Games for Dead Girls

CopyrightHarperVoyagerAn imprint ofHarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GFwww.harpercollins.co.ukFirst published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023Copyright © Jen Williams 2023Jen Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.Source ISBN: 9780008383848eBook Edition © Mar 2023 ISBN: 9780008383862Version: 2023-03-02 Dedication ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightDedicationPrologueChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34Chapter 35Chapter 36Chapter 37Chapter 38Chapter 39Chapter 40Chapter 41Chapter 42Chapter 43Chapter 44Chapter 45Chapter 46Chapter 47Chapter 48Chapter 49Chapter 50Chapter 51Chapter 52Chapter 53Chapter 54Chapter 55Chapter 56Chapter 57Chapter 58Chapter 59Chapter 60Chapter 61AcknowledgementsAlso by Jen WilliamsAbout the Publisher Six months agoThere was a seagull on the damp sand ahead, fat and solid and grey.Every time they came to the coast on holiday, Cheryl was surprised at how large and bolshie seagulls were up close. And this one was mean-looking too; its tiny yellow eye was full of fury. As she watched, it pecked violently at a cigarette butt someone had left on the beach. She thumbed the camera awake on her phone, but by the time she had it trained on the bird, it had dropped the fag end and hopped away from her.‘Shit. Suit yourself.’Instead her eye was caught by a small gathering further up the sandy beach. At this end, the place was nearly deserted. Cheryl’s own family, like most visiting the beach that day, had set up their towels and picnic bags closer to the small fairground that crouched above the concrete breakers. There were small wooden booths down there too, selling ice creams and freshly fried doughnuts. Down this end, there was just the sand, the stones and the persistently grey-brown sea. To Cheryl, already tired of her whingy cousins, the quiet end of the beach had looked very attractive.And it seemed she wasn’t the only one to think so. Just ahead was a complex of brightly coloured windbreaks, the pink and blue material slightly tattered at the edges and snapping in the strong sea breeze. A tall man stood with a hammer, rhythmically whacking the poles into the damp sand. Cheryl was immediately fascinated. He was taller than her dad, so at least six foot four, and he was old; somewhere in his late sixties, from his iron grey hair and deeply lined face. He wore a clean long-sleeved white shirt, buttoned neatly up the front and at the wrists, and a pair of beige slacks. On his feet were brown leather sandals. It was a peculiar outfit for the beach. She wandered over towards the windbreaks for a closer look.Despite his age – to Cheryl, who had not long turned fifteen, he was impossibly ancient – the man was hitting the poles firmly and without hesitation, and she sensed a great deal of coiled strength in his wiry arms. Spotting her approach, he stopped.‘What are you after, girl?’Cheryl jumped. The voice came not from the man, but from behind the windbreaks. She stepped forward, peering around curiously. This family were very keen to avoid the wind, by the looks of things. The tall man had set up what was essentially a fort, with walls on all sides and a small gap at the front to grant a view of the sea. Inside it were two old-fashioned stripy deckchairs, and several towels laid neatly on the sand. There was a huge, traditional wicker picnic basket and a long dark blue tarp wrapped around something bulky – but Cheryl’s attention was taken by the woman lying on the nearest towel. She was the one who had spoken.‘Nothing, sorry. Just wandering about.’ Cheryl pushed a wild strand of hair behind her ear and slipped her phone back into her jeans pocket. ‘It’s nice down here,’ she finished.The woman shifted on the towel. She was wearing a vintage-style swimsuit with a navy and white floral pattern, and her long legs were so tanned they looked almost leathery. Her toenails were painted red, and she was rubbing greasy-looking sun-tan lotion into her thighs. Cheryl could see little of her face; it was mostly obscured by a huge floppy sun hat.‘It’s nice for young people, this beach.’ Her voice was leathery too. ‘That’s why we come here, isn’t it, dear?’Cheryl blinked. Neither the woman nor the man with the hammer could be mistaken for ‘young people’, even if you were feeling particularly charitable.‘My family seem to like it,’ said Cheryl, mostly to fill the silence. ‘We all get dragged down here every year.’The woman tilted her face up towards Cheryl, and the girl got a brief look at the lower half of it, split into a dizzying smile; bright red lipstick, the colour of poisoned apples in a Disney film, and a sharp, unforgiving chin. She got a glance at skin that looked wrong, stretched somehow, and then the woman had bent back to applying lotion to her legs.‘The beach, the sun,’ continued the woman. ‘The sea. Candyfloss, hot dogs, ice cream. There’s nothing else like it. Everyone should get to see the beach, don’t you think?’‘I guess.’ Cheryl thought everyone should get to see Disney World, not a poxy seaside town on the south-east coast of England,