Chapter 31
We eat to fuel ourselves rather than with any sense of pleasure. Euan and Jameson are talking about what to do, and Jameson won’t look at me after I bolted from the library. I’m shaky from that last plunge into the memories of that night, trying to make sense of it.
Did someone threaten me? Who?
Did I witness something I shouldn’t have?
Am I innocent, after all?
‘We’ll go out at first light,’ Euan says. ‘We’ll head across the hills to the village – it’s a shorter route as the crow flies. It’ll be hard, but we can make it. We’ll knock doors and ask to borrow a phone.’
I can’t imagine how we’re going to pass the long hours until then and from the expressions on the faces around the table, nor can the others. My head aches with lack of sleep, stress, the confusion and grief of the past twenty-four hours.
Becca swallows a sob. ‘Are you sure we can’t bring Alex back here tonight—’
Euan covers her hand with his. ‘We can’t, babe. Not in this weather. I’m sorry.’
She nods, her breathing ragged. ‘So what do we do in the meantime?’
Euan’s jaw tightens. ‘I’m going to look for the phones. You coming?’
Becca nods and rubs at her tired eyes. ‘I don’t understand how our phones could just disappear like that …’
Leo chimes in looking grim. He’s still drinking. ‘They obviously couldn’t. Someone’s messing with us.’
Jameson gestures around the table. ‘There’s only us here. Which means one of us took the phones and disposed of them or hid them somewhere. Why?’
Kimmy tucks hair behind her ears, her sharp nails sparkling in the LED lights. ‘Presumably someone doesn’t want us to be able to contact the police.’
I shiver.
‘Don’t start all that again,’ Jameson warns. His hand moves towards mine, but he thinks better of it and tucks his beneath the table.
‘I don’t like this,’ Leo says. ‘Everyone suspicious of everyone else. It’s horrible.’
It’s on the tip of my tongue to argue that he’s not the one who’s twice been accused of murder.
‘It’s inevitable,’ Kimmy says. ‘Four phones don’t just wander off, and the SIM card didn’t remove itself from yours. Someone did that.’
Becca presses a hand to her mouth, holding back another sob. Euan looks at her with concern. ‘You could take one of your mother’s sleeping tablets, babe, and rest. There’s nothing to be done until morning.’
Becca shakes her head. ‘No, I want to stay sharp. If I take a tablet I’ll be out of it.’
He gets up, reaches out a hand to her. ‘Come on, then, let’s start having a look around.’
Leo tugs at his hair once they’ve left. ‘This is mental.’ He looks at Jameson. ‘Fancy a game of pool, mate – take our minds off everything?’
Kimmy scoffs and inspects her nails again, but says nothing. Leo side-eyes her. You could cut the tension between them with a knife.
‘Why not,’ Jameson says, surprising me. ‘But I think we should all stick together; no one should go off on their own.’
I remember Leo’s bad taste joke earlier: And then there were none.
Does Jameson think we’re in danger?
I don’t want to watch their game of pool, but I don’t fancy hanging out with Kimmy, and I don’t want to be alone.
I can’t be. That’s when my mind starts playing tricks on me, when I’m on my own with my thoughts …
We troop upstairs to the games room, which is chilly despite a dwindling fire still burning in the library grate and the connecting door between the rooms standing open.
I curl up in a leather armchair and pull a blanket around me.
Kimmy sits in the window seat, spine straight, gaze distant, resting her elbows on her kneecaps.
Leo racks up the balls, and Jameson chalks his cue with little appetite for the game.
They start to play. The cracks and thuds of the balls go through me, and I startle at every sound.
My nerves are jumping, and I’m rapidly descending into a state of despair, my thoughts disordered, frantic.
I hang on by my fingertips, wondering how much longer I can keep going …
What if I lose it completely, blurt it all out – the periods of amnesia and fragmented memory, then and now. The wet clothes, footprints, the phone and bow tie …
Neither Leo nor Jameson have their hearts in the game.
They go through the motions, Leo trying to gee things up with exclamations of victory any time he plays a halfway decent shot.
Jameson plays with silent, brutal efficiency.
He wins easily, tosses his pool cue on the table and lounges in a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace from me.
Kimmy gets up and paces round the table like a cat.
She hoists herself up on the end of the pool table and crosses her legs, one shiny, black shoe dangling.
I can tell she’s about to start on me again before she opens her mouth.
‘Eilish … I can’t help but think we need to return to the matter of your wet clothes that night … you still haven’t explained that.’
I pull the sleeves of my jumper down over my hands. Leo’s head snaps up and he frowns at Kimmy, but says nothing. Jameson turns to look at me, a flicker of curiosity in his gaze.
What do I say?
I can’t tell them I don’t remember that either. I think of the figure at my back on the edge of the dune, wonder what it means.
I open my mouth, but no words come. I’m scared to speak — scared not only of their accusations now, but also of the possibility that someone knows I saw something that night. Someone doesn’t want me to remember.
There’s a charged silence – Kimmy staring at me with that gleam in her eyes, Leo prowling around the pool table, Jameson’s gaze scalding the side of my face.
‘It’s interesting to me that you haven’t explained it.’
‘Kimmy, I thought we were past making mindless accusations,’ Jameson says, and Kimmy turns on him, eyes narrowing.
‘Protesting too much, Jameson? Maybe we should be shifting our attention to you.’
Jameson doesn’t dignify this with a response. He’s losing his temper in the slow-burn way he seldom does. Anger threads his voice. ‘How watertight is your alibi for that night, huh? Seems to me your motive is the strongest of all.’
‘Pretty watertight,’ Kimmy smirks.
‘I already told you,’ Leo says. ‘She flew to America the week before the party.’
‘Can anyone corroborate that?’
‘Yes,’ Kimmy says calmly. ‘Lots of people. Including the airline.’
I catch her eye and shiver. Again I realise that she’s enjoying this drama.
Kimmy and Jameson are glaring at each other, the air in the games room simmering with distrust. I don’t know what to think anymore, who to trust or believe. Leo waves his arms about, impotent. ‘Come on, guys,’ he says weakly. ‘We can’t turn on each other.’
‘We have no one else to turn on,’ says Jameson.
Seeing him on the edge of anger like this is unsettling.
Leo blinks in reproach, looking uncertain. He staggers around the table to hover at Kimmy’s side, but doesn’t dare touch her. There’s a seething discord between them, but they appear aligned against me. Two camps.
Leo and Kimmy, me and Jameson.
I toy again with the possibility that someone planted the evidence in my room, someone who wants me to seem guilty. ‘Maybe they’re in it together,’ I blurt out. It was meant to be an inside thought, but once it’s out it makes even more sense than when it was just a germ of an idea in my head.
Leo laughs. ‘What?’
I gesture between them. ‘You two. You said you’d broken it off but what if you hadn’t?
Maybe you killed Gen to punish her for what she’d done to Kimmy, and because you knew she’d never let you go.
Alex came here determined to get to the bottom of what happened to Gen, convinced that one of us killed her.
I was the easy scapegoat, but perhaps it was only a matter of time before Alex put it all together.
Maybe he already had, and you—’ I glare at Kimmy. ‘You decided to silence him.’
Jameson shifts beside me. I can tell he doesn’t agree – the accident angle is so much more palatable, I get that. But for two of our friend group to die in apparent accidents, and for Alex’s death to coincide with his decision to play murder mystery … It just seems like too much of a coincidence.
Leo laughs again, but he sounds less confident now. ‘Are you serious, Eilish?’
I don’t know. It was a fleeting thought but now it’s starting to grow, it sort of makes sense.
Jutting my chin, I stare back at him. Either way, I can’t back down now.
*
‘What’s going on?’ Becca’s voice lacks her usual vibrancy, but it’s still a breath of fresh air for the way it distracts us from the stand-off. She and Euan are in the doorway, arms touching as if they’ve put their differences aside for now.
‘Nothing,’ Jameson says, blowing out his cheeks. ‘Did you find the phones?’
Becca and Euan exchange glances. Euan clears his throat. ‘Yes … We found them all.’
My heartrate picks up. It can’t be good for me, running on adrenaline all the time. Kimmy slides off the pool table and folds her arms across her narrow chest. ‘Well—’
I notice that the front of Becca’s sweater is soaked, and there are water splashes on the thighs of her grey running leggings. Her eyes are puffy, and she looks utterly depleted.
I know the feeling.
‘Becca,’ Jameson says. ‘Tell us …’
Euan rests a hand on Becca’s shoulder. ‘Better tell them, Bex.’
Her voice shakes. ‘The phones were in the pool.’
I stare at her stupidly. ‘In the pool house? Where?’
Becca flicks her gaze to me, and I’m shocked at her ravaged expression. ‘No, Eils, not the pool house, the pool.’
‘Someone chucked them in the deep end,’ Euan says, matter of fact. ‘Three phones – Kimmy’s, Eilish’s and Jameson’s.’
Silence. There’s no way all three phones ended up in the pool by mishap. This has to be a deliberate act.
*
Everyone seems to be speaking at once. Accusations fly as emotions, running on high for so many hours, let loose. We’re all on our feet now, talking over each other, anger bubbling up. There’s finger pointing and shouting, and I’m sure we all sound deranged.
Becca and Kimmy get in each other’s faces, and Euan and Leo are shouting at each other too, but I can’t make out their words – it’s all just a blur of sound. Jameson is speaking, and it takes me a while to realise he’s speaking to me, and that I’m making noise too, wailing ‘no, no, no.’
‘Eilish,’ Jameson says, soothing me. ‘It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.’
I start sobbing and Jameson shouts above the melee. ‘Enough! Everybody shut up—’
I try to control my crying, but I’m fighting a losing battle.
I finally manage to slow my sobs. Becca wins whatever unspoken contest is going on between her and Kimmy, as Kimmy turns away with a dismissive shrug that doesn’t quite conceal how rattled she is.
Euan and Leo seem to vibrate with energy, eyeballing, posturing.
It’s laughable, really – Leo’s a lover, not a fighter, and I wouldn’t fancy his chances against Euan if it really kicked off between them.
Finally, we calm, gathering in an untidy circle. The faces that surround me are taut. ‘Are the phones beyond saving?’ Jameson asks.
Becca smoothes her damp top. ‘I’ve put them in rice in the kitchen, but I’m not hopeful.’
‘Why don’t we all go downstairs and have a drink,’ Leo suggests. He’s clinging to the vestiges of his schoolboy charm, which usually stands him in good stead. My suspicions reassert themselves – could Leo really be guilty of killing Gen? Maybe he thought it was his only way out.
What lengths would Kimmy be willing to go to in order to protect him?
They were alone for several hours while we hiked up to the waterfall. They could easily have sabotaged the phones.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit across the table from these people and pretend everything is okay. I might be fearful of my own company, but it suddenly seems preferable to the alternative. As I slip through a gap in the circle and head for the door, I hear Jameson calling after me.
I keep going.