The football cut out mid-pass. The TV above the bar flashed red, and a graphic punched through the game in bold white letters:

BE ALERT — A DANGEROUS BODY HOPPER IS ON THE LOOSE.

The screen beeped and the text changed.

THE HOPPER IS BELIEVED TO BE IN YOUR AREA. DO NOT ENGAGE WITH ANYONE DISPLAYING SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOUR.

It cycled between the two pages for about a minute. Then the football came back on and the bar let it go. Someone down at the end of the bar asked what a body hopper even was. Someone else said it was the same shit they'd run last month, just another scare tactic to keep people indoors. A third bloke said he'd happily ‘hop’ into his missus for an afternoon, and got a laugh, and that was the end of it. The match resumed. The conversations resumed with it.

From the shadow of a corner booth, a young man in a prison officer's uniform took a long swig of his ice-cold Corona and lime. He'd told the bartender he was straight off shift. He watched the last of the red graphic slide away, and kept staring at the screen long after the football had swallowed it whole.

"Bollocks," he muttered, took a final long swig and set down the empty bottle.

The man stood, threw some cash on the bar, waved to the bartender and then made his way out into the blazing tropical heat.

Fuck this place, I’ll be glad to see the back of it. So much for my dream holiday.

Leaving the bar and heading down the promenade he spotted a beautiful young woman sat amongst a group of other young women, clearly on a ‘girls trip’, on the beach. The man smiled, cracked his knuckles and took a seat a short distance away from the group to observe.

She was something to behold. Short, maybe five-three, with jet black hair cut into a sharp little bob that sat at her shoulders and stuck to the sweat at her neck. Her figure was slim everywhere it should be and generous everywhere it counted. Hips that flared out from a narrow waist and rolled into a heart-shaped rear, round and high and barely covered by the polka dot bikini bottoms, which rode up a little further every time she shifted on her towel. When one of her friends said …