Page one contains the information about the employment programme that I already know. It’s a mutualistic swapping of perks: simply for some easy labour, you and a bunch of other tanned and smiley people get free run of an island, a bed to sleep in and some pocket change. The applicant pool is largely made up of students in the tri-state area looking for a free vacation. I researched everything. Lurked on the forums. I made myself the perfect imaginary candidate on the application forms: over eighteen, retail and food service experience. Turns out there’s nothing easier than lying. The best jobs are at the bars but I knew with my baby-face I’d never pass for twenty-one. This was the deal I’d formally signed up for. And I was fine doing the work, because it was necessary to achieve something else: full immersion. Not just a front-row seat, but my show.

The last page has an itinerary. There’s a bonfire tomorrow night where the Seasonals are meant to mingle, more activities over the weekend to get settled, and then everyone starts work on Monday.

I plan to start work right away.

Without the car’s air conditioning the heat is already settling thick on my skin; cold sweat pinches the back of my neck and the windscreen is angling the sunlight into my eyes, like a magnifying glass cooking an ant. I get out to avoid the glare, lock my car and traipse up to the top deck via a rickety spiral staircase. Up here, the whole thing opens out, and I move to the railing, grip its edge and lean over as far as I can bear before I worry about falling and let my gaze travel over the indigo water to the jagged brown sliver at the break in the sea. Even from miles out it’s easy to see the way Sandown Bay is split in two: there’s the flattened half of civilization where the tourists visit and the islanders live, and then it’s the peaks of the trees, deep green and tall, and this goes up and up and up until the incline swells into a mass of rocky cliffs towards the north. Though it’s split in two, it’s not split in half; the woods win. They own fourteen of the island’s fifteen square miles, a largely untouched remnant of the past that probably would have looked the same in the 1800s as it does now. Same trees. Same Atlantic Ocean lapping at their feet. No point developing your island’s natural scenery when everyone comes to your island for the exclusive draw of cheap booze.

The foghorn blares again and I jolt. The ferry lurches forward.