‘Do you want to play cards?’ I ask Liam, who is standing at the window, peering out through a crack in the curtains; though whether he’s looking at the water, contemplating how far it would be to swim to the mainland, or searching for our stalker, I don’t know. He may even be studying the word DEVIL written on the glass. It’s hard to tell. ‘We may as well distract ourselves,’ I tell him. ‘Otherwise we’ll go mad.’

He pauses then shrugs. ‘I suppose so.’

I saw some cards in the drawer and I go and fetch them. Liam shuffles and deals. We play Whist, a game that my grandad taught me, but I lose every hand to Liam because I’m too preoccupied and I can’t keep the suits straight in my head. Though he wins, he seems almost as preoccupied as I am, a permanent frown creasing his forehead.

After an hour Liam gets up and walks again to the curtain. He pulls it back and scowls at the word DEVIL etched there.

Beyond the word, the sky is a thunderous black and the loch is now the colour of unpolished pewter. Liam shakes his head and drags the curtains back across, concealing the letters carved into the glass. ‘I can’t believe we’re stuck here,’ he spits, ‘completely stranded like this. We should have gone to Greece.’

The Stalker

DEVIL. That was what my mother called me. Her tongue was a lash, and she wielded the word to hurt me. She claimed I was born with the devil inside me and she had to beat him out. She used more than her tongue for that, I’ll tell you.

As a boy I believed my mother was right. I thought there must be something wrong with me; if your own mother won’t love you what other reason could there be? I had evil inside me and that made me unlovable.

I believed I deserved those punishments; the beating and the starving and the name-calling; that I was worthless. But then I grew up. I got bigger. And I saw one day my mother was afraid of me. That changed everything. Something in me switched. I decided to let that devil inside me loose. I thought to myself, Let me show you what the devil is capable of – maybe then you won’t treat me the way you do. Maybe then you’ll learn to show me some respect.

And so it was. The devil took over and my mother quickly learned to hold her tongue. The shoe was on the other foot, and it felt good. Her fear grew, and with it my power. I became a new person.

I learned to wear a good disguise in public of course; many disguises; I learned fast that charm and good looks are all it takes to trick people into believing you are who they want you to be.