In this chap­ter WILL: The Groom, Jules and I walk back to the mar­quee togeth­er. I leave Olivia to make her own way. For one crazy moment there, real­iz­ing how near we were to the cliff edge, I was tempt­ed. It wouldn’t have come as that much of a sur­prise. She tried to drown her­self ear­li­er, after all – or that’s cer­tain­ly how it looked, before I saved her. And with this wind – it’s real­ly blow­ing a gale now – there would have been so much con­fu­sion.

But that’s not me. I’m not a killer. I’m a good guy. It’s all some­what out of con­trol, though, every­thing get­ting out of hand. I’ll have to sort things out.

Obvi­ous­ly, I could nev­er have told Jules about Olivia. Not by the time I made the con­nec­tion between them that day at her mum’s house, not when it had gone so far. What would have been the point in hurt­ing Jules unnec­es­sar­i­ly? The thing with Olivia – that was nev­er going to be real, was it? It was a tem­po­rary attrac­tion. With her, it was all based on lies, hers as much as mine. In fact, it was the pre­tence that got me going when we met on that date, try­ing to be some­one she wasn’t. Pre­tend­ing to be old­er, pre­tend­ing to be sophis­ti­cat­ed. That inse­cu­ri­ty. It made me want to cor­rupt her, rather like a girl­friend I had at uni once, who was one of the good girls – smart, a hard work­er, who came from some crum­my school and didn’t think she was good enough to be there.

When I met Jules at that par­ty, how­ev­er, that was dif­fer­ent. It was like fate. I saw how good we would be togeth­er straight away. How good we’d look togeth­er – phys­i­cal­ly, yes, but also in how well-matched we were. Me, on the brink of a promis­ing new career, her, such a high fly­er. I need­ed an equal, some­one with self-con­fi­dence, ambi­tion – some­one like me. Togeth­er we’d be invin­ci­ble. And we are.

Olivia will keep qui­et, I think. I’ve known that since the begin­ning. Knew she wouldn’t feel any­one would believe her. She doubts her­self too much. Except – and per­haps I’m sim­ply being para­noid – it does feel like she’s changed since we’ve been here. Every­thing seems changed on this island. It’s as though the place is doing it, that we’ve been brought here for a rea­son. I know that’s ridicu­lous. It’s the fact of hav­ing so many peo­ple in one spot all at once: past and present. I’m usu­al­ly so care­ful, but I admit I hadn’t thought it all through, how it might play out hav­ing them all here togeth­er. The con­se­quences of it.

So. Olivia: I think I’m fine there. But I’ll have to do some­thing about John­no, soon as I get back to the mar­quee. I can’t have him run­ning his mouth off to any­one and every­one. I under­es­ti­mat­ed him, per­haps. I thought it was safer to have him here than not, to keep him close. But Jules invit­ed Piers with­out my know­ing. Yes, actu­al­ly, that’s where it all went wrong. If she hadn’t, John­no would nev­er have known about the TV thing and we could have car­ried on as nor­mal. It would nev­er have worked, him on the show, he must know that. He does, in fact: he put it so well him­self. He’s an absolute lia­bil­i­ty. With his pot-smok­ing and his drink­ing and his long fuck­ing mem­o­ry. He’d have had some sort of freak-out in front of a jour­nal­ist and it would all have come out. If he can see that – what a dis­as­ter he would have been – then I don’t real­ly under­stand why is he so cut.