"Where do you think we're going?" Charlie asks me.

The clothes arrive the next morning. Boxes of weatherproof jackets and parkas, winter hats, trousers, thermal underwear and boots. None of it ostentatious, but all designer-branded and clearly expensive. Then a cabin suitcase for each of us, and folders containing used Russian international passports, driving licenses, credit cards and other identifying papers in the same names.

We drive northwest, following the signs to Sheremetyevo airport. Visibility is limited, and the road surface treacherous. The outlines of broken-down vehicles are visible on the hard shoulder, hazard lights winking. I'm nervous, but glad that Oxana is at my side. I'm even glad, in a perverse sort of way, that Charlie's there.

"Hawaii?"

We leave at midday, and as we step out of the lift in our designer outfits and follow Richard through the building's endless succession of lobbies, no one gives us a second glance. We could be an upscale tour group, or prosperous Russians setting off on holiday. Outside, it's wonderfully cold, and I turn into the wind for a moment so that the snowflakes fly into my face. Then, all too soon, we're climbing into a Porsche SUV with dark-tinted windows. Anton drives, Richard takes the front seat, and I sit between Oxana and Charlie.

We're crossing the outer ring road when a police vehicle swings in front of us, blue lights flashing. "Fuck's sake," Anton mutters, bringing the Porsche to a halt in the slush. "What now?"

There's a sharp tap on the passenger-side window and Richard lowers it. The features of the uniformed figure outside are obscured by his helmet and face mask, but his shoulder patch identifies him as an officer of the FSB, Russia's internal security service. Ahead of us, other vehicles similar to ours have been stopped. Several drivers and passengers have been ordered out of their cars and directed, documents in hand, to an armored truck with iron-grille windows and FSB insignia, parked on the side of the highway.

"Security check. Passports please?"

"What's going on, Lieutenant?" Richard asks the officer, as wind and snow blast into the Porsche's interior.

We hand them over, he checks them carefully, and peers at us one by one through the passenger window. Then he returns all the passports except mine. "Out please," he tells me, pointing to the truck with a gloved hand.

"Mr. Tikhomirov. This is a surprise. And yes, it's good to be alive."

It's freezing outside, and I pull the hood of my parka over my head as I join the line outside the truck. "Must be looking for someone important," I say to the woman in front of me, a grandmotherly figure in a pink woolen headscarf.

She shrugs, indifferent, and stamps her booted feet in the snow. "They're always looking for someone. They just stop cars at random."

I recognize the voice, and when he moves into one of the shafts of light admitted by the iron-grille windows, I recognize the man. Broad shoulders made broader by a military greatcoat, buzz-cut silver hair, a wry smile.

Eventually, it's my turn. I climb the steps into the truck, and when I get inside stand for a few seconds, eyes narrowed. It's dark in there after the snow-brightness. Two officers are sitting on metal benches opposite me, and one is in the shadows to my left. At a signal from the man in the shadows the others leave.

"Mrs. Polastri. Eve. I'm so glad that the reports of your death were exaggerated."

Vadim Tikhomirov is a senior officer of the FSB. A general, in fact, although he's not the kind of man to advertise his rank. We first met in complicated circumstances after Charlie -- or Lara as they were then -- tried and failed to shoot me in the VDNKh Metro station in Moscow. On that occasion Tikhomirov not only got me out of Russia, he discreetly alerted me to the fact that my boss, Richard Edwards, was an asset of the Twelve.

Tikhomirov is the refined face of an often brutally uncompromising organization, and where his own loyalties lie I'm not sure. Is he, as he appears to be, a dedicated servant of the Russian state, and if so, what does that actually entail? Unquestioning obedience to the diktats of the Kremlin, or the playing of longer, more ambiguous games?

He leans toward me on the bench. "Eve, we have very little time. If we don't keep this short your friends outside are going to be suspicious. First, you've done brilliantly to insert yourself into a Twelve operation."

"I saw the photograph. It was good, and would have fooled most people but… what do they say? Don't bullshit a bullshitter. In our world, as you know, nothing is what it looks like, even life and death. Everything's a simulacrum."

I stare at him. Does he really think that's why I'm here? That I'm still working for MI6?

"How do I know this? Let's just say that we have a friend in common in St. Petersburg. But it's imperative that we discover what the Twelve are planning, because if what I suspect is true the consequences will be catastrophic, and not just for Russia. So you absolutely have to find out, Eve. And you have to tell me."

It's as cold as a butcher's fridge in the truck, and I zip my jacket up to the chin.

"You know who's in that Porsche SUV, don't you? Our mutual friend Richard Edwards. Why don't you just arrest him?"

"Nothing I'd rather do, believe me. But I can't. I have to let him run. See who he leads us to."

"Isn't that a bit risky? I mean --"

"I see." This is not sounding good.

"This is the Twelve we're dealing with, Eve. We need to take down the whole organization, and if we're going to do that we need to aim a lot higher than Edwards. He's useful to them but he's replaceable, and probably doesn't know that much anyway."

"Don't kill her. Please, I…" I stare at him helplessly.

"I'm going to give you a phone number, which you're going to memorize, and the rest is up to you. You're a highly resourceful individual, and I'm confident that one way or another you'll succeed." He lets his words hang in the air. "So are you with me? I'm afraid that you have to decide right here, right now."

"So, we need to keep our nerve, let them think it's safe to go ahead, and wait for the key players to reveal themselves. Then, and only then, can we make our move. First we have to know what they've been planning."

"Exactly."

"So tell me."

"Tell me."

"And that's where I come in?"

"Ah. The famous Villanelle. I thought we might get to her."

"Oxana Vorontsova."

"One condition."

He meets my gaze, his eyes thoughtful, and then turns to the door. Slowly, barely perceptibly, he nods his head. "I can guarantee nothing. I have to consider the optics. But if you do this thing for me I will try to do this for you. Here is the number…"

He says it three times. Makes me repeat it three times.

"They've taken our guns, phones, pens, everything," I tell him. "They'll be watching us all the time. I don't know how I'm going to --"

As I stand in my turn, a handsome young man in a winter camouflage uniform climbs into the truck, and I recognize Dima, Tikhomirov's assistant. A long look passes between them.

As I trudge back to the SUV, I repeat the number he gave me.

Tikhomirov looks at me, his expression sad, and raises his hand.

"You'll find a way, Eve. I know you will." He stands up, bowing his head beneath the low roof of the truck. "And now you have to go."

"Please," I whisper. "Remember."

"They checked my appearance against a set of photographs of women that they had on a laptop. I didn't look anything like any of the photographs -- all the women were wearing black Islamic headscarves -- and the officers didn't ask my name. I asked them what it was all about but they wouldn't tell me."

"So what did they want?" Richard asks, when we're back on the motorway.

"So who was there?"

"An FSB officer, in his forties probably, and two junior guys. A fourth guy came in from having a cigarette just as I left. I didn't get the impression they were very interested in what they were doing."

"Nothing like that, no."

Richard leaves us on the tarmac at Sheremetyevo airport, beneath a bruise-dark sky. He shakes our hands through the driver's window of the Porsche, and gives us each a taut, crinkle-eyed smile that doesn't quite mask his relief that he's not coming with us. How did I work for him for so long without spotting that phony manner?

"They didn't photograph you? Take your fingerprints? Take a copy of your passport?"

Oxana sits next to me, her head on my shoulder, and we talk about the things we'll do, and the places we'll visit, when all of this is over. We both know it's a fantasy, that we'll probably never walk hand in hand by the River Neva in St. Petersburg, watching the ice floes drift past, or sit in the sun on a spring morning in the courtyard of Oxana's favorite café in Paris, but we promise ourselves these things and more. I say nothing about my conversation with Tikhomirov. I try not to think about it at all, and to ignore the ghastly sensation that we are sleepwalking toward a cliff edge. Instead, I lose myself in the moment, feeling the soft weight of Oxana's head on my shoulder.

The Learjet lifts off shortly afterward, heading westwards. Our immediate destination, Anton tells us, is Ostend, in Belgium. No one inquires further.

"Probably."

Anton looks back at me and grins. "Just checking out women to pass the time?"

After forty-five minutes we start our descent. The helicopter's spotlights illuminate dark, wrinkling waves. "We're there," Oxana mouths at me. "Look." She jabs a finger downwards.

Oxana tucks in next to me again, but with the engine noise and the headsets conversation is impossible. Where we're going, I have no idea, although Oxana's pensive expression suggests that she may have figured it out. We hold a roughly northwestern course toward England, but why would we be traveling there by helicopter? If our destination is London, we could have flown there directly from Moscow. Are we going to be landing on a ship?

After three and a half hours we land at Ostend-Bruges airport. The light has almost gone, and as we leave the warmly upholstered interior of the Learjet we're met with a bitter wind and driving sleet. A minibus is waiting for us on the tarmac, and we're driven a few hundred meters to a waiting Super Puma helicopter, where the pilot hands us noise-canceling headsets. The helicopter's rotors are already swinging as we board, and the lights of the airport vanish behind us as we gain height over desolate beaches and the wind-blurred expanse of the North Sea.

We walk the length of the platform, heads down, to where three converted shipping containers are lashed to the decking with steel hawsers. Anton guides us inside the nearest of these, flicks on an electric light, and when we're all inside, including the two men who guided in the helicopter, closes the steel door.

At first I see only the surface of the sea. Then a gray rectangle swings into view, and the Super Puma's spotlights lock on to it. A marine platform, its size hard to estimate, supported by two trunk-like columns. As we approach the platform I see that there's a helipad at one end, which two tiny human figures are illuminating with torches. Never in my life have I seen anything so unforgivingly harsh. "Fucking hell," I mouth at Oxana, and she nods.

We touch down, and the Super Puma rests on the helipad for no more than thirty seconds as we climb out into the bitter, sleeting wind. It's so ferocious, I'm afraid that if I lose my footing I'll be swept away, and I cling to the arm of the nearest person, who happens to be Anton. He shouts something to me, but it's whipped away in the wind.

"So let's get to it. First off, meet Nobby and Ginge. They are going to be your instructors and your watchdogs, so listen up and do what they say. They're former E Squadron sniper team leaders, so they know their stuff. Lara and Villanelle, I know you have experience as solo operatives, but this project poses unique challenges. Our targets, plural, have the best security the world has to offer. Teamwork is going to be vital."

It's not much, but it's a lot more homey than the last container I was in. Two double-glazed windows have been let in to the lengthways wall, framing views of the sea and the sky. At one end there's a trestle table and six folding chairs, at the other a microwave, a chest freezer, and a kettle. A tray on the table holds jars of honey, Marmite, and strawberry jam. Above it, there's a bookshelf stocked with well-thumbed paperback thrillers by Mick Herron, Andrei Kivinov, and others, and a hardback copy of Mangan and Proctor's Birds of the North Sea.

"Welcome to Knock Tom," Anton says. "It was originally a Second World War anti-aircraft emplacement, built by the British to protect the North Sea shipping lanes. So if you get bored and feel like a swim"-- he points out of the further window --"the Essex coast is about ten miles in that direction. But I promise that you won't be bored. We've got a lot of work to do and a lot of ground to cover."

"Charlie. My name is Charlie. Since you're talking about teamwork."

Silence. Nobby and Ginge exchange grins.

Anton looks as if he's swallowed a wasp. "Charlie it is, then. Moving on. We're going to be using two teams, each with a spotter and a shooter. The window of opportunity will be small, and the weather conditions challenging, so the role of the spotters will be critical. Our shooters will be Villanelle and, er, Charlie. Spotters will be Eve and myself."

Anton regards her with calm loathing. "Nobby and Ginge have retired from the stage. They prefer to pass on their wisdom to a new generation."

"So what's wrong with these two heroes?" Oxana asks, jerking a thumb at the two instructors. "If they're so fucking experienced, how come you need us?"

"It's that dangerous, then," Oxana says and smirks.

"I'm not going to pretend it's not dangerous. It's very dangerous indeed. That's why preparation is everything. We have a week in which we can concentrate fully on the task at hand. There's no WiFi here, so you'll have no active links to the outside world. We are going to be living and breathing our mission. Train hard, fight easy."

It's at this point that I lose hope. There's no way to contact Tikhomirov, and as I have no clue as to the identity of the target, or targets, there's no point in thinking about how to do so. Anton, moreover, clearly has no intention of telling us the details of the hit until the absolute last moment. Maybe he doesn't even know them. The fact that we have been flown all the way to the middle of the North Sea, rather than to a secure facility in Russia, tells me how concerned the Twelve are that no word of this operation should get out. We're confined to this tiny, isolated, storm-battered platform with no possibility of escape, and no way of contacting the outside world.

"The two teams will be training separately," Anton continues. "Villanelle and I with Nobby, Charlie and Eve with Ginge. Neither team will discuss the details of their mission with the other team. You all have separate quarters, three in the north leg of the platform, three in the south, and there will be no doubling up." He looks balefully from me to Oxana. "This is not a request, it's an order."

Watching Anton, with his too-pale eyes, wolfish jaw and thin, fastidious mouth, I can't suppress a shiver. He's one of those men whose hatred of women is so deep, so central to his being, that it almost defines him. He knows where he stands with men. With Richard he's subtly obsequious; with Nobby and Ginge matey but superior. He's pretty sure where he stands with me, too, as I'm too much of a scaredy-cat to give him much trouble. But he has no idea how to deal with Charlie and Oxana, who are every bit as hardcore as he is, and not frightened to let him know it. I turn to Oxana but she is staring expressionlessly into space. Impossible to tell what she thinks of the sleeping arrangements.

This briefing is followed by a meal of warm baked beans and luncheon meat prepared by Nobby, during which Oxana remains wordless and withdrawn, refusing to meet my eye. As hurtful as this is, it no longer surprises me. I'm familiar with her mood cycle. I know that when I say good night to her, she will look straight through me, and she does.

I'm bracing myself for the chilly business of undressing when there's a bang on the steel door. It's Charlie.

"Er, right. And you?"

My quarters, accessed by a vertical ladder from the deck, are a concrete-walled cabin in the interior of the north leg. Inside is a metal bunk bed furnished with a mattress, sheet and blanket, all damp to the touch, and a locker containing cold-weather combat clothes.

"Same as yours, but I'm in the south leg, between Oxana and Nobby. Bit like being back in Butyrka."

"I'm looking through the rifle scope. That's all I see, that little circle. Until I take the shot. Then we get out of there, fast. Who do you reckon the target is?"

"Are you good at mathematics?"

"Because the spotter has to make all the calculations. You know: range, wind-direction, all that. And you have to keep us safe. You're the lookout."

"Looks like it." I sit down on my bunk, loosen my boots and kick them off. "How's your cabin?"

"So we're a team," they say.

"Hopeless."

"I'm sorry you're stuck with me as your spotter. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do."

"I don't know, Charlie. I don't even want to think about it."

"And I'm really good at it. I know you think I'm not, but --"

"Dangerous work."

"I know. But I thought I was going to be there forever. So I was like in heaven when I learned that I was going to get out. I mean, people say the Twelve are a patriarchal organization, but I think they offer real opportunities for women and gender non-binary people. The chance to grow as a person and live your dream. Which for me has always been shooting people."

"Really shitty. Lonely. Bad sex."

"Oh God, Charlie."

"I never said that."

"Mmm. Yeah, I do. A lot. What was it like in prison?"

"Yes, there is that."

"Not you, anyway. Makes a change."

"You didn't need to. Listen, I know you're not impressed that I missed you twice, but maybe the whole situation had got too personal? Like I knew that Oxana liked you, or whatever, and that made me tense up? I have feelings too, you know. I'm not just some replicant, like Rachael in Blade Runner."

Charlie leans against the rust-streaked wall, arms folded. "Do you miss her? Oxana, I mean? When you're not with her?"

"I know, Charlie."

"He wasn't an asshole, he was a good man, but yeah."

"But explain to me, why are you with a woman at all? I mean, you were married, weren't you? To that Niko guy? Oxana always called him the Polish asshole."

"No, it wasn't like that."

"And that was OK?"

"Mmm. It was."

"So what happened? Did you just wake up one morning and say fuck this shit, I want some pussy?"

"I think… God, it's so difficult. OK, to start with, Oxana -- she was Villanelle then -- just really fascinated me. I was stuck in this quite frustrating job, which I felt was going nowhere, and then suddenly here was this person who didn't obey any of the rules, who made life up as she went along, and did whatever the fuck she wanted and got away with it, and to begin with that made me kind of angry, because my own life was so… not like that. I thought, how dare she? I was kind of outraged by her. And then, little by little, I began to admire her skill, and her cunning, and the whole game she was playing. It was so personal. So intimate. You remember that bracelet she bought me in Venice?"

"So how was it, Eve? Tell me."

"It's always about the sex."

"Because I'm fucking jealous, Eve. Because I want her back."

"Don't you?"

"It wasn't really about the sex. Then."

"So get to the sex."

"Yes I remember the bracelet. I was super-pissed off with her about that."

"Charlie, get real. Do you think any of us are going to walk away from this? That there's going to be some kind of happy-ever-after?"

"I know. And at that point I hadn't even met her."

"Charlie, if the FSB heard so much as a whisper that any of us was involved, they'd have us in an interrogation cell in Lefortovo before you could say Baileys Irish Cream. And then we'd talk, trust me. Any one of us would talk."

"So why do you want to know?"

"No. If we fail, we're dead. If we succeed, and the target's as high profile as they say it is, then we're dead too, because they're certainly not going to want us around to tell our story."

"But why would any of us say anything? I wouldn't, you wouldn't, and Oxana definitely wouldn't. We'd just go on working for the Twelve."

"I love Baileys, it's the best drink there is. And I'm sorry, but I want Oxana back. I mean, what have you and her got in common? Nothing. And this evening. She didn't even talk to you. You're not enough for her, Eve."

At breakfast -- tea, bacon sandwiches -- I team up with Charlie and Ginge, a stocky, balding Welshman with a twinkling smile. "Lovely day for it," he grins, as the wind screams across the platform deck outside. He leads us to one end of the deck, where two makeshift hides, about ten meters apart, have been constructed from oil drums and tarpaulin. On the ground beneath the tarpaulin is a low mattress, and on the mattress is a sniper rifle with scope attachment, a metal ammunition box, and a waterproof rucksack. The edge of the platform is no more than two meters in front of us. Far below, the sea churns and boils, dashing itself against the platform's concrete legs.

"Go to bed, Charlie, I'm tired. I'll see you tomorrow."

I wake up early, and clamber down the ladder to the washroom, or "head" as Anton insists on calling it. It's tiny but it's private, and there's a freshwater shower heated by a generator. I try very hard to enjoy the sixty-odd seconds of steaming hot water I allow myself. I suspect I'm going to spend most of the day feeling very cold indeed.

"Right now, let's get comfy. You're on the gun, Charlie-girl. Eve, you're behind and to the right, and I'll just tuck in on the left. Proper cozy, isn't it?"

I see Charlie tense up at being called a girl, and then deliberately relax. We settle into our places on the mattress. It's weird to be quite so close to Ginge and Charlie, but a relief to be out of the wind. It's still very cold, though, and my back aches badly. Will I survive long enough to have the stitches taken out?

"Some," Charlie answers warily.

"In that case you'll probably know a lot of what I've got to tell you, but listen up anyway. This job is going to be a very tricky one. I'm not aware of the location of the firing point, or the identity of the target. But I do know that the window of opportunity is going to be very small, probably just seconds, the target will be moving, and the range will be in excess of seven hundred meters. So Charlie, you are going to have to act very fast and very decisively, while remaining very calm. Eve, your job is to make sure that she can do that.

Ginge grins at Charlie. "Gather you've done a bit of sniper work before, then?"

Charlie frowns. "Range, wind force and direction, drag, spin-drift, Coriolis…"

"So first, your weapon. It's a British-made AX sniper rifle with a Nightforce scope. The rifle's light, it's smooth-firing and it's very accurate. Altogether a tidy piece of kit." He opens the ammunition box to reveal rows of shining, brass-cased cartridges. "Caliber is.338 Lapua Magnum. High power. Send one of these your target's way and he's a mess. So, Charlie, what would you normally take into account when lining up a five-hundred-meter-plus shot?"

"Wind is also a factor. A strong crosswind will take a bullet off-course laterally, and a headwind will add drag. Cold air is denser than hot air, so that increases drag as well."

"Right."

Ginge gives me an evil smile. "This making any sense to you, Eve?"

"Not a lot."

"Got it."

"A bullet leaves the barrel of a rifle spinning at very high speed. This causes a very slight drift toward the direction of twist, which needs to be compensated for at long ranges."

"Don't worry, it will do. Let's start with range. The further a projectile has to travel, the more it drops in the air due to gravity, OK?"

"Say I shoot at you at a range of a kilometer, the bullet's going to be in the air for three or four seconds before it hits you, OK?"

"Righto then." Ginge twinkles at me. I'm guessing that as a Special Forces sniper, working with Anton, he took out human targets with exactly the same merry smile on his face. "In the old days, when I was in the game, we had to calculate all of these variables and adjust our sights accordingly. Fine if time was on your side, but awkward if it wasn't. Today we've got a laser system that makes all these calculations automatically. You just look through the scope, and there's your corrected aiming point."

"So while the bullet's in the air the earth continues to spin. And you're on the earth. So even if you don't move, you move. Get it?"

"Sure. Say I shoot at Eve, right?"

"Want to talk us through the Coriolis effect, Charlie?"

"Er, OK. I think I basically get that. And the other thing?"

They smile.

"I guess."

"Um… sort of. Yeah."

"Again?"

"So what am I here for?" I ask him.

"Is that right?" The smile never falters. "Charlie it is, then."

"We'll get to that. First, let's set the rifle up. Charlie-girl, would you like to do the honors?"

"It's Charlie. Not Charlie-girl."

"So I'll tell you what we're going to do next. If you look out to sea, about one o'clock, you should be able to see a red buoy. It's quite small and near the limit of visibility. Got it?"

I've never thought of them as a particularly dextrous person, but watching Charlie calmly set the rifle on its bipod, fit their face to the cheekpiece, check the scope and work the bolt, I know immediately that I'm watching someone who's very, very good at what they do. As I watch, the weapon becomes an extension of their body.

"Eve, you get a lovely piece of kit too." Ginge opens the waterproof rucksack and takes out an object like a truncated telescope. "This is a Leupold spotting scope, for keeping eyes on the target. It's got much more powerful magnification than the telescopic sights on the rifle, so you can actually see, close up, where the sniper's shot goes."

"Cool."

As Charlie and I rehearse the spoken procedure, Ginge sets up the targets. In the rucksack there's a box of yellow party balloons, a ball of twine, scissors, a bag of small plumb-weights, and an air canister. Ginge inflates a balloon, ties it off with a length of twine, attaches a weight and slings the whole thing off the edge of the platform. A minute later it drifts into view, blown by the wind toward the buoy. Ginge, meanwhile, is preparing the next balloon.

"Once you've got eyes on it," Ginge orders us, "look at it through your scopes."

He's right, the Leupold is an amazing piece of kit. The buoy looks close enough to reach out and touch, as it swings from side to side on the waves.

I squint through my glasses, which have become blurry in the damp salt air, and finally see a tiny dot of red.

"OK. That buoy is five hundred meters from this firing point, give or take, and that's the range we're going to be looking at today. I understand that the shot you're going to have to make on the day is at a range of just over seven hundred meters. Your target will be moving and the atmospherics will be challenging. So, shall we get to it?"

I let the first one drift for about a hundred meters, then pick it up in the spotter scope. The waves are not high, perhaps half a meter, but the rise and fall of the water is quite enough to make the balloon a hard target. At moments it disappears altogether. Beside me Charlie seems to draw into themself, and becomes almost preternaturally still. Cheek to cheekpiece, eye to eyepiece, finger to trigger.

There's a sharp crack, instantly whipped away on the wind. The balloon continues its dance on the waves.

"I didn't see," I confess. "There wasn't a splash."

"Range four eighty," I announce. "Four ninety. Send it."

"Where did it go?" Ginge asks.

"Don't look for the splash, watch the passage of the bullet. You should be able to follow the trace through the scope."

Charlie fires again, and this time I see it. A tiny, transparent trail, spearing through the crosswind.

"One click to the right," I tell Charlie.

A third crack, and the balloon disappears. I lift my eye from the scope and glimpse a pink balloon bobbing up and down a few meters to the left. There's a faint snapping sound and it vanishes.

"Looks like we've got competition," murmurs Ginge. "Anton reckons that other girlie's a real dead-eye. One of the best shots he's ever worked with."

As the hours slip by, we settle into an efficient routine. Charlie maintains a kind of zen state, their breathing slow, their cheek welded to the cheekpiece, their features wiped of expression. There's just the wind, the snapping of the frayed edge of the tarpaulin, and the quiet glide of the bolt. "Send it," I say, and wait for the whipped-away crack of the shot. I try not to think what we're preparing for. A.338 round is a hefty projectile and at a range of half a kilometer an upper body shot will leave an exit wound the size of a rabbit hole. It's not quite the same thing as popping a balloon.

"Let's see," says Charlie grimly, and Ginge gives me a wink.

We continue to pop them, nevertheless, and so do Oxana and Anton. Ginge starts counting off our hits against theirs, yellow against pink, but there's really nothing in it. At midday we make our way to the canteen for tea and microwaved shepherd's pie, which we eat with plastic spoons. Oxana doesn't speak to me at lunch, or even look in my direction. Instead she hunkers down in her chair next to Anton, eating swiftly and in glowering silence. Nobby and Ginge sit together with their backs to me, comparing notes in an audible undertone. "Yours might be more of a natural marksman," Ginge murmurs. "But long-term I'd back mine. She's --"

"Did what?"

"You wouldn't think they'd care, would you? Being Russian and that."

"Call her 'her.'"

"Ginge, no offense, mate, but you're basically a dwarf. Have you ever thought of doing porn?"

"Call who her?"

"Her. My one."

"You're not supposed to call her 'she.'"

"Fuck knows. This PC lingo does my head in."

"'They' as in both of them, or one of them?"

I sip a cup of tepid tea. I no longer have any idea what I'm doing, or why. Am I training to take part in a political assassination for the Twelve, or working as an undercover agent for Tikhomirov and the FSB? My compass is spinning. The only real allegiance I have is to Oxana. I'm rehearsing a murder to be at her side, and right now she won't even look at me.

"You're a dinosaur, boyo, that's your trouble. You should be woke, like me."

But then, this is how Oxana is. Loving her is a kind of death. I feel hollowed out, as if the core of my being has been eaten away, like an apple by wasps. Is this what she always wanted? To occupy and toxify me? To make me wholly, helplessly hers, and then simply detach herself?

"Bloody hell, I'm not, am I? But you just did."

That night, as Nobby and Ginge exchange banter over the food preparation -- impossible to call it cooking -- and Oxana and I studiously ignore each other, Anton informs us that it's Christmas Day. Pulling a liter bottle of brandy and six paper cups from a locker, he pours a large shot into each and hands them out.

We look at each other awkwardly. Oxana bolts her brandy straight down and holds out her cup for more, which Anton hesitantly gives her. She knocks that back too, and retreats into sullen silence.

Ginge, Charlie and I return to the firing point, and continue until dark. The wind gets angrier as the light goes, and the desolation of the place seeps into my soul, or what's left of it. Charlie, meanwhile, is calm, patiently sending bullets to targets as I call the shots. I learn how to choose the moment to speak, how to align my breathing with Charlie's so that they're exhaling as the balloon is lifted by the swell, and squeezing off the shot as it achieves a millisecond of stillness at the peak of the wave. For all the differences between us, we're a good team.

"I like it with hot chocolate, fifty-fifty. That's how Emma and Celia used to drink it. By itself it's too acid."

"You're very good on that gun."

Charlie sips their brandy and shudders.

"I know." They look at me earnestly. "But it's super-helpful for me, having you spotting. At the moment it's all just sea out there. But when we get to the real firing point you'll see how important your job is. Do you like working with me?"

"Don't you like it?" I ask.

No one moves. Instead they watch open-mouthed as Oxana throws open the steel door of the container and shimmies outside. After a moment I follow her onto the unlit platform deck, where she's still flailing around, her combat clothes flattened to her body by the salt wind. I grab her, terrified she's going to go too close to the edge, and she twists violently in my arms.

The question takes me by surprise. For all Charlie's lethal proficiency, they can be almost childlike at moments. I'm about to answer when Oxana starts to dance. We all watch in amazement as she bops around the tiny space, winding between us with her arms and hips swaying. "Come on, everyone," she sings out. "It's Christmas."

"I heard him, yes."

She starts to speak, but I have to put my ear to her mouth to hear her words against the roar of the gale. "Didn't you hear what Anton said? It's Christmas."

"So don't you want to dance with me?"

"Oxana, stop. Please."

"Not here." I drag her back toward the door. "Come inside."

"Why won't you dance with me?" She stares at me accusingly. "You're so fucking… boring." She screams the word at me but it's plucked away on the wind.

Oxana comes back inside. Ignoring everyone, she takes a disproportionally large helping for herself, and starts shoveling it into her mouth. Her plastic spoon breaks almost immediately, so she throws the pieces on the floor and uses her hands.

I leave her there, her eyes streaming, her hair a crown of spikes around her face. Back in the container, the ping of the microwave announces that the food's ready. It's some kind of curry-based sludge from a packet. I help myself to a portion, but I'm so pissed off that I barely taste it.

There's a moment's silence, then Nobby launches into an anecdote about a woman he met in a club in Brentwood High Street and Charlie starts telling me how they're sure they have a future as a Hollywood film actor, and what do I think, and I pull myself together and say that stranger things have happened.

"Charlie," I say. "It's not going to happen."

Their gaze doesn't flicker. "You really don't know her at all, do you?"

Physically, Charlie would make a good superhero, with their broad, sculpted features, muscled arms and statuesque body. And it may well be that audiences would overlook the homicide charge, the jail time, and the bizarre English accent. The problem, I suspect, would be the actual acting. Subtlety is not Charlie's forte. Witness the way that they're staring with frank, open-mouthed lust at Oxana, who's licking the last of the curry sauce from her paper plate.

The next morning I wake at dawn, my anger dissipated, and make my way to the deck. Around me the sea heaves itself into blue-black peaks and furrows, marbled with foam. The sky is a soft gray, the wind sighs. At the westward end of the platform Nobby and Ginge are having a smoke, roll-ups cupped in their hands.

I've grown cautiously fond of our desolate outpost. Its physical boundaries are hard and unambiguous. For as long as we're here, we're alive. In the unlikely event that we stay that way, do Oxana and I have a future together?

I think that this is why she acts up so obnoxiously, demanding my attention at the same time as rejecting it. She knows that I love her, but she also knows that the usual psychopathic love narrative, the one ending in my obliteration and her savage triumph, will not play out. Instead, it seems, we're moving toward a tentative equilibrium. I know that there's a place where I can't follow her. Where she has always been alone, and always will be. I tell myself that I can live with that. That all I have to do is be patient. Be waiting there with open arms when she returns.

Most relationships with psychopaths come to an end when the psychopath knows that their latest victim has succumbed, and so is no longer of interest. That's not how it is with us. We play with the notion of Oxana as the predator and me as her prey, but that's a game, and both of us know it. Right from the start, when she first looked into my eyes as Villanelle, Oxana recognized something that it would take time for me to understand. That we were fundamentally the same, and that in consequence neither of us could ever fully possess or control the other.

The whole thing is so flagrant, so bare-faced and unapologetic, that for a moment I just stand there. How have I never noticed Charlie's fingers? Meaty, pink and spatulate, like the artisanal pork chipolatas Niko used to buy, and probably still does, from the West Hampstead farmers' market.

This fragile optimism endures precisely until the moment when I walk into the canteen and see Charlie and Oxana sitting there, side by side. They have the sated, sleepy-eyed smugness of people who've been fucking all night. Charlie's fingers are splayed nonchalantly across Oxana's upper thigh, and Oxana's head is tilted proprietorially toward Charlie's.

"Tea, detka?" Charlie asks Oxana, fixing me with eyes the color of wet slate, and I feel my guts churn and my fists bunch uselessly at my side. I want, so badly, to hit them. No, let me amend that. Looking at those big chipolata fingers, and thinking of where they've been, I want to kill them. I want to kill them both.

Oxana shakes her head. She's got her blasé, what's-the-big-deal face on, and watches unblinking as I approach. "Eve," she says. "Hi."

"Perhaps chill?" Charlie suggests, and without even thinking about it I reach for the nearest hard object, which turns out to be an unopened can of baked beans, and hurl it straight at them. The can catches Charlie right between the eyes. They collapse sideways off their chair, slide to the floor, and stay there.

"Fuck you," I tell her, trying to keep my voice steady. "Fuck you both."

Oxana stares at me speechlessly, her gray eyes wide. "We're finished," I tell her, picking up the dented can, slipping a finger through the ring-pull, and shaking the beans into a saucepan. "Don't speak to me. And I hope the two of you are as happy together as pigs in shit."

I bang the saucepan down onto the Calor stove, and light the gas. "You know how emotional we women get."

Anton walks in, and seeing Charlie slumped on the floor, stops dead. "What the fuck's going on?" he asks, incredulous. "You been fighting?"

On the floor Charlie stirs and groans. There's a lump the size of a walnut in the center of their forehead, and a nasty-looking cut. A trail of blood runs into one eyebrow.

Anton looks at them irritably. "So what happened to her?"

"Hit their head. They'll be fine."

"You fucking find it. I want my breakfast, and to be honest I don't care if Charlie lives or dies."

"Sure is," I say. I've never eaten an entire tin of beans before.

Anton sneers. "We're very full of piss and wind all of a sudden, aren't we? What brought that on? Girlfriend decide to start grazing in pastures new?"

"Better be. You're her spotter. Find the first-aid box and get a dressing on that wound."

"Lovely morning for it," says Ginge, as he says every morning.

When Charlie and I meet at the firing point, they've got a bandage around their head and regard me warily. Ginge clearly knows we've had a fight, but tactfully makes no reference to it. Instead, as I make the range and trace calls, my voice emptied of expression, Charlie puts round after round through the sniper rifle. Visibility is good, the sea is calm and there's almost no crosswind. I can't have done Charlie any serious damage because we're soon knocking out the balloon targets at ranges of close to a kilometer.

I ignore him, and when Oxana stands Charlie's chair up, helps them to their feet, and examines the bump, I ignore her too. When the baked beans are ready I take the hot pan and a spoon outside to the deck, where I run into Nobby and Ginge.

"Too easy, is it?"

"I wish there was more wind," Charlie mutters to Ginge.

"No, Eve keeps farting."

Somehow, the day passes. I hold on to my anger, keeping it icy and sharp inside me, and address not one word to Charlie that I don't have to. The sight of their bandage and the livid swelling beneath it consoles me a little. It was a brilliant reflex shot, though I say it myself, and I'm confident that they're not planning any immediate revenge.

"Ah." He leans round and grins at me. "I had a dog with that trouble. Good dog, mind."

Fuck her. Seriously. I'm better off alone.

They don't need to. Their triumph is complete. Why was I not prepared for Oxana to behave so viciously, so unforgivably, when in retrospect it was the most likely thing in the world? I know that she can't resist subjecting my feelings for her to cruel and wounding tests, and it was always probable that sooner or later she'd test them to destruction.

At the end of the day, a hard wind gets up and thin spits of snow come whirling in from the east. Standing on the edge of the platform in my combat clothes, my face pricking with the cold, I feel myself consumed by guilt and sadness. I gaze at the sea for what seems like a very long time, and as the light fades, and the feeling drains from my exposed face and hands, something in the vast indifference of the scene -- some sad, steely note -- possesses me, and my anger becomes determination. I may be empty inside, hollowed and devoured by Oxana, and I may be alone and beyond redemption, but I will not be broken.

I will not be broken.

Fuck them all.