Five minutes. I shut the door of my cabin, set a timer on my phone.
Sitting on my bed, hands on my lap, I take ten slow breaths, close my eyes and get to work.
In my mind’s eye, I bring up a picture of last night’s spectacle – the swathes of light hanging from the sky – and then I zoom back. I see myself there. I imagine the black shape moving behind me. And then I put the whole image into a box and I shrink it. I do the same with John. His dead body, grotesque even after a few hours. I stand back from the picture of them wrapping him and fold the whole thing up, like it’s a model made by a child.
Another box for Wolf, his hand making contact with my cheek last night, the sharp shock of it.
One for Will, and the nagging feeling that something isn’t right with him.
One for the money issues, the fact that if this show flops, my house is no longer my own.
In my head, I press these boxes tight, tighter, until they’re nothing more than pixels. And then I open my eyes. I uncap my lipstick, open my mouth wide in the mirror, blink through a new layer of mascara.
Big smile!
And, miraculously, everything is fine again. Because it has to be.
In the saloon I find the contestants either heaping food onto their plates from the buffet table or, in Wolf’s case, already sitting and eating. The meal looks simple but exactly what’s needed: big bowls of chilli, some kind of slaw, hunks of crusty bread still steaming from the oven.
Dee is her usual semi-invisible self, unobtrusively shooting from the edges of the room. I catch her eye once and she gives me a brief, shell-shocked shake of her head, registering her disbelief that we’re going ahead with this when there’s a dead man downstairs.
But I can’t help John now. There’s a job to do.
The curtains are open, giving the room a wraparound view of the preternatural world outside. The sky is a solid baby-pink, save for the towering mass of grey-white snow clouds coming in from the south.
Ulla bumps the galley door open with her hip and carries in a big dish of rice, setting it on the long table. Marco, waiting next in line with a serving spoon, immediately plunges in, then suddenly stops.
‘Shit, sorry,’ he says, abashed. He hands me the spoon. ‘Ladies first.’
As I help myself, he leans in. ‘So, where’s John?’
Nish, behind him, looks over and then a hush takes hold. One by one the conversations drop off and they all look at me, with the same earnest expression of concern on their faces. Dee lifts the camera off her shoulder and pretends to do something technical.
I have no choice but to improvise.
‘He’s not feeling too well,’ I say sympathetically. ‘We’ll have to wait and hear.’
‘Not too well, like what?’ Gaia says, putting down her fork. ‘Is he … is it serious?’
I glance towards Dee, who studiously avoids my eye. Annabel, who’s been perching on the armchair with the second camera across her lap, gets up and takes a clean dish from the stack. ‘I’ll take him some food.’
‘No, he’s fine,’ I tell her.
‘Which is it?’ Marco snaps. ‘Is he fine or is he ill?’
Before I can answer, Wolf clears his throat. ‘What’s this going to mean for the vote?’
No one will look directly at me now. It’s bad form to be preoccupied with the prize money when someone is clearly in difficulties of some kind, and they all know it – but it’s clear that Wolf has just voiced what they’ve all been thinking.
‘Straight after dinner,’ I tell them as I start to fill my bowl. And although I’m already regretting it, I add, ‘John’s in safe hands, he’ll be back with us by tomorrow. So let’s eat!’
I take a seat next to Helen, but as I settle, Dee comes over and crouches into a low shot at my elbow. She puts her eye to the viewfinder and braces her elbow on the table to steady the shot.
‘“Safe hands”,’ she mutters under her breath. ‘What the fuck?’
I pretend I haven’t heard her and turn to my neighbour.
‘How are you feeling now? Nice to be warm?’
Helen regards me from under her silver fringe as she eats. Then she lays her fork down. ‘Tell me about yourself, Tori. What are you like to work with?’
I frown, laughing. ‘I’m kind of an open book. I like to look after people, I suppose.’
She waits, her grey, thinly plucked eyebrows raised. ‘Do they trust you? ‘
‘I’m sorry?’
She takes another forkful of chilli, takes her time chewing, then swallows. ‘What do you know about me?’
Wherever this is going is not a place I want to be. Why did I sit beside her? ‘Um,’ I begin, stupidly. ‘You’re very successful.’
‘What else?’
I sigh. ‘You have five hundred people working for you—’
‘Six. Go on.’
‘And that’s even after selling off three businesses in the last two years.’
‘Well, that’s all very dry. What else?’ She waits. ‘You can say it.’
I glance around. ‘There was a big deal in the press when you’d fired this woman—’
‘Not just any woman.’
Do I really have to say this? ‘A single parent, for stealing a packet of biscuits.’
‘Yes. That’s the part the media reported. The whole truth was: she was a shift manager. She earned a good wage.’ She smiles. ‘And it wasn’t about the biscuits.’
‘Okay. Hey, how about some wine?’
But Helen won’t be distracted. ‘It was about trust. It was brought to my attention. I asked her – and if she’d told the truth, she’d have had another chance. But she lied to my face. And I will not work with people I can’t trust.’
She leans in.
‘Is John all right, Tori? Nothing we need to worry about?’ It’s as if the room goes suddenly cold. ‘You must remember that we’re all out here, absolutely isolated. If we can’t trust you, who knows what’s going to happen.’