Chapter 1
Fireworks burst outside my window, an explosion of colour like shattered stained glass.
Sparks flare and flame against the dark crenelations of the castle and smoke hangs in the air.
On TV, a countdown begins: scenes shifting from the studio anchor to Hogmanay revellers in towns across Scotland, to the Edinburgh street party, the castle, the gleaming barrel of Mons Meg.
I can hear the celebrations from my flat, but I have no desire to be out there, to be part of it. I drink a glass of the wine I treated myself to tonight, and listen to the screaming festivities, the canon’s shuddering boom. I switch off the television – Hogmanay broadcasting is beyond depressing.
I wonder if anything will truly change this year. It’s just numbers at this point.
On the coffee table sits the three-quarter-full wine bottle, my laptop, and the garishly covered psychological thriller I’ve been trying to get into for days.
It was a Christmas present from my brother, Mitch, who has no idea about my reading tastes.
He’s not the first person to try to broaden my literary horizons – though I suspect that wasn’t his intention; more likely he picked it up at the supermarket: a bargain, no thought required.
The first person to give a care about what I read is long gone; taking her penchant for YA, high fantasy and obscure poetry with her. Along with her verve and lust for life.
And a piece of me too.
Gone. Such an inadequate word for what happens when someone so brilliant dies suddenly. This summer it will be ten years since Genevieve drowned.
A decade! It hardly seems possible that so much time has passed. I knew her for just ten months, and I’ve been without her for ten years.
I had intended to spend this evening working on the manuscript of the biography of a killer I’ve been commissioned to write.
As a forensic psychologist I love nothing more than delving into the knotty minds of the imprisoned, psychopathic and criminally insane, and I’ve always hankered to write beyond the scholarly articles only a niche group of people will ever read.
You’d be forgiven for thinking I’d love a good psych thriller, but compared to the horrible reality I face on a daily basis, that sort of fiction always falls short.
For once, I admit defeat on the work front – I can’t concentrate. Though I don’t get excited about the turning of the year, I’m not usually maudlin about it either. But it’s hitting different this year.
Something feels … off.
My mood is melancholy. Maybe it’s the significance of that decade: a round, neat passage of time that will catapult the rest of us into our thirties … without her.
And maybe it’s the unfinished business of not understanding what happened to her, to all of us, that night.
I don’t think about Gen or the others often, but she’s always there. In a recessed corner of my mind. Any chain of thought, left unchecked, can drag me back. I make it a rule to set a watch on my mind, keep the routes blocked.
I suppose if I’d thought about it then, I’d have assumed that my life would be vastly different ten years on.
That it would … mean more. I love my job – a combination of teaching, researching, profiling, and now writing – and I have a nice flat on one of the city’s quaint, historic vennels.
But I’m starting to wonder if it’s enough, if a life without people in it can ever be enough.
I turn my gaze to the ridges of the castle rock, the rooftops, the clutter of chimneys, and sip my wine. I feel a strange hollowness when I realise that all over the city, the country, the world, people are spending tonight with loved ones: friends, family, partners.
I split up with my boyfriend, Connor, a month ago.
We were together for three years and since it ended, I’ve sunk deeper into solitude, plunged myself into my work in a way that some people might think is unhealthy – Mitch for one.
I prefer to give him little opportunity to expound on that subject, or any other.
My brother and I have a relationship that can best be described as complicated.
Do I miss Connor? Is that it – the root of my mood tonight?
I don’t think so. I miss the idea of him, the rhythms of our joined lives – getting lattes and baguettes at the bakery on the corner on a Saturday morning, drinking nice wine and cooking up a storm in my pretty kitchen, hiking up Arthur’s Seat or the Pentlands of a weekend …
I miss having someone; I miss mattering to someone.
My mother’s been buried in her Highland grave for eleven years, and my father, cemented in grief and the old ways, is wedded to his farm. My brother shares my city, but not my life, beyond the odd duty dinner and awkward phone call – and now, apparently, a generic, supermarket gift at Christmas.
But I’m being uncharitable – there was, perhaps, more thought put into the book than I credit Mitch with. More, certainly, than the John Lewis voucher I gave him in return.
I shake my head as though I can shake off the gloom.
It must be this time of year after all – the barrier between past and present is flimsy tonight.
Memories rise like weeds in a cold Scottish loch, making me nostalgic for a time that never was.
I miss Mum, miss the years we were cheated out of.
I miss my friends – real friendships, not the arms-length acquaintances I meet for coffee or a cocktail sometimes, but proper, do-or-die friends, like the ones I loved a lifetime ago at St Andrews.
The ones I left behind.
Restless, I pad through the archway into the hall, wineglass cradled against my chest, and examine the photographs on the sideboard.
There are three: a smiling photo of Mum with her straggly, grey-blonde hair and kind eyes; a rare picture of Dad grinning awkwardly at the camera with his arm around Mitch; a summery snap of Gen …
I pick that one up. It was taken on the beach where she died – not that night but another, one of many. Another party, another bonfire, a different ending.
I’m distracted from the backward tug of my thoughts by a sound at the door – footsteps on the landing. A shadow blocks the light beneath the door. Startled, I pause, waiting for the knock. Perhaps a well-intentioned first-footer …
But who? Perhaps I wouldn’t mind if it were the cute guy from upstairs who smiled at me last week, while we were both putting our bins out, or the tall detective who asked me for a date before Christmas after I was called in on a case – I haven’t messaged him back now I think about it.
More likely it’s Mrs McCafferty from the garden flat, eighty if she’s a day but with a better social life than me. Actually, scratch that – there’s no way Mrs Mac doesn’t have Hogmanay plans …
Not Connor, that’s definitely over and done with. The only other possibility is my little brother, but Mitch already sent a fake-cheer, drunkish message earlier:
Happy New Year, big sis! Have a good one.
Dad would never leave the farm to drive all this way. He’ll have been in bed for hours, anyway, he doesn’t stay up for the bells these days. I glance down at the wiry welcome mat where I wipe off the dirt of the city each evening.
An envelope lies there, shoved beneath the doorframe.
Surprised, I stoop, pick it up, see my name handwritten. No postal mark, no address. Just Eils in spiky blue ink on cheap paper.
No one’s called me Eils in a decade.
I hear the thump of retreating footsteps as I turn the envelope over: flap tucked in rather than sealed, like my visitor was in a hurry.
I set my wineglass on the hall table beside the picture of Gen, and slip my thumb beneath the edge, pulling the flap free with a whisper like the turning of a page. Like the start of something.
I pull out a photograph and stare at it, heart galloping.
We look so young – impossibly, beautifully young: bright eyes and dreamy smiles, kilts and floaty dresses and sleek Prince Charlie jackets.
Champagne flutes and creamy pints of Guinness and glossed lips.
I can almost smell the perfume and aftershave reek.
The Yule Ball.
St Andrews.
I remember it vividly: the skirl of music and swish of skirts, the clamp of sweaty skin on my arm as I spun from partner to partner. The camaraderie as my friends surrounded me.
There were six of us:
Jameson, Alex, Leo. Becca, Genevieve and me.
A tear trails down my cheek, and I backhand it absently.
In the photo, we’re dressed to impress, loving life.
We stare into the camera, guileless and unafraid – except for Jameson and Gen, both of whom are looking sideways at me, anchored between them, as though I’m the centre of their worlds.
A spear of pain finds a chink in my armour.
I didn’t just lose Gen on West Sands that seething summer’s night, I lost everything: my friends, my love, myself.
I turn the photo over and read the scratchy handwriting:
Nearly ten years and not a day goes by that I don’t miss her … Miss you too.
Galvanised by the nostalgic wrench of the past, I open the door.
No one’s there. Barefoot, I sprint down the first flight and lean out over the balustrade, peering downward into the Fibonacci stone spiral of the stairwell.
I catch a flicker of movement below and take the next flight swiftly, the legs of my jeans flapping.
He’s waiting for me on the landing, a guilty, goofy grin on his face. I’m only a little disappointed that it’s him and not him – though my first clue was the handwriting.
It was never going to be Jameson.
‘Alex!’ I cry, stopping short of throwing my arms impulsively around the boy on my stairs – a boy no longer but a man of nearly thirty. He has the same piercing eyes and heavy brows, the same curly brown hair.
He spreads his arms wide. ‘I bottled it, Eils. Was gonnae first-foot you, but …’ he tails off, shrugs his shoulders.
I wonder if he’s everything I remember: gallus, cocky and intense.
He’s carrying a whisky bottle and looking at me like there’s no question I’ll invite him into my flat, into my life.
I study him – new lines at the corners of his eyes, a slight glassiness in his expression, a hectic air. He’s already been drinking, I think. But then, so have I. It’s Hogmanay. ‘Come in,’ I say, before I can change my mind.
What am I doing?
Inviting in the past that stalks me like a predator and won’t let go.
‘You can have a drink with me.’ I nod at the liquor sloshing in his bottle and smile. ‘I’m not touching that vile stuff, I’ll have wine. But you can please yourself.’
He feigns hurt, flashes a grin. ‘This is decent whisky, I’ll have you know, Eilish Culpeper.’
‘There’s no such thing,’ I say with a laugh that feels natural. God, but it feels good to laugh with him. ‘Come on. You’ve made it this far.’
I’m still clutching the photograph bearing our shining, gorgeous faces, and it gives me courage. I glance over my shoulder as I ascend the stairs again, checking that Alex is following – he is. ‘Don’t chicken out on me now.’
The words are meant for me as much as him.