Page 72 of The Bridesmaid

‘Could be,’ says Fitzwilliam. ‘Can’t be Fortune House though. There’s no land like this anywhere near it.’

My eyes drift back around the array of images on the walls. The scrawling hate-filled words labeling Adrianna. The blurry shots of the dark open earth, with bone-like shapes in smudged white relief.

‘It looks like Elysium has a secret history,’ I say grimly.

Fitzwilliam opens his mouth to reply when footsteps sound on the gangway outside the room. Someone is walking up to the door.

We look at each other.

Fitzwilliam grabs my arm. ‘Hide,’ he decides, pulling me out toward the deck.

We tumble outside, squinting in the morning sun twinkling on the ocean, scouting fruitlessly for places to conceal ourselves.

‘There’s nowhere,’ I whisper, taking in the little private plunge pool, and deep-hued hammock.

‘The sea,’ decides Fitzwilliam. ‘We can hide underneath the hut.’

‘I’m not a great swimmer.’

‘It’s shallow. Waist-deep.’ Fitzwilliam takes my hand and pulls me toward the edge.

‘There are sharks in there!’

He slides into the silty waters below. The sharks scatter.

‘Holly!’ he hisses from down beneath me. ‘Hurry!’

I look desperately back at the door. The handle is moving. I close my eyes, and plunge into the salty water.

Almost immediately, I hit the sandy bottom, and come up spluttering. Fitzwilliam pulls me into the darkness beneath the planks that form the hut floor. They are slick with green seaweed, and studded with barnacles. Even at this early hour, the water around my hips is the temperature of a warm bath.

From the gaps in between I can see the red underside of a pair of designer wedge shoes. They walk out onto the deck where Fitzwilliam and I stood moments ago, then return to the room.

The designer undersoles pass back into the room, and out again.

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. ‘Do you think that was Silky?’ I say.

‘Probably,’ says Fitzwilliam. ‘Maybe she forgot something. Came back for it.’

Something brushes up against me in the water and I stifle a squeal. ‘What is that?’

Fitzwilliam glances across. ‘Strange. It looks like … paper.’

He lifts a sopping page from the water. ‘There’s more of them,’ he says. ‘Look. They must have drifted in on the tide.’

I begin lifting them carefully. ‘Unreadable,’ I say. ‘Water damage.’

My eyes settle in the middle distance, where a thick clutch of them float as one mass. It’s then I see a shape in the water, floating by the rocks.

Human proportions. Someone swimming.

But … the shape isn’t moving. I squint my eyes against the sun. A bad feeling is swirling in me, like the sharks in the water.

The shape is rippling at the edges. A cloudy border just under the water.

‘Fitzwilliam,’ I say, ‘is that …?’

‘My God,’ he says. ‘It looks like a body.’