Tiggy walks over and runs a finger along Giles’s flask. ‘I’m getting a bit worried about him now.’
‘Oh, he’ll be back soon enough,’ Scott says. He reaches for his own flask, but Lucy pulls it away.
‘I’ll serve, OK? I’ve got all the correct glasses.’ She starts to unscrew the flasks, sniffing the contents before pouring them into various shapes and sizes of glass, depending on the drink.
‘I’m guessing they didn’t psychically magic up my bottle of Coke then . . .’
‘Ta-da,’ Lucy says, tipping the head of the flask towards him. Then she sticks her fingers into the top and pulls out a bottle of Coke. ‘Guess again, sunshine.’
She pours Scott’s foamy pina colada into a long-stemmed goblet, garnishing it with a slice of pineapple. Scott grins. ‘No biggie. You all heard me ask for this.’
‘The Coke, though . . .’ Amelia says.
Lucy pours the contents of Amelia’s flask into a wine glass. It’s mostly orange, but there’s an unmistakable streak of red as the last of the dregs slide into the glass.
‘Woah,’ Scott says. ‘None of us heard you ask for that.’
‘So these trackers . . .’ James starts to say.
‘I don’t even have the proper one, though. I only have the wrist sensor.’
‘You can’t all still be thinking that these trackers are tapping into your neurons or whatever,’ Scott says, shaking his head. ‘You know it’s some kind of trick . . . or they looked up an interview with you online and got lucky.’
Amelia knows she’s never mentioned tequila sunrises in any interview she’s done, but she can’t be sure she hasn’t mentioned it somewhere. Social media, maybe. It wouldn’t be any surprise that the host had researched them all thoroughly. They’re some sort of tech company, after all. Maybe they’ve hacked their accounts.
‘I bet Giles’s is vodka Red Bull,’ Tiggy says. ‘He’s such a commoner when it comes to drinks.’ She pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts tapping away.
‘There’s no signal on that, is there?’ James says. He’s holding his Coke but he hasn’t taken a sip yet.
Tiggy nods. ‘No phone signal, but I seem to be connected to a Wi-Fi network. My calls go through that when there’s no reception.’
‘Have you tried ringing lover boy then?’ Lucy says, unscrewing the lid of Giles’s flask.
‘No. I don’t want to talk to him yet. I’ve just sent him an angry message instead.’
Lucy sniffs. ‘Urgh, you’re right about the drink. I hate the smell of that stuff.’ She screws the lid on and goes back to pouring the remaining drinks – all of them correctly guessed.
They are still pondering that when Tiggy’s phone pings.
‘“See you soon, babe,”’ she reads off the screen for them. ‘“Sorry. You know I can explain.” Three kisses.’ She scowls. ‘Right, well, now that I know he’s OK, he can bloody well stay away. I’m having a drink.’
‘Cheers to that,’ Scott says. They all raise their glasses.
Amelia takes a long gulp, savouring the orange and the tequila kick, and the sweet tang of the syrup. She instantly feels more relaxed. The others are quiet now, all enjoying their drinks. Amelia looks around at the bay – sunloungers, paddleboards, a rolled-up net next to a couple of bats and balls. The sand is deep, the water clear. On the other side, another path snakes its way up a hill lined with long grass. Finally, everyone seems content.
‘Well,’ Tiggy says, draining her drink, ‘I wonder how long we’ll be allowed to enjoy this place before the next part of the game?’
Summer 2000
She stops running when she reaches the bay. Her lungs and her leg muscles burn, and she has to put a hand on the wall of the shop to stop herself from collapsing. After a few moments, her breath starts to return to normal. But her face still feels hot and her heart is still thumping too hard.
She’s meant to be back for dinner soon. But how is she going to eat after what she’s just done? She steps away from the wall and walks around to the door of the shop. She knows what to do. She was told the first time she came here without her parents that if there was ever a problem of any kind, she was to go to the shop and they would help her.
The shop door is open, stands filled with buckets and spades lining the route inside. She takes a few tentative steps, spots the nice lady behind the counter who always adds an extra piece of fudge or an extra couple of Fruit Salad chews when she goes in for a mixed bag. The lady has a kind face. The lady will help.
She’s almost at the counter when a man knocks into her as he passes. ‘Get out of the way, girl,’ he says, angrily pushing a bag of bread rolls across the counter.
She stands behind him, shaking. She doesn’t like this man. Something about him gives her a bad feeling. She doesn’t wait for him to turn round. She just walks out of the shop. Outside, she smacks right into a pale, skinny boy and he springs back from her, a terrified look on his face.
‘Sorry . . .’ she mutters, wondering for a moment why he looks so spooked, but not caring enough to stop and find out.
She walks quickly back to her grandparents’ cottage, bursts in the door, hot-faced and sweating, and says, ‘Please, I’m too homesick. I don’t want to stay here for another week. I feel sick. I want my mum. Please, can I go back home?’
Brenda
Brenda tries to get comfortable on one of the sunloungers, but it’s either too upright or too flat, and every time she swings her legs over the side to twist around and adjust it, a shooting pain travels up her thigh. She makes one final attempt to get the lounger to stay where she wants it, then, realising it’s the best she can do without drawing attention to herself, she swings her legs back one final time and picks up her drink.
She’s already on her second glass. It doesn’t taste too strong – in fact, there’s maybe a little too much soda for her liking – but she can already feel it going to her head. If she was at home, she’d probably stop now, but after the day she’s had, and being stuck here with these strangers, she decides that another glass or two won’t do any harm. Besides, it’s taking her mind off her leg.
She doesn’t think the snake properly bit her. It didn’t really feel like a bite, as such. More like being stung by nettles, or the sharp scratch of a needle inserted in a vein to take blood. Do snakes even have teeth? She doesn’t have time to watch wildlife programmes. How is she supposed to know how snakebites work? James had been extremely concerned when he’d asked if she’d been bitten, and for reasons she can’t quite fathom now, she’d decided to lie.
Maybe it was just a drama she didn’t want to be part of. Or maybe she’s trying to convince herself that it didn’t really happen.
She makes sure that the others are fully distracted before rolling up the leg of her shorts and taking a look. There’s a swollen red bump that itches a little, and only seems to hurt when she moves her leg or touches it.
She rolls her shorts back down and takes another sip of her drink.
Best not to touch it then, she decides. Anyway – it’s not as if it can be that bad, can it? They can’t have put a potentially deadly snake in a place where she was sure to disturb it – that would be absurd. They invited her here to ask for her advice, and to offer her potential investment. She’s hardly going to be interested if she ends up hospitalised.
She leans back into the lounger. James and Amelia are inspecting the sports equipment that’s been left for them all. Lucy is rattling a cocktail shaker, leaning forwards and laughing at something Scott is saying to her at the bar. Brenda doesn’t know what to make of her yet, but then she hasn’t really spent much time talking to her. She’d helped Scott all the way down to the bay and Brenda had been more concerned with her own footing to pay much attention to what they were saying. Tiggy had walked with her, holding her elbow as if she were an old woman. She is an old woman to Tiggy though, isn’t she? Sometimes she forgets what it’s like to be so young and invincible. Tiggy had rabbited on the whole way, c
hattering about what a pig Giles is, but how he’s such a genius and it’s not surprising that he needs so many people around him – to stimulate his mind. She’d tried to explain her Instagram life, and how it made her money, and what she could do to help Brenda grow her ‘online presence’. Brenda hadn’t been able to get a word in to tell the girl that her business doesn’t work like that. That discretion is the key to her investments, not shiny pictures of king-size beds with vases of artfully arranged flowers by the side and luxury robes laid out at the bottom, with pretty cotton slippers on the thick carpet. Towels fashioned into swans and hearts. Ice bucket on the bedside cabinet with a bottle of expensive champagne draped in a starched linen napkin.
Tiggy had explained all this with such passion that Brenda couldn’t be bothered to tell her that she couldn’t care less – that her assistant always booked her hotels for her, and that she wasn’t particularly impressed by origami towels.
She takes another drink. Tiggy is down by the water’s edge, glass in hand, taking small steps into the sea then flicking her feet up, spraying water across the sand. Giggling to herself. Not too bothered about Giles now, is she?
There’s a beep. Not too loud at first but rising. She sits up straighter, glances across at the others. They are all looking around, trying to see where the sound is coming from. It beeps again, and then the sky seems to shimmer, moving lines flickering across her vision.
Tiggy’s head snaps up and she whirls round to face them all. ‘This is what happened earlier,’ she says. ‘When I was with Giles.’ Her eyes are wide, and the fear is evident in her voice. ‘It’s . . . it’s kind of . . . a video. Can you all see it? I—’
The swirling stops and the image comes into focus, slowly depixelating. It’s above Tiggy’s head, seemingly floating over the sea. Brenda blinks. When she refocuses her eyes, the image reappears. She turns her head and it moves with her.
It’s not floating on some unseen screen – it’s being projected from her own head. How can this be? Her heart starts to beat faster. A strange tingling comes over her. She blinks again, but the image keeps coming back.
She doesn’t like this. It’s a horrible, disembodying experience. But through the transparent projection she can still see the others, circling, holding hands to their foreheads as sun visors. They are seeing it too. Tiggy starts walking slowly backwards, away from the sea. She keeps batting a hand across the empty space in front of her, as if she’s trying to get the screen to disappear. Brenda assumes that’s what she’s doing. She can only see her own projection, and Tiggy through the other side. She looks up again at the sky. If she’s going to be shown something, she might as well make sure she can see it clearly. Tiggy’s right. It is a video, of sorts. A streaming projection. It starts to play, and Tiggy gasps, falling back onto the sand.
‘I thought . . . I thought this would be about Giles.’ She stops talking.
It’s not Giles in the scene that Brenda is viewing. Not yet anyway. It’s Tiggy herself – her face reflected in her phone screen, by way of some sort of mirror app, maybe. So what Brenda is seeing is what Tiggy is seeing as this projection unfolds. It’s all terrifically disorienting. She’s living this scene as Tiggy. She has to accept that, or she might just be sick.
Tiggy lays the phone on the table in front of her, and through her eyes Brenda sees bare legs poking out from the bottom of a short red skirt. She glances around, taking in the plump green sofa in the corner of a stark room. Music is playing – something you might hear in a nightclub, no real words, just thumping bass notes and the occasional breathy moan. Something repeated, over and over again. There are other girls in the room. Chatting to each other, huddled together. An expensively bleached blonde throws her head back and laughs as two scowling brunettes turn to her – Tiggy on the sofa – and they say something, then they laugh again. Brenda feels a fresh wave of nausea. She wants to turn away, but she can’t. The scene is still projecting. Trapped in this awful moment with Tiggy, as Tiggy, Brenda looks down at Tiggy’s hands, watches as they clench tight into fists. Brenda can feel the tension in her own body as Tiggy’s knuckles glow slightly white when she grips harder onto her drink.
‘No. Please. Turn this off.’
Brenda looks down from the clear sky to Tiggy, here and now, where she is curled up on the sand. She can still see her through the projection. The effect sends her mind and stomach reeling in a new way.
Brenda turns to the bar, and then to the piled-up paddleboards. Everyone is watching, living through the ‘on-screen’ Tiggy at a party. Everyone is experiencing this.
Except Amelia.
Amelia is tapping her watch. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘This isn’t fair.’ She turns to Brenda, as though feeling her gaze. ‘Please. Tell me what you can see?’
Then the real Tiggy, sitting on the sand, curled into herself, rocking gently – just as she did in the visitor centre when the text feed exposed Giles for the cheat he is – sobs, ‘No. Stop watching it. Don’t tell her . . .’
Brenda closes her eyes and the image vanishes. She could keep them closed. Ignore it. But would it still be there when she opened them? Is this what happened earlier? Did Tiggy get shown a projection like this of Giles? Some sort of memory feed?
She needs to see.
‘Close your eyes, Tiggy,’ James calls over from the paddleboards.
Amelia gets up off her knees and walks over and lays a hand on Tiggy’s shoulder. ‘It doesn’t matter, Tiggy. I can’t see it. Try not to get upset. It’s just a game, remember?’
‘Those bitches,’ Tiggy says, just loud enough for them all to hear. ‘This is not a game.’
Amelia crouches down beside her. ‘Tell me then, Tiggy. Talk me through it.’
Brenda tips her head back up to the sky. She’s Tiggy again, on-screen. Still pretending she can’t hear what the other girls are saying, but the volume has been turned up loud enough for her to hear them now.
‘Silly little cow. No matter what he does, she stays. Too pathetic to make a name for herself on her own merits.’
‘Did you hear what he did with Cressida and Lorena? Talk about filth . . .’
‘She’s not that pretty, is she? She does all that contouring, but if you actually look at her face . . .’
‘Shut up!’ Tiggy on the beach says, clamping her hands over her ears.
Tiggy on-screen says nothing.
Feeling another wave of swooning dizziness, Brenda leans back into the lounger, closes her eyes. It was a mistake to have that third glass of wine. She never drinks this much, and with the heat . . . and . . . her leg itches again. A vision swims in front of her, as though it’s imprinted on her eyelids. A fresh one; not Tiggy’s. A small scene replays itself. An island, a long time ago. Waves crashing against rocks. A voice carried on the wind. ‘No!’
Her eyes fly open again.
Brenda is back inside Tiggy’s vision, just as she gets up slowly from the sofa, the glass still held tight in her hand. She catches a glimpse of herself in a mirrored pillar, and her face – Tiggy’s face – is completely devoid of expression as she smashes the champagne flute against the high glass table where the three women stand, their faces fixed in horror as she raises a hand above her head, then thrusts the stem hard and fast towards the blonde woman’s face.
Lucy
‘Woah,’ Lucy says, laying one of the flasks on the bar. ‘That was quite . . . unexpected.’ She’s gazing out at the sea, still not sure what’s just happened. Did she really experience a woman being glassed, through the eyes of sweet, naive little Tiggy?
‘You’re telling me,’ Scott says. He swivels round on the bar stool. ‘Hey, where’d she go?’ He swipes a hand in front of his face. ‘That was so weird, right?’
Lucy turns, and the projection remains in her vision – a horrible freeze-frame of Tiggy’s hand clutching the broken flute, the woman’s face etched with pain and terror.
Tiggy is no longer on the sand, where she’d fallen back in shock when the scene start
ed to play. Brenda is sitting up on her lounger, mouth wide open in a stunned ‘O’. James and Amelia are running towards the rocks in pursuit of Tiggy, who has fled the scene.
Lucy closes her eyes for a moment, but when she opens them the projection remains paused, hanging there above the calm sea like an angry, mocking cloud. It’s been left on the still of the blonde woman’s face as she reels backwards from the high glass table, a jet of dark red blood frozen in the air as though someone has shaken a bottle of ketchup with the lid off and caught it on time-lapse photography. Reflected in one of the club’s many mirrors, Tiggy’s face is fierce – mouth open, teeth bared in a silent warrior’s cry. The two brunettes have simultaneously thrown their hands over their faces, either in shock or as protection, or possibly both. It is a stunning visceral image – mainly because it shows a scene that is so unexpected in its horror that it takes a while for the brain to absorb it. And just like that, it flickers, then disappears.
‘That can’t be real,’ Scott says, shaking his head. ‘No way was that real.’
‘What? The technology, or our Tiggy?’ Lucy asks.
Scott blinks at her. ‘What? Both, I guess. But yeah, Tiggy.’
‘She’s a dark horse, that’s for sure. I had her pegged as pretty but vacant. Would never have thought she had that in her.’ Lucy pours herself a drink and tops up Scott’s. If this image is true – and at the moment she can’t see how it isn’t, as it’s been revealed as if through Tiggy’s own memory – then this could be the scoop of the century. She’d thought Cheryl Tweedy punching a toilet attendant at the height of her Girls Aloud fame had been a good one – but Cheryl had somehow bounced back from that to become the unthinking nation’s sweetheart. There’s no way Tiggy can come back from this. If this is leaked, she will be destroyed.
The Last Resort Page 10