Power Games (32 page)

It must be the island. Something in the air, or some fruit he had eaten, something that had magical, potent powers. But he could not think what he had been exposed to that the others had not. And it wasn’t just a physical metamorphosis—it was mental, too. Kevin, on the cusp of twenty, had spent all his teens being thrust this way and that, all for the interests of another: Sketch, his management, his mom, the fans … Suddenly, it was about him.
He
was the powerful one, nobody else.

All the girls he had struggled with, all the rejections and taunts that Sandi had thrown his way—if only they could see him now!

Tawny had noticed. He had seen it in the supermodel’s eyes.
Desire.

The promise of that mystical prize called sex.

He had thought she and Jacob had something going, but the Casanova whom Kevin had held in such regard now seemed a smaller man than him. He bet Jacob’s dick wasn’t as big as his. He bet Jacob couldn’t hunt pigs, even if he could see.

Whatever Jacob had, it wasn’t enough to satisfy Tawny.

Kevin could satisfy her. He had no doubts about that.

Now, he could achieve anything.

He had arrived—and the world had better watch out.

52

Day 11

J
acob was knee-deep in the lagoon.

By now he could pick out the form of things, like concentrating on a developing photograph and figuring the shapes before they appeared: the mountains that climbed either side of the cove, and the difference between sea and sky.

If he stayed still long enough, he would feel a swish at his ankles, the flick of a tail or the fluid rush as something passed by his leg. The bigger fish caused vibrations when they were inches away: these were the ones to go for. He learned stealth, then with keen reflex to plunge his stick into the water. Hours passed between hooks, but it was worth the wait. Not just the promise of sleeping on a full belly, but the instant of triumph that accompanied a catch: the flipping, frippery body that was pulled from the water, held on the point of the harpoon, a silver, twitching trophy.

He sensed it was Celeste before she opened her mouth. The Italian woman had a definite scent, unlike any of the others.

‘You’ve got the hang of this,’ she commented.

‘Want a go?’

‘No.’

‘Ever done it before?’

‘Once.’

‘Did you catch anything?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled, lifting muscles that hadn’t been used in days.

‘You don’t give away much, do you?’ he said.

‘It was an accident.’

‘What was?’

‘When I fished—just a fluke, I couldn’t do it again.’

‘Says who?’

‘My boyfriend.’

Jacob was surprised, and a little disappointed. He didn’t know why. He thought about all the girls he’d had sex with, and whether or not they’d had boyfriends. It had never occurred to him to ask. It hadn’t mattered.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’

‘We’ve been together a long time.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Carl.’

Jacob ground his stick into the sand, twisting so it stayed upright. He crouched, unsteady, and she helped him. He splashed his chest with water.

‘Does he make you happy?’

‘That’s a personal question.’

‘I’m a personal guy.’ But the question had surprised him, too. It was because Celeste had been so kind to him. He hoped that somebody was kind to her in return.

‘He’s good for me.’

‘That isn’t what I meant.’

She sat down next to him. ‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Any special girl?’

‘Lots of them.’

‘Are you in love?’

He smiled again. ‘Now who’s being personal?’

‘You don’t have to answer.’

Jacob lifted his shoulders. ‘Love’s overrated. This soulmates thing, I don’t believe in it. Sexually compatibility, on the other hand …’ But it felt like the old him talking.

‘So the rumours are true.’

‘Rumours?’

‘You are a playboy.’

‘I doubt you’ll ever see me as that after what we’ve been through.’ A pause, then: ‘Thank you. I wanted to say that. I mean it, I really do. For what you’ve done. We don’t know each other, Celeste—you didn’t have to. Thank you.’

Jacob had never said anything like that before and meant it. Normally when he got sensitive with a girl it was because he wanted to get into her knickers.

Celeste was quiet a while, then said: ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Carl’s a lucky man.’

‘He isn’t, really.’

‘He is. I know.’

‘Some days I think this happened because of me … The crash. This.’

Jacob had felt it too. Perhaps they all had.

‘I’d love to know how you work that one out,’ he said.

‘I’ve done things I’m ashamed of.’

‘Who hasn’t?’

‘I’m not a good person.’

‘Who is?’

‘It was always going to happen. I deserved it.’

‘For what?’

He heard her breathing.

‘I killed my best friend.’

The words should have floored him, but, at that point, in
that particular place and at that particular time, they made absolute sense. He waited for her to go on.

‘Until I met Sylvia,’ Celeste began, ‘I felt so lonely. My parents moved around a lot when I was small. I never made any friends. It was only when I went to college in England that all that changed. We were like sisters. She knew me better than my own family.’

A beat. ‘What went wrong?’

‘Nothing. That was just it. One day everything was perfect, the next it was ruined.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Twenty.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I.’

‘You can tell me, you know.’

She shifted next to him. ‘I know.’

And so she did.

From her first term at Oxford, she and Sylvia had been inseparable. Eight years had passed since the loss of her best friend, but it haunted Celeste as if it had been last week. Ever since then, she had struggled to regain control, to feel as if she had a say over anything that happened in her life. If something like that could ambush her, right out of nowhere, something unforeseen and until then unimaginable, how was it possible to govern a single day, an hour, a minute, let alone a lifetime?

She missed her. She missed her so much. Celeste had felt powerless since forever. Powerless to her parents’ whim, powerless to the school, powerless when Sylvia died, powerless with men. She had to create her own power somehow …

Celeste had been driving that night. The girls had gone to a party, deep in the countryside, and the lanes home had been long and winding, the car’s headlamps sweeping across the
dark bulk of hedges. Celeste’s decision to take the wheel, of opening the door and climbing in, of fastening her seatbelt: frozen snapshots. These moments that can change a life—or take one.

And Sylvia, with a whole world ahead of her, her hair streaming loose as they had rushed through the night; laughing, her neck thrown back, the radio blasting their favourite song. That was how Celeste kept her friend, moving, spirited, not in the coffin they had buried days later. The car had come from nowhere, from a hidden lane, its lights only just switched on, no time, no time, though she had swerved and they had hurtled towards the tree and after that nothing, only black.

Celeste hadn’t been drunk, but she had been drinking. She should have made sure that Sylvia had her belt on. She should have seen the car before she did. She shouldn’t have had the radio so loud, maybe then she would have heard it. She should have kept control when they went off-road. She should have accepted a ride off the boys who had left at midnight, and only hadn’t because Sylvia had begged her not to since one of them had kissed her in the library and she didn’t know if she liked him.

It didn’t matter how many times Celeste post-rationalised it. Sylvia had been her friend, her confidante; the girl she had laughed and cried with, the keeper of her secrets, and the first place, really, she had truly belonged … and now she was gone.

‘Believe me,’ Celeste admitted, ‘I’m no angel.’

The waves came up. They both sat alone with their thoughts.

‘Do you know something?’ said Celeste. ‘Carl’s the only person I ever told that to. And now I told you.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘It helps that you can’t see me.’

‘I’d like to.’

‘Carl said it was a mistake. But that we have to pay for our mistakes.’

‘It seems like you’ve paid for yours.’

Jacob ran a hand through the sand. It was powder-soft and warm, every grain distinct and magnificent; things he didn’t notice when he could see. Celeste’s story reached into him in a way that would have been impossible had he the pictures to go with it. Had he seen her tears, her trembling lip, he might not have concentrated so hard on the words. As it was, the words touched his soul.

He hadn’t known he had a soul.

‘I’ve done things I’m not proud of either,’ he said.

‘I won’t ask what they are.’ There was warmth in Celeste’s voice, easy and conspiratorial. Jacob wasn’t used to having this sort of conversation with a woman, feeling they were on a level. Friends. It felt new, and good.

‘Then I won’t tell,’ he said.

Tawny watched them from the shadows of the trees. The closeness of their shoulders, the elegant back of Celeste’s neck, the way Jacob brushed against her when she spoke. Jealousy bit through her with tiny, stinging jaws.

She was mortified after their encounter by the pool. When had a guy
ever
failed to get it up for Tawny? It was ridiculous. A joke. An abomination.

If only Jacob could see!
Then he would be reminded that she, Tawny, was indeed the fairest of all women and that there were no rivals worth a dime.

Yet even though she knew this, she accepted the disturbing truth: Celeste had flourished on the island. With her cool, artisan beauty, she brought to mind those haughty, above-it-all dancers with whom Tawny had worked at the Rams. The
girls hadn’t been ravishing, far from it, but they had carried a measure of dignity and poise that Tawny, to this day, felt had always eluded her. As if she had the package, the body, the face and the hair, but had never known quite what to do with it. She had never been able to take command of it in that way Celeste had—a quiet, contained control that needed no reassurance from others or guarantee that it existed.

She teetered on the edge of the void, from which a whistling query sailed up:

What else have you got, Tawny Linden?

Just a girl in a subway station, scrabbling for change.

A girl without a family, without a home. Rejected. A street whore.

You’re dead to us.

Tawny’s demons reared their heads, dancing like snakes from a wicker basket. She needed to be the one the men wanted. It was survival, and all the girls knew it.

She stepped backwards into the jungle. There was only room for one of them on this island, and it damn sure had to be her.

53

D
usk lengthened across the sand. Over the ocean the sun was a giant, melting disc, bleeding red and orange. Cliffs gleamed black and dense in the gloaming, and the first winking stars were starting to prick the sky.

The fish was sweet and salty, cooked on a spit over the fire so the skin was charred and crisp. The innards were white and moist, flaking apart, and the group devoured the meal in silence. Afterwards, full and tired, they surrendered to sleep.

All except Mitch Corrigan.

The senator lay awake, his heart shaking.

He was afraid to go back to the cave, but he knew he must.

He could hear them calling.
Come to us … Come to us …

Infinite space, the universe more ancient and complex than he could fathom, and still there were those who believed that aliens belonged in the realm of movies: science fiction, a story, just a game. They couldn’t see how much sense it made. On a rock hurtling through the cosmos, dwarfed by others in our solar system alone—what about other systems, other galaxies, the universe made up of hundreds of billions, more, an unlimited number? To assume solitude made no logic.

Before 2012, Mitch had held these beliefs, but in the vague and detached way of one who knows that in his lifetime, and the lifetime of his children, there would be no movement. It had been someone else’s concern, and nothing to do with him.

Now, it was everything to do with him.

There was no doubt they had brought him here. Had he dared to step further into the cave over the mountain, he would have met them face to face—it was almost a relief, after all this time, the promise of closure. No more running and no more fear.

Would Melinda be there?

Come here, honey … Come on home …

His wife was in on it. She was one of them.

The transformation had been subtle. It had started with Melinda arriving home late, vanishing and reappearing, and refusing to meet his eye. She had been talking differently too, a weary, hollow drawl, so unlike her old voice that it seemed not to be Melinda speaking at all but a
voice inside her
, selecting the words, nothing but a ventriloquist’s puppet. Next she had stopped cooking. She used to cook every day, whipping up feasts for the family at a moment’s notice. These days she had no appetite. She drank endless glasses of water. He rarely saw a morsel pass her lips.

If she wasn’t eating food, what the hell was she eating?

And so it came to this …

Had the pilots seen lights in the sky? Had the aircraft been guided towards its grisly fate by a beacon sent from another dimension?

Mitch walked down to the shore. Above the water hung a silver moon, a crescent slung in the sky, throwing silver glow. He could see the shadow of the Earth set across it, and thought as he always did how strange and fantastic it was that
that should be his own self reflected, however small: a telescopic mirror.

Stars abounded.

Maybe if he went to them, they would set the others free. The others had been a necessary appendage but there was no use for them now. It was Mitch they wanted. Thwarted at Veroli, smeared a hoax, the newcomers had a point to prove.