Chapter 65
iris
‘What did you just do?’ Amy cried, aghast.
Iris looked at the girl on the ground in front of her. In the uneven light of her flickering torch, they could both see the dark, sticky stain spreading on the sand beneath Ashley’s head.
‘She was going to tell,’ Iris said.
Amy crouched next to the girl, feeling for her pulse. ‘Oh, God, Iris. I think you’ve killed her.’
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ Iris said calmly.
She was neither sorry nor shocked by what she’d done. You did what you must to survive.
To protect those you cared about.
‘Wait!’ Amy exclaimed. ‘She’s still breathing!’
‘Don’t touch her,’ Iris said. ‘You’ll leave traces. DNA.’
‘DNA?’ Amy said. ‘This isn’t a crime scene! I’m not going to leave her to die, Iris! She needs to get to a hospital!’
‘If she lives, she’ll tell,’ Iris said. ‘I don’t just mean about this. I mean about everything.’
Amy stared at her. ‘Iris. You can’t be serious.’
‘This town will destroy us if they find out what you did,’ Iris said.
‘You heard what Ashley said. She’ll tell everyone you locked that door on purpose because she had an affair with your husband.
She’ll say you killed Raylan and Bella and Cassie and all the others just to get at her.
And people will believe her, because they’ll want someone to blame.
They’ll tear you apart. You could end up in jail!
It’ll be the end, not just for you, but for Nicky and Mac, too. Is that really what you want?’
‘Iris, you’re not thinking straight. We can’t just murder—’
‘The only thing that matters is family. You do whatever it takes to protect the people you love. You taught me that.’
‘Not like this!’
‘She could have drowned,’ Iris said. ‘She should have drowned. I’m just putting things right.’
‘I can’t let you do this,’ Amy said. ‘I can’t turn you into a murderer. I’ll take responsibility for tonight. I won’t drag you into it. I’ll—’
‘We’re in this together. You said so yourself. I could have opened that door. I could have gone back. It’s my fault, too.’
‘Don’t let’s make this night any worse,’ Amy pleaded. ‘I don’t want any more deaths on my conscience. And nor do you – I know you don’t. Please, Iris. We have to get help.’
Iris turned and waded into the lake, and then threw the rock as far as she could into the water. It wasn’t far, but who’d be looking for one more stone in a lake filled with them?
‘I should have hit her harder,’ she said, as she came out of the water.
‘Ashley didn’t see you. She won’t have known what hit her. Literally,’ Amy added. ‘We’ll say we found her like this. No one ever needs to know what really happened. Come on, Iris. This isn’t who you are.’
Iris knew there was no point arguing with her sister when she’d made up her mind. ‘Fine.’
‘Stay with her,’ Amy said. ‘I’ll go and get help.’
‘Sure you trust me alone with her?’
Amy climbed awkwardly to her feet. ‘If we can’t trust each other, we can’t trust anyone,’ she said.
Iris sat down beside the girl as Amy ran back down the beach. Ashley still hadn’t moved; with any luck, she’d have stopped breathing by the time her sister came back with help.
Iris was surprised how few qualms she’d had, and how little remorse she felt now. Maybe Amy was right, and she wasn’t thinking straight. This night had been so traumatic, her moral compass could no longer find true north.
Or perhaps she’d always had this darkness within her.
Everyone is a murderer, her mother had once said, when they’d been watching a true crime show on Netflix together. All it takes is a good reason or a bad day.
Well, she’d had both.
She hadn’t attacked Ashley with a rock to save Amy.
She’d done it for Finn.
In those last moments on the Lady before Finn had been swept away from her, he’d told her his secret, a truth so horrific she still hadn’t wrapped her mind around it.
If something happens to me, I need you to promise you’ll fix this.
She couldn’t fix it for him.
But she could make sure no one else ever found out.
Secrets only remained secrets until you made someone swear never to reveal them. Finn had confided in Ashley, and sooner or later, the girl wouldn’t be able to resist telling someone else.
So Iris had stopped her.
She hadn’t figured out what to do about Nicky yet. Maybe he’d keep Finn’s secret. But what if he told Amy? She knew her sister. She wouldn’t just let it go. She’d want to do the right thing, which would destroy Finn’s life.
She heard Amy call her name. Two paramedics were running along the sand with her sister. One knelt beside Ashley and began to assess her, quickly and efficiently, as Iris moved out of the way.
‘OK, Patrick. Eyes not opening, no verbal response, flexes to pain, GCS five,’ he said. ‘Pass me an airway.’
The other man handed him a short, thick, curved plastic tube. The medic inserted it into Ashley’s mouth to keep her tongue out of the way and allow air to pass between her lips. ‘Either of you two the mother?’
‘No. Her mother’s back at the marina,’ Amy said. ‘Jenna. She was picked up by a rescue boat an hour ago. Susan Pierce is locating her now.’
‘Have her meet us at the hospital,’ the medic said. ‘She may want to bring another family member with her.’
‘We should get back to the marina,’ Amy said to Iris.
‘Have they found the boys?’
‘No. They’ve been searching the lake for hours now. If they’re still in the water, they should have found them.’ She turned and shone her flashlight along the beach. ‘People have been out checking the shoreline for several miles on both sides of the marina, but there’s no sign of either of them.’
‘But they’re still looking, right? The boys could have come ashore further along—’
‘They’re still looking,’ Amy said quickly. ‘We’re not giving up hope.’
At the marina, the crowd of parents had thinned considerably; those whose children had been found safe and well had taken them home, where they’d watch them as they slept every night for weeks, unwilling to let them out of their sight, even for a moment.
There were others, Iris knew, who’d been taken to the cove around the headland. Parents whose children would never come home again.
The rest – Iris and Amy among them – could do nothing but wait.
She knew she should tell Amy she’d found Nicky. She hadn’t been able to locate Mac, and Nicky clearly wasn’t on the shore where she’d left him, or someone else would have found him by now. He’d turn up soon; she was sure of it. And if he didn’t, she’d tell Amy she’d found him.
Just as soon as she knew Finn was safe.
She didn’t want to be alone with the dread that was worming its way through her entrails. In a way that made no sense, knowing her sister was experiencing the same desperate fear somehow made hers a little easier to bear. They needed to be in this together.
She refused to admit, even to herself, that her son and his secret would be safer if Nicky just . . . disappeared.