Rachel hugged him tight. And Edmund thought he could live within that embrace forever. But it was over all too soon. “Ed,” she said, keeping hold of his arms so they were still close. “You’re one of the kindest and softest people I’ve ever met. You’re not a killer. What happened here was an accident—a phenomenally tragic accident. But is it really worth ruining our lives over?”
Edmund couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You’re mad. Both of you. You and Tim. Someone just died. I killed them. And you were there too. You saw it. You felt it. You felt our hearts break. There’s no way back from this. There’s no way back from what we did.”
“But what if there was?” Rachel said. “Would you take it?”
“I already said,” Edmund replied. “No! We need to call the police.”
“Ed, think about your life. Think about our lives. Think of all we could attain, think of all the good we could do. We can be assets to society. I’m going to be a psychologist because I want to help people. You and Tim are going to be physicists, running intellectual rings around all of us. Pru’s going to build things we could never dream of and Robert’s going to write things we could never fathom. We will be citizens who give so much.
“And this, this was a terrible thing. But is it really enough to throw that all away? It’d be the world’s loss, her and us.” Hadn’t he thought that exact thing a few minutes ago? “Only one person needs to die out of this, not all of us. And it’ll be hard. It’ll be so hard, Ed, but then, what isn’t? We can still rebuild something for ourselves out of this, and I’m so sorry for her, that she died, but Tim’s right—she was walking along this road without any reflective gear or lights on her. Not all the blame is on you, on us. Some of it lies with her too. And don’t forget about it just because she’s not here to face the music.”
Edmund felt tears gush down his cheeks. And Rachel hugged him again, even harder this time. “You’re one of the greatest people I know, Edmund Sunderland,” she whispered in his ear. “Please, don’t leave me.” And she shifted in his embrace, before kissing him on the lips. And that was that. Edmund was lost to her. She pulled away and ran a finger across Edmund’s cheeks, wiping away the tears. “Okay?”
Edmund still couldn’t speak. He was concentrating on trying not to cry anymore in front of her. He couldn’t understand how she wasn’t. But that’s because she was stronger than him—they always had been, the Claypath twins. They were always people to look up to. And now they were offering a version of the future that didn’t completely unravel. Who would say no? He slowly nodded.
Rachel smiled, against all of the odds. And she held his hand and guided him back to the others. Tim was looking at the woman, and Pru and Robert seemed to be quietly squabbling. They hushed as they saw Rachel and Edmund rejoin them.
“So what’s the plan?” Rachel said.
“He’s nuts,” Pru said, gesturing to Tim. “He’s stark raving mad.”
“So, the plan?” Rachel said.
“I agree, an absolute idiot,” said Robert.
“Shut up,” Rachel said, letting go of Edmund’s hand and holding her own up to silence Pru and Robert. “Now, what is the plan?”
“The Hamlet,” Tim said, walking up to them. “We need somewhere to take her, to think about what we are going to do, make a more final decision.”
“How are we going to get into The Hamlet, Einstein?” Robert said, a little too loudly.
“Amber,” Tim said, softly.
“What?” said about three of them at once. It didn’t really matter which ones.
Tim just looked at them all in turn.
Robert threw up his hands. “That’s pretty bloody psycho, Tim.”
“Is it?” Tim said.
“Yes, it is,” Robert said, finally.
“Let’s just hear him out, okay,” Rachel said. “Tim, please, what’s your plan?”
Tim nodded, grateful that she was there and then feeling guilty about it. “Amber’s staying at The Hamlet. The Acker family are away and entrusted the keys to her so she could feed the hamster. She decided she might as well just stay there instead. She’ll help us. She’ll give us shelter, give us a place to hide the body, until we figure this out together. Because right now, that’s all we have.”
“We really want to bring her into this?” Robert said. “I mean, I know we’re not the Scooby-Doo gang, but she isn’t exactly part of the group, is she? How do we know that bitch won’t turn us in the first chance she gets?”
“Because she’s obsessed with me,” Tim said bluntly. “And I’m sorry, but right now, we have to use that.”
Pru scoffed. “Taking Little Miss Loved Up out of the equation, are we really going to reward The Hamlet—our favorite place in the entire world—by bringing a dead body into it?”
“Does anyone have a better idea?” Tim said, and they all shook their heads in turn—even Pru. “Right, she has a suitcase, so we can assume that she was coming from the station. That means she doesn’t live here. So that means no one’s going to be looking for her, at least not for a while. We have time to breathe and figure this whole thing out. We can do this, okay. Now, Edmund, go and get the suitcase—make sure you get everything that fell out and put it back in. It’s really important we get all of it. Rachel and Pru, go and look in the car. First, for stuff you can line the trunk with. Blankets, plastic bags, papers, whatever. And secondly, look for bottles of water or any liquid—anything we can use to wash away the blood on the road. We don’t need to get every drop but we have to make it so it’s not so obvious. If we can just make it so no one really notices, the cars in the coming days will do the rest, and hell, it might even rain. Robert—” he turned to the poet “—you and I have to move the body to the boot of the car.”
Robert looked mortified and angry. He opened his mouth, but Tim reached out and covered his mouth with a palm. “We’re in this together, Rob. All of us. We always have been, and we always will be. We need everyone, here. All of us. Where we’re at our best. There’s no weak links here. We’re all as great as each other. And you know what that means? It means when it’s your turn, you get the shit jobs. Are you still with us?”
Robert seemed to think about it for a moment and then nodded.
“Good,” Tim said, smiling. Edmund didn’t know how he managed a smile at a time like this, but he couldn’t deny it made him feel better. Tim nodded to them all, and they split up. Edmund was incredibly thankful to Tim for not making him carry the body. Body—it seemed real now. That was the thing about dealing with a problem; how to accept that there was a problem to deal with in the first place. Was that what the woman was now—a problem? No, Edmund would never forget she was a human being, and she was real. She was someone’s sweetheart, someone’s daughter, maybe even someone’s mother—his stomach churned at this. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time—just like he was. If it was the other way around, and he was dead, would he want that woman’s life to be ruined because of a little slipup? He didn’t think he would—it wasn’t going to turn back time, bring him back to life, so no, he’d want her to live on and be amazing.
He got to the suitcase, to find the retractable handle was broken in two, but the case was only halfway open and didn’t seem as devastated as first thought. He unzipped the case and started dumping in the clothes from the road. He picked up some flimsy underwear and felt utterly ashamed at touching a dead woman’s delicates. In the grand scheme of things, though, it wasn’t the worst thing he’d done tonight. He finished putting the clothes in and put the broken handle in and zipped it up. He stood up with it in his arms and walked a few paces back, scanning each side of the road. He saw nothing else, but he walked them both just to make sure nothing had been thrown farther.
He looked back toward the car and wished he hadn’t. Tim and Robert were carrying the woman—Tim at her shoulders, Robert at her legs. Her head lolled lifelessly o
n her chest, her forehead leaking with blood, but it was splattering on her chest. Tim and Robert obviously wanted to do it as quickly as possible, so were almost running to the car. Rachel stood at the open trunk, having covered it with a few blankets, which were some of Edmund’s mother’s favorites. He didn’t care.
Once Tim and Robert had hoisted her into the trunk, Pru came jogging out with bottles of water, Lucozade and Coke. Edmund was glad he was terrible at cleaning the car out and even worse at finishing bottles of drink. She stopped at every drop of blood and poured a little liquid on it. The biggest amount of blood—where the woman had lain to rest—took a whole large bottle of water and a half-empty bottle of Coke for good measure. With the empty bottles under her arms, Pru used a rag to slosh around the water and scrub some of the blood away. The resulting effect was wet patches that did seem red, but looked more like some kind of dark drink spillage than blood. And luckily there weren’t enough spatters to draw attention—the only one that might being the main one. Edmund looked at them and couldn’t see anything but blood, but he supposed that a member of the public wouldn’t even bat an eye, especially when they were going forty miles an hour just interested in getting where they were going. And if they thought it was blood, they’d probably just think it was a badger or a rabbit that had got clipped by a car. That happened a lot out here in the country. It might just work.
Edmund started walking toward the car. Pru was just rejoining the others, who were huddled around the open car trunk. They all seemed to be looking in at the body. Edmund didn’t understand why. Other than to say sorry, he wanted nothing to do with the body. And that made him feel even more guilty. Tim and Robert had had to touch her—clean up his mess.
We’re in this together. All of us. We always have been, and we always will be. We need everyone, here. All of us. Where we’re at our best. There’s no weak links here. We’re all as great as each other.
That was what Tim had said to Robert, and he had to believe that. It was true that everyone was in trouble. Maybe not equal to him, but trouble nonetheless. Letting someone operate a vehicle who you know is drunk is just as illegal as driving it yourself. But Edmund still felt an immense amount of gratitude to everyone. This would never not feel like his crime—at least not to him—but everyone was helping him.
Edmund heard a rustling in a lone bush on the roadside. It was a bush that had fought its way through a stone slab wall, and provided a hole into the farmer’s field next door. Edmund looked to see a brown rabbit watching him from the cover of the bush. Its nose was bobbing up and down, sniffing out what was happening, while it watched Edmund with black shiny marbles for eyes. A witness—although Edmund didn’t think they had to worry about this one.
But under the rabbit’s gaze, the lone surveyor, the utter shame began to sink in. It burst inside him and filled him from head to toe. What had he done? Really? What had he done?
“Sorry,” he said pathetically to the rabbit. He didn’t even know why. And when he started moving to the car again, the bush made a great shush and the rabbit was away, back into the farmer’s field, and back into a brighter future. It wanted no part in this scene, and who could blame it. This darkness was his, and it was theirs, and they would live with it forever. Edmund got to the car, and the others looked around. Even Tim’s optimism had gone from his face. Pru and Rachel looked like they were on the verge of tears, and Robert looked like he was on the verge of mania.
“What?” Edmund said, a new coldness working into his brain. The wind whipping around them seemed to pick up. They parted so that he could see inside the trunk of the car.
The woman lay there in her raincoat, her limbs barely more organized than before. Blood was matting her hair, but the movement had shifted the hair from her face, so he could see her now. It was suddenly a different situation.
They all looked down at her in the cramped trunk. A real woman, battered and bleeding from cuts on her face. Her limbs were limp and at odd angles. This was real. This was happening.
“Okay, then,” Tim said. “Looks like we’re going to The Hamlet.”
He shut the trunk.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Three years earlier...
They parked behind The Hamlet, as close as they possibly could. Marsden was sleeping, totally silent and dark, with no one around to witness them. Thankfully. If this had happened during the day, they would already be in prison cells. Tim had said that Edmund shouldn’t drive because of the shock, but after a quick look around, it seemed Edmund was still the best choice. Everyone else was still over the limit—somehow, Edmund thought he’d never been more sober, and he was going to drive at least ten miles under the speed limit anyway. So, he drove.
In contrast to what had just happened, the drive was uneventful.
That sound. When she hit the road.
Edmund tried not to think about it. Tim said that he would go in and talk to Amber, that he would explain the situation to her and make her see reason. He seemed confident, deflecting any “What if you can’t?” comments from Robert and any “What if she calls the police?” questions from Pru. He just said that he could and that she wouldn’t. He got out of the passenger side door and disappeared into the dark.
He was gone for a long time. Edmund kept his hands on the steering wheel, knowing that if he loosened his grip, they would just shake uncontrollably. Even as it was, his hands were twitching.
He felt like he was dead—like he had somehow been the person who had died at the side of the road. And then he realized he didn’t feel like he’d died. He just wished he had.
No one talked in the car. No one even breathed loudly. Edmund shut his eyes and felt like he was alone—because in many ways he was. He should have felt love for the others. The others who were standing with him through this ordeal. But for some reason, he didn’t feel love. He felt afraid of them. All of them. And maybe Tim most of all.
The radio clicked into life and Edmund opened his eyes. Robert had reached from the back and turned it on. Rock music blared out for a couple of bars before Pru reached forward and wordlessly and mercifully shut it off. Robert didn’t protest. The entire exchange was mute, but meant more words than they could ever speak.
After what seemed like hours, Tim came out of the night and opened the passenger door. “Let’s go.”
They all got out of the car, Edmund last, and he looked up to see another figure emerging from the darkness.
Amber.
She didn’t look scared. She didn’t look apprehensive. She looked positively indifferent. She said nothing, just joined them.
Tim opened the trunk, giving a slight grimace at the scene he was presented with. Like Edmund, maybe he was hoping that the woman would evaporate, become a collective hallucination. But no, she was still there.
Amber took out her keys and unlocked The Hamlet’s doors—in the side where they received their deliveries. She propped the large door open as Tim and Robert carried the woman inside, draped over with blankets, so it was impossible to discern what they were carrying. They carried her through, Amber and Rachel flicking on light switches in front of them. Just as Rachel was about to flick the lights on in the main bar, Amber barked, “No,” furiously. Rachel recoiled slightly. “We’ll take her to the basement. We can put on all the lights down there, and not worry. Maybe even get the fire on.” Rachel nodded, but still seemed fazed at the instruction from a relative outsider. Edmund, trailing behind with the suitcase in his arms and Pru muttering behind him under her breath, had never seen anyone snap at Rachel before, had never even seen a bad word said to her, so seeing this was a shock.
Instead of turning on the light, Rachel fumbled with her phone flashlight and pointed it down the sharp staircase. Tim and Robert slowly picked their way down, Tim having to go down backward. Edmund didn’t know how many times all of them had drunkenly slipped up or down the stairs, so he couldn’t help admire how ass
uredly he did it. Soon enough Tim was at the bottom and Robert followed, and then the rest of them. Amber followed last, making sure the basement door was shut and secure.
Rachel turned on the lights in the basement. Tim and Robert scrabbled around the tables—someone had reorganized the basement since they had left, so the tables were separated again—and placed the body in front of the fireplace on the rug. The two of them straightened up, and Robert yelped. There was a large bloodstain on his coat. He struggled to get it off and threw it on the floor next to her.
“Jesus,” Robert said.
Amber got to the bottom of the stairs and saw the woman for the first time. Edmund watched her, curiously. At the sight of the woman, anyone else would’ve recoiled, thrown up, fainted. But Amber didn’t do that. Amber just looked with curiosity, her eyes flickering in the light. And then, the strangest thing, she smiled.
Edmund looked away in disgust.
“Can we get the fire on?” Tim said, ignoring him. “I’m freezing.”
“I’ll do it,” Rachel said, fiddling with the fire. Soon flames were starting up.
They all just stood around the body, not knowing what to really do. Blood was already soaking through the blankets onto the rug, but stopped there. The rug was incredibly thick, so would stop any leakage.
Amber had retreated to the far corner, watching as if she were a curious bystander. It was clear she was going to offer nothing to the conversation, but she wasn’t going to put up any roadblocks either.
“Right,” Pru said. “So what the hell do we do now?”
“We need to find some way of, um, disposing of her,” Tim said unassuredly. Edmund thought once again about how simply these phrases were coming to his friend’s mouth. Maybe there was another side to Tim that no one ever saw. Yes, he always liked a problem to solve, but could that really apply to this incredibly morbid situation too? How bad did the problems have to get before he tapped out?
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