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E mily wanted a shower and needed to wash her face and brush her teeth, but instead she lay on the couch and idly flipped through what seemed to be hundreds of TV channels until she found one that was showing nothing but the American version of The Office . One minute she was watching Michael Scott burn his foot on a George Foreman grill and then the next thing she knew, it was cold, dark and 4:55a.m.

She changed into the old T-shirt she’d intended to sleep in and washed the grime of a full day’s travel off her face. She went to the trouble of turning the couch into a bed, which turned out to be hardly any trouble at all; one good pull unfolded it to reveal that it was already neatly made with crisp white linens. She set the thermostat to something less chilly, got back into bed and closed her eyes.

But her body had already had ten hours’ sleep and had no interest in any more.

She picked up her phone and, with a held breath, opened her email app.

No new emails.

It had been spam. Not something to worry about. She was annoyed at herself for even briefly thinking it might have been.

She opened WhatsApp. Grace, the assistant from Morningstar, had sent a message saying she’d meet Emily in the courtyard at 9:45a.m. Both Alice and Mark had replied overnight. Mark said to give him a call later and Alice demanded pictures. She sent them both thumbs-up emojis.

Next, she opened the browser and searched for Neil Ireland ghostwriter and Neil Ireland writer Morningstar and then Neil ghostwriter Ireland Jack Smyth , but couldn’t find any potential candidates for the guy who’d said yes to Morningstar before her, then changed his mind.

When she typed What is a buttery? into the search box, the top result was a highlighted line from a Wikipedia page explaining that it was a cellar under a monastery where food was stored, which left her none the wiser. She sent Mark another message. BTW do you know what a buttery is???

Emily got out of bed, took a long shower and got dressed. After a couple of non-starts and a YouTube video, she managed to make a cup of coffee in the fancy machine. By then the sky was lightening so she took it outside, onto the balcony.

The view of the beach at sunset the evening before had been beautiful, but at sunrise it took her breath away. Miles and miles of unspoiled white sand stretched in both directions. The angle of the sun, still low in the sky behind the house, made the water a steely grey and illuminated a mist hanging low over the surf. She took a video, panning from left to right, and sent it to Alice, who immediately replied with a How absolutely AWFUL for you . She sipped her coffee and watched the view slowly change as the sun ascended.

Then, come 7:30a.m., noise.

The chugging engines of large, heavy vehicles. The hissing of their brakes. The beep-beep-beep warning of their manoeuvrings. Drilling. Banging. Hammering. The nasal roar of a chainsaw. The disembodied voices of hyper-early-morning talk-radio hosts, blaring from someone’s car stereo. Men, shouting instructions to each other.

It didn’t happen in stages but seemed to come suddenly and all at once, as if the construction crews were an orchestra who’d been poised over their instruments, eyes on the conductor, waiting for the signal to start.

Rolling her eyes, Emily went back inside.

There were still two hours to kill until she had to meet Grace. She’d been toying with the idea of going for an early-morning walk around what town there was, but the building-site soundtrack had turned her off it.

Instead, she dug out The Ultimate Ghostwriting Handbook and flipped through it.

It was weird that no one else in this process seemed at all concerned that she had no idea what she was doing. When she’d pointed out her total lack of ghostwriting experience to Beth and Carolyn, Beth had assured her it wasn’t a problem and Carolyn had waved a hand like it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Yes, Beth said, there were experienced ghostwriters who wrote other people’s books for a living, but many ghostwriting projects enlisted writers who’d never ghosted before. They were chosen because the subject liked the writer’s style, or they happened to know them personally, or the publisher played matchmaker, thinking they’d be a good fit personality-wise.

Or the writer owed the publisher twenty-five grand.

She’d been advised not to overthink it. ‘Listen to Jack tell his story,’ Beth had said back in the little nook at the Fitzwilliam. ‘Consider what questions you’d want answered if you were the reader, what details you’d want to know. Probe him for more if you feel he’s created any bald spots or left holes. This week is primarily about collecting raw material.’

She’d made it sound quite simple and straightforward, and it felt that way when Emily thought about it in those terms. But when she started thinking about how she was in some weird, half-built town in Florida helping Jack Smyth tell the world that he didn’t kill his wife, it looked more like a terrifying fever-dream and felt like drowning in water tens of feet deeper than Emily was tall.

Five minutes before she was due to meet Grace, Emily left Bookmark with her backpack slung over her shoulder. A wall of heat met her outside the door, despite the early hour. The courtyard’s design completely blocked all views of the outside world but could do nothing to dampen the noise from the construction site.

A woman was standing by the edge of the pool with her arms folded.

‘You must be Emily,’ she said.

The woman had an American accent, which was as precise a classification as Emily was able to make. She could fairly reliably identify New York, Boston and Fargo , but that was about it.

‘Grace?’

The other woman nodded.

She was not Tall Blonde Woman from the plane. Grace was much younger, twenty-one or twenty-two. She had dark, curly hair, and had swamped her small frame in the kind of shapeless cotton jumpsuit that, on her, whispered I might work in fashion but, on Emily, would shout All I’m missing is my high-vis and hard hat . Her make-up was the kind that men mistook for natural beauty and she appeared to be wholly unaffected by the already oppressive heat.

Emily absently tugged on the hem of her T-shirt, feeling frumpy and undone by comparison.

‘Good to meet you,’ she said. ‘Finally.’

‘Finally?’ Grace lifted a wrist to peer at a tiny gold watch with concern. ‘Am I late?’

‘Oh no. No, I just meant, you know – I’ve been looking forward to getting started and I’m glad the time is finally here. That’s all.’

‘I heard you met Jack?’

‘Just briefly.’

Grace met Emily’s gaze and held it for a beat longer than was comfortable, and Emily thought that this was it, that now they were going to have the inevitable conversation.

What do you think of him? This is all a bit weird, isn’t it? Two women spending a week alone in a place like this with a man who could’ve killed his wife …

What will we do if we start to feel afraid?

Are we safe?

Are we terrible people for being a part of this?

But Grace said, ‘Everything’s good for you?’ and the moment passed.

‘Yeah, great. The beach is beautiful. And this house … Gorgeous. The town, though’ – Emily made a face – ‘not so much.’

She was expecting a conspiratorial I know, right? We’re staying on a building site! And what’s up with those traffic cone things? but instead, one perfectly manicured eyebrow slowly rose in question.

‘What do you mean?’ Grace asked.

‘Well, it’s just not what I was expecting. And yesterday evening, when I arrived, it was kinda eerie. No one at all around and—’

‘I don’t think you’ll have much, if any, free time, so—’

‘No, I know. I was just—’

‘—it doesn’t really matter and—’

‘No, sure, yeah,’ Emily said quickly.

‘—you know you can’t talk to anyone about why you’re here, right? Do you understand that?’

Grace seemed to be picking up every single thing that came out of her mouth completely wrong, so Emily just nodded in response, afraid to say any more.

‘That’s actually why I wanted us to meet a little early,’ Grace said. ‘To go over the arrangements for the week. And the rules.’ Her gaze flicked to Emily’s backpack. ‘Let’s head on up.’

Emily wordlessly trailed her into the main house, down a long corridor and across a large foyer. The noise from the building site disappeared. By the time they’d walked through a pair of barn-style sliding doors, she’d lost her sense of direction and was surprised to find herself facing a wall of windows. Through them, two banners of stunning blue: higher up, cloudless sky, and below that, shimmering water, chromatic and calm. It was the rear wall of the living room, which was filled with light and furnished in a palette of whites and beiges, seemingly chosen not to distract from the view or perhaps in resigned acknowledgement that nothing could possibly compete with it.

Through an archway was a kitchen and beside it a narrow staircase tucked in an alcove. Grace started up it and Emily followed.

‘These are the back stairs,’ she explained. ‘They’re the quickest way.’

The first floor of the house was a swathe of rattan carpet and a collection of closed white doors.

They made Emily think of her connecting door back in Bookmark and wonder where the corresponding door on this side might be. Logically, it would be in a hallway or a nook, like hers was. If an opportunity arose, she’d have a snoop around for it.

‘You’re in here,’ Grace said. She’d stopped at an open doorway and was motioning for Emily to enter first.

She obeyed.

It was a huge room that shared a view with the living room below – they must be directly above it. On the right was a king-sized bed, dressed as if for a photoshoot, the decorative cushions karate-chopped and the sheets completely crease-free. On the left, an L-shaped couch faced a large oak-coloured desk with a dark grey MacBook, a small, silver device that looked like a vape and an unopened box of ballpoints sitting atop a stack of legal pads. A nearby dressing table had been commandeered as a snack bar, replete with cans of seltzer, a capsule coffee machine, and a half-dozen of those tall, cylindrical water bottles that look like something geologists in disaster movies would store core samples in.

In keeping with the rest of the property, everything looked and smelled like it was fresh out of the box.

‘You and Jack will meet in here every morning at 10:00a.m.,’ Grace said. ‘Each day’s interviewing will last for a minimum of four hours and a maximum of five, with a half-hour break after the first two for lunch. Lunch will be brought in. Afterwards, you can use this room to listen back, make notes, prep for the following day – but you need to be out of the main house no later than five so Jack can have his evenings to himself.’

‘Sounds good,’ Emily said. ‘But, ah, I could just leave right after we finish each day’s interview? Do anything I need next door, in my place?’

That was her plan.

On the balcony, watching the sunset, with wine.

‘No,’ Grace said firmly. ‘We have provided a computer, voice-recorder and thumb-drive for you to use, and they cannot leave this room or be connected to any network. Any related materials, such as handwritten notes, have to stay in here too. You cannot use your personal devices. In future, I’m going to ask you not to bring anything in here with you, including your phone. I’ll secure it and your bag for today, and you’ll know not to bring them with you in future. Also, if there’s to be any communication with Morningstar, it needs to go through me. I’ll call Beth from my phone. No emails, no messages, no direct calls from you from now on. Everything about this project has to be kept as secure as possible. Do you understand?’ She pressed her lips together and stared at Emily, as if braced for a challenge.

‘Of course,’ Emily said. ‘I understand.’

And she did, but she also felt condescended to.

Grace clearly wasn’t so much an assistant here but Morningstar’s representative on the ground. She was in charge.

Emily really was the hired help.

Dinner, Grace was explaining now, would be delivered each day at a time of Emily’s choosing, to Bookmark. Otherwise she should make a grocery list, and Grace would go shopping for her.

‘Can I not just come with you?’

Grace pressed her lips together again. ‘We’d rather you stay here, in Sanctuary, for the duration. Same goes for Jack.’ She started towards the door. ‘Is there anything else you need at this point?’

‘Ah, actually, just so I don’t say the wrong thing … Does Jack know?’

‘Know what?’

‘About, you know, me .’

Grace looked at her blankly.

‘About why I’m doing this,’ Emily clarified. ‘The contract, and owing Morningstar for the second book. Just because he said something about a guy called Neil pulling out, and I didn’t know what to say because—’

‘Morning,’ a new voice said.

Jack was standing in the doorway, his hands dug in his pockets.

‘Morning,’ Emily said, too brightly, too obviously trying to pretend that she wasn’t worried that Jack had just heard what she’d said.

‘All good?’

‘Great.’

He glanced at Grace, but said nothing to her.

‘Right, well.’ Grace reached out a hand. ‘I’ll just take that bag and your phone, and leave you to it.’

Emily took a quick mental inventory of the contents of her backpack. There was her battered laptop, which was password-protected, and her phone was too. A notebook, but it was brand new, completely blank. Mark’s Olympus digital voice-recorder, which she’d taken without asking.

She hadn’t checked to see if there was anything on it but if there was, it was him practising spoken-word performances. If Grace was nosy enough to listen, that’d be her own bad luck.

She handed it all over.

‘I’ll be downstairs if you need me,’ Grace said. ‘Lunch will be here at noon. I’ve ordered sandwiches for today but I’ll take orders for tomorrow. So I guess, all that’s left to say is … Good luck.’

Emily smiled and said thanks.

Jack nodded silently.

Grace turned and walked out of the room holding Emily’s backpack by its hook, pinched in her fingers, like it was contaminated. She had to pass Jack, who was still standing just inside the door, and when she did, she looked up at him for longer than a glance, as if waiting to catch his eye and communicate something without speaking.

But he didn’t look at her at all.

Then Grace left and closed the door behind her, and they were alone.

Jack crossed the room to sit on the couch with his hands buried together between his knees. It seemed that no matter what position he was in, he hid his injuries.

Emily pulled out the chair beneath the desk. ‘OK,’ she began. ‘So—’

‘I didn’t kill Kate,’ Jack said. ‘Can we start there?’