Free Bright Young Things by Scarlett Thomas

whether he did or not.
    ‘Then he left us to drink the coffee,’ says Emily. ‘Then we wake up here.’
    ‘Must have been full of downers,’ says Bryn again.
    ‘Can anyone remember anything else?’ asks Emily.
    ‘There were those roadworks outside,’ says Jamie. ‘It was noisy.’
    ‘And hot,’ adds Bryn. ‘Hotter than here.’
    ‘The room we were in seemed all dark and dusty,’ says Jamie.
    ‘We should still be sitting in that room,’ says Thea tearfully. ‘We shouldn’t be here.’
    ‘Shhh,’ says Emily, patting her shoulder. ‘It’ll be OK.’
    ‘It won’t, though, will it?’ she says. ‘We don’t even know where we are. Or why.’
    ‘Or how we got here,’ adds Jamie.
    ‘Well, we didn’t walk,’ says Paul, smiling.
    ‘We must have been flown here,’ says Anne, with a shiver. ‘I hate flying.’
    Jamie’s never really met people like this before. The girls seem nice, although Thea’s all stressed and Anne’s all weird. Emily’s gorgeous, of course. The guys are different. With Paul, it’s hard to put your finger on what’s unsettling about him, but something is. With Bryn, it’s obvious. All that matted hair and his stained teeth. He looks rough. Good-looking, but rough. Jamie’s seen pictures of people like him in
The Face
, although not often. Is it even fashionable to do that with your hair any more? Jamie’s not sure.
    ‘Why would anyone want to kidnap us?’ he asks the others.
    ‘Yeah, you’d think they’d choose some important people,’ says Anne.
    Thea’s been looking at the kitchen door every couple of seconds.
    ‘Expecting someone?’ asks Paul, the next time she does it.
    ‘I’m scared,’ she says. ‘What if they just turn up and kill us?’
    ‘We’ll hear them coming,’ says Paul. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have good warning.’
    Jamie wishes he’d thought of that.
    ‘They haven’t brought us here to kill us anyway,’ Paul says.
    ‘Like you’d know,’ says Emily.
    ‘They wouldn’t leave us food if they were going to kill us.’
    Bryn gulps down his coffee. ‘Maybe we’re worth more alive.’
    Anne giggles. ‘
They were worth more alive
,’ she repeats, in a film-trailer voice.
    Jamie doesn’t really know what’s serious and what isn’t right now. How can she joke? What the hell is this place? And who are these people? Mind you, although Jamie doesn’t really understand why Anne’s being so tongue-in-cheek about being abandoned on an island with a load of strangers, he’s not actually that freaked out either. He is trying to be scared about the situation, but all he keeps doing is running through scenarios in his head. He sees himself telling people back home what happened, and how he engineered the dramatic escape. He imagines himself on talk shows, selling the book of his experiences, never having to worry about numbers again, except for the staggering sales figures.
    He has briefly considered that being kidnapped might not be fun, and that this could (as the book jacket will suggest) end in tragedy, but even that outcome seems better than his actual life. He remembers how adventurous he felt going up to Edinburgh on the sleeper, fantasising about a Bond Girl mysteriously popping into his compartment and asking for his help. This situation is real, but it’s more like Jamie’s fantasy world than reality ever has been before. Being held hostage on a remote island is just so much more exciting than what he expected: boring interview, train home, Carla demanding what the hell he thought he was doing, rejection letter. And after all, it doesn’t seem as though they’re in any immediate danger.
    Thea’s making some kind of fear-noise. Like a sob with no tears.
    ‘Oh, God,’ she says.
    ‘Calm down,’ says Emily. ‘It’s all right.’
    ‘Who’s scared?’ asks Paul, in a who’s-having-fun kind of way.
    ‘Shut up,’ says Thea.
    ‘I think we’re
all
scared,’ says Emily.
    ‘I’m not,’ says Anne.
    ‘Me neither,’ says