CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I can’t be-lieve it.”
Catalina stared at the open news page on her iPad, which was propped up on a pale wooden cook-book stand. Sun-light spilled through the win-dow in golden swathes, il-lu-mi-nat-ing her curls with a bur-nished warmth. It felt wrong, some-how. Shouldn’t it be dark and dreary out-side? Shake-speare was a big fan of pa-thetic fal-lacy.
I glanced at her screen and swal-lowed hard:
Ac-tor and Phi-lan-thropist Or-lagh Cam-ran Found Dead
“Didn’t you have a men-tor-ing ses-sion with her last night?” she asked, cup-ping both hands around a steam-ing mug of car-damom tea.
Maisie’s ears vis-i-bly pricked up. She was sit-ting on the sofa in the liv-ing area, her lap-top on her knee as she typed up Ked-die’s au-di-ence es-say at the last minute. I dimly re-mem-bered my own draft was still raw and unedited.
Nod-ding to Catalina, I padded over to the fridge. “I was the one who found her.”
I sti-fled a yawn. I’d slept ter-ri-bly, for ob-vi-ous rea-sons.
“Oh my god, that’s so trau-matic.” Catalina turned the ra-dio on, catch-ing the tail end of an eight-ies rock banger. It felt al-most com-i-cally in-con-gru-ous with the sit-u-a-tion. “Are you okay?”
I stared at the con-tents of the fridge. De-spite the deep crater of hunger in my stom-ach, none of the food held any ap-peal. Not the creamy straw-berry yo-gurt, nor the smoked ba-con and sausages, nor the per-fectly ripe av-o-ca-dos with tiny cherry toma-toes. I wanted to eat it all, wanted to sa-vor each and ev-ery mouth-ful, and yet some-thing guilt-shaped was stop-ping me. I tried to tell my-self it was the sight of Cam-ran’s corpse, but deep down I wor-ried that the de-mon in my brain had an even tighter hold on me than I feared.
Catalina sipped at her tea with a sigh. “Was she … did she—”
“How did it hap-pen?” Maisie asked, clearly dis-miss-ing any dis-like she had for me in the search of first-hand gos-sip.
De-spite ev-ery-thing that had hap-pened, I was still hurt about the way she’d spo-ken to me back in the Cos-tumery. I’d tried so hard to make her feel in-cluded, to be warm to-ward her, to make sure she never had to feel as alien-ated as I so of-ten did. But in-stead she’d es-sen-tially called me a tal-ent-less shrew and swanned off to be-friend my mor-tal en-emy.
I had to be care-ful around her. I had to be pre-pared that what-ever I said in front of her would likely make it straight back to Davina.
“I re-ally don’t know,” I replied vaguely.
“Sui-cide?” One of her pointed red nails was poised over the space bar.
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s so sad.” Catalina would have made a good priest, I thought. Her tone was the per-fect pitch of rev-er-ent and ele-giac. “She was such a queen.”
“She re-ally was,” I agreed, my voice seem-ing far away. My nerves were frayed, my thoughts fre-netic, an un-der-cur-rent of fear cours-ing through me. Us-ing the past tense to talk about Or-lagh al-ready felt wrong.
Catalina scrolled down the news ar-ti-cle with her fore-fin-ger, scan-ning the text with a well-prac-ticed schol-arly speed. “I dunno, though. The vibes are a lit-tle off with all this. Like, it’s kind of weird how no-body knows how old she ac-tu-ally was.”
“She was adopted, ap-par-ently,” said Maisie. “Her birth cer-tifi-cate had been lost, and she had no liv-ing rel-a-tives. Her agent was her next of kin, I heard. That’s who an-nounced it to the press.”
I was barely lis-ten-ing. Just choose some-thing to eat, I in-wardly screamed at my-self. In the light of ev-ery-thing that had just hap-pened, what did it even mat-ter?
Yet the de-mon did not loose its grip for some-thing as petty as per-spec-tive.
Or-lagh’s words echoed in my mind.
And so your self-star-va-tion is about con-trol.
Was she right? Was this ex-er-cise in need-less self-dis-ci-pline the vice I leaned on when ev-ery-thing else spi-raled out of con-trol?
Cof-fee. I’d start with cof-fee. Cof-fee was safe.
I closed the fridge. There was a note stuck to the out-side of the fridge, hand-writ-ten in block cap-i-tals on a torn-out sheet of lined pa-per: PLEASE STOP DRINK-ING MY OAT MILK!! Maisie was the only one who drank oat milk. I couldn’t imag-ine car-ni-vore Fraser tak-ing a cheeky swig, nor could I imag-ine Catalina steal-ing lit-er-ally any-thing from any-one. Un-less I’d been sleep-drink-ing, which was a dis-tinct pos-si-bil-ity, Maisie was sim-ply hal-lu-ci-nat-ing drama.
“Just so sad,” Catalina mur-mured again. “All that money and fame, but no-body be-side you when you pass.”
“She seemed happy enough,” I replied, fill-ing the pale turquoise ket-tle over the sink.
“On the out-side, maybe. But you can never re-ally know how lonely a per-son is.”
“Some-times I think I could never see an-other liv-ing soul again and I’d be per-fectly happy,” I said, but I sensed as I said it that there was an el-e-ment of per-for-mance to the state-ment. “No of-fense,” I added with a smile. “I’m just good alone. I like my own com-pany.”
Catalina nod-ded, look-ing out of the win-dow and over the Great Lawn. The grass shone with dew. “For me, hap-pi-ness is only real when it’s shared. But ev-ery-one’s dif-fer-ent, I guess. Did you have fun with Davina last night, Maisie?”
“Yeah, what did you get up to?” I asked, sud-denly re-mem-ber-ing through my hunger-daze the fact that she’d lied about be-ing with Davina.
Maisie stilled, al-most im-per-cep-ti-bly, then slurped iced cof-fee from a metal-lic straw that clinked on her teeth. “I helped her un-pack.” She didn’t look up at us, only the com-puter screen. “She’s only just got-ten into her stu-dent flat.”
“How long were you out for?” I tried to keep my tone as ca-sual as pos-si-ble, but I felt men-tally alert as a hawk. If I could add some speci-ficity to the lie, I could de-ter-mine just how sus-pi-cious it was.
“Erm, pretty much the whole night? Like five till mid-night. Why?”
My heart pounded at the trap I’d set. I was with Davina in Or-lagh’s of-fice just af-ter seven.
“Just won-der-ing.” I smiled, but she was now fu-ri-ously fo-cused on her lap-top, the slight-est spots of pink ap-pear-ing on her cheek-bones.
I didn’t un-der-stand Maisie’s swift and un-shake-able loy-alty to Davina. If it were any of us, she’d be glee-fully gos-sip-ing about how we’d asked her to cover for us—and spec-u-lat-ing about what dark deeds we were com-mit-ting in-stead. Yet Davina had a kind of cruel mag-netism to her, like a cult leader you wanted so badly to im-press. I could hardly blame Maisie for be-ing sucked in.
“Do you want to in-vite Davina to have lunch with us?” Catalina asked.
Fraser, who had en-tered the kitchen with a sleepy stretch, yawned.
“Are we talk-ing about Davina Burns? Man, she’d get it.”
Maisie’s gaze snapped up. Fraser wore only a pair of gray cot-ton striped pa-jama bot-toms, and was oth-er-wise shirt-less. Maisie flushed even fur-ther at the sight of his bare, mus-cled torso, be-fore rolling her eyes.
“That’s beau-ti-ful, Fraser. Is it Shake-speare?”
I couldn’t help it. I chuck-led at her joke.
Fraser swished a car-ton of cloudy ap-ple juice, then swigged it straight from the top. “Shame about Cam-ran,” he said, nod-ding to-ward Catalina’s screen. “Golden lads and girls all must, / As chim-ney-sweep-ers, come to dust. Happy now, Maze?”
“Ec-static,” Maisie said dryly, but there was a light glow to her. Was it the nick-name? The fact I’d laughed at her joke? Or sim-ply Fraser’s naked torso?
Speak-ing of which, his chest looked re-cently waxed, and there was a sub-tle sheen to his skin, like the rem-nants of body glit-ter. And his lips were stained slightly darker than usual, as though he’d scrubbed hard at lip-stick that wouldn’t shift. Surely there hadn’t been two cos-tume par-ties in a row?
“What did you get up to last night, Fraser?” I asked, gen-uinely cu-ri-ous.
“Oh, erm … I was in the li-brary.” He looked a lit-tle shifty. “Study-ing. Ob-vi-ously.”
Catalina looked up from the new fan-tasy map she had started sketch-ing on a loose piece of printer pa-per. “Were you? I was there all night. I didn’t see you.”
Why were two thirds of my room-mates ly-ing about their where-abouts?
“It’s a big li-brary, hey.” Fraser tossed the empty ap-ple juice car-ton at the re-cy-cling bin and missed en-tirely. He didn’t bother pick-ing it up, just made one of his trade-mark mock salutes. “Any-way. Bye.”
He left the kitchen a lit-tle faster than he usu-ally would.
Strange hap-pen-ings upon strange hap-pen-ings.
Drain-ing my cof-fee in one rav-en-ous go, I took a seat at the break-fast bar op-po-site Catalina. She looked up briefly be-fore doo-dling some coastal is-lands off her main con-ti-nent. But a few sec-onds later, she frowned and glanced back up at me again, as though just reg-is-ter-ing what she’d seen.
“What’s that on your neck, Penny?”
My hand went to the spot on my throat she was star-ing at. “I don’t know, what is it?”
“It’s like … a pur-ple mark. It looks like a cut, al-most.”
A cool kind of dread twisted in my guts long be-fore my brain caught up.
Word-lessly I leaped down from the stool and sprinted back to my bed-room, starry-eyed and ter-ri-fied.
My bed-room door banged shut be-hind me as I stood in front of the mir-ror over my sink, pray-ing that what I was see-ing was not re-ally what I was see-ing.
But it was.
An inch-long smooth pur-ple wound, a hair’s breadth away from my jugu-lar.
The ex-act same hue and tex-ture as the marks I had found all over Or-lagh.
No.
It felt like the walls of my life were crum-bling to the ground.
The face-less hand had marred me too. As if to say: I could’ve killed you, but I didn’t.
My heart slammed in my rib cage as I tapped my phone screen.
A dozen missed calls from my mum. She’d ob-vi-ously seen the news.
I called her back, but she didn’t pick up.
As her voice-mail kicked in, I blurted out:
“Mum? I’m com-ing home. We need to talk.”