“It’s not like the Falklands, right?”

“No. I don’t think many people know it exists.”

“You see, we’re living on a secret. It’s not healthy. This whole place is a dirty secret. Officially, nobody is a citizen of Ascension. Even if you’ve been here for decades, you’re a temporary visitor. You’re a job, that’s all. And if you have kids here, as soon as they leave school they have to find work on the island or leave. And they take their silence with them. You can’t belong here—you can’t choose to grow old and die here.”

“Why?”

“Ask your government. They don’t want attachment. A few years ago there was talk of changing things up a bit; Ascension was trying to be democratic. Then that all stopped. Now they only let people bring their families if it’s essential. Mostly, everyone’s being replaced by contract workers. People come and go. And without attachment, you have no principles. A lot of men here get bored, start to look for distractions. Teenagers, too. Anyone tell you details about Petra?”

“What kind of details?”

“Petra got herself a bit of a reputation. She was a good kid but she’d gone wild, as teenagers do. She was fifteen, you know, and always was a precocious kid, always liked attention. It was normal teenage stuff but this isn’t a normal place, and people knew her, knew a bunch of those girls who were looking for opportunities to party and express themselves, shall we say. They’d get alcohol off the bases—I’m not sure exactly how. One time I know Petra was found on the UK base and various reprimands followed, although it doesn’t seem like she did anything apart from use the pool there. But she was still technically a kid. You’d see her and her friends getting rides from adults all the time. First time I saw Petra in the front of the police car, I thought the obvious. But she was laughing, having a great time.”

“When was that?”

“End of last year maybe. I said to Connor: Is this normal? He told me there were invite-only parties on the island, out away from the main centers. Usually it was just the girls who’d get invited but one night he was there and they got the girls drunk. This is the tragedy: The only place they can go wild is with a bunch of middle-aged men who’ve been alone on an island for a year. That’s fucked up. Connor said he saw a maroon Land Rover parked up by this party, at one or two in the morning. Now, the only person on this island who drives a maroon Land Rover is the Administrator. So what the fuck do you do with that?”