Over the eight-hour shift Mary Anne takes eleven smoke breaks. Smoke breaks, I come to understand, don’t always mean that she smokes but she disappears into her office to do … I’m not quite sure what. The door to her office is kept locked and there’s a faint beeping coming from inside that I can’t place. On the fourth time I catch a glimpse – a full bookshelf, a cluttered desk with drawers, a safe, and what looks like a collection of radios and radio equipment hanging and displayed on the far wall. I decide that must have been what the beeping was from.

I’m not sure yet how I plan to bring up the subject of Roxy with Mary Anne. Her noticing the car could have been entirely innocent, of course. I’m trying to place Archie as well and am finding it difficult.

Before I came to Sandown, I’d hoped I would have been taken over by some sixth sense upon my arrival, that I would’ve felt Yes, she was here, but I don’t. No premonitions. Nothing supernatural.

I was happy to rely on facts; it was the matter of obtaining them that would prove difficult.

When my shift finishes, a hot rush of panic tells me I’m in way over my head, that this is impossible, that who do I think I am, trying to turn an entire town, an entire island on its head? But then I think of small me climbing inside my guts to upturn anything that needed upturning. If that fixed me, if all it took was a bit of uncomfortable rooting?

Well, I’d say thank you very much.

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 10

I’m surprised by my exhaustion when I get back to the dorm, despite it only being three in the afternoon. A combination, I assume, of the past few days of intensity – the fact that working at the diner, although not that busy, is still a bit more gruelling than I’d anticipated, what with the constant social performativity and being on my feet. Also, apart from the English muffin Charlie slung me for breakfast, I haven’t eaten, and there’s not anywhere near enough fluid in me to compensate for the heat. I grab a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and swallow it all in almost one gulp, then immediately crack open another. The icy shock of it trickles along the edges of my empty stomach.

I pull out the notebook from my podcast drawer and get to scribbling – catching up, logging every solitary, seemingly unimportant thing I can remember. These episodes, although obviously about Roxy, will hopefully serve to document every element of my time here. It’s not only about Roxy, it’s about Sandown – and it’s not only about Sandown, it’s about me, the messenger of it to the rest of the world.