‘Hey,’ says Paul, walking towards her, carrying the brown suitcase and some twine.
‘Hey,’ she says back. ‘Where’s the dead body?’
He kisses her wet forehead. ‘On its way.’
Soon, Jamie and Bryn emerge from the house. They have done what Thea said and used a sheet to transport the body, which is itself covered by another sheet. They all walk to the cliff edge. The waves below are at least five metres high. Each one smashes at the cliff face as if attacking it.
‘Glad I’m not going out in that,’ says Bryn.
‘Me too,’ says Anne.
Bryn and Jamie lower the sheet on to the ground.
‘Aren’t you going to put him into the boat?’ asks Paul.
‘Maybe we should put him in the boat when we get down there,’ suggests Bryn.
‘No,’ says Paul. ‘If we tie him strongly to the boat up here, then it’ll be easier.’
‘I think so too,’ says Anne.
‘It’s going to be really slippery going down the cliff,’ says Jamie.
‘Then we’ll have to be careful,’ says Paul. ‘Come on, get him in the boat.’
Bryn and Jamie pick up two corners of the sheet each and lift the body off the ground. They start swinging it horizontally like a hammock, aiming at the boat.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Anne. ‘Just slide him in vertically.’
In the end the procedure looks like something Anne saw on the in-flight safety manual on the way to California. The dead man slips off the sheet and into the boat as if he is alive and has just been rescued from a plane. He lands there with a thwack, lying in the exact same position as he was in upstairs when they first discovered him.
Paul starts unravelling some twine.
‘Anyone know any good knots?’ he asks.
No one does, so he just improvises. Once he’s finished, the man looks quite secure. Paul has looped the twine around his arms and legs and then through the ropes on the sides of the rubber boat. Then he’s made a few more loops around the dead guy’s middle and tied several more knots to secure him.
‘He’s not coming out of that,’ says Jamie, smiling.
‘The water’ll tighten the ropes as well,’ says Bryn.
‘What?’ says Anne.
‘When the rope gets wet, the knots will become tighter,’ he explains.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Cool.’
‘What about his horrible suitcase?’ says Paul. ‘I thought it could go too.’
‘You should have tied it on with him,’ says Jamie.
‘No,’ says Paul. ‘I had a better idea.’
He opens the suitcase and takes out the mask.
‘Are you going to put it on him?’ asks Bryn, laughing.
‘Let me do it,’ says Jamie, taking the mask.
He pulls it over the man’s head. ‘This is for Emily,’ he mumbles.
‘We’d better not give him the knife,’ says Anne. ‘It’ll deflate the boat.’
Paul takes it and throws it over the cliff into the sea.
Bryn’s pulled the syringe out of the suitcase. He looks uncomfortable.
‘I’ve never touched one of these,’ he says.
‘What are you going to—’ begins Jamie, but Bryn’s already stuck the syringe through the mask and into the man’s forehead.
‘Have we gone mad?’ asks Anne, laughing and shivering in the cold.
‘No,’ says Paul. ‘We’re just making him easier to spot.’
‘Oh. Well in that case . . .’ Anne takes one of the dildos and sticks it in his open mouth.
The others laugh.
‘Cool,’ says Jamie. ‘Where shall we put the other two?’
‘Don’t even go there,’ says Anne, and throws them over the cliff into the water below. She also throws the blindfold and the sewing kit. The suitcase is now empty, so she throws that, too.
‘What about that spider?’ asks Bryn.
‘What, Sebastian?’ says Paul.
‘You called it Sebastian?’ says Jamie.
‘Yeah. Well, Anne did. What about him?’
‘Shall we send him away too?’
‘No!’ wails Anne. ‘He’ll drown.’
‘It would be a bit cruel,’ says Paul.
‘But we’re sending our fears away with him,’ says Bryn.
‘Not that one,’ says Paul firmly. ‘It’s not sinister like the others. It’ll be all right.’
‘Did you write the note?’ Anne asks Jamie.
‘Yep,’ he says, waving it around.
‘What does it say?’ asks Bryn.
‘Just what Thea said.’
Anne takes it from Jamie and looks at it. He’s written it on a piece of blue paper. It says: I’ve kidnapped six people and they’re on the island I’ve just floated from. Please rescue them. They are the ‘Bright Young Things’ you probably know about. The ones who went missing on 6 September 1999.
‘Cool,’ she says, giving it back to him.
‘Where’s it going to go?’ asks Paul.
‘In a plastic bag in his pocket,’ says Jamie. ‘I’ll do it now.’
He seems to take ages fiddling with the bag and sticking it in the man’s pocket.
‘Let’s go, then,’ says Bryn.
Getting the boat down the cliff path is an inch-by-inch process, which is slow and cold and wet. They could have slid it down the mud, but there are too many prickly plants and sharp rock edges. No one wants to burst the boat. Anne is at the back with Paul, walking forwards. Jamie and Bryn are at the front going backwards, constantly looking over their shoulders for edges and things they might slip on. Now Thea’s cut this path, there are no big plants or stinging nettles to get in their way. And it’s not too treacherous in itself, going down here – there are no vertical drops or anything – but no one wants to fall or slip and risk losing the boat over the edge. Paul explains all the way down that it has to launch properly, and that they have to make it land the right way up. Bryn says it would be easier if they could switch on the outboard motor, but they’ve left it at the top. There’d be no safe way of turning it on without being in the water, and no one’s getting into this stormy sea and coming out alive.
If they can just get the boat almost to the bottom, and then give it a good shove, it should land just beyond where the waves are breaking. Anne knows there’s a good chance it’ll get cut to pieces on the cliff face, but at least they’re taking the chance with a dead man and not with themselves.
Eventually they reach a ledge.
‘This is as far as we can go,’ says Paul.
The waves are breaking only a few metres below them, licking up the cliff face.
‘So what do we do?’ says Bryn.
‘We have to throw it just after a wave has broken,’ says Paul, raising his voice over the wind and the spray. ‘Aim for the calm bit.’ He points at a patch of navy blue beyond all the froth and gush of the waves. ‘Hopefully the pull-back effect will take the boat clear of the island. The tide is going out in theory, so . . .’
‘How do you know the tide’s going out?’ shouts Anne, pushing wet bits of hair out of her eyes.
‘The charts,’ Paul shouts back.
So he could read them.
‘OK,’ he shouts. ‘Everyone ready?’
‘Yeah,’ shouts Bryn.
‘Yes,’ calls Jamie.
‘Yeah,’ says Anne, her fingers slipping slightly from the ropes on the boat.
‘On three,’ shouts Paul. ‘One, two . . . three.’
On one and two they swing the boat. On three, they let it go.
At first it seems as if the boat will be destroyed; it instantly catches an incoming wave and just misses some jagged-looking rocks. Almost vertical, the little boat bounces on the sea like a stray beach ball. But gradually it seems to move away from the island, rising and falling dangerously as it goes. Anne and the others stand there for about ten minutes until it’s safely on its way.
‘We did it,’ laughs Jamie.
‘Cool,’ says Anne.
‘Goodbye, Psycho,’ says Paul.
‘Yeah, bye,’ calls Bryn, waving to the yellow shape in the mist.
‘Better get back,’ says Anne.
They turn to walk back up to the house.
At the top, the house suddenly looks warm and inviting; it’s so incredibly wet outside. As they walk towards it, the rain suddenly turns to a drizzle and then stops. The sun comes out. Feeling like a little girl, Anne instantly turns to see if there’s a rainbow. And there’s Jamie, standing on the cliff-edge, screwing up a piece of blue paper and throwing it into the sea.
THE END OF MR. Y
SCARLETT THOMAS
If you knew a book was cursed, would you read it?
When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of The End of Mr. Y in a second-hand bookshop, she can’t believe her eyes. She knows enough about its author, the outlandish Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas, to know that copies are exceedingly rare. And, some say, cursed. With Mr. Y under her arm, Ariel finds herself thrust into a thrilling adventure of love, sex, death and time-travel.
‘A masterpiece . . . A brilliant, engaging story that makes you rethink the nature of existence and the true structure of the world’
Douglas Coupland
‘Ingenious and original. A cracking good yarn, fizzing with intelligence’
Philip Pullman
‘Has a delightful whiff of decaying books, and a strong pinch of sulphur’
The Times
£8.99
ISBN 978 1 84767 070 0
eBook 978 1 84767 368 8
POPCO
SCARLETT THOMAS
A brilliant mind-melting adventure from the author of The End of Mr. Y
Alice Butler has been receiving some odd messages - all anonymous, all written in code. Are they from someone at PopCo, the profit-hungry corporation she works for? Or from Alice’s long lost father? Or has someone else been on her trail?
The solution, she is sure, will involve the code-breaking skills she learned from her grandparents and the key she’s been wearing round her neck since she was ten.
PopCo is a grown-up adventure of family secrets, puzzles, big business and the power of numbers
‘This book might just change your life’ Independent on Sunday
‘Wonderfully fresh and ambitious’ Jonathan Coe
‘An anticorporate fable with enough code-breaking tips, puzzles and graphs, charts, postscripts and appendixes to satisfy Lewis Carroll’ New York Times
£8.99
ISBN 978 1 84767 335 0
eBook 978 1 84767 396 1
OUR TRAGIC UNIVERSE
SCARLETT THOMAS
Could a story save your life?
If Kelsey Newman’s theory about the end of time is true, we are all going to live forever. But who would want that?
Certainly not Meg, a bright spark trapped in a hopeless relationship. But if she can work out the connection between a wild beast on Dartmoor, a ship in a bottle, the science of time and a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe, she might just find a way out.
‘This intriguing novel bends time and space . . .
A book that brims with a compassion and warmth’
Guardian
‘Thomas has the mesmerising power of a great storyteller’
Financial Times
‘Our Tragic Universe is so addictive, you can’t help but fall deeper and deeper under Scarlett Thomas’s spell’ Douglas Coupland
£8.99
ISBN 978 1 84767 129 5
eBook 978 1 84767 906 2
GOING OUT
SCARLETT THOMAS
‘A modern take on The Wizard of Oz that will be thoroughly enjoyed by all fans of Douglas Coupland’ Daily Mail
Luke is twenty-five and allergic to the sun. He is stuck in his bedroom, where the world comes to him through TV, the internet and Julie’s visits. Julie, meanwhile, is brilliant, kind and could be changing the world. Unfortunately she is too terrified of aeroplane crashes, road accidents and potentially life-threatening bacteria to leave her home town.
When someone contacts Luke and claims that he can cure him, Luke and Julie have to deal with their fears and face the world outside. With four friends, wellies and a homemade space suit, they set off in a VW Camper van along Britain’s B-roads. It is a journey that might just change their lives.
‘Surreal and inventive’ Independent on Sunday
‘Insightful and entertaining’ Big Issue
‘Scarlett Thomas captures perfectly the Estuarine suburbs where a lack of blonde highlights makes you a weirdo. . . Never mind what the neighbours might think – Going Out is worth staying in for’ The Times
£8.99
ISBN 978 0 85786 210 5
Export 978 0 85786 233 4
eBook 978 0 85786 211 2
MONKEYS WITH TYPEWRITERS
SCARLETT THOMAS
Unlocking the secret power of stories: A manual for reading – and writing – better
Exploring the great plots from Plato to The Matrix and from The Wizard of Oz to Tolstoy, this book is a manual for anyone who wants to unlock any narrative and to create their own. With startling insights into how construct stories, this is a book about how to read and write better.
Scarlett Thomas is the bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y and seven other novels. For ten years she has lectured in creative writing at Kent University.
Praise for Scarlett Thomas:
‘Thomas has the mesmerising power of a great storyteller’ Financial Times
‘You can’t help but fall deeper and deeper under Scarlett Thomas’s spell. She’s a genius’ Douglas Coupland
‘If you’ve never read a Thomas novel then let’s be clear: the ideas are big’ Scotland on Sunday
£14.99
ISBN 978 0 85786 378 2
eBook 978 0 85786 379 9
THE RAW SHARK TEXTS
STEVEN HALL
‘The most original reading experience of the year’ Independent
Eric Sanderson wakes up in a place he doesn’t recognise. All he can recall are memories of Clio, a perfect love now gone. When he starts receiving letters signed ‘With regret and also hope, The First Eric Sanderson’, he embarks on a search to recover everything he has lost. The Raw Shark Texts is a heartbreaking love story, a brain-warping thriller and a one-way trip into the dangerous waters of the mind.
‘Fast, sexy, intriguing, intelligent – a cult waiting to happen’ Toby Litt
‘Clever, exciting, funny . . . and, finally, moving’ Sunday Times
‘A psychological thriller with shades of Memento and The Matrix and the fiction of Mark Danielewski; page-turning, playful and chilling by turns’ Guardian
£8.99
ISBN 978 1 84767 024 3
Export 978 1 84767 023 6
eBook 978 1 84767 389 3
£16.99
Audio CD 978 1 84767 156 1
£10.99
Audio digital download 978 0 85786 388 1
UNDER THE SKIN
MICHEL FABER
Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award
A brilliantly told and beautifully written novel that defies categorisation, Under the Skin introduces Isserley, a woman obsessed with picking up male hitchhikers – so long as they’re well-muscled and alone. As the novel unfolds, the reader is drawn inexorably into a completely unexpected and increasingly terrifying world. Beautifully written, funny, macabre and deeply affecting, Michel Faber’s debut novel will stay with you long after the final page.
‘It’ll get you one way or another. Of that there is no doubt’ Observer
‘Strange, adept, original . . . Would that more first novels were as adventurous or as funky and daring in their conception’
Independent on Sunday
‘Teases and prods the reader up a plethora of literary blind alleys before hauling them screaming towards its final, thrilling destination’
Daily Telegraph
£8.99
ISBN 978 1 84767 892 8
eBook 978 1 84767 373 2
THE RADLEYS
MATT HAIG
Families. Sometimes they’re a bloody nightmare . . .
Life with the Radleys: Radio 4, dinner parties with the Bishopthorpe neighbours and self-denial. Loads of self-denial. But all hell is about to break loose. When teenage daughter Clara gets attacked on the way home from a party, she and her brother Rowan finally discover why they can’t sleep, can’t eat a Thai salad without fear of asphyxiation and can’t go outside unless they’re smothered in Factor 50.
With a visit from their lethally louche uncle Will and an increasingly suspicious police force, life in Bishopthorpe is about to change. Drastically.
Bright Young Things Page 29