The Guest List

by Lucy Foley

And there is a pack feeling about them, like dogs that might behave well on their own but, once all together, don’t have their own minds.

Here there’s the added danger of the whole island. The wildness of this place gets under your skin. These guests will feel themselves far from the normal moral codes of society, safe from the prying eyes of others. These men are ex–public schoolboys. They’ve spent much of their lives being forced to follow a strict set of rules that probably didn’t end with their leaving school: choices around what university to attend, what job to do, what sort of house to live in. In my experience those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.

Even when I came here all those years ago, even though the island was inhabited then, there were ghost stories. The grieving women mourning their husbands, brutally slain. The voices from the bog, denied their proper burial. At the time we scared ourselves silly with them. And in spite of myself I feel it now, the sensation of my skin shrinking over my bones.

I don’t think he is actually attracted to me, nothing like that. He put his hand on my shoulder because he can. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. But it felt like a reminder that he is the one in charge, that I am working for him. That I must dance to his tune.

The truth is, I don’t think Charlie is quite himself at the moment: or not the self I know. This place has done something to him—to us.