Bright Young Things by Scarlett Thomas Page B

the cars? Where are the people? Where is the bustle? All she can hear is the waves against the cliffs and a few sea birds. It smells and sounds like the villa in Tuscany, not that she’s been there since she was about twelve. This was so not what she expected when she got up this morning.
    The fair-haired guy says he’s going to walk around the circumference of the island. This won’t take him more than ten minutes. A couple of the others call to him to be careful. The island is high above sea level, and Anne can’t see if there’s any way down or not. Falling would be a pretty good way to get down, she thinks. As he sets off towards the cliff edge, Anne pretends this is a videogame and she’s controlling this guy. He’s a bit like Duke Nukem, but without the porn or the guns or the muscles. She presses forward on her imaginary direction pad and circles him around the island. He returns and reports what she could have predicted. There’s no way down. As if someone would drug them, bring them here, and then just let them walk – or swim – away.
    ‘Shall we go inside, then?’ asks Pop Girl. ‘It’s too weird out here.’
    The good-looking dark-haired guy is the first to get up.
    Inside, the house is dark and cold. It smells a bit of something that could be mothballs. It’s dusty, too. The front hall is big and square, with a red tiled floor and a staircase leading to a balcony upstairs. There are no carpets, just huge rugs everywhere. A large painting of the earth is hung at the top of the stairs, all blues and greens and swirls of sea. Anne wonders if this island is on the picture somewhere, and if so, where.
    ‘What’s in here?’ the dark guy asks Vomit Girl. She came inside briefly for a glass of water, Anne remembers, just after she was sick.
    ‘A sitting room off there,’ she says, pointing to the left. ‘A library thing down at the end and a kitchen around the back.’ She smiles weakly. ‘I’m Thea, by the way.’
    ‘Paul,’ says the dark guy, smiling back.
    Anne can’t remember if they spoke at all at the place in Edinburgh. She thinks not.
    ‘Shall we all have a look around?’ suggests Duke. ‘Get the lay of the land.’
    Pop Girl giggles. ‘Yeah, let’s get the
lay of the land
,’ she repeats. He blushes and a couple of the others shift around. Then everyone drifts down the corridor. Nothing about this seems very real. Anne’s wondering who’s going to panic first, but no one seems to know how to react.
    ‘Is there anyone else on this island?’ asks Dreadlocks. ‘Or is it just us?’
    ‘If there is anyone else here, they’re being very quiet,’ says Paul.
    ‘There’s no one in here,’ says Thea.
    ‘There was no one outside,’ says Duke.
    The house is pretty much as Thea described. The sitting room off to the left is big, and looks weird without a TV. There are no electronic devices of any kind in the room, just a couple of big brown sofas and a large Indian rug on the bare, unvarnished floorboards. There’s also an open fire, a mantelpiece with nothing on it, a bureau and a single table, pushed to the side of the room. It’s cold and dusty and Thea’s shoes make an echoey, clicking sound on the tiles. Anne’s legs feel heavy and she wishes she could go back to sleep.
    Upstairs there are six bedrooms, three to the right and three to the left. Each door has one of their names on it. Whoever planned this intended the boys to be along the right, the girls along the left.
    ‘Hot Christ,’ says Paul as they walk, dazed, from room to room.
    The bedrooms are identical. They are all white: white linen, white towels, white walls.
    ‘It’s just like a hospital,’ says Pop Girl, yawning.
    ‘What kind of hospitals do you go to?’ asks Thea. ‘It’s more like a hotel.’
    ‘What kind of hotels do
you
go to?’ asks Pop Girl, raising her eyebrows.
    They both laugh sleepily. They seem to have established that it’s not like a hospital or a hotel.
    ‘Whatever,’ says Paul.