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.

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