The Islanders

by S. V. Leonard

  There’s only one thing to be done. I kick off my shoes and take a running jump. In the air, I pull my knees into my chest and fall into the water like a cannonball. The water roars around my ears as I fall to the bottom. My skin, warmed by the wine and vodka, practically hisses against the cool water. I paddle towards Daniel and wrap my arms around his thick neck. I sense that this is an intimate gesture but the alcohol coursing through my blood convinces me it is the right move.

  ‘Don’t stress about him. Jack Peaks is a knob.’

  Daniel laughs at my words, but I know with great certainty that if Jack continues to behave like this, his days in this villa are numbered.

  Chapter Eleven

  LoveWrecked @LoveWrecked

  1.3m followers

  Share your thoughts on this year’s season of LoveWrecked.

  @trashqueen2000: Who else is watching the LoveWrecked live feed? How did they all get so drunk so quickly?

  @dannidoes: @trashqueen2000 Jack is the drunkest. Kim is pretty bad too. But the others? Nah, I think they’re just playing to the camera.

  @LoveWrecked4eva: @dannidoes @trashqueen2000 OMG did you see what Jack just did? He is wasted.

  @trashqueen2000: @dannidoes @LoveWrecked4eva At 18:00 Jack Peak-ed. At 22:00 Jack fell. LOL

  @M155Ch1ef: Real zero to hero story this one #LoveWrecked #jackhaspeaked

  @Chriscomments: Jack Peaks is the type of guy that’s going to piss people off. Fact. If the public don’t get rid of him, one of the others will #jackhaspeaked #LoveWrecked

  Chapter Twelve

  Kimberley

  Sunday 27th July, 9:01

  I roll over onto my side and pat the palm of my hand across the surface of my bedside table. I’m sure I put my water bottle here before I fell asleep. My mouth is so dry that my tongue is practically sticking to the side of my mouth.

  The beds that surround me are occupied and the sound of not-so-gentle snoring fills the air, overpowering the noise of the air conditioner. Its cool breeze runs over the top of my head and I’m grateful for it; there are too many bodies in one room to be without it, and yet, even with the air conditioning, my skin is sticky with sweat and I can feel it gathering in the nape of my neck. I glance upwards towards the hidden cameras, the cameras that are catching me in all my morning glory. Oh God, I really hope Daniel isn’t waiting for me outside, camera at the ready.

  I peel back the covers and swing my legs out of bed and onto the floor. My sweaty feet make contact with the marble floor and I relish the coolness of it. Pushing myself into a standing position, I creep out of the bedroom and head down the corridor towards the kitchen in search of water. Debris of clothes and underwear from the previous night litters the floor. We’d really better sort it before the newcomers arrive; what will they think of us if they see this mess?

  There’s a pair of men’s sunglasses lying discarded by the door. I pick them up and inspect them. They’ll do for now. I place them over my eyes before pulling aside the curtain covering the wide glass door that leads to the garden. Light streams into the hallway and I’m thankful for the shades, whoever they belong to.

  I open the patio door and step straight into the outside kitchen. It seems the kitchen too has taken a hit from the festivities of our first night in the villa. Glasses, stained with red wine or filled with half-drunk gin and tonics, are clustered together in a group and plates laden with the crusts of late-night toasties cover the kitchen counter.

  I will deal with this, but later. First water and coffee.

  Less than ten minutes later, I’m sitting at the breakfast bar, my legs dangling from a bar stool, my fingers wrapped around a steaming cup of strong, black coffee. Its smell alone is enough to convince me that it will do the trick. It’s the elixir of life.

  From my position, I can see part of the table at which we sat last night and the outer edge of the decking that surrounds the pool. I hear the water lapping gently against the sides of the pool moved by the gentle morning breeze and I imagine it splashing little flecks of water over the side, darkening the light-coloured wooden decking. The soft breeze brushes against my skin, warm and kind. Its caress makes me feel slightly more human. I’m still fragile but I feel much better.

  Blowing on my coffee, I try to piece together the night before.

  I remember dinner; I sat next to Mo. That is clear at least. I can picture his dark, thick hair and strong chin. He is a chef – I’m sure we discussed his work. I even remember noting that he spent most of the evening glancing towards the actress. Well, both the men did.

  What is her name again? I shake my head; my brain throbs – best not to put too much pressure on myself right now, the name will come. Although I can’t remember the actress’s name, I can vividly recall that she didn’t seem to be enjoying the company of Jack. Jack Peaks, well, he certainly made an impression last night. I smile, comforted with the notion that if I feel like shit this morning, Jack is probably dead in a ditch somewhere.

  Then, after dinner, there was music and dancing and…

  A scream rips apart the peace of the morning, wrenching me from my remembering. My body jolts forward, unprepared to hear such a noise and my fingers loosen around the coffee mug. The mug hits the worktop and shatters into several pieces. Brown liquid stains the white marble.

  ‘Shit,’ I say aloud, twisting my legs away to avoid them getting burned as the coffee flows towards me. The dark brown liquid splashes onto the floor.

  The scream comes again. So piercing, I feel like it’s stabbed my brain. This time, reacting in the way it was trained to all those years ago, my body springs into action. Instinct punches out any lingering remnants of my hangover.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sunday 27th July, 9:17

  The bar stool clatters behind me as I push myself off it but I don’t stop to pick it up. There was something in the scream that I’ve heard before. It wasn’t a scream of someone who’s seen a spider, it was the scream of someone who’s seen a ghost.

  My feet pound against the tiled patio floor as I whip past the dinner table. I jump down the steps to the grassy area of the garden and step onto the wooden decking.

  It takes me barely any time to reach the pool and the screamer, but it’s far from enough time to prepare myself.

  I freeze, my moment of action stopped dead.

  Valentina Novak, dressed in a hot pink bikini, is sunk into a low crouch at the side of the pool, tears streaming down her cheeks. She whimpers as she looks down at it.

  A fresh wave of nausea crashes over me.

  A body.

  Jack Peaks floats in the pool, face down in the water.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ I say, my voice coming out as a rasp. Valentina turns her eyes up towards me and I see they’re rimmed with red.

  I stalk closer to her and to him, past the sun loungers and down one more step to the pool’s edge. The wood of the decking is sharp against my recently pumiced soles but I ignore the pain.

  Without waiting another second, I slide into the pool. The water isn’t cold, but I gasp as my body, warm from the sun, hits the water. Waist deep in the pool, my pyjamas flap around me as I stride towards Jack, my feet bouncing off the pool’s bottom.

  I get myself behind Jack and push him; his body moves in response to my push like a lifeless buoy bobbing in a rough sea.

  ‘What is going—’ A soft voice comes from the side of the pool. It’s Carly, Carly Chu. The actress – her name comes back to me in a rush.

  ‘Help me! Help me get him out of the pool,’ I say, exasperation clinging to my words. She dashes to the poolside and drops to her knees and Valentina, already on her knees, crawls towards us. I push Jack’s body close to the pool edge and the two women plunge their hands into the water, hooking their arms under his limp ones.

  ‘One, two, three,’ I say and in unison we push and pull.

  The muscles in my arm scream as we haul him from the water. He’s heavy, a full-grown, muscular, water-clogged man
. A strangled voice shouts from behind us.

  ‘We’re calling the medics. Is he alive? Please tell me he’s alive.’

  It’s Rosalind; she flies towards us at breakneck speed, the baggy shirt of her dotted pyjamas billowing out behind her. I turn back and heave Jack flat onto his back. The sound of his wet skin slapping against the poolside tiles makes my muscles tighten; there’s something grotesque and undignified about the noise.

  Valentina gags beside me. It’s an understandable reaction and I’d have probably had the same one had I not been here before. Jack’s face is pale and swollen from waterlogging, his skin is wrinkled, and his features are distorted out of proportion.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a body. I try to stop the thoughts that come to my mind, to push away the vacant stare of the last dead body I saw. My ghost, my demon, my fault. No, I can’t think about that, not now. Nothing about this is similar to then.

  I press my hands against the rough surface surrounding the pool and heave myself out, spraying water everywhere like a wet dog shaking itself.

  ‘Jack,’ I call, diving towards him and shaking his shoulder. His arm flops limply at my movement but his mouth, puffy and wrinkled, remains firmly shut. ‘Jack, can you hear me?’ He’s completely unresponsive. I press my fingers against the soft hollow beside Jack’s windpipe; there’s nothing.

  Placing my hands against his chest, I pump.

  One, two, three, my heart hammers in my chest.

  Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, my breath shortens as I tire from the effort.

  Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Pinching Jack’s nose and tilting his head back, I blow into his mouth. Then again.

  But Jack doesn’t rouse. Not that I expected him to.

  ‘Here,’ says Carly. ‘Let me.’ I clear out of the way and watch as Carly mimics my actions but despite all Carly’s efforts, it’s pointless. Jack Peaks is dead.

  ‘Leave it, Carly,’ I say, placing a hand on Carly’s shoulder. ‘He’s gone.’ Carly stops and twists to look up at me. The actress’s face is pink with the effort of pumping his chest. She nods at me, a mutual understanding. We both know that there is no saving him.

  ‘Gone? No. He can’t be. Oh my God. Oh my God.’ Rosalind’s voice is strangled and she slumps to her knees; her breathing becomes so fast and ragged that she’s in danger of hyperventilating.

  ‘But I only chatted to him yesterday,’ mutters Valentina, her lip trembling. ‘He was drunk. So, so drunk.’

  I glance at her; I never understand why people say that – I only saw them yesterday – as if those who are about to fall victim to an accident would have the aura of tragedy about them.

  I don’t point this out, of course. It isn’t the time; it’s never the time. People say these things for a reason – it’s a way of coping with their shock. The very fact that I have the presence of mind to point out the illogicity of said statement puts me in the minority, not the other way around.

  Slow footsteps pad across the grass behind our huddled group. We all turn to see two men. The two men that survived the night. Mo walks towards us accompanied by Daniel. The former is dressed in black linen pyjamas, the latter fully dressed with his camera strapped around his waist. The red ‘on’ light flickers from the top of the camera.

  ‘Good morning, ladies,’ says Mo, his mouth breaking into a smile, clearly missing the true horror of the scene. ‘How are we—’ His smile drops as quickly as it came. Both men stop short, metres away from the group of women clustering around the body of Jack Peaks. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Mo says instead.

  ‘He’s dead,’ whispers Valentina, not taking her eyes off Jack’s body.

  ‘Dead?’ asks Mo, his face slackening. ‘Jack’s dead? What the fuck happened?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ replies Rosalind, getting to her feet and running shaking hands through her hair. ‘I should call an ambulance. Yes, I’ll do that, I’ll call an ambulance. Oh God, I can’t remember the emergency numbers. Where’s Sophia? She’ll know.’

  ‘A doctor isn’t going to help Jack now. We need the police, Rosalind.’ I speak in a calm but assertive voice, the one I’ve used so many times before. Jack is dead so unless the nearest hospital employs Dr Frankenstein, Jack will remain dead.

  ‘Can you turn the camera off?’ I snap at Daniel; I can’t allow him to film this.

  Despite my tone, he shakes his head, pulling me an apologetic look as if to say, I’m sorry but I have to. I scowl at him; maybe he isn’t the nice guy I thought he was.

  ‘He was so drunk last night. He must have fallen in the pool and drowned,’ says Carly.

  I stare at Carly, perplexed. Carly’s voice lacks any real empathy and her face isn’t contorted in horror or shock like the others. And, despite being the one who attempted to resuscitate him, Carly Chu clearly isn’t rattled, upset or, apparently, even surprised by the death of Jack Peaks.

  My first reaction is to protest Carly’s assertion, but I stop myself. It doesn’t feel right to disagree and something tells me that I should keep my suspicions close to my chest for now. At least until the police arrive. Whenever that might be, given how far we are from the mainland.

  Keeping my face as neutral as possible, I drop to my knees, feigning a need to be closer to Jack. I press my fingers against his neck to check for a pulse I know I won’t find. Nothing. I reach out my hand and grasp his, giving it a squeeze. His hand is cold to the touch. None of the others question my motives; they assume I want to hold his hand, to provide him some comfort, but I don’t want to hold Jack’s cold hand, I want to look for proof that my suspicions are right.

  Dead bodies found floating on the surface of the water are unlikely to have drowned, especially if they’re face down. As someone drowns their lungs fill with water and they sink, at least in the short term. Bodies that float are usually dead when they hit the water. It was one of the first lessons I learned in my old job. My old life. If Jack didn’t drown, then something else killed him but I’m not sure what.

  My stomach knots as I draw my eyes closer to Jack. The first body I ever saw was of a child who’d drowned; since then, I’ve always been repulsed by the puckering and wrinkling of water-exposed skin. It’s other-worldly, like a creature out of a sci-fi film.

  My eyes continue to scan Jack’s body. There’s no blood or obvious markings so he wasn’t strangled or beaten, plus if he had been I’m sure we would have heard it. Sure, Jack was drunk last night but he’s a big man and is unlikely to have gone down without a fight. So if not that, then what? I check the pockets of his sodden trousers but they’re empty. I don’t know what I’m looking for, though I’m sure I will when I find it.

  There’s nothing suspicious around Jack’s body or within my current sightline but there must be something, some clue as to what killed him. The eyes of the others are on me as I crawl on my hands and knees around the pool. The sun loungers are bare of cushions, allowing the sunlight to shine through the slits and illuminate that there is nothing beneath them, and neither is there anything hidden behind or wedged underneath the umbrellas.

  The decking is clear. I get to my feet, step onto the grass and return to my crouching position. It’s hard to see objects that might be hidden because of the grass’s length so I comb my hand through it like I’m petting a dog. My fingers collide with something solid and I grab whatever it is, holding it in my outstretched palm.

  A double-sized shot glass, like the ones Valentina and I drank vodka out of last night. Except this glass didn’t serve vodka, for clinging to the bottom of it are remnants of a lurid coloured liquid, a bright blue like the sky above us. Bringing the shot glass to my nose, I sniff: the smell is sweet and sickly. If it is what I think it is then this is what killed Jack, and if it is what I think it is then someone must have given it to him. Jack might have been a bit stupid and was very drunk but shooting anti-freeze doesn’t seem like something he would do.

  ‘Who gave him this shot?’ I ask, holding it out to the others
, who all still stand around Jack’s body.

  ‘Not me,’ says Mo. ‘Last night, I was doing whatever I could to avoid that bastard.’ We all gaze at him in disbelief; his face screws up and his cheeks flush when he realises what he has said. ‘I mean, avoid that guy. Shit, sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ says Rosalind, turning back to look at me. ‘I didn’t even know you were all doing shots.’

  ‘I only did one shot last night and that was with you, Kim,’ says Valentina.

  ‘Do you think that’s what did it?’ says Carly and I twist around to look at her; she nods towards the glass. I feel my eyebrows furrow. Carly’s face is impassive so it’s impossible to tell if it’s a genuine question asked with the complete absence of any emotion or a pointed question that hopes to pass Jack’s death off as one shot of alcohol too many.

  The others are all now looking at me, waiting for me to reply to Carly’s question. As I return their look, they all change subtly beneath my gaze as the reality of what this is sinks in.

  ‘Hard to say,’ I lie because instinct tells me that there’s no point upsetting anyone with accusations of murder. But that’s what this is, isn’t it? Murder. ‘But,’ I say, continuing, ‘I assume until a proper investigation has been done we can’t be sure.’ I stand up, my hands on my hips. Again, I appraise the group. Every movement of their faces, every glance of their eyes, every twitch of their hands could be a sign of guilt. Everyone has a tic, a tell that gives them away.

  Someone gave this shot to Jack, probably passing it off as some sort of sweet liquor, and given our current location, that can mean only one thing: someone here is responsible for his death. And like that, they’re no longer my companions in the villa, they’re no longer my competition for the LoveWrecked prize, they’re not even Islanders any more. They’re suspects.