass as he walks. And past the glass, the river, chopping away in the dark and overflowing as it often does this time of year.

‘Fine and checked,’ he says into the phone and the voice repeats back some kind words for his efforts.

He sits back in his chair and feels the pleasure of being active in the working world. Half an hour later he spins around on it. He has tap danced alone in this place. How he remembers tap dancing went anyway. He has wandered the corridors in the dead of night. He has rested his tired body on the gleaming floor at 4 a.m. He used to wear a suit.

His mind wanders, and he observes the movement of his thoughts. He thinks of his mother in an old hospital bed. She was in a coma, but he still spoke to her. Left the radio on the whole time she was in there. Just in case.

Mr Knight gets up and runs a hand through his wave of salt-and-pepper hair. He glances at the extravagant chandelier above, part glass, part diamonds, part feathers from rare birds, as his feet echo back to him from high ceilings. He approaches the temperature readout, tapping it. All fine. Then looks through the window at the glow of the screen.

He presses his face and hand against the glass to getter a better look at the screen in there. It shows an old television show repeat. Beautiful men and women in some exotic location. Just playing away in there on its own. For no one in particular.

Tap, tap, tap. That hasn’t happened in a long time. Another pair of footsteps in the building. Unannounced. Impossible, he thinks. And his heart quickens a beat.

11.08 p.m.

Simon thinks, moving his tongue around his mouth, checking he still has all his teeth, which thankfully he does.

‘I can’t explain how a woman gets killed when she’s all alone in a locked room,’ he splutters out before the blood in his throat makes him cough.

As he does so, Liv rises to grab a tea towel, wets it at the tap in the kitchen then heads towards Simon.

‘Careful,’ says Roberto.

‘He’s not Hannibal Lecter,’ says Liv, as she wipes his mouth dry.

‘More like “Have No Balls, Lecturer,”’ says Roberto.

‘That’s terrible,’ says Summer.

Roberto keeps smiling but something inside him dies at another knock from Summer. And the group cringe again.

‘Okay, what if someone went down there and banged on the door,’ says Simon. ‘Said they wanted to come in so they could be safe in there with her?’

‘Not possible. You have to slide the door in the wall open to get down to your lounge, it’s conspicuous as hell and we were all here the whole time,’ says Tabs.

‘Okay. What if someone came from the outside? Tapped on the window?’ says Simon.

‘So now we’re back to the outsider theory?’ says Justine.

‘No, can’t be an outsider. One of us. Who wasn’t accounted for?’ he says.

They watch the smoke from the fire eek out into the room as they recall how this started and everything that has happened since.

‘There’s just Zack,’ says Roberto. ‘Who I’ve thought was a shark for a while.’

‘And he’s out there somewhere looking for help. So he can save our skins,’ says Tabs, opting to defend the man who isn’t here to defend himself.

‘Or we gave our one phone to the murderer,’ says Justine. ‘And now he’s waiting for us to step outside, one by one, so he can—’

‘Or there’s you, Si,’ says Lance. ‘You and Zack are the only ones unaccounted for at the time.’

‘All right,’ says Simon, and for a second Lance thinks that’s a confession before Simon starts speaking again. ‘Sly was killed by that same knife in the drawer, yes?’

Summer nods. While Simon was unconscious, she insisted they drag Sly’s body into the partial dry. She kissed him on the cheek and confirmed the shape of the smile that had been slashed across his voice box. A crescent with a serrated edge.

‘Then how did I get hold of that?’ says Simon, his voice raised in challenge. ‘Surely you can all agree I wasn’t in this room?’

‘We can’t agree on anything,’ says Tabs.

‘I certainly couldn’t have picked it up, killed someone and put it back without anyone noticing. There was someone here the whole time. Right?’

Tabs looks to the others. ‘Yes. But… maybe someone could’ve slipped it out and slipped it back? Without me noticing—’

‘Someone must’ve been better placed to do that than me. Any theories?’

The truth is, as they breathe in the silence, that no one has broached the journey of the knife because none of them has a single clue how that happened.

‘Nah. Real magic shit that,’ says Roberto.

‘No, no, not magic! All explainable by some kind of logic. It’s just logic you haven’t thought of yet,’ says Simon.

‘Shut it!’ says Lance, back-handing him across the face. ‘He’s trying to confuse me. But it’s harder to confuse a man like me than he thinks.’

Simon leaves that one alone. ‘I’m merely trying to get you to reflect, like I always have,’ he says, taking a deep breath. ‘Look, so it’s all out in the open, there is one other insight we stumbled on. Isn’t there, Lance?’

Lance folds his arms, shaking his head, but by now people are catching his eye and he knows he has to spill it.

‘What is it?’ says Summer.

Simon gives Lance a ‘be my guest’ look.

‘Whatever,’ says Lance. ‘It don’t change the fact that it’s you, Si. But listen, when we viewed the footage, Zack and Liv’s stories checked out,’ says Lance, still uneasy about the fact that Liv didn’t appear to cut herself the first time they watched. ‘But we also found something else. Sly getting aggy with Tommy before the blackout hour. He cuffs him, like the one I just gave this mug. Something muggy had gone on between them and Sly didn’t like being mugged off.’

The room shudders uncomfortably.

‘So. Anyone have any idea what happened between them?’ says Lance.

And it doesn’t take long for the pressure to tell on one of them. Summer lifts her head from Liv’s lap.

‘I think I do,’ says Summer. She’s held this back for a while, not so much because she was worried it could implicate her, but because it’s hardly a great character reference. ‘I told Sly… that I was thinking about getting to know Tommy better. Because I didn’t want to keep all my eggs in one single basket.’

‘Wow,’ says Roberto, and gets a sharp look from Summer.

‘But getting to know each other is what this game is all about. Isn’t it? Well… isn’t it?’

The words seem so simple but the consequence, including Sly’s on-camera attack on Tommy, is a little more divisive.

‘But that’s not quite all, is it, babes?’ says Tabs.

Summer falters, looking around the room. She thought this revelation would be enough to pacify them.

‘Babes. I’m afraid Tommy told me everything,’ Tabs says.

Summer braces herself for her big glossy magazine interview moment. Admission of guilt, sorrow, redemption, all in the length of a double-page spread.

‘Look, me and Tommy… had a moment in the Love Nest,’ she says.

Judging by the open mouths that greet her, admission of guilt has landed heavier than she intended. She takes a look back at the steps that have taken her here, knowing it’s too far to go back, then looks forward to how far away sorrow and redemption seem. She might have to go with tears, platitudes and cries for mercy. The shamed internet star’s apology video full house.

‘We knew the cameras wouldn’t be on, so we snuck in there. For a little kiss.’

‘And…’ says Tabs.

‘Jesus Christ, he really did tell you everything,’ says Summer. ‘Yes, and the rest. We did it twice. Me on top, then I let him go on top. We tried to only do it once, to be respectful, but the moment got the better of us.’

Summer looks pained. She tried to rip off the plaster in one swift painless move but seems to have taken half of her arm off in the act.

‘But me and Just never even got our night in the Love Nest,’ says Roberto, unerringly missing the point. ‘You have to be voted in by the British public. It has to be the will of the ruddy people!’

‘The people, just so you know, thought they just kissed,’ says Simon, still in pain. ‘So did I. I don’t know if Sly knew about any of it.’

‘He didn’t,’ says Summer. ‘He can’t have.’ And then her eyes turn to Tabs. ‘You didn’t tell him, did you?’ she says, through gritted teeth.

Tabs says nothing, just shows her perfect smile for a second.

‘Of course not,’ Tabs says finally. ‘Girl code. Swear on my life.’

The women of the group assess the state of the coven as the room falls silent.

It was a pressure cooker atmosphere even before all this. Their pride and futures bound up in how they were perceived, their honour and sense of themselves as potent beings. Every day was literally survival of the fittest. People have left the show in the past, citing stress or emotional difficulties. People have suffered after-effects, some citing PTSD, which critics have belittled as a very on-trend malady, but others, who know the spotlight and felt its burn, know the scars it can leave.

‘Listen, I started to think,’ says Summer, ‘we were such a strong threesome, it was almost polyamory. So I thought if I removed myself from it, Liv would be happier with Sly. I could be with Tommy. Dawn could go with Lance. And…’

‘Happily ever after,’ Liv bites.

‘I was going with my heart and my head. I thought that’s what you wanted?’ says Summer.

‘You never asked. But how benevolent of you to gift Sly to me,’ says Liv.

‘Well, it turns out he didn’t want that anyway,’ says Summer.

‘Even better,’ says Liv, throwing up her hands.

‘Wow,’ says Roberto, clapping his hands, a small laugh escaping from him.

‘Stop saying wow,’ says Summer. Oh, there are things I could say, Roberto, she thinks.

‘No, it’s just… Tommy, man, what a legend. In a manner of speaking,’ says Roberto. ‘You know, err, he shagged Dawn…’ He gestures to Lance and finds a stiff nod of confirmation. ‘God rest her soul. Then Summer. Anyone else?’

‘I snogged him before she did,’ says Liv, ignoring Summer’s glance.

‘Bloody hell,’ says Roberto. ‘And I mean, let’s be honest, we all thought he’d end up with Tabs.’

It’s an uncomfortable thing to air. It was the type of gossip that gained greater thrill the more it was spoken behind the backs of the people in question. It acquired a quality of brilliance, like marble buffed to perfection. Telling one of them about it takes away the sheen and adds a glint of guilt.

‘The joke of it is,’ says Tabs, steadily, ‘we knew people thought we’d crack on. But we were only ever mates. That’s why he told me everything. That’s why people liked us, we had the feel of people with history. And that’s because that’s what we did have.’

‘The public were gunning for you. To get together, I mean,’ says Simon. ‘Wait. What do you mean, history?’

Tabs almost blushes, an unusual colour for her, then she collects herself. ‘We had a moment at the airport.’

‘That… shouldn’t have happened. Why were you—’ says Simon.

‘I had to change my flight and we bumped into each other at the airport. We had a fleeting moment. But that’s all it was. It fleeted. It died. And then he was my best friend in here and I can’t believe Sly would hate him enough to—’

‘This is precisely the question,’ says Simon. ‘Do we think he did? Because that’s what I’ve been getting at. Sly was unaccounted for. You lost him. What if he saw red, planned to kill Tommy in the Love Nest, at the scene of the crime, so to speak. When you lost him, in the dark, could he have moved the body?’

Liv shares a look with Summer for the first time in a long while.

‘I don’t know, I was freaking out…’ says Summer.

‘I don’t think so,’ says Liv, then adds, ‘I don’t know for sure.’

‘Then what?’ Lance shouts. ‘He moves the body, scoots outside to tap on Dawn’s window, kills her, then comes back upstairs to slit his own throat and jump out of a window?’

Another light seems to go out before their very eyes.

‘That’s the person more likely than you, is it? It’s bollocks, mate,’ Lance says. ‘All you can throw is dead ends at us. I want to see what your secret thoughts are. I want to see inside that head of yours.’

Lance reaches down towards the knife, then picks up the blue moleskin next to it. Simon’s eyes widen. ‘Your confession’s in here, Si, I’m sure of it.’

‘No. No,’ says Simon.

The others note Simon’s fear as Lance, the bit between his teeth, opens up the book and smooths down the first page.

‘Wait,’ says Simon. ‘The storm’s stopped.’

‘What?’ says Lance, at this poor excuse for a distraction. ‘Oh, fuck off.’

‘No, listen,’ says Tabs.

And they do, listening for the howling gale, the kind that feels like it could send you mad over a long enough timescale.

But they hear nothing. Nothing at all.

‘He’s right,’ says Liv, and gets up to open the blinds.

As half of the picture is instantly revealed out there, they find no jewels of rain falling anywhere. Justine stands, dragged from her seat, as if called upon by a hypnotist.

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