Chapter 27 #2
I can’t imagine coming up here, in the dark. But it looks like I did.
‘Yes, Eilish’s boot prints are here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean—’
‘If you were up here last night, you have to tell us right now,’ Becca demands of me. ‘If there’s a reasonable explanation—’
I can’t imagine what that might be. It’s an entirely unreasonable prospect that I hiked up here in some sort of fugue state for any other reason than that I was following Alex. It would be unfeasibly coincidental for us both to have wandered this way.
And the fact that I can’t remember it only makes everything worse. What am I trying to block out this time?
‘It’s her prints from yesterday,’ Jameson tries again feebly. ‘Maybe for some reason, mine got filled in or the snow drifted in such a way that …’
He trails off, realising it’s not working.
‘Maybe someone borrowed my boots,’ I counter, staring directly at Becca. I’m not having this. I’m not standing around to be accused of another murder.
‘You have ridiculously tiny feet,’ Becca snaps. ‘I’m not sure how that would be possible.’
‘Okay, but how do you explain the lack of my footprints all the way up here? There was only one set – Alex’s. We’ve followed them all the way here.’ I’m clutching at straws but I need something to cling to.
Silence falls as everyone considers this. Then Euan clears his throat. ‘Um, I can explain that. Maybe you did the same thing you did the night you got here, when I came to escort you up the track.’
‘What?’ I stare at him and he drops his gaze, apologetic.
Becca leaps on this. ‘What are you talking about, Euan?’
He scrunches his nose, looks at me briefly before studying his feet again.
He says, almost reluctantly, ‘On the way up the track, the snow was uneven, drifting. I knew the route, so Eilish followed me closely. She walked in my footprints to avoid falling into the deeper drifts. Maybe she did that again here. I mean, we didn’t look too closely at Alex’s prints – at the tread. Just the size.’
And Alex’s feet are significantly larger than mine; his prints could easily encompass my own.
My heart thumps even harder. ‘That’s it. I’m going back to the house.’
I turn on my heel and start back down the path, almost running in my eagerness to escape them, slipping on snow-slicked rocks.
I hear Jameson call out to me, but I don’t stop, or turn around.
I press on. All I can think about is getting back to the house and calling for help, so that Alex’s body can be recovered, and I can clear up this mess and get out of here.
I hurry back through the deepening snow, trying to outrun the encroaching storm, and Becca’s accusations.
There are tears on my cheeks, little bursts of warmth against my icy skin.
I wipe them with the back of a mittened hand, but they keep coming.
I’m crying for Alex … and for myself. For the promise of this reunion, not just unfulfilled but snuffed out, destroying something of me in the process.
And ending Alex’s life.
It occurs to me, as I slither and slide my way back down the slopes towards the house, I so badly want to escape, that my haste to return isn’t just about calling the police. I also want to run up to my room and scrub away the evidence of my midnight wanderings.
And if that implies guilt … well, so be it.
Summoning the police might not expedite my ticket out of here, but rather – if Becca starts spouting her outlandish theories – land me in the middle of a murder enquiry. It would be preferable not to be caught with incriminating evidence in my room.
Still, we have to summon help. I’m sure I didn’t harm Alex, and the truth will come out. Innocent people don’t get blamed for murders they didn’t commit.
But I know better than anyone that they do …
And horrific as the thought is, I can’t say with complete certainty that I am innocent.
*
All hell breaks loose at the house. I arrive mere seconds before Jameson, who caught up with me a mile back, but hung back out of some misplaced sense of chivalry – or self-preservation, perhaps. I kick off my boots and slam into the hallway, shouting for Leo.
He and Kimmy are in the sitting room Becca brought me to my first night here.
They’re toasting themselves by the fire, eating crisps and – drinking wine!
Of course they are; it shouldn’t surprise me that they’re refusing to let something so trivial as a missing friend come between them and a nice time.
‘Alex is dead,’ I announce brutally, erupting into the room and shattering the cosy scene.
I must look a sight, with my hair all over the place, my wet socks, my tear-stained face.
Leo’s face drains of colour. I’ve never seen anyone pale like that before, not so fast or so completely.
‘Eilish,’ Jameson reproves gently, coming into the room behind me.
Leo leaps up and grabs the fireplace as if he might be about to fall down again. Kimmy trains a curious gaze on me, and takes a slow sip of her wine. I want to wrench the glass from her fingers and throw it in her face. Cold-hearted bitch.
Then she unfolds herself and goes to Leo’s side, puts a hand on his arm and urges him back into a seat. ‘What happened?’ Leo breathes, eyes fixed on me.
My immediate anger has waned, and I gentle my tone. ‘He fell from the edge into the ravine – at the top of the waterfall.’
‘What was he doing up there?’
I wrap my arms around myself to quell my shaking, shrug helplessly. ‘We don’t know.’
‘Somebody knows something,’ Becca cries, barging into the room. She and Euan bring a blast of outdoors with them – cold, pine-scented air and the waft of snow that just yesterday was so appealing to me. Now I long for the city, for my cosy corner of it. I want my books, my home, my work.
My solitude.
Kimmy frowns, and takes another mouthful of the wine she has no idea how close she came to wearing a few moments ago. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Eilish was up at that waterfall with Alex last night, her boot prints are all over the crime scene.’
‘Crime scene?’ Jameson protests. ‘Come on, Becca. Accident site, surely?’ We didn’t speak all the way down the hill, and I can’t bear to look at him, afraid I might see doubt, finally, in his face.
Becca ignores him. ‘We need your phone, Leo. We have to call the police right now. Did you guys get the Wi-Fi sorted?’
I wouldn’t have thought it possible that Leo could pale further, but he turns the colour of old putty. ‘Um, that might be a problem. After you left, we tried everything we could think of to reboot the Wi-Fi, but it’s not working. There’s no phone line, no internet. And none of us have reception.’
‘I’ll take a look at it,’ Euan says, and some of Leo’s colour returns, albeit in less than attractive fashion.
He says, ‘I know you all think I’m useless, but I actually can switch a fucking router on and off.’
‘Easy,’ Jameson murmurs. ‘No one is saying you’re useless, but we need a phone. If that means every single one of us taking a turn at getting it going, that’s what we’re going to do.’
Leo presses his lips together and nods. He tears a hand through his hair. ‘I can’t believe Alex is … dead.’
Becca is hoarse with anger and grief. ‘I know …’ Then she looks at me and her voice steadies, steel slicing through her tone. ‘Ready to explain what you were doing up there, Eilish?’
I clench my fists. ‘For the last time, I wasn’t up there. I didn’t leave my room, let alone the house last night. I didn’t kill Alex.’
‘It does sound a bit far-fetched,’ Leo says tentatively.
Becca narrows her eyes. ‘Let’s just let the police figure it out.’
Something in me snaps. Anger flushes through my whole body.
I’ve been lured here with promises of bygones being let go, of new beginnings and forgiveness.
I’ve been welcomed up to a point, brought in from the cold.
Becca was happy enough to ply me with wine, turn me into the meek little listener – the acolyte she desired; and desperate enough for entertainment to meddle and match-make, to paint my face and dress me up like a doll.
But at a single glimmer of doubt from Alex, she’s ready to hang me out to dry for not one – but two – murders.
It beggars belief. Except, she has good reason to doubt me.
I have good reason to doubt me. But fear makes me attack.
‘Maybe you should look closer to home, Bex.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Heads swivel between us like tennis spectators. I shrug. I’ve no control over my mouth now. ‘Perhaps your boyfriend here didn’t like being cuckolded by Alex – in a place that’s supposed to be his home.’
‘I’m sorry – what? Are we living in a fucking Jane Austen novel now?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what cuckolded means.’
‘Um, I don’t know what it means,’ Euan says. His face is tense. ‘But I think I might be getting the gist.’ He gives Becca a hard look.
I huff a sigh. ‘She slept with Alex, on our first night here. I saw him sneaking out of her bedroom in the middle of the night. She was wearing a nightie no one in their right mind would wear to bed in a house this cold, and he looked pretty pleased with himself.’
Sharp intakes of breath all round.
Euan stares as Becca, his expression like stone, his ‘What the fuck?’ so raw and exposed it makes me flinch.
Perhaps he really loves her. Becca starts to cry, and Leo swears and reaches for his wineglass, only to misjudge the gap and knock it to the hearth, where it shatters into smithereens, amid a spreading pool that I can’t help but think looks like blood.