Chapter 56
AMBER
I glare at Dominic across the bed.
‘You… you utter bastard!’ I cry. ‘How could you?’
‘What are you talking about, Amber?’
‘What am I talking about?’ I let out a short, incredulous laugh. ‘I’m talking about the fact that you have an alibi for the night Felix died because you spent it with Simone!’
He goes to speak but I shout over him, even though I’d been determined as I left Demetriou that I wouldn’t let anger get the better of me.
‘I knew you only asked me out because I looked like her. A younger version of her, anyway,’ I add, cattily.
‘How does it feel, knowing you were shagging Felix’s wife the night he was murdered? ’
He opens his mouth again, then his expression falters and his shoulders droop.
‘I’m sorry,’ he mutters.
His apology only fans my fury. I picture it spiralling into the night sky like a firework, exploding above my head with a shower of sparks and a sonic boom.
‘You’re sorry? Sorry for asking me out, or sorry for cheating on me? And another thing. I suppose Nessa told you about Rob Harvey, did she?’
He gives a tiny nod.
‘How dare you tell Demetriou? He probably thinks I make a habit of crying rape. Thanks for nothing.’
‘Please, Amber, don’t be like this. I—’
I throw my hands up in disgust. ‘Whatever you’re about to say, I don’t want to hear it.
I wish I’d never clapped eyes on you. I wish you’d never asked me out.
But most of all, I wish you’d never brought me to this bloody island.
I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight.’ I grab my pyjamas and phone charger.
‘And tomorrow I’m going to catch the first boat out of here. ’
‘You can’t,’ Dominic says heavily. ‘Demetriou has our passports, remember.’
I howl with frustration and stomp from the room, slamming the door behind me.
* * *
I don’t want to see anyone else, so I curl up on the two-seater sofa in Felix’s study, still reeling from Dominic’s betrayal. Not only has he cheated on me with Simone, he’s handed me on a plate to the Greek police for a murder I didn’t commit.
The extent of his deceit takes my breath away.
I wait for the tears but they refuse to come. Perhaps it’s because I knew from the moment we met that it was never meant to be. I was never part of his world and never will be, no matter how much I splurge on linen trousers from John Lewis. I’ll always be the cheap fake to Simone’s designer label.
I close my eyes, longing for sleep and the respite it’ll bring, but my mind is too busy, my heart too bruised, to drift off. Giving it up as a lost cause, I hug my knees to my chest and think about the one possibility I’ve been doing my best to ignore since Felix’s body was found.
Did I kill him?
Already, my memories of the night are fuzzy round the edges, like a child’s scrappy crayon drawing.
Snapshots in time. The fizzing flutes of Kir Royale.
Felix’s mouth on mine. Dominic punching him in the face.
The fight I picked with Dom on the way home.
Storming off into the night. After that, everything’s a blank until I woke up on the beach, confused, alone and very, very hungover.
Felix was out cold when Dominic frogmarched me out of the taverna.
Is it possible he came to and followed us?
Dominic was too angry and I was too drunk to have noticed.
What if he heard our argument and saw me storming off alone?
What if he followed me into the scrub, and forced himself on me a second time?
What if this time I hit back?
I sort through the memories again, taking them apart and examining each one in minute detail.
But though I can recall the exact feeling of Felix’s hot breath on my neck in the taverna, the precise sound of Dominic’s fist hitting flesh, I can’t remember anything that would suggest Felix followed me and I lashed out.
I might have been hammered that night, but I wasn’t blind drunk. I have no memory of attacking Felix because it never happened.
But if I didn’t kill Felix, who did?
Maybe it was a robbery gone wrong. Maybe Barney’s right, and the Russian shipping magnate hired someone to take him out for complaining about Villa Olympus.
Both scenarios are possible but the more I consider them, the more unlikely they seem.
Isn’t the far more credible explanation that someone at Villa Paradiso killed him?
I remember the suppressed rage on Barney’s face the night of Simone’s birthday. The murderous look in his eye as he threw a handful of notes on the table. Felix had just laughed. Was that enough to tip Barney over the edge?
What about Victoria? Barney’s sunk her entire inheritance into Felix’s dodgy property deal. Would she be driven to kill the man who stole her fortune?
I dismiss Willow, who is genuinely distraught by her father’s death, and Maria, who has given no hint that she is anything but loyal to her employer. Which just leaves Simone and Dominic, and they have the perfect alibi, don’t they?
Unless one of them is lying…