Sadie
“Genevieve?”
There’s no reply. She can hear Nazleen’s and Zach’s voices calling out the same name on the floor below, and it gives her a moderate amount of reassurance. Gently, she pushes open the door and feels around on the wall for a light switch; her fingers find it easily.
“Genevieve?” she murmurs. “Where are you?” But the room remains silent, and there’s no obvious hiding place. Still feeling uneasy, she hurries back down the spiral staircase.
Zach grumbles at him. “I said I’d come, didn’t I? I just don’t feel very well . . .”
Nazleen tightens her dressing gown belt and waits for Sadie to answer.
“What have you found?” Sadie asks, but Joe merely indicates the front door. They leave Zach and Nazleen behind, and they make their way back out into the freezing darkness.
“Come on, what is it?” she says. They crunch across the gravel. Joe’s torch gives a much broader, brighter beam, but for some reason it makes Sadie feel more rather than less anxious.
Joe shakes his head. “You have a look first. See what you think.”
Her heart pounds as they approach the dock for a second time. The reeds are a ghostly silver, swaying and rustling, as if trying to escape the darkness behind them. The black surface of the lake rumples gently like oil. A sudden flurry to one side makes her cry out.
“Hey.” Joe touches her arm briefly. “It’s just a bird. We woke it up, that’s all.” He swings the torch beam away from the dock to the frosty grass beside it, and he slides the light left and right. “What do you make of these?”
At first, Sadie can’t see anything but white-tinged grass. She peers closer. Actually, there is something—a faint trail of impressions—two different sizes of indentations in the frost, half of them round-cornered triangles and half of them small circles. She straightens slowly.
“You think they’re Genevieve’s footprints?”
Joe nods and swings the beam away in the direction of the driveway. “High heels, don’t you think? And they join the drive just over there. And there’re no other tracks next to them.”
“Except yours.” Sadie blinks at him. “Presumably? If you followed the trail . . .”
“Well, yes, I meant—”
Sadie turns toward the house and gazes at the yellow glow seeping around the drawing room and dining room curtains. She’s not sure she can trust anybody here. But sometimes you have to trust somebody.
“Mrs. Shrew thinks Genevieve was planning to walk to the village. To stay at the B and B instead.”
“Yeah, Zach told me.” Joe rubs his mouth. “I suppose that must be what she did, then.”
Sadie peers at him in the gloom. “Do you know her? Mrs. Shrew.”
He takes his time replying. “I used to, when I was young. I grew up round here.”
Sadie considers this. Mrs. Shrew said she’d traveled a long way to get here this evening, but it doesn’t surprise Sadie that she, too, used to be local—it fits, somehow, with her uptight behavior and reactions tonight.
“Do you trust her?” Sadie asks. “She just seems a bit . . .”
He frowns, as though trying to weigh up the evidence to give Sadie a fair answer. “I feel sorry for her, mainly. And I don’t trust her, particularly, no. But equally—I can’t see why she’d lie about this.”
Sadie hates feeling so powerless; they ought to be doing something.
“Well, we can’t phone anyone, can we? And we don’t have a car.
Do you think one of us should walk to the B and B to check that Genevieve got there okay?
” She tries to suppress a sudden conviction that the company won’t pay her if she ends up following Genevieve into the village and spending the night at the B and B.
And all because the selfish young woman couldn’t be bothered to let them know what she was planning to do.
But Joe doesn’t need any more of a hint. “I’ll go. I know the route.”
“No!” Sadie grabs his sleeve. “Actually, no, you’re the only one here I can rely on.
You can’t leave me with that lot.” She jerks her head toward the house, picturing the four remaining guests—self-centered Everett, arrogant Mrs. Shrew, cowardly Zach, and indecisive Nazleen.
And how would they describe me? she thinks, cringing inwardly.
A pathetic, desperate actor who puts money before her own safety?
Joe searches her expression in the torchlight, frowning, and she waits for him to reassure her, to tell her she’s overreacting. But instead, he tilts his head as if more confused than ever.
“You know, it’s been niggling at me all evening,” he says. “You really do remind me of someone. Do you mind me asking—what’s your mother’s name?”