The Private Island

by Ali Lowe

Genres: Holiday books; Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

New Year's Eve, Loloma Island, Fiji. At one of the most exclusive island resorts in the Pacific ocean, the champagne is poured, the fireworks are ready, and the countdown to new year is just beginning. It's set to be a night that no one will forget.

Especially when a body washes up on the shore...

But it's impossible to find answers when everyone here has a motive.

The billionaire's daughter, glamorous, untouchable, hungry for her inheritance.
The start-up founder, out of money, and out of time.
The young dive instructor, in way over his head and struggling to stay afloat.
The husband, blinded by desire, in all the wrong ways.
And the lover, hidden in the shadows, where no one can see them....

One person's holiday of a lifetime is about to be the last they'll ever have.

Make sure you don't miss the latest scandal. Everyone is obsessed with Ali Lowe...
'Ali Lowe is swiftly moving into the footprints of Liane Moriarty' The Australian
'Sharp, clever and compelling' Sarah Pearse
'Deliciously dark and completely enthralling' Nicola Moriarty
'Utterly gripping' Heat
'Darkly funny . . . I raced to the last page' B.M. Carroll
'A murder mystery that had me gripped til the end' Helen Cooper

Release date: February 25, 2025

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 384

Sample

Una plucks four red hibiscus flowers from their stems and steps inside the bure – or bungalow, as some of the guests like to call it. Bure One sits on a cobbled pathway that runs parallel to the main beachfront, the first to link the most expensive rooms at Loloma Island Resort together like the chain of a necklace.

Bure One, like all the exclusive rooms along the path, opens out almost directly onto the seafront, requiring just a single hop to reach the silken sands of the South Pacific from the front door. The most luxurious of them all, Bure One enjoys uninterrupted ocean views, without so much as a palm tree, a bush or even a fallen coconut to block its cerulean vista. A super king bed sits regal in the centre of the room, its sheets pulled so tightly across the mattress that they shine like the glossy coat of a meringue. Two bedside tables, fashioned from native beach mahogany, gleam with polish, their reading lights pointed down at exactly thirty degrees. On the hand-carved coffee table sits a fresh fruit basket and a large hessian beach-bag that reads LOLOMA RESORT & SPA, FIJI. Loloma means ‘love’ in Una’s native tongue.

Una scoops up a handful of bottle-green hibiscus leaves to accompany the inviting tropical pink flowers and begins to spell out Welcome Home on the bed. It’s a nice touch, Mr Roko says, a gesture that makes guests feel like Loloma is a home away from home, their own spot in paradise – a simple courtesy that guarantees the drop of guests’ shoulders, the slowing of their racing city heartbeats. It is for this reason that the bed, more than any other feature of the room – more than the marble-set bathroom sinks or the built-in wardrobes with their sliding doors – must be pristine. Not just because Una has been instructed it should be so, but because she herself believes it should.

It is deeply ingrained in Una Simpson, this need for perfection. Her mother had been like that, too. Una does not have children of her own, because she never found a man who quite challenged her enough, and at forty-three, it is too late now. But if she had become a mother, she is sure her offspring would have been just as fastidious as she is. These days, she babies her nephew, Sailasa, instead. Her late sister’s son is now a man and working alongside her at Loloma. He, like the rest of Una’s colleagues, both loves and hates her attention to detail. They all enjoy her cleaning up after everyone in the vicinity yet roll their eyes in the cramped staff village when their mugs are swept away and washed before they are finished with. ‘Una found my coffee!’ It is a familiar lament. ‘Every time!’

But the fact is, Una sees everything: the faint purple ring of a wine glass on the gleaming surface of the coffee table, the slightest smudge of a fingerprint on the vanity mirror, a cobweb in the highest corner of the hand-painted tapa cloth roof, a strand of blonde hair on a bathroom tile, a speck of blood on a pillow slip. And she notices everything: snatched conversations, a covert glance, the almost-wink of an eye, a husband who casts a lusty glance at another woman across the crowded bar …

Happy that her work is done, Una closes the door of Bure One with a click and sweeps the sand from the patio with a traditional Fijian broom made of dried reeds. As she listens to the scratch and swish of the bristles, she thinks of Christmas Day and Boxing Day just gone, of bins overflowing with luxury wrapping paper and boxes balanced on top of waste-paper baskets labelled Cartier and YSL and Chanel, of the sound of Christmas carols carried around the resort on tuneful acapella voices.

Those guests have gone now, and soon the New Year’s Eve revellers will arrive, bringing with them their sequinned gowns and their lavish Venetian masks for the biggest event on the resort’s calendar, the New Year’s Eve ‘Love’ Ball. Una is fascinated by it: the frocks, the glamour, the drunkenness, the drama. There is never a dull moment on the New Year’s Eve shift – or afterwards for that matter. When their shifts are over, the staff will celebrate in their live-in quarters, ringing in the New Year with cups of kava and leftovers from the guests’ lavish celebratory dinner.

Una clicks off the brake on the trolley with her foot. The large grey cart is laden with fresh white towels, bed linen and miniature Bvlgari shampoos, conditioners and shower gels for the bathrooms in each of her allotted bures, and she is forced to give it a hard push to gain momentum on the cobbles. The mini bottles shake as the trolley rattles along. The guests tend to pocket them on the first day to take on future holidays (because even the wealthy like to get things for free), which means she has to refresh them on a daily basis.

She puts the brake on outside Bure Two, the second of her four designated suites, three of which look out on the northern tip of the Mamanuca Islands. The last, Bure Four, is set back from the seafront in the resort’s lush garden and is Una’s favourite of all ten guest rooms due to its surrounding frangipani trees, with their pretty white-yellow flowers and strong jasmine fragrance. The three beachfront bures – with glass-panelled doors to afford a generous view of the ocean – share Bure Four’s beautiful floral aroma only when the wind is blowing just right, catching the scent and carrying it off on the breeze.

Today isn’t one of those lucky days. Instead, outside Bure Two, Una smells something rancid – the distinctive aroma of decay. She turns her head and sniffs tentatively again, but the pungent smell has gone. Much like the scent of the frangipani, it has been whisked away to some other spot on the island by the breeze.

‘Una!’

Una’s hand flies to her chest. It is only Nunia.

‘You scared me.’ She scowls. ‘Why are you creeping up on people like that?’

Nunia looks down at her feet, her toes painted blood red. Una’s eyes follow and note the chips in the polish. Una’s own toes, painted peach, are perfect, of course. She gets the spa manager, Ema, to do them for her in quiet moments. Una has always taken pride in her appearance: neat hair, a little coral lipstick, a dab or two of rouge …

‘I wasn’t creeping,’ Nunia insists. ‘Do you want your transfer list before the first boat arrives or not?’ She holds up a clipboard in her left hand and taps on it with fingernails that are as chipped as her toes.

‘Your nails,’ says Una. ‘Get Ema to see to them before Mr Roko notices. You work on reception, Nunia. You’re the face of the resort!’

‘Pah,’ says Nunia and waves a dismissive hand in Una’s direction.

Una picks up a stack of beach towels and rests them on her belly, which she would like to protrude slightly less than it does. ‘Well, who have I got?’

Most of today’s arrivals will make their way to the island on Loloma’s own private speed-boat from Port Denarau Marina on the main island of Viti Levu; others will come on the passenger ferry that leaves from the same place. However, some guests do not like the public ferry because it resort-hops, from the six-star Turtle Cove Resort & Spa that sits on stilts twenty metres out to sea, along to Sunshine Island, the family-friendly Totoka Resort, and then, finally, to the most exclusive of them all, Loloma.

Nunia, in the regulation white ‘bula’ shirt that denotes she’s administration staff (considerably more modern than Una’s avocado-green maid’s dress with its stiff white collar) shoves the plywood clipboard under her arm and secures one of Una’s hibiscus flowers into the side of her hair with a bobby pin. ‘Benedict and Luella St John-Gray in Bure One. First visit to Loloma,’ she says. ‘I heard Roko say she’s an heiress of some kind. Verrry rich.’

Una shrugs, unimpressed. All of the guests are wealthy. They have to be in order to pay the prices they do; a week’s stay at Loloma is more than Una earns in a whole year. The resort is marketed as ‘six-star plus’, the ultimate adults-only destination where children under the age of fifteen are kindly uninvited. Guests always arrive around lunchtime, only a couple of hours after the previous guests have checked out, because the Los Angeles and Sydney flights land at Viti Levu’s Nadi International Airport late morning. As their boats appear on the horizon, resort staff assemble ready to perform the Loloma welcome song, and however fuggy guests are from travel or jet lag or an early wake-up call, the upbeat choral greeting ensures the general vibe on arrival is happiness. It’s the opposite a week or so later, as they depart the island to the same staff voices singing a mournful goodbye. Una wishes it wasn’t such a miserable send-off – she’s heard more upbeat tunes at funerals.

‘An heiress.’ Nunia rubs her thumb with her index and middle fingers to denote wealth. ‘Maybe she’ll leave a big tip.’

It’s a nice thought. Like most of the staff at Loloma, Una relies on tips to supplement her income. Most guests are generous: a note or two handed to her with a flourish, so that the benefactor can receive gratitude for their generosity, or tucked discreetly under the fruit bowl. However, on more occasions than she cares to remember, Una has been left nothing but foul stains on the toilet basin and dried spheres of minty toothpaste in the bathroom sink. She knows not to expect gratuities or indeed to rely on them. What she desires most is kindness and respect from her guests, and in return, she will do her best for them – after all, she wants holidaymakers to return to her beautiful island again. It is in everyone’s interests, isn’t it?

Nunia peruses her list. ‘In Bure Three, you’ve got Fergus and Kitty Miller. They’re coming in on the speed-boat with Luella and Benedict St John-Gray.’

Una makes a mental note. She hasn’t had anyone named Fergus before, but she thinks she had a Kitty a couple of years back. ‘And in Bure Two?’

‘Dr Sofie Barthélemy. French. Lists her place of work as the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.’

Una is impressed. She has heard of that hospital – it is where Princess Diana died, and Una considers herself somewhat of a royalist. She was pivotal in decorating the resort for King Charles’s coronation. She even persuaded Roko to allow the chefs to bake a cake.

‘Dr Barthélemy is travelling alone,’ says Nunia. ‘So is your last one, Thomasina Delana.’

‘Delana. That’s a South Pacific name,’ says Una.

Nunia nods. ‘She’s in Bure Four.’ She studies her fingernails as if to ascertain if she can get away with the chips for another day. ‘Two single women this time. Unusual, no?’

‘Perhaps.’

It is unusual for lone female travellers to visit Loloma – with a name that translates as ‘love’, their island home naturally attracts couples. However, it’s not unheard of. Sometimes they come for the spa and the dawn yoga, or to escape their young children or husbands. They say things to Una like: I just wanted a week without having to cook any meals! Una prefers these guests by a golden mile – they’re tidier than men, for one, and then there’s the basic fact that a single person in a bure makes for one less name to remember. Roko is militant about remembering names. If guests feel cared for, they will re-book, he says, which in turn pleases the big bosses. Make them feel like they’re the only guest that matters! Do not forget their names, for pity’s sake!

Una repeats under her breath, ‘Luella and Benedict St John-Gray, Kitty and Fergus Miller, Dr Sofie Barthélemy, Ms Thomasina Delana.’ She will remember those easily. A little unusual, all of them – none of them easy to forget.

Nunia fans her face with her clipboard. ‘Ugh, what is that smell?’

‘You notice it, too?’

‘Yes! It’s awful! Must be a sewer issue.’ She grimaces and turns to leave. ‘You should call maintenance before the boat comes in.’

‘I will.’ Una clicks open the bure with the key card she wears around her neck. ‘See you later.’

In the bathroom, the smell comes to her again through the slatted wooden window at the very back of the bure, with its outer layer of mosquito netting. She winces and pulls the blinds shut. Did the newlyweds who left early this morning notice it? She empties the bathroom bin, ties a tight knot in the top of the rubbish bag and turns to the bed. On the bedside table is a bottle of Fiji water with a fifty dollar note under it, a pair of used sponge earplugs and a well-thumbed book, face down.

Una puts the tip in her pocket and picks up the book. The blurb on the back says it is about serial killers, and on the front is a photo of a man with close-set eyes and thick-rimmed spectacles. His face makes Una shiver, and she places it on the coffee table next to the rubbish bag. Creepy or not, she will take it with her to the staff village for Sailasa. He loves a good crime book. The gorier the better for her inquisitive nephew.

Una cleans the rest of the room methodically and arranges the leaves and petals on the bed. When she is satisfied that her work is done and everything is pristine, she backs out of the villa, mopping as she goes so as not to leave footprints behind her. Outside, she takes the foot-washing bucket – filled with sandy water from the previous guests’ repeated trips to and from the beach – around the side of the bure to rinse out and refill from the outdoor tap.

That’s when she locates the source of the smell – a rancid stench that fills her nostrils like a rotten egg. Her hand flies to her mouth, and she stumbles over herself to step back. A mongoose, its stomach torn open, stares up at her, eyes wide, from the sand. Maggots, hundreds of them, feast greedily on its entrails, shaded in their labour from the sun by the imposing awning of the bure’s bamboo thatch.

Luella St John-Gray clutches her handbag to her chest at Nadi airport as she passes three traditional Fijian warriors in grass skirts. Tall, handsome men with bare chests clutching wooden axes. So young, so rugged, so vital. They’d probably have her handbag in a flash. Nowhere to stash it, though. Not much room in a grass skirt.

Luella rolls her neck on her shoulders and looks away.

‘Darling?’ Benedict ushers her forward to the glass-fronted cubicle, where a border security officer in a blue suit and with a stern expression holds out a hand for their passports. The woman looks Luella up and down with disdain.

‘Hair behind your ears, please,’ the officer says.

‘Ears?’ snaps Luella. ‘In Britain, we look at someone’s face.’

The security officer regards her, expressionless, and hands back the passport. Benedict keeps nagging her to change it into her married name, but Luella cannot abide pointless admin, even if it is a legal requirement. She stuffs the document in her bag and sweeps through the gangway separating the passport control cubicles and the baggage carousels from the outside world.

Benedict leans in. ‘Almost in paradise, darling,’ he says. ‘Just remember, downtown Nadi is not indicative of where we are going.’

Luella bites the inside of her cheek. Why does Benedict address her this way, as if she is stupid and not an intelligent and well-travelled thirty-nine-year-old woman? She knows this airport town is bustling and industrial, that it is the antithesis of the turquoise and golden palette of the island destination to which they are heading. Still, she will let this indignity slide. It is too humid to argue.

A baggage handler attempts to lift the smaller of her bags. ‘I’ll take that,’ Luella says and passes it across to Benedict to put on the luggage trolley instead.

The journey to Loloma Island Resort is expected to take an hour and a half. A twenty-minute cab from Nadi Airport to Port Denarau Marina and then an hour by speed-boat to the island. Benedict has informed her umpteen times that he has done the route before, only to a different island with a different woman – a long-term ex about whom Luella does not care a single jot, because what could she have possibly offered Benedict that Luella cannot? Luella has visited the South Pacific, too, also with a former lover, who, as it turned out, was only after one thing – and it wasn’t her svelte size eight body.

‘It’s not too late to get a chopper,’ Benedict says as he pulls her larger Louis Vuitton suitcase off the conveyer belt and deposits it on the luggage trolley.

‘No!’ Luella holds up a palm. She will not do it, because helicopters are simply not safe. Flying death-traps! She, for one, does not want to go down somewhere over the South Pacific and end up the subject of newspaper fodder on account of her sizeable wealth. She would much rather expire somewhere more upper class: perhaps Monaco or St Tropez, right outside Le Club 55, for example, or even the Paris Ritz. Besides, she shudders to think what the maintenance would be like on a helicopter in a place like this: blades falling off and everything. Pilots drunk on the job! It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Luella applies some ludicrously expensive factor 50 sun cream to her face (because what would be the point of paying for acid peels like paint-stripper if she is going to cultivate more age spots in the space of a week?) and conveys as much to Benedict.

‘It’s not the third world,’ Benedict tells her. ‘It’s Fiji, darling. It’s heaven on earth! The people, the hospitality … it’s all exquisite. We are going to have the most wonderful holiday, Luella. What’s not to love about seeing in the New Year in paradise?’

Luella smiles sweetly. One must endure what one cannot cure, after all – and in this case, she must tolerate Benedict’s wanderlust for developing nations.

‘Of course, my darling.’ She cups his cheek with her palm and plants a light kiss on his lips.

They walk through the baggage hall, through the dodgy X-ray machines at customs and into the arrivals hall, where the sticky air appears to be being merely churned around by giant plastic fans. Air-conditioning appears strictly sanctioned for the customs area and Luella feels her nostrils flare at the combined smell of hot chips and sweat and duty-free perfume, and … is that coconut oil?

Men and women with dots of perspiration on their foreheads and upper lips, dressed in printed shirts and sarongs and dresses, are positioned all over the place, holding shell necklaces and placing them round the necks of weary travellers. Luella pulls her handbag in close. Ugh, she’s barely out of the airport, and they’re trying to sell her things!

‘No, thank you.’ She ducks her head out of the way as a woman attempts to lift a circle of shells to her head.

‘Bula!’ The woman smiles, hand still hovering in front of Luella’s forehead. ‘Welcome to Fiji!’

Maybe she hasn’t heard Luella correctly! ‘I said no, thank you,’ she snaps.

The woman’s smile falters, and she turns towards Benedict as if for an explanation. Benedict leans his six-foot frame forward to accept a shell necklace and thanks the woman, who casts an anxious glance back at Luella.

‘Come on, darling,’ he says, a hand on the small of Luella’s back. ‘It’s a custom, a welcome gift. Just take one.’

Luella stares pointedly ahead at the row of drivers holding up hotel placards with travellers’ names on and pretends not to hear. Benedict takes a shell necklace for her anyway, muttering his thanks, and hurries behind her towards a smiling limousine driver, who is holding up a whiteboard with the words: ST JOHN-GRAY / LOLOMA RESORT written in thick black ink.

At Port Denarau Marina, the heat is even more stifling. Luella pulls on her sun hat, flicks open the lavish Japanese uchiwa fan she bought at an upmarket boutique in Kyoto and pulls it up to her face. In front of her, a young Fijian woman in a tight cobalt-blue dress drags two young boys wearing Manchester United shirts along by the hands. On her back is a baby in a fabric sling drinking water from a Fanta bottle. Just ahead, a porter in a lime-green T-shirt and shorts shouts to his colleague loudly in their native tongue; behind a tourist information desk, a lady laughs loudly, and at a desk selling diving tours, a woman braids a giggling child’s hair. The café inside the marina, named the Dolphin Café, blasts out nineties hits and a pungent smell of garlic. It is sensory overload, and Luella feels slightly affronted that everyone needs to be so … loud.

‘Can we go straight to the boat?’ she calls impatiently across to Benedict, who is over by the water, taking photographs and in no apparent hurry to make this cultural melting pot a mere pit stop. He puts his phone in the pocket of his linen shorts and beckons her over with his hand. ‘There’s just a little delay while the boat chaps sort out the luggage,’ he tells her. ‘Come and look at the view with me, darling.’

Luella pouts and points towards a white speed-boat at the very end of the jetty. ‘That boat says “Loloma Island & Resort”, does it not? Are they going to invite us on board, or do I have to row to the island myself?’

Benedict digs his hand into the pocket of his shorts. ‘I’ll investigate, my darling,’ he says. ‘Sit tight.’ He opens his wallet and marches with purpose to the information desk for Loloma Island Resort, where he waves a large wad of Fijian dollars at the perplexed desk clerk. But the woman waves Benedict’s hand away in a simple movement that requires no translation. Thank you, it says, but however much you pay me, the boat is simply not ready.

Luella sighs. She snaps her fan shut and shoves it in her Chloé bag, pulling out a bottle of water instead. She unscrews the lid and glugs the icy liquid, irritably snapping her gaze away from a small child who sits on the floor of the marina, watching her.

‘It’s just so hot, isn’t it?’ says a soft, barely audible voice behind her.

Luella turns to see a woman in last season’s Stella McCartney resort wear with wildly frizzy hair fanning herself with a dog-eared paperback. She leans against the wall of the boat terminal as if she is about to expire.

Luella makes a mental note to book herself in for an iron infusion and a B12 shot when she returns to London.

‘I didn’t realise it would be this stifling,’ the woman continues. ‘It’s playing havoc with my hair. Talk about frizz!’

Luella isn’t in the mood for tedious small talk – she does not consider it a bare necessity of life as so many others do – so she simply nods and turns towards the water, where the faint waft of fish from the fishing vessels jostling for space against the wall hits her like a sudden slap to the face. She takes out her Aesop rose petal and bergamot facial hydrator spray and leans into the fragrant mist.

The woman edges forward, undeterred. ‘I see from your luggage tags you’re also off to Loloma Island,’ she enthuses. She must detect the raise of Luella’s right eyebrow because her hand flies to her chest. ‘Gosh, I so apologise. It is rather presumptuous of me to look at your luggage tags,’ she says.

Luella offers a curt nod, and the woman looks confused, as if she can’t work out if Luella is confirming their mutual destination, or whether she agrees that the studying of someone else’s personal luggage is, in fact, wholly intrusive. Luella does nothing to clarify the situation either way.

The woman presses on regardless. ‘We’re going to Loloma, too! I’m Kitty – Kitty Miller, and that’s my husband, Fergus.’ She gestures over to an overweight man with a ruddy, booze-bloated face and red hair, standing at the water’s edge. ‘Fergus loves the water, unlike me. I’m an awful bore, but I’d much rather be perched on a sun lounger with a book.’ She holds up her battered paperback with a peeling library sticker on the spine. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you on your honeymoon? You have a rather newlywed glow!’

Luella smiles stiffly and glances up at Benedict as he strolls back from the information desk. ‘Just a holiday,’ she says and hopes it invites no more questions.

Just a holiday. One of many: the Maldives, Malaysia, Whistler, Zanzibar – all this year alone. She and Benedict enjoy frequent vacations, and this one is no more special than the rest – except, of course, that it straddles two calendar years: a sojourn that will take them out of one year and deposit them head first into the next before almost anywhere else in the world, twelve hours before their native London and a whole seventeen before the glitter ball drops in New York’s Times Square.

‘How divine,’ muses the woman named Kitty. ‘And do I detect an English accent?’

Luella sighs. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh, how wonderful. Were you on the Fiji Airways flight from Heathrow via LAX?’

Luella nods.

‘Us too! Right at the back near the loos, unfortunately!’ Kitty wrinkles her nose.

Luella is tired and does not have the energy to muster a response. These are not like-minded people. They will not be friends. They will not exchange phone numbers and arrange to meet up over champagne at the Sloane Club in a month’s time.

‘Loloma Island is meant to be incredible,’ Kitty waffles. ‘According to the resort website, the views from the mountain at the top of the bush-trek are phenomenal. It’s definitely on my holiday to-do list. How about you?’

Luella does not respond. She takes a step back and turns to look out over the marina.

‘Do you have your mask for the New Year’s Eve “Love” Ball?’ Kitty persists. ‘I mean, of course you do – we were asked to bring them, after all. I presume you got the email? Rather bossy, wasn’t it? “You must have a mask!” I’m really rather impressed, if I’m honest. It must take an awful lot of work to co-ordinate such an affair!’

Luella studies the woman’s face. Kitty Miller isn’t unattractive. In fact, she is rather striking in a horsey kind of way – vibrant eyes and a full mouth. There is a sort of aristocratic air about her – a little Camilla Parker-Bowles, perhaps. But they flew economy, which is puzzling.

‘I was feeling inspired, so I actually made my own mask,’ Kitty continues in lieu of a response to her questions. ‘Out came the feather box and the craft glue, and I went hell for leather!’

Luella grimaces. ‘How creative.’

‘Where did you get yours?’ asks Kitty.

‘Philip Treacy.’

Kitty Miller’s smile falters, and she takes a sip from her plastic water bottle, which has a chewed nozzle and says London Marathon 2017 on it.

Fergus Miller appears beside his wife and looks Luella up and down. ‘Fergu. . .