Page 29

“SOMETHING’S BURNING,” THE GIRL ON the lounger next to me says. I’m dragged blinking back into the present, from the cool dark of the woods into heat and sunlight. She’s sitting up, nose aloft. Her partner glances over lazily. “It’s probably the pizza oven,” he says. “The outdoor bar has one.”

“No,” she says, “it’s coming from the beach.” And maybe the breeze shifts because suddenly we’re surrounded by a stinging blue cloud of woodsmoke, so thick you can barely see the other side of the pool.

“Jesus!” says the guy, sitting up straight. “Who’s lit a fire in this heat?”

“Look!” the girl says, shrilly, pointing.

The breeze shifts and the smoke thins a little, and I can make out figures down there on the sand next to a small inflatable dinghy. A little gaggle of kids in their late teens, early twenties. The smoke’s billowing from a bonfire they’ve lit in the middle of the beach.

There’s the putt-putt-putt of an engine and another small boat arrives, its board-shorted occupants—all male—jumping out into the shallows, dragging it to shore. I watch them from behind my dark glasses: the lean, tanned bodies. Do they have any idea how beautiful they are? I think of Eddie last night, his blush. Probably not. You’d have to be pretty cynical to know your power at that age. The male guests here probably spend collective lifetimes in the gym, and hundreds of pounds on those tailored swim trunks, but they’re soft and pallid by comparison, no match for the raw glamour of these boys with their hard brown bodies and ratty board shorts. Perhaps the only guy from The Manor who could compete is the one I met at the beach this morning: Owen Dacre.

A third boat appears, this one roaring in at a phenomenal speed, braking just before it hits the beach. Everyone around the pool is looking now. Then a girl with hair dyed the dark red of cherry cola saunters out of the waves in black thong bikini bottoms and nothing else. She looks like a punk mermaid or a Gen Z take on Botticelli’s Venus, hair a wet slick down her back and skin pale as sea foam, tattoos inked in blue-black contrast. Never having had much in the way of boobs myself I’m amazed by hers: huge and gravity-defying on her slender body. She wrings out her hair, hip cocked, totally unselfconscious. She must know she has an audience.

“Holy shit,” I hear the guy next to Hugo Meadows breathe, covering his lap with his GQ. I’m jealous of the girl’s figure, sure I am. But most of all I’m jealous of her bravado or confidence or sheer brass balls: whatever you want to call it.

Now the kids on the beach—a crowd of about twenty—are getting into formation, stepping into a long line across the sand. Their leader looks older than the rest, almost middle-aged, wearing some sort of band T-shirt and holding something—a loudhailer—in his hand. Suddenly they all raise their heads in our direction. One guy makes a very definite gesture.

The chatter up here has completely ceased. It’s so quiet you can hear the sounds of the pool’s filtration system, birdsong. “They can’t come up here, can they?” the girl to the left of me murmurs.

“No, darling,” her partner says, “there’s a locked gate.”

But it suddenly doesn’t feel like enough.

The first stone falls in the pool. It’s almost like it happens in slow motion: the surface of the water bending to receive it, then the shattering of the smooth surface, the shockwaves spreading outwards.

“What the fu—” someone nearby says, before the next stone falls and the next and the next, until they’re hailing down around us, landing in the pool, on the sunbeds, striking exposed flesh. There’s a brief silence of total shock and outrage, and then guests are swearing, screaming, overturning sunbeds in their haste to get away. Glasses and coffee cups shatter, sunbathing spots and mobiles are abandoned, a pair of Oliver Peoples shades are trampled underfoot.

“Call the police!” a guy shrieks. But already the storm seems to have passed. One final pebble plops into the pool like a piece of punctuation and then there’s the roar of several outboard engines gunning down below. Just before they leave a voice blares through a loudhailer: “More where that came from, you posh fucks! Enjoy your stay!”