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, chattering 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 . . .’