‘You know,’ she says, quietly, ‘when I think about what happened, the decision I regret most in my entire life – and if you’ve read my memoir or the newspapers you’ll know I have made some really bad ones in my time – is bringing my little girl with me. My second biggest regret is not leaving sooner. It was chaos, that Sunday morning. Really scary. Drones circling. Everybody attempting to get off the island, trying to work out who was missing, desperate to get their phones back – squeezing their way through the crowd into The Boathouse, shoving, shouting – to call their agents, their PAs, their publicists, their mums. I’ll never forget it. Wandering around the island with my daughter – the only child in the whole place – clinging to my hand and crying, people pushing past us, the two of us trying to find anyone in a position of authority, to tell them what Lyra had told me. What Lyra had seen.’
Chapter Two
Thursday Evening
Jess
This was not how Jess had envisaged her first evening on the island: babysitting a tiny gatecrasher.
There was so much to do. So much to do. That was the panicky thought that kept gripping her. Under normal circumstances someone in her job would have been in place a year in advance for a launch like this. Choosing her team, getting to know their foibles. Understanding the island and its quirks, figuring out the quickest ways from one cabin to the next.
Her tour of Island Home had been whistle-stop, conducted by a recently arrived, crumpled and quite put-out-seeming Adam Groom, the golf buggy barely stopping as they looped its woodchip paths, rattling here and there across little wooden bridges over streams and gullies, squeezing half off the track into the bushes or onto grass whenever they encountered a buggy coming in the opposite direction; Adam pointing out through the trees as they hurried by the outdoor pool, the yoga pavilion, the breakfast barn, the lake, the concrete track down to the water sports centre （not yet quite finished, not that anyone was likely to want to go paddleboarding this late in October, even if the sun was shining）， the turn for Ned’s own personal residence on the island （the road up to it was clearly marked private）， the big jetty where all the island’s supplies were unloaded, the staff canteen, their accommodation （a long two-storey brick building with tiny windows, adjacent to a generator） – which was where he had dropped her off, so that she could check out her room （single bed, wardrobe, sink, mirror, view of the corrugated and pine-cone-covered roof of the staff bike shed） and freshen up （there were showers at the end of the corridor on each floor） before she met her team.
A handover document? Sadly not, Adam said with a glance at his watch. Sorry. Her team would let her know anything she couldn’t work out for herself. He was sure she was going to be absolutely great. He gave her a reasonable imitation of an encouraging smile, looked for a moment as if he might be about to say something else, then two young waitresses （one a redhead, the other blonde） emerged from the accommodation block in their uniforms, and Adam tapped his horn and called out to see if they needed a lift anywhere. One climbed in next to him and one hopped up onto the back as Jess was lifting her bag down and Adam said something and they both laughed; then, with barely a goodbye over his shoulder, off he went.
Jess hoped she had made a good impression, with her team. She hadn’t made a big speech, just said a few words about how excited she was about working with them all, explaining who she was and a bit about her previous experience. Her attempt at a joke had garnered a couple of scattered laughs and quite a few smiles. At the end, she had asked if anyone wanted to ask anything and – predictably – two people with questions regarding their rotas immediately shot up their hands.
It often felt a bit odd, telling people how much of her career she had spent working at a hotel – The Grange – where her father had once been general manager, trying to decide whether to mention the family connection. Not that she wasn’t proud to have followed in his footsteps. But unless you’d grown up in the kind of village she had, it was hard to convey how limited the employment options were – unless you were lucky enough, pretty enough, to land a job at Country Home – if you had caring responsibilities, as Jess had, and couldn’t just move away.