Owen

I RETURN FROM THE WOODS covered in flecks of bark and sawdust, sweating like a pig. Out of the shade of the trees, I feel the heat rising. Guests wilt on benches, fanning themselves. Soft London melts. This lot must go on several foreign holidays a year but apparently they have no tolerance for over thirty in the British countryside. And clearly the guys reckon the use of suncream in the UK is for pussies: most of them are already pink as Christmas hams. It's only meant to get hotter tomorrow: Christ knows how they're going to cope then.

I can't help thinking about the note inviting Francesca into the woods. I'm sure it's nothing, that when I ask her she'll have a perfectly reasonable explanation. Still, I don't like it.

A sharp cry jolts me out of my thoughts. I glance down. Just in front of me on the path are two huge crows, squabbling over the entrails of some small creature, dancing and bickering as they tear into the flesh. I'm reminded of the grisly present left on our door. I take a step closer and wait for them to fly away but they're too focused on their feast. I aim a kick at the nearest one. It doesn't even flinch. Instead it cocks its head to one side and glares up at me with what feels like pure malevolence. Unnerved, I step to one side. "Shoo! Fuck off!"

I look up and see Michelle advancing toward me along the path. No time to swerve her. Jesus Christ, is the woman stalking me? She gives a quick authoritative clap of her hands and both birds take flight instantly, one carrying the dead thing in its claws. A bloody smear left behind on the gravel.

"Hello, Michelle," I say: cool but civil. Not going to let her rattle me.

She looks me over from top to toe and I feel her taking in my sawdust-caked clothes, the sweat beneath my arms. "So they've come down?" she asks. "The trees?"

"Yes," I say.

"And the Treehouses are inspired by one Francesca had as a child?" she asks.

"That's right." I remember Fran talking me through her vision: "We had such larks in the woods playing in there. Real Swallows and Amazons stuff. Such happy memories!"

Michelle is silent as she looks toward the woods. Then she turns back to me.

"I never forget faces," she says. "It's what makes me so good at this job." A jerk of her head toward a couple of guests strolling across the lawns. "The Hodgsons, Seaview Cabin Fourteen," she recites, like a kid saying her times table.

"Very impressive," I say. "But I don't see—"

"It's you," she says. "Isn't it?"

I swallow, my throat dry. "I don't know what you mean."

"In your usual clothes you look so different. But now..." She gestures to my sweaty, grubby T-shirt and shorts. "I remember you both, coming in to drop off the catch. You and your dad. You were so quiet. You barely even looked at me. I suppose that's because everyone made fun of you. But just look at you now, Shrimp."

I feel myself sway on the spot. So much for keeping away from Tome, from locals, wary of being recognized. I've been rumbled from within the gates.

She's frowning at me. "You came back. Just like I did. It's the thing they say about Tome. Everyone returns in the end—" She breaks off and looks genuinely mortified for a second, covers her mouth with her hand. Perhaps remembering that not everyone does return.

For a moment I can't speak. Then I say, "And you're Shelly, aren't you? The girl from the fish and chip shop." I didn't realize it before, but it's why I've been so wary of her, why I've instinctively kept my distance. It's why I did everything in my power to dissuade Francesca from hiring her in the first place. Michelle, Francesca's uber-efficient assistant, is none other than the girl from the chippy where my dad and I used to drop off the morning's catch.

"But why did you return?" She seems somehow troubled.

"Well, if you must know," I say, drawing myself up, "it was Francesca herself who got in touch with me. She commissioned my work."

I try not to think about that strange phone call from Francesca's "office." The confusion at that first meeting. I'm certainly not going to share my doubts with Michelle.

"But it can't be a coincidence," she says. "You being back here..."

"What do you mean?" I say it more sharply than I intended.

"I—nothing." She's suddenly wary. "I shouldn't have said anything." Then, like she's drawing a line under it: "Well. Look at us now. Both reinvented ourselves, haven't we? Long way from trawlers and chippies, isn't it?"

No, it's not like that at all. I feel a hot sting of indignation at this conflation of our positions. No, Michelle, you grasping wannabe. I'm not like you. I'm not staff. I don't commute. And it's hardly "coming back" when I don't set foot in Tome. I live here. I sleep beneath Belgian linen. I'm Lord of the fucking Manor.

A memory hits me suddenly: seeing this place properly for the first time, through the blue light of dawn and a haze of nicotine and diesel fumes from the outboard engine. The house seemed to float above the cliffs, a shimmering pale gray in the morning light. Whole and perfect and untouchable. Another universe to a moldy broken-down caravan. And then I remember—crystal clear—coming back around The Giant's Hand in the trawler in the afternoon and seeing, through Dad's binoculars, a blonde goddess in a hot-pink bikini. I was thirteen years old and she was maybe several years older than me... it was like she'd walked out of my fantasies. A noughties take on a fairy tale. The princess in her castle viewed by the pauper fisherman's son. And then the craziest, most spectacular thing happened: she whipped off her bikini top—and I forgot to breathe.

"I know it's not the easiest," Michelle says, snapping me rudely back into the present, "overcoming the way people see you. The labels that get attached—"

"Stop," I bark. "I don't need to hear it."

I won't go back there. To being the weird kid, the poor kid. The one everyone took the piss out of, before. And then worse: after, the one everyone pitied when his mum upped and left without so much as a by-your-leave.

I feel like a layer of skin has been sloughed off, the true me exposed beneath the fancy clothes and the shell of Owen Dacre, celebrated architect.

"And I felt so sorry for you—"

"Fuck off." I see her take a step back, stung. Good.

"Thing is," I say, "I don't need you to feel sorry for me, thanks. You seem to have mistaken me for an equal. I'm your boss."

She frowns. "Actually, Francesca's my employer."

I take a step closer. "I'm going to strongly recommend to your employer that she terminate your employment with immediate effect. I'll tell her the local chippy girl really isn't cut out for a management role here. No wonder you're so unprofessional—"

"I don't think you want to do that, Shrimp," she says, quickly. The old nickname hits like a slap. "I've got much less to lose here than you. This place is everything to you, isn't it?" Suddenly her phone rings and she looks at the screen. "Oh," she says. "Would you look at that?" She turns the phone around so that I can read the name of the caller written across it. Francesca. She says the next words in a kind of hiss: "She's not what you think she is either, you know. Whoever brought you into this—I'm sure you weren't meant to fall for her. She's not a good person."

"What on earth do you—"

She holds up a hand. "Better get this." I watch as she answers the phone and switches into consummate professional mode so quickly it's unsettling. "Hello, Francesca. Funny thing. I'm actually here with Owen." Was there a weird emphasis on the way she said my name? Just a reminder that she's rumbled me? "Yes, yes, he's made some progress on the Treehouses! Isn't that exciting!" She wanders away in the direction of the walled garden, chattering busily into her handset.

But just before she disappears from sight, she turns and looks back at me. In the middle of this sweltering summer's day, I feel a sudden chill.