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 Two

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: 9780008361365

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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.

‘I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms’

Ovid, The Metamorphoses

(trans. A.S. Kline)

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

PRAISE

Dedication

Epigraph

Previously in Beach Bodies…

Dawn: Before

4.29 p.m.

Summer: Before

5.49 p.m.

Liv: Before

6.16 p.m.

Meanwhile…

6.57 p.m.

Sly: Before

7.49 p.m.

Zack: Now

8.32 p.m.

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 have to see out the night. He tells them 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 her session with Simon, Justine sees that the live feed is actually down. But has he sold them this lie to keep them safe, or does the fact that Simon was the only one unaccounted for at the time of Tommy’s death make him the prime suspect?

 - Lance doesn’t think it’s the latter. He’s more concerned about Zack, who he senses isn’t ‘being real’.

 - Liv is suspicious that Lance is the only one who saw the body and seemed adamant that no one else should see it.

 - Lance is currently partnered with Dawn, who was previously partnered with Tommy. Dawn seems very close to Summer, who is partnered with Sly, who seems to be admired by Liv, who doesn’t seem to admire her partner Zack at all. But all of them are big admirers of themselves.

 - Justine, who is in an intense relationship with Roberto, is sure she saw Tabs and Tommy talking late one night in the garden. But then she herself has a dark secret she hasn’t even shared with Roberto.

 - It’s Tabs that seems to have had the closest connection with the now deceased Tommy, and is unable to get over the last secret thing he said to her before he died.

 - When we left the villa, a storm was gathering over the island. That meant they couldn’t leave even if they wanted to.

 - The camera tracked along their beautiful faces, its dead eye staring at them, one by one, though the images aren’t feeding anywhere in particular.

 - And then came a knock at the door.

Dawn: Before

Dawn’s story can mostly be told in the language of disease. Disease that has left its mark: cave paintings, little signatures on the otherwise smooth turns and straights of her skin.

The chicken pox pockmarks, thankfully now only visible under her chin after half a life sentence of vitamin E oil, Aloe Vera cream, cocoa butter and oat meal baths. The discolouration of skin, hidden behind her ear, which when found caused a forty-eight-hour panic marathon before she visited her doctor and was told it was ‘non-actionable’ (oh god, inoperable?) ‘and certainly non-cancerous’ (okay, fine).

The cold sore, which flares up so rarely at this point, earned from a week of kissing a Belgian boy called Bertrand on a Year 10 exchange, who told her it was only a lip zit, a ‘petit bouton’, and received half-a-dozen angry missives weeks after their encounters for his carelessness, messages which detailed the sudden death of their relationship, how there would be no return trip to visit EuroDisney, and how their plans for marriage and a life in a chateau would now be consigned to the recycle bin of rash teenage promises. The anger of words like ‘imbecile’ and ‘saboteur’ undercut by the Care Bear embossed notepaper she used. Love notes which still sit in the bottom drawer of Bertrand’s dressing table, hidden occasionally from his current fiancée because of the hold Dawn’s lips at the disco, the piscine, the bowling alley, still hold over him.

The psoriasis irks her the most, fully concealable only in long sleeves that don’t suit her. This single Isle-of-Wight-shaped slight on the back of her elbow blights an arm her personal trainer once told her had been made ‘perfect’ by their kettlebell work; the sort of earnest compliment she daydreams of during her long walks she has been prescribed for maladies, inside and out.

Ah, the inside. The ear discolouration was not the first melanoma-fearing thought to plague her mind and lead her to voyage into the arms of Dr Murthy, the childhood physician she has retained into her young adulthood. At the tender age of 16, her mother was solicited to take her to the good doctor four times that year so he could assess various abrasions, bumps and possible carcinomas. Enough visits to make even the indulgent Murthy utter through his perfect white smile, ‘Perhaps, Dawn, you are just not a happy-go-lucky girl.’ A line delivered with such kindness, but one that would stay glued to her mind whenever she thought of her fundamental self, like a caption under a painting, so succinct was the description of her character: ‘Dawn, 23, just not a happy-go-lucky girl. Died painfully of rare cancer.’

Horsham, Sussex, gateway to the beautiful South Downs, was an idyllic place to grow a child, particularly if you only intended on having one perfect single one, Dawn’s parents had decided, but the silence of its beauty seemed to take its toll on the young. A gaggle of beautiful infants talking with precise diction, blossoming through the years while talking of how lucky they are to grow up in the countryside, then choosing every spare moment to plan secret trips into London, find secret boyfriends with cars to take them there, and take secret Adderall and Oxycontin at lunch to make the days go faster.

Sadly for the pill-popping in-crowd, they were unable to secure the services of Dawn, dubbed by them as PGIS (prettiest girl in school) for this exploratory stage in their lives, as she had confided in them that the polluted London air would not be good for her asthma, and that she’d tried ‘most drugs’ and they played havoc with her sinuses; both stories hinting at afflictions and experiences her friends had curiously never heard her mention before. So the in-crowd simply resolved that as they approached the navy-blue period of their youth, that dusk when children tread onto the routes they believe adults take but using the gait only a child would, they would do so without Dawn. But Dawn wished them well with their plans, as only pupils at ‘the most polite public school in the country’ (according to the Sunday Times) can. After all, she told them, her grades were already against her and so was a possible allergy to animal fur she had recently developed, and she would have to solve at least one of those problems if she wanted to achieve her dream of becoming a vet.

‘Good luck with your wild adolescence,’ Dawn said in the hall after lunch.

‘Good luck with your allergies,’ Fleur Masterson said with a sympathetic smile. Then, in the only moment that bordered on passive-aggressive, she added, ‘and your asthma.’ They had never even seen her with an inhaler, and Dawn had been known to tell tall tales.

‘Thanks,’ Dawn said, producing a small blue telescope-shaped item to the girl’s surprised eyes, taking a hit on it as she pulled up her socks and walked away.

This parting of terms ushered in an extension to the silence of home and gave her even more time to think. She often sat in the living room, her eyes running over lines in her biology textbooks, not really reading, her mind instead wandering to various ailments she’d heard about: flesh-eating viruses, ME, locked-in syndrome. She imagined what they would feel like inside. While she did this, she rubbed her eyes, but her mother noticed that despite Dawn’s claims, this wasn’t when the cat was near, raising the possibility that Dawn was rubbing because she thought she could be allergic to the Siamese, rather than because she ‘felt an actual itch’. She said as much but Dawn met this suggestion with stillness – a silent chill that had grown in her late teenage years due to her self-prescribed quiet hours in her room – and without saying a word in reply she headed back to her sanctum.

And her alone hours came to be broken only by one catalyst.

Because physical exercise was always championed at her school for the development of well-rounded young women, and because the PE teacher, Mr Thomas, admired her long legs, she was invited to take part in every sport that she could stand. This found her travelling to schools that fitted the standing of her own, so she could show off her limited ability at hockey and netball, while occasional doting boys enhanced her self-esteem on the side lines; including Mr Thomas and the other school’s equivalent Mr Thomas.

Despite the newfound attentions of others that brightened the corners of her sixth-form years, Dawn continued to ignore any attempts to get her to meet up with any older boys, especially the ones spoken of by the in-crowd, who they had met in that mecca, spoken of in hushed tones: Clapham. She also ignored the stares and contrived collisions of boys her age, and Mr Thomas’ messages on Facebook. Instead, as she started to think about personal statements and UCAS forms, she decided on regular kissing sessions with a boy called Stuart, two years below. This started as experimental touching in the boys’ toilet cubicles, reported by a smaller child as ‘a strange knocking’, an encounter that climaxed in a knock on the door with an authority that could only belong to a teacher. Dawn mouthed an expletive and prepared to pretend she was helping to get something out of Stuart’s eye. The knocking came again. ‘Yes?’ Stuart said, fists clenched in tension. And an assertive voice came back ‘Err, look. I can see two sets of feet. Come out.’

Dawn proceeded with her amateur optician act, blowing into the eye of the shorter Stuart, as he awkwardly opened the door a crack, which was immediately thrown wide open by a pale-faced Mr Thomas, who looked more startled than angry, Dawn noted. Rather than a reprimand, he merely looked momentarily sad, was speechless in contemplation for a moment, then nodded as if in agreement with some private thought only he was privy too. He muttered, ‘Sorry, you can’t’ over his shoulder as he hurried away.

One night as the sun was going down, Dawn met Stuart in a cornfield, with a windmill bearing down on them in a scene she seemed to have contrived from one of those well-thumbed books she found on her mother’s dressing table. Stuart found himself dragged to the ground, and after the passion was done they lay watching the long corn sway in front of the darkening canvas of sky.

‘What are those marks?’ he said.

‘What marks?’ she said.

‘On the back of your arms? Did you do that to yourself?’

‘No, Stuart,’ she said, feeling his brain lurching for some self-harm psycho-drama he’d had impressed on him by an issue-based TV show he’d seen. ‘That’s just my psoriasis.’

She didn’t see him much after that – not by design, it was just that she was spending more away days with her various teams and developing a certain ‘interest’ that she could follow up on Instagram. An interest concerning the girls on other teams. There’d often be at least one, but sometimes two, who’d be particularly striking in some unusual way and she’d find herself trying to talk to them in the dinner hall during the free lunch you got on enemy territory after fixtures. If she didn’t manage to speak to them, she could always get a name, and then she’d follow her interest up later online. It was a method that turned into a system. She had a few favourites, role models really, people who she found classier than the girls at home. The fashionable, the statuesque, the exotic, she learnt, could even be found in girls from nearby counties: Kent, Dorset, Devon. She’d see them wear clothes she particularly liked and asked her mother to order them for her, who appreciated Dawn’s sudden interest in all things aesthetic. She’d think about starting chats with these girls and then delete the DMs, not out of shyness but more because it felt more appropriate for them to be idols, so they could retain their glamour. Obsession would be going too far when describing all this. A powerful word, bolted together by a trinity of syllables. The ‘b’ that brought the lips together, that ‘shh’ that implied a secret. It wasn’t as dramatic as all that, she thought.

And that period would soon be usurped, as often in a long youth, by a time when other preoccupations would rise, prevail, then dominate.

The strings attaching her to her doting parents didn’t stretch long, and at 18 she found herself at the University of Sussex, basing herself in Hove so she could cultivate a deep intellect, sourdough bread and her hypochondria. She made friends, ate better than most, drank even more than most and generally did quite well at making friends and getting older. Then, one morning after reading week, she found it particularly hard to get out of bed. Eventually, after five days bedbound and with no symptoms other than lethargy and neck pain, she was taken back to see Dr Murthy, who she trusted implicitly.

‘Can you feel this pinch?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it painful?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that.’

‘Can you give it a number out of ten?’

‘Two.’

‘How about… this?’

She saw her mother take an intake of breath, she steeled herself.

‘Still a two.’

‘Well, okay,’ he said, and began tapping hard at his computer.

The tests that followed were unclear and as she was used to her wheelchair for now, her parents and Murthy grew confident the situation could pass. She even heard a mutter through a closed door about it being ‘a symptom of adjustment’, which sent a chill of resolve down her spine, a sense that she must steel herself, but in what direction and how, only her inner parts seemed to know. She was allowed to go back to university without so much as a handful of pills, (‘Don’t know of any that would do her any good’) and to continue going to lectures in pursuit of living a reasonable if not wholly normal life.

As the weeks rolled on and crutches, effortful daily walks and a physiotherapist were employed to help, the situation became hardly any better. Dawn even felt an occasional numbness in her hands, a tingle that felt like a threat of things to come. An MRI scan was called for.

Dawn couldn’t help a feeling of satisfaction that moved from her inner parts to her outer, that the situation was indeed as serious as she had protested it was all along, and that she had continued to fight it off without complaining, waiting patiently for the malady to disappear while knowing all along that something desperate, terrible and terrifying was happening to her. She had a strange sense, she told one of her many new friends who accompanied her on her difficult walks near the sea, that defeating this was in some way ‘her destiny’.

The tone Murthy took on the day he was charged with relaying the results was one neither Dawn nor her mother had noted before. His sleeves were rolled up, the crumples around his elbows bulging and straining, contorted as if in a struggle to the death.

‘Dawn, I feel partly responsible.’

‘For what?’ she said. ‘Should I have been given medication?’

She noted the tiniest hint of triumph in her own voice, just one of the voices in the room she no longer recognised. She felt somehow her coming-of-age had been played out almost entirely in this room.

‘No, I feel responsible, because I let this go on so long.’

Her mother hung her head.

‘Bu—’

‘But don’t get me wrong. Just because there is no muscular or cerebral issue, it doesn’t mean you aren’t, I mean, that you’re not—’

‘But—’

‘Let us talk of psychosomatic disease. Let us say that this is no less a disease than any other. A disease of the mind is just as valid as any other, even though the wounds are not observable to the naked eye. Let’s remind ourselves of soldiers who after trauma needed recuperation, some of whom… became poets. Let’s consider that just as a broken bone under the skin requires definite attention, so too does the mind. Let me tell you that the medical profession is only recently agreed on this, historically speaking, but that the public may be more sceptical. Let us agree that the therapies we need to help solve this are more to do with the inside than out.’

He said other things, but Dawn barely heard them. The inside took over, a kind of glow arresting her, numbing her to the rest of the difficult words that followed, which despite claiming not to invalidate her condition, invalidated her condition in the same way that a piece of paper balled-up then set alight and watched until it turns black can no longer be considered a piece of paper.

The trip home was silent as her mother sped over speed bumps and through fords, distractions like lambs lying in fields languishing under a strong autumn sun.

There were no raised voices in her mother’s new kitchen, surrounded by the marble worktops and brass handles. Dawn was not questioned to the point of being asked to prove her illness in the living room, which did not climax in Dawn barely being able to breathe through tears, as her mother pushed her out of her chair and her forehead connected with the newly stripped-back floorboards next to the kitchen island. No, this is not that kind of story.

Dawn returned to her essays and friends and abundant attentions of female friends, and men who were occasionally invited to take her on dates and even fumble around with her. Each of those men considered themselves better people for wheeling her along the cinema multiplex carpet, despite an attractiveness differential not in their favour that didn’t even occur to them when they were never invited on a third date. ‘She has her issues,’ they recounted to friends, while smiling with saintly looks on their faces. ‘Dawn is brilliant, we had a short but awesome time together.’

And slowly, in the first weeks of the third term, as exams approached, Dawn began to stand freely again. And when the word miracle was mentioned, she reminded the speaker that ‘This was never going to be forever, I knew it wouldn’t be.’ And when her female friends of that whole era receded into hallway well-wishers, and her male friends swelled as the student body saw that she looked just as good upright, she entered into a new life she barely looked back from. Her chair was donated to the theatre department, and that was that.

The first one inside the Sex on the Beach villa, Dawn skips past the pool, giggling as she dips her fingers in the chlorinated water, aware that cameras are watching her close, and imbuing her performance with all the day-glo colours of excitement they would expect.

‘Oh – my – god – this – is – flames,’ she says, in a kind of chant. ‘I hope that I look okay.’ And as she leans back over the pool like a latter-day narcissus, to catch her reflection, she hears another pair of heels enter the villa. She turns, glances over her left shoulder, feeling particularly grounded and statuesque, and looks up to see another pair of eyes meet hers so perfectly on cue it was as if the whole thing had been staged.

‘Oh – my – god!’ says Summer. Her blonde waves of hair look like she’s sitting on the back of a speedboat in front of a sun-soaked ocean.

‘You look amaze,’ Dawn says, running over to give her a hug.

‘Aw, you too, my love. That neon bikini is TD.’

‘Ha – is that good?’

‘TD? To die.’

Dawn squeals and internally berates herself for not getting that sooner.

‘What’s your name, darl?’ says Summer.

A pause. A hint of concealed disappointment. Of course, Dawn realises…Summer doesn’t know who Dawn is. Dawn is just one of five hundred thousand to Summer.

But Dawn rallies quickly. ‘Dawn. Like the early morning,’ she says. A hand clasp. Summer pulls her in. Bare right shoulder meeting bare left. Dawn squeezes back.

‘Summer. Like… what it is now,’ Summer says.

And she kisses Dawn on both cheeks. Summer smells just like Dawn thought she might. It’s such a coincidence, her being here, but Summer doesn’t think so. Summer doesn’t realise at all, as she runs her hand along the outdoor furniture, the sheen of the hot tub, the kitchen island counter.

Dawn watches her, recalling those girls she used to admire from sports outings. So competitive on the day. Then with a brush of hair across their reddened faces, they became fast friends. The Maynard School: Summer Charles. How can she forget? She used to stare at those pictures before bed. Just an idol, just a role model, no harm in it.

‘Hey,’ Summer says, running back to her to take Dawn’s hands. Is that an embarrassed look on her face? A remembrance, at last?

‘When do you think the boys get here?’ Summer says.

Dawn shakes her head in silence, blowing a curl of flame hair out of her eyes.

‘We’ve got the rest of the girls to come first,’ Dawn says.

‘Yes!’ Summer says, extracting enthusiasm from every surrounding atom. ‘Oh. Dawn?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m really looking forward to us becoming best friends.’

And Dawn feels the glow within her again.

4.29 p.m.

Dogger. Fisher. German Bight. Humber. Thames. Dover.

Many miles away, the comforting sound of the voice that reads the shipping forecast describes still waters around the United Kingdom, but the sea around its furthest flung territory rises and falls with venom, like a great dark blanket shifting high into the air and crashing down many metres below. The water’s fingers shooting white spray into the air after crashing themselves onto the unfriendly rocks of Tristan Da Cunha.

The island’s two trawling ships are in, having retreated for the day after an early start in the navy-blue morning. Their modern motorised winches pulling in huge ancient nets, rudimentary things compared to those of many fishing vessels that sail the rest of the wide world, but strong enough to feed the residents of the island.

The British developed the first kind of trawler and christened it Dogger. A name that later was given to a patch of sea off the east coast: the pathway to Holland, co-star of the shipping forecast. It also happens to be the name of the larger of the two outrigger trawlers lying in wait, left to be beaten down in the harbour until the storm relents, which is scheduled to be some time tomorrow.

The Dogger’s fishermen left an hour ago, dressed in work-boots thick with various slimes. Above them begin the bib and brace overalls, a wet blackness at the ankles soon dissipating into the luminous orange they are intended to be. Rising to the stomach, they become caked in the grey remnants of assorted innards, and higher still, spackles of various hues of red, that are especially thick around the barrelled chest of one man in particular, dripping rain-diluted blood, from fish guts and whatever else, which fall down onto the front door step of the villa.

It is this that greets Simon, backed by his two makeshift henchmen, in the open doorway. The man in the stained overalls that once were orange. A long blunt instrument in his right hand, that rests low at his side for the moment.

‘HI!’ Roberto shouts, the noise escaping from him, far louder than intended. But Simon says nothing, waiting for the shock to settle as he looks at the fisherman’s face, shadowed by the premature darkness the storm has brought with it.

He is bearded and his eyes shine, though their intent can’t be judged with any accuracy at this point. Within the beard, his glistening red lips, caught by the light spilling from the hallway, open.

‘Storm on the way,’ he says, a growl in a minor key with little effort behind it. And as he says this, the one streetlamp blurred in Simon’s vision behind the man’s left shoulder flickers, then goes out, the orange glow disappearing from the wet concrete.

‘Thank you,’ says Simon. ‘We know. But it’s very good of you to—’

‘You’ll need things. I brought some.’

Lance watches that blunt instrument in his hand.

‘Er… what – what like?’ Simon bumbles.

The fisherman lifts his weapon, Roberto bundles Simon out of the way and grabs the cold steel pipe. The fisherman lets it go and stands back.

‘Decent torch, for a start.’

Roberto nods, puffs out a short breath, mostly composed of embarrassment, as he examines the weight of the metal in his hand. ‘Hmm, thanks.’

‘You fellas… all right?’

‘Of course,’ says Simon, a little too like he’s got something to hide.

‘Bit scared… by the weather,’ Lance says, finding himself completely outmanned by the wilting look he gets back.

‘Making TV, right?’ the fisherman says, examining the three of them in turn.

‘That’s right,’ says Simon.

‘Going to ask me to come in?’

Roberto backs away a touch, thinking about that body upstairs. There’s no reason for the man to want to go up there, he supposes. No reason he can think of.

‘Yes. Do come in,’ mumbles Simon.

And as the fisherman places a sodden foot on the tiles of the villa, making his way past the three men, he mutters, ‘Thank you, Simon.’

Floundering, Simon gasps, ‘How did you know my—’

The front door closes and they follow the fisherman’s long strides inside as the rain pounds on the makeshift street beyond.

Liv is the first to flinch when the unannounced fisherman appears in their living room. He raises his hand in greeting, then reaches back and slings his waterproof pack from off his back onto the ground between them. It lands with a wet thump.

Liv catches Lance’s eye, as he follows behind. And you’re supposed to be a bouncer? she thinks. She feels stupid for what she clutched before he came in now – for what she still has in her hand, obscured from everyone including the fisherman, behind the kitchen island. She grips it, looking for a neat way to get rid of it before anyone sees her with it.

Summer’s fingers twitch by her sides, the tension hardly dispelled by their new guest. A hand slides along her back. Dawn’s. Summer has never been big on inter-female touching, but appreciates the contact is intended to calm her.

‘Cold?’ the fisherman says.

‘Sorry, what?’ Summer says.

‘Cold,’ he repeats, flat and expressionless. ‘You will be.’

Summer stills her hand by placing it on the small of Dawn’s back, trying to look comfortable.

‘Storm. Heat’s always first to go. Light’s next.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ says Simon. ‘Thank you, but we’ve got back-up generators, we’ve thought of all eventualities. The electricity will stay on.’

Simon throws this out to them all with an unfounded confidence, but one he needs to keep if he’s to convince them these cameras are still watching over them…

To be watched is to be safe, keep being observed, keep playing the game, it’s the best way to stay alive.

‘If you say so,’ says the fisherman, with a single shot of doubting laughter.

Zack crouches down to place his hand on the tiles. ‘He’s right. Underfloor heating’s gone already.’

A few noises of concern from surrounding boys and girls, who are now shivering with folded arms. Psychosomatic, Simon thinks. Tell them they’re cold and that’s what they believe. You could put whatever you want into heads like these.

‘Lights next,’ Justine says, with her eyes all over Simon.

‘No,’ says Simon, turning back to the fisherman. ‘We have a system.’

‘System, eh?’ says the fisherman, immediately triggering Simon.

‘I know the technology,’ he says.

‘I know the island.’

There’s a stand-off. All eyes on the two men in front of them, but the fisherman merely blinks and turns his gaze to Liv, who straightens and starts when she sees his sallow skin, yellowing eyes and the dark bags beneath.

‘Jumpy ones, aren’t you?’ he says, his eyes running along Liv, who gives a non-committal wince and shrug, a serrated kitchen knife in her hand, out of view.

‘Maybe a little,’ Dawn says. Offering a smile that the fisherman chooses not to reciprocate.

‘And I know why,’ the fisherman mutters.

Their eyes dart around the room. Simon swallows a sour taste. Behind the intruder, Roberto takes a step in, but to do what, he doesn’t know. Zack’s eyes go to Liv’s, catching her priming herself for something.

‘Because of the storm,’ the fisherman says. And the other bodies in the house relax, their muscles loosening. ‘You won’t get storms much like this back where you’re from.’

He reaches down for the package he carried here on his back; thick, rippling with weight and bound in a makeshift sack made from tarpaulin.

Then a sound stops him in his tracks; thunder that sounds more like a distant drill, trying to pierce its way into their world through the heavy clouds. The kind of noise that lodges in your bones and leaves a cold white shiver there.

The fisherman nods. ‘Not your average storm, I’d say. Not that I’ve anything to compare it to. Never left the island myself.’

‘No?’ Dawn says, placing the hand not wrapped around Summer onto a nearby sofa, like an actor in a soft-furnishings commercial, desperate to appear natural.

‘Nope. But I see things. We do have television. I watch it closely.’

He locks eyes with Dawn and smiles for the first time. She smiles too, and her face falls as she wonders whether he is referencing those two days when she sunbathed topless before being advised by Simon that, despite her efforts, she wasn’t out of view of the camera, and that this therefore might have undue consequences. She was only trying to make sure her tan was consistent while on the nation’s most-watched television show, but the result was Simon informing her to expect screenshots through the post when she returns home, with requests for her to sign them, which he warned her not to. Dawn hardly needed to be told that. But she didn’t expect to come face to face with a grinning fan happy to infer to her how familiar he is with her more secret parts.

‘Sorry, sir,’ Zack says, drawing the fisherman’s eyes his way. ‘What’s in the package?’

As Summer ponders why the fisherman is giving Dawn so much attention when she’s in the room, Liv considers what could possibly be inside…

Pump action shotgun, explosive, crossbow; she flips through the first few options that spring to mind.

‘It’s this…’ says the fisherman, before being stopped in his tracks, one hand on the damp tarpaulin package lazily slung on the cream tiles.

‘Can I ask?’ says Simon. ‘How did you know my name?’

The fisherman stalls, an odd stasis coming over him, his hands clenching in front of him. Simon raises his eyebrows as if to cue the man, but nothing comes out of him other than a low grunt, a long channel of air through which more confusion arrives into the room. All his imposing weight seems to disappear like someone has put a pin in him, all his previous character suddenly excusing itself from him.

‘Zack, Lance, Summer, Tabitha,’ he finally gasps. Tabitha, who had stayed skulking nearest the door in the half-light, planning to bolt if necessary, steps forward on hearing her name. ‘Er, Dawn,’ he says, smiling that weathered smile and lingering on her with his eyes. ‘Justine, er—’

‘We know you know their names,’ Simon says. ‘You must’ve seen them on television. But I’m not on the show.’ He’s incandescent, squaring up to the fisherman. It’s the first time the group notice this thin man can be quite imposing at full height. ‘How did you know my name?’

The fisherman smiles at the group, lost for words. He seems to look older by the second and is currently approaching 50. Justine pinches herself to check she’s not dreaming, such is the departure from reality they seem to have taken.

Simon closes in on him and grabs him by the strap of his overalls, voice rising with every syllable. ‘How. Did. You. Know. My. Na—’

‘Sandra told me it. The producer. When she left, she gave me instructions. And a retainer.’

Simon drops to a crouch as the others take a step in towards him, Sly getting close enough to give him a manly pat on the shoulder. They have, perhaps, neglected the strains it puts on a man when his job is to keep the strain off them. But none of them will be able to recall this abstract outburst with any ease.

‘Sandra told you,’ mumbles Simon.

‘Sandra told me,’ affirms the fisherman. ‘To watch over you.’ He leans back down to the package and pulls out a stack of firewood, kindling and firelighters, then takes them to the open fireplace, where he gets to work on them.

‘Good, yes. I’m sorry,’ says Simon. ‘Look, I would like to apologise…’

‘Fine,’ says the fisherman.

‘Yes, well, that’s very good of you. Sorry, to everyone, for my…’

Simon rises and goes over to the kitchen island where he leans and takes a few deep breaths and is comforted by Dawn in the partial silence. The fisherman strikes three lights within the fire and stands back to fan the flames.

Roberto crouches too, warming his hands. ‘God, it got cold fast.’

‘You should put on an extra layer,’ the fisherman says, drawing all heads his way as he turns towards the stairs.

A volley of shaken heads behind his back, in reference to the body up there. But none of the Beachers know quite what to say and Simon remains strangely inert.

‘We like it down here, you see,’ Lance says. It escapes from him under duress. But at least it makes the fisherman turn.

‘Weather turns fast here,’ he says, but all he sees is a roomful of bodies, static and unwilling to make any false move. ‘Why don’t you just go and get—’

‘Nah…’ Zack says, a long sound that means little. ‘It’s just… nice to have some cold… after all this… sun. Reminds us of home.’

The fisherman gives a slow frown. ‘As you wish.’

He notices not one of them is sitting down, nor have they been the whole time he is here. A couple of them give stiff nods to thank him for his time.

‘Well, I should get going—’

‘Of course,’ Sly says. ‘Don’t want to hang around with a bunch of melts like us.’

‘Black fella, eh?’ says the fisherman, looking Sly up and down.

‘Er, yep,’ says Sly.

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