There’s a picture of Zane stapled to the wall in the back room, next to the toilet where customers don’t go. Paul’s plump finger is pushed against it, trying, and failing to obscure the grin that is spread across Zane’s face.

“Take … this … down,” Paul says, punching his finger in and out of Zane’s mouth.

So, I take it down.

Paul presses his pointing finger into the space between his own eyes.

“Get the rest of this shit off the wall,” he says to the floor. Then he leaves.

It’s seven-thirty in the morning. Zane has been missing for two days. I get the staple remover from behind the till and start prying away.

“The fuck happened here?”

Jason stands in front of our former photo wall.

“Zane,” I say.

“Zane took them?”

Jason hasn’t been here since Thursday and doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. He put up most of the photos back here. He’s the youngest, only seventeen, so when we go out and shoot the nightclubs, we leave him behind to work the printing machine. We bring him back the film when our pockets are full, and he runs them through. I like that shift myself, it means you don’t have to tell anyone to smile, it’s all input, output. You go home smelling of chemicals. But Jason likes it more, so I let him have it. When the dumb photos come through — the boys downing shots, someone pretending to mount the mascot, me with brain freeze after too much free slushie — Jason picks them out and staples them up in the back room. We tell Paul he can’t go in there; hazardous chemicals, he doesn’t have the right training.

The shop doesn’t open until nine, so I tell Jason what happened as he sets up the till. I tell him I’m the boss now. I tell him Zane’s not coming back. I tell him about the sniffer dogs they took up to Zane’s caravan on Friday. About the stuff they found on the beach. His keys. The money. His clothes. Not his uniform. That was crumpled up in his caravan, covered in something dark that made the police put it in a plastic carrier bag before they brought it down to show to me. Is this what he was wearing when you saw him last? I don’t tell him about Zane’s text, or the whispered voice mail from Saturday night. Jason’s just a kid. I don’t want him to have to lie to the police.

“I can’t believe we still have to work today,” Jason says, his eyes popping more than usual. Jason looks like some kind of fucked up cartoon character. Blond hair, huge blue eyes, gummy smile. He ought to be cute, but it just comes off as creepy.

“I mean, our boss could be dead,” he says, “what are we even supposed to do?”

“I’m the boss now,” I say.

Doors open and there’s no time for discussion. The holidaymakers hoard in to examine the photos in the racks. This season is the first where almost all of them have their own cameras. Some even have digital. The early morning customers are normally teens trying to get us to take down the pictures before their parents, or siblings, or boyfriends, or girlfriends, see whatever drunken thing they were doing on camera the night before. A few early-riser families come in because we don’t let them take their own pictures with the mascots or at the talent shows. That’s still our biggest earner. Exclusivity. But in a couple of years, there won’t even be a photography department here.

“Can’t you just take it down?” a girl is asking.

She’s leaning across the counter so the people behind her in the queue can’t hear her. Her hands are cupped around the photo she’s removed from the rack.

“Sure,” Jason says with a massive smile, “three pound fifty.”

“I’m not paying for it,” she says.

Jason knows this game.

“Then I’m going to have to put it back up,” he says, “someone else might want to buy it.”

“No one else wants to buy it,” she says.

“They might,” Jason says, “what about this boy in the picture with you? He might like it. He looks like he’s enjoying himself.”

“Oh my God! Just throw it away or something.”

She’s pleading now.

“No can do,” Jason says.

He takes the photo from her, wipes it with the microfiber cloth we keep next to the till, and pops it into the box under the counter.

“Don’t put that back up,” she says.

“Oh, I won’t,” says Jason, leaning towards her just a fraction, “my boss could, though, so you might wanna check back later.’

“No!” she says. “It has to come down!”

People in the queue behind the girl are getting impatient. I look up from the machine and glare at Jason. He sees the look and winks at me.

“Can I help you?” he says to the next customer.

It’s a large man wearing a small Hawaiian shirt. The man hands Jason a photo of a kid standing next to a guy in a monkey suit. Jason puts it into a cardboard mount.

“Three fifty,” he says.

The man slides the right money, a little stack of coins, across the counter.

“Fine, here,” the girl says, pushing herself back to the front of the queue waving a five-pound note.

Jason snatches it from her, takes the photo out of the box, and starts to slip it into a mount.

“I don’t want it,” she says, “throw it in the bin.”

Jason smiles, he pulls the photo out of its mount and rips it in half separating the girl from her undesirable companion forever.

“You forgot your change,” Jason calls as she marches out.

“You have to stop doing that,” I say after the morning rush has died down.

It’s turned into a sunny day, and everyone’s gone to the beach. I throw film canisters into the bin from across the shop and wonder if the police managed to find all of Zane’s crap before the holidaymakers got down there with their towels.

“So that’s it?” Jason says. “We’re going to do customer service, and all that ‘Welcome Host’ shit now?”

“I don’t know,” I say, throwing another canister.

“Because I might as well go and man the mini-golf for the rest of the summer if that’s what’s going to happen.”

HR sent him to Photography because he’s doing Media Studies A-Level. Kid had never picked up a camera in his life, but now he thinks he’s special. That’s Zane’s doing.

“We need to stop thinking we’re above mini-golf,” I say.

Jason has been reorganising the personalised teddy spinner. His arms are full of red and yellow bears with Jasmine, Jessica, and Julia written across their tummies. He stares at me before dumping the bears on the floor and heading for the back room.

“I’m taking a break,” he says.

I suppose I should stop him now that I’m the boss. Instead, I pick up the bears one by one and try to find the right hooks for them. We hate the bears because they don’t make Melanie or Jason. They have Angelica. They have Allegra. They don’t have Melanie. I could get rid of them now. Put something else on the hooks. But Zane said they brought our takings up while taking gift shop’s down. Everything here is a competition, so fuck the gift shop. Last week he stole a giant stuffed Marvin the Monkey and put him in our window, dropped the price from £90 to £60. We sold him within the hour.

Jason comes back and he’s made a cup of tea for me too. He’s a good kid and I feel bad for being a dick. We hide the mugs under the counter.

“We’re in trouble,” I say, “sorry.”

“How am I in trouble? I wasn’t even here.”

I’ve put all the photos Paul made me take down in my rucksack, so I rummage through it and find the offending one. I beckon Jason to the end of the counter. There’s an area there that’s not covered by the CCTV, which is where I put the photo.

It’s a picture of Zane in his caravan, beaming out at us with his gauzy, far too wide, grin. He’s wearing his Seashell Bay blue shirt, but the sleeves are rolled up to show off his muscular arms. There’s a light up joke shop necklace on his head like a rainbow halo. In one hand he holds up a fan of fifty-pound notes, in the other six or seven bags of pills. There’s a joint between his fingers with a cloud of smoke rising from it. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses and there, reflected in the lenses, is me, taking the photo. The rest of the team are in hysterics behind me, half of them in uniform, half of them dressed up for the club.

It was a joke. The pills weren’t even real, and Zane earned the money shooting a wedding off-site. Still, he looks like a lunatic, and the rest of us don’t come off much better. Across the top of the photo, in black marker, Jason’s spiky capitals say,

“WELCOME TO SEASHELL BAY!!!”

I don’t want to meet his eyes. So much for not implicating him.

“Well, fuck,” he says.

The Photo Shop is in the Money Zone. A courtyard of shops at the top of the hill. The Money Zone is the first thing you hit after driving through the entrance to the park. I suppose the hope is that lost holidaymakers will wander into the shops and buy something before they’ve even unpacked. When I leave the shop after lunch, I’m directly opposite the Gift Emporium, and Bayview Grocery is on my right. Paul’s office is next to Bayview and his window looks out on the courtyard so he can see us all coming and going.

I wait until I’m out of sight before lighting a cigarette. There are designated staff smoking areas; the path leading up to the caravans is not one. But Paul can’t see me and no one else cares. The cigarette makes me feel sick. I’m not a tobacco smoker but these are from Zane’s stash, and it seems like a betrayal to throw them in the bin. A family is walking towards me down the path. I can tell they’re new arrivals because their towels are nicely folded, their clothes are clean, and they aren’t crusted with sand.

They smile at me and the children wave. I puff the cigarette, walking past them without acknowledgement. Definitely new. After a few days, holidaymakers figure out the hierarchy. Blue shirt means retail. Retail means not paid enough to smile. Bar staff and catering wear red. They’re a little nicer. If guests are looking for warm welcomes, they need the yellow-shirted Shell Stars. The sooner they figure it out the better. They pass me, muttering, and I remember that I’m in charge now. I turn and give them my best grin, but they aren’t looking.

“Look, Mummy, it’s called the Monkey Zone, can we go?” the girl says, running towards the shops.

You can’t fault the marketing team.

The retail caravans are in the corner of one of the lower priced fields. Shell Stars have their own field, but retail only owns five caravans so there’s no point giving us our own space. The rationale is that most shop staff can be sourced from the local town. No skills required. Photographers and bakers are the only reason we have any caravans at all. My van is closest to the trees and when I get back to it, there are rabbits sitting on the steps and seagulls on the roof. The rabbits run back into the woods when I approach but the gulls just stare at me. I wonder if there’s anything that repels birds and attracts bunnies. It would be nice to have a pet other than the spiders in the shower.

Getting home from the shop took a cigarette and a half. I scrape the unfinished one on the metal railing and slide it back into the box before going in. I can’t smoke inside because all the air vents in my van are Gaffa-taped. Zane did it back in February before the park opened when it was still freezing. 

It’s a mess. It doesn’t take many days of not doing the dishes to trash a caravan and I haven’t done them since Zane left. I decide I’ll tidy the place up. Anything to avoid looking at my phone which I take out of my pocket and place face down on the table.

I gather up the dishes in the plastic bowl and boil the kettle. My gas canister is almost out, and I want to save what’s left for showers. Getting a new one means filling out a form and taking it to the maintenance hut. The form must be approved by Paul who always asks if there’s any way I can cut down. I pour boiling water on the dishes from high up, so it sloughs off most of the dirt. I add some soap and leave them to soak. Next, I sweep up all the rubbish into one bin bag and all the clothes into another. I change the sheets and add the dirty ones to the clothes bag. It’s tempting to go and do the laundry. To leave the phone in the van and take a book. But I have to be back at work by five p.m. and I don’t want to waste my whole afternoon on chores. I make a coffee, open a pack of bourbons, and sit at the table. The phone rings and I watch it, wondering what to do next.

*

My course director said I couldn’t switch to a photography major in my third year and didn’t even look at the black and white pictures of the estuary I’d risked my life to get. So, I dropped out and took a five pound an hour job at Seashell Bay.

In my interview, Zane was impressed that I had Theatre Studies A-Level.

“Confidence,” he said.

“Yeah, I got an E.”

I’d also refused to talk to anyone in my Theatre Studies Class and just sat stoned at the back thinking about lunch. The actual reality of the situation didn’t seem to matter to Zane, which made more sense once I’d met the rest of the team. Cameras were permanently set to T60 and f11. There was a diagram explaining good composition on the back wall. He was probably just happy I’d seen an SLR before and knew what a darkroom was.

At first, only Zane was allowed to take studio or mascot shots. The rest of us just trawled the nightclubs with massive grins forcing people to hug and smile for the camera.

Towards the end of my first month, he slapped a photograph, still warm, onto the counter in front of me.

“How would you like to take a picture like that?”

It was of a brown-haired, blue-eyed baby, sitting on a lace-covered pedestal in front of our only sheet of infinity paper.

“Sure,” I smiled.

So, while the rest of the team were regularly farmed out to other shops in retail; Mini-Golf, Arcade, Bayview; Zane kept me close. He made sure we were always on the rota together. He taught me how to use the studio. How to put in orders. He put his arm around my shoulder whenever we spoke to Paul.

On my first day as assistant manager, I came back from Paul’s office to find Zane shouting at a middle-aged couple in tie-dye shirts.

“… because the structures of capitalism are the structures of war! It’s everywhere man. It’s EVERY … FUCKING … WHERE!”

He waved his arms at the till and then pointed across at Bayview nodding in an exaggerated way.

“Yeah, I totally get you,” the husband said, eyes wide.

“That’s what I learned in the Parras,” Zane said, “they’re always watching. You never truly leave the military.”

“You are so … just, wow,” the wife said.

“You,” Zane said, pointing a finger into her chest, “should come to Coconut Club tonight.”

“Is that the one by the Alligator Arcade or the Go Go Go Karts,” she asked, looking down at her laminated Monkey Map.

“Fuck the arcade,” Zane said, “but my boys at the go karts’ll see you right.”

He pushed something across the counter. He was hiding it with his hand as if it was some kind of contraband but from where I was standing, I could see it was a cardboard Bay Voucher. A prepaid £10 to spend anywhere in the park. Zane saw me standing in the doorway as the husband slipped the card into his wallet.

“This girl,” Zane said pointing at me, “is gonna run this whole park someday. And then we’ll see a change. Then we’ll see. The underdogs are coming and they’re gonna eat you alive.”

I bared my teeth at the couple as they left.

“You’re coming tonight,” he said, “we have to celebrate you joining the establishment.”

The Coconut Club was the closest thing Seashell Bay had to an alternative venue. The Shell Stars that worked there used to be stand-up comedians. They made sexual innuendos and didn’t let kids in after nine. It’s where people who only liked the park ironically went. The décor was not tropically themed despite the name. It was more like a fifties diner. You could still buy all the Seashell Bay branded drinks though. There was a joke shop vending machine. Marvin the Monkey made the odd appearance. It was Zane’s favourite.

When we got there, the guy who ran the go karts was sitting shirtless at a table downing shots of pineapple flavoured vodka and heckling the Shell Stars on stage. Zane slapped him around the head by way of greeting. He didn’t introduce me.

“Corporal,” the go kart man said, kicking Zane in the shin.

They laughed.

“So, you two knew each other before Seashell Bay?” I asked.

Zane put his hand over my mouth and tapped the side of his head.

“Not here,” he whispered.

The other men at the table didn’t work at the Bay, but they had day-pass lanyards hanging around their necks. They talked about the holidaymakers they’d like to sleep with and, while the go kart man was describing a red-headed teen who had stayed at the track for two hours just to keep driving past him, the couple from earlier arrived. Zane grabbed my arm and pulled me close.

“You best head back to the shop,” he said.

He stroked my hair, and I didn’t stop him.

“You want me to go?” I said.

“I’ve got business.”

He pushed me back and punched my arm.

I left him and went back to the caravan without dropping off my film.

On our last day working together, Zane came out of the camera cupboard holding the Canon EOS. His camera. The only camera with auto-focus. He held it out to me, the muscles in his arms stretching the tight sleeves of his polo shirt.

“You,” he said, “are on Photos with Marvin.”

My first time.

“Bang!” he snapped, as I took the camera and slipped the strap over my head.

The boys I met in town were all primary education students or baby marines from the training camp up the river. Zane was something else. He was ten years older than me for one thing.

“You?” I asked.

“Coco,” he said, “tell Nat and the boys.”

He took a Pentax from the cupboard, saluted, and headed out, pockets bulging with film.

I had an hour to kill before Marvin photos started so I waited for the rest of the team. Natalie arrived first. She was new but she had worked with Zane a few seasons back, so she acted like she knew him better than I did. She was a foot taller than me and her hair was white blonde.

“You’re on Ritzy’s,” I said, holding out a camera.

She didn’t take it.

“Brought my own,” she said, “where’s Zane?”

“Coconut.”

“I think I’ll go help him out there then,” she said, “send the boys to Ritzy’s.”

We didn’t need two people to shoot the Coconut Club and Natalie’s camera wasn’t as good as she thought it was. She was wearing a white shirt instead of her uniform and the top two buttons were undone.

The boys didn’t give me any trouble. They liked the big clubs because they were friendly with the bar staff. Jason was last to arrive.

“Bingo,” I said.

The old ladies in the bingo hall loved Jason.

He stopped and stared at the camera in my hand.

“Wow, EOS,” he said.

“Photos with Marvin, innit,” I grinned.

“So, how long before you’re running the shop and we have to stop this crazy thing we’ve got going on,” he said, stepping closer.

I tried not to recoil. If anyone was the opposite of Zane, it was this kid.

“It’s not like that,” I said, “his mates are in Coco tonight.”

Which means he won’t have time to pay attention to Natalie, I added in my head.

Jason gave me a half-arsed version of the Zane salute before we went our different ways.

I was settling down in the Jungle club when I saw Zane and Natalie walking back to the shop with their heads close together. They must have been on fire if they’d used up all their film already.

He was supposed to be in early the next morning. A dance club booked out the bingo hall every couple of months and turned it into a ballroom for the weekend. Zane was friendly with the organisers, and we always made a killing. Cash was taken up in the bingo lobby where there was no till and no CCTV. We usually skimmed about a third and splitting it between the six of us still got everyone a couple of hundred pounds. Even with the petty embezzlement, dance weekends were huge earners for retail so Paul either couldn’t be bothered to monitor us or didn’t care. Zane was supposed to be doing portraits with the dancers and I should have been in the ballroom getting action shots. I missed the first few contests waiting for him and then I just took the studio kit up by myself.  The boys came in to shoot the dancefloor even though it was their day off and Natalie was left in charge of the shop.

I’d been shooting for six hours when I saw Paul making his way through the crowd. He was a fat guy, but he was moving fast, red and dripping with sweat, his hair, usually combed into a sharp side parting, was sticking up at odd greasy angles. The powdered and glittering teen dancers shrank away from him as he pushed past.

“Break now,” he said, “thirty minutes.”

“Who’s gonna cover?” I shouted above the music.

The line of dancers waiting for portraits filled the lobby and trailed out into the park.

“I am,” Paul said, “so, hurry back.”

“You’re kidding?”

He frowned at me and shook his head. It had been too long since I’d used the bathroom or had a drink, so I left him trying to find the shutter release button and went to sort myself out. Of course, he got his hands on the cash box and we didn’t make anything.

At midnight, we were still running film through the machine when Zane finally appeared, naked, in the courtyard. I saw him first. I stopped working and stared through the glass. His body was rainbow neon. It looked like he’d cut open glow sticks and poured the chemicals over his chest. As the others looked up to see why I had stopped chopping negatives, Zane started to sing.

“Marvin is a monkey, who likes the chicks! Marvin is a Monkey, with a huge dick!”

“Fuck,” Paul said.

Paul swearing was more surprising than Zane’s behaviour and for a moment, I was distracted. Then, Paul was running out of the store and chasing Zane across the courtyard. The last thing I heard was Zane shrieking out the last line of his song:

“Seashell Bay is the place you wanna STAY!”

*

After ten rings, I pick up the phone. Silence. Zane told us all not to speak first when answering the phone. That’s how they get you. He never told us who.

I wait.

After a few seconds, I hear a sound, like tapping at the other end of the line.

“Zane?” I say.

“Shh,” he replies, “what did I tell you?”

“Is a phone the best way to communicate if you don’t want me to talk?”

“Look, whatever,” he says, “I need you to get something from my van.”

“They have someone else in there,” I say.

Zane had easily escaped that night. It helped that the glow stick oil was so slippery. Paul had come back with neon fingers and a bump on his head. He’d called the police on my phone. By the next day, everyone knew what had happened and the Entertainment team had a Shell Star lined up to move into Zane’s caravan.

“That’s okay,” he says, “it’s Gaffa-taped underneath.”

“Where are you?”

“Can’t say. Will you do it?”

“Fuck Zane, it’s Seashell Bay, not Afghanistan.”

I hear him breathing. Thinking.

“What do you know?” he says.

“What?”

“Forget it. I never called.”

He hangs up.

I tell myself not to check under the van. There won’t be anything there.

Zane doesn’t call again. When I go back to work in the evening, I try to ask a red-eyed Natalie if she’s heard from him, but she just shrugs and says, “he wouldn’t want me to tell you,” before walking out halfway through her shift.

Jason sidles up to me and our shoulders touch.

“Did you know they were sleeping together?” he says.

We all get drunk in my caravan after work and smoke the last of Zane’s weed. We look through our photo collection and one of the boys says he’s going to make them all into a book.

“Like one of those wedding books,” he says, “only better.”

Jason has been watching me all evening and I know he’s going to ask to stay over. He’s done it before on nights when we finish late or go drinking. The caravan can sleep seven if you know all the tabs to pull. The dining table turns over to make a bed. The box seat unfolds. A bunk lowers from the ceiling.

“You’ve heard from him though, right?” Jason says.

The boys look surprised and then stare at me.

“Yeah, you must have,” one of them says, “you’re his right-hand man.”

I’m drunk. I shrug.

“You have!” Jason says.

It’s too late now so I tell them about the phone conversation, and they tell me we have to look under the van. We put our shoes on and go. Zane’s caravan is only two over from mine. The boys are pretending to be spies or snipers or something like that.

“I wish I had my BB gun,” one of them says.

By the time I’m crawling under Zane’s van with Jason, they’ve forgotten what we’re doing and are doing drop rolls across the field.

It’s there. A wodge of papers stuck to the bottom of the van with silver tape.

“Gaffa tape for everything,” Jason says, “what do you think it is?”

I think about Zane’s secret meetings. His ‘business’. They found bags of nails in his van. And I never bought the drug dealer act.

I lie on my back and peel away the tape. The papers fall onto my stomach. Jason holds up his lighter so we can read them.

 But it’s just scribble. Capital letters written on top of each other, spelling out nonsense words in Zane code. Some pages are almost empty, others are crammed full of phrases too small to read, shapes that aren’t even letters. Things are crossed out so hard that the paper is full of little holes. In the middle of the final page is my name. Written over and over. Circled round and round and round. I touch the largest letter M. My name. Made by Zane’s hand.

I crumple the pages. Jason puts his lighter to the edge of them and they catch. The flames move towards my fingers. We could leave them there, burning under Zane’s van. Burn the whole thing down.

Instead, we crawl back out and drop them in the long grass at the edge of the field until they are burnt up and I stamp out the embers with my shoe. Just another illicit bonfire in the staff field.

“I might go back to Portsmouth,” I say.

“That’s cool,” Jason says, “they have a uni there, right?”

I look at him; he’s less hideous through the fog of alcohol and smoke.

“You can’t follow me to Portsmouth, Jason,” I say.

Our faces are close.

“Why not, it’s romantic.”

“It’s not romantic if I’m twenty-one and you’re seventeen. It’s not romantic if I’m your boss.”

He shrugs.

“You won’t be my boss in Portsmouth. And I’ll be eighteen.”

I think about Natalie and Zane together in his caravan. I think about those cheesy window stickers you can buy in the gift shop that say, if the van’s a-rocking don’t come a-knocking.

I turn away. Jason is behind me but it’s Zane’s breath I feel on the back of my neck.

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