Chapter 33
I would pay little heed to this newspaper story save for three things:
The fact that Gen saw fit to keep it
The name in the article is eerily similar to Gen’s: Jennifer Learman / Genevieve Learmonth
And most compelling of all, the block capital annotations in Sharpie scrawled beneath the typed print …
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID
I’M COMING FOR YOU, JENNIFER
I flatten the paper and reread it several times, as if the words might rearrange themselves and reveal some hidden meaning.
If I accept that Jennifer and Genevieve are one and the same person, then this is a glimpse into the past Genevieve never revealed to us.
She didn’t talk about her family, except the great-aunt in Peterhead, and she certainly never mentioned the tragic death of a stepfather, even when we talked about my mother’s accident, my loss.
We might have bonded in our grief, but she left me out in the cold on this, chose not to disclose.
Am I missing something or does this read like a threat?
I know what you did.
But what did she do? Was the fire in the summerhouse … deliberate? Why would Gen keep this note?
I imagine the remote summerhouse, the man inside passed out after a few drinks, candles burning.
Wouldn’t be hard to make it look like an accident, would it?
Someone made a direct threat against Gen in the days before her death – we only started reading this book about a week prior to the beach party. I’m coming for you.
I cast my mind back to that time. Gen was acting strangely in the weeks before her death, but no more than usual. She was looking over her shoulder a lot when we were out and about. Grabbing my hand and saying she felt like someone was watching us.
Dramatic.
Or so I thought.
Gen was always a bit like that. She once said she thought it would be romantic to have a stalker.
And she loved being the centre of attention. She’d invented a few stalkers over the brief time I knew her. She even reported some nerdy guy who had the audacity to wave at her in the library a few times for harassment. The guy was clearly just smitten with her.
No wonder we didn’t pay attention when she said it was happening again.
But what if it were true?
I try to piece things together, make sense of it. Someone sent her this threatening note, written on a print-out of a news article about the death of her stepfather. Can that be coincidence?
Is the writer of the note insinuating that Genevieve was involved in causing the fire? I know what you did.
If I’d opened this book a decade ago, if I hadn’t scooped it up along with my own belongings and hidden it all these years, might Gen’s death have been looked at differently? Even investigated as murder.
Blackmail is a powerful motive.
I rifle through the pages of Looking for Alaska, in case Gen has concealed anything else in here for me to find. But before I reach the endpapers, there’s a sharp knock on my door. It startles me so much that I drop the book on the floor.
*
The doorhandle rattles, but the chair wedged beneath it does its job.
Not only does it prevent anyone gaining entry, however, it alerts whoever is on the other side to the fact that I’ve tried to lock myself in.
My poor excuse for security won’t deter a persistent intruder.
If I want to properly protect the room I may need to take more drastic steps – drag the vanity unit in front of the door perhaps.
The moment stretches between me and whoever stands outside my door, just a slab of wood between us. I know they’re still there. Then I hear the creak of a floorboard as my visitor leaves. No words passed between us, but I am shaking from the encounter.
Why is someone trying to gain entry to my bedroom? It freaks me out; I hate all this subterfuge, looking over my shoulder. I tug at my ponytail, chew my nails, pace endlessly forth on the heavy rug, trying to settle my nerves. The book lies forgotten on my bed.
A second knock makes me nearly jump out of my skin. ‘Eilish!’ Jameson’s voice drifts through the door. ‘Are you okay? I’m worried, please open up.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, my voice high. ‘I have a headache, I think I’m going to get an early night.’
Jameson clears his throat. ‘Are you sure you’re okay to be alone?’
I’m not sure of anything anymore, especially that. I want to trust Jameson, but there’s an outside chance that I can’t. And equally possible is the fact that he might not be able to fully trust me.
‘Yeah, honestly. I just need to sleep.’ I rest my head against the door, the wood cool beneath my forehead. I fancy I can hear Jameson breathing on the other side, but perhaps that’s just my imagination.
‘Everyone’s calmed down,’ he tells me.
‘Great, but honestly I just need to get some sleep.’
I want to tell him to run to his own room and lock himself inside, stay safe, but the words are trapped inside. I want to take him into my confidence. I could really use his help to unravel the puzzle Gen has unwittingly left me.
I open my mouth to speak, about to beg him to stay and help me, to keep me safe. But someone in this house has gone pretty far out of their way to convince me I murdered two of my friends, and I won’t feel safe until I’m far, far away from here.
‘We’re in the library, if you change your mind.’ The floorboard creaks again, bringing another stab of irrational fear, even though I know this time it’s Jameson.
Of course, last time might have been Jameson too …
He might be really, really good at pretending.
I resume my pacing.
My foot catches on the rug, and I stumble and curse. ‘Bloody hell!’ The damn thing has been tripping me up ever since I got here. My foot curls the edge of the thick-pile rug, and when I stoop to straighten it, I spot something sticking out from beneath the corner.
I pick it up.
It’s a faded photograph showing a small family group: a woman, with her arm around a young girl and boy, everyone wearing holiday clothes. There’s a white beach behind them, a glimpse of cerulean sea, the picture staged beneath a lush palm tree.
The girl is undoubtedly Gen. I’d place her around thirteen in this picture – her hair more red than blonde then, a scatter of caramel freckles across her nose. I flip the picture over, and see Gen’s handwriting:
Mum with me and Johnny the step-monster.
I look at the boy – a year or so younger than Gen.
The stepbrother mentioned in the news article?
Perhaps the picture was taken by Gavin Metcalfe, the man who lost his life in the summerhouse fire, if my surmising is correct and Gen Learmonth and Jen Learman are one and the same.
Here is another scrap of Gen’s missing childhood.
But what the hell is it doing under the rug in my bedroom?
Beneath Gen’s annotation, more writing has been added. I recognise Alex’s script from the last time he slipped a photograph beneath my door: Hogmanay, the photo from the Yule Ball, the memento that started all of this.
This time, his words send shockwaves through me:
Euan / John?
He’s not who he says he is. I found more recent pictures and he looks the same! I don’t know why he’d lie about being her brother. Play along with me tonight, A.
*
I sit on the floor with my back pressed to the bed, the photograph and newspaper article in front of me. Something nags at me about the message scrawled on the article, but I’m not sure what it is. I’m too focused on the photograph, the image of a young Gen.
I retrieve the book from the bedcovers and shake out the pages just in case there’s more to find.
The items she used to fill her books with were like a roadmap to her mind. Whatever she tucked inside this book is all I have left of her.
I am rewarded for my persistence. There, stuck inside the back cover, is a yellow Post-it. Biro pen, sharply scrawled letters. Three lines.
I had to do it
He’s taken too much.
I’ll set us free …
Oh, Gen, what did you do?
All these missing pieces of a jigsaw have been hiding here, in my room, without my knowledge. Now, before it’s too late, I must try to put them together.
I had to do it …
He’s not who he says he is …
I’m coming for you …
Euan is John Metcalfe, Gen’s stepbrother – the eyes are the same in the photo but he’s at least twenty years older now so of course it’s hard to tell. But Alex clearly thought so. Perhaps if I had a photo of him as a teenager, I could be sure …
If it’s true, John Metcalfe wrote Gen a threatening note in the days before she died, telling her he knew what she’d done and was coming for her …
And Gen scribbled those strange lines about being compelled to do something to save someone – her mother maybe?
– presumably also in the days before her death …
She tied these things together – article and Post-it, stashing both inside the book she was reading, keeping them close. She always had a book with her.
There are still gaps in the jigsaw when I assemble the pieces. Crazy as it sounds, I’m considering the possibility that Gen killed her stepfather. Maybe he was abusive to her mother, or maybe it was just his money she was after. If he was rich, there would have been a sizable inheritance.
Whether it’s true or not, I can’t work out why John is here, pretending to be someone else. How did Gen’s stepbrother come to be in a relationship with Becca?
The connection is too bizarre to be coincidence. This must have something to do with Gen’s death, and Alex’s.
Alex presumably found this photograph at Tarnmore. He pushed it under my door where it got caught beneath the rug that’s been annoying me for days.
The day he died, he was weird, trying to get me alone.
That was the night he laid out our potential motives for killing Gen, before he settled on me to point the finger at.
Play along with me tonight …
So accusing me was an act, and his real suspect was … Euan. Maybe he wanted me to play along so that he could gauge Euan’s reaction to the allegation that Gen was murdered whilst still keeping him feeling safe, thinking that all the suspicion rested on me.