“Hey, take a plate.” Hollis placed one in her hands.
As each person filed out, she wandered in and searched through the crumbled bags and containers with a delicate touch, afraid to move a single scrap unless necessary because if she moved something, she would start to tidy up, and if she started to tidy up, she would start to clean, and if she started to clean, it would be like when she had chicken pox and Daddy told her not to scratch or it would make the itch worse. If she scratched that itch now, she would never ever stop.
She found her curry and her naan bread, but the rice had already migrated to the front room, piled high on Maeve’s and Oliver’s plates. She said nothing as she squeezed her thin body onto the floor next to the armchair where Hollis sat.
“You can sit here if you want,” he offered, already shifting, but Ellie shook her head. Oliver cracked open a can of Heineken. He raised it in a toast. To her. They were all looking at her and raising their drinks—Lorna a Diet Coke, Maeve a Heineken, Hollis a Foster’s. Ellie hadn’t brought anything to drink.
“To the founder of the feast! Our Princess Ellie!” said Oliver.
“Princess!” they cheered.
Ellie wondered if they expected her to say something, but her contribution was forgotten as soon as they lowered their drinks.
“You know your Dickens?” Lorna asked.
“Not really. But I played Tiny Tim in a panto.”
Maeve snorted beer through her nose and covered her face in embarrassment.
“You did panto?” Lorna asked.
“When I was seven. Besides, I was pretty damn good, I’ll have you know. Bernard Cribbins played Scrooge, and he told me so himself. Even offered to hook Mum up with his agent. Gave her his number.”
Lorna tore off a piece of garlic naan from a large plate on the center of the floor and asked, “So what stopped your illustrious childhood acting career?”
“Mum crashed our car and . . .” He cleared his throat. “We had a car crash. Nothing serious, but it messed up my knee. I could’ve only played kids with bum legs and I’d already played Tiny Tim—the top bum leg role—so what was there to aspire to, eh?”
He laughed, and the room laughed with him. No one but Ellie noticed the shadow upon his face.
Even Maeve, usually so in tune with his emotions, had forgotten to pay attention to Oliver. Her guilt kept her glancing at the front door. She shouldn’t be having a good time with them. But then again, why not? She hadn’t really promised anything, and she hadn’t had Indian in ages. Plus, Ellie was paying. Maeve was skint, and going out would’ve cost her at least ten quid, if not more. This was an economical decision. Everyone laughed, and she joined in even though she didn’t know what they were laughing at.
The evening continued that way, Maeve clinging to the threads of their conversations, too afraid of being cast aside to contribute any worthwhile comments, willing herself to be content on the fringes of this group even though she could have been with Callum instead, where she would’ve been the center of attention. When she thought the others weren’t looking, she’d look at the door, waiting for him to appear. How long would he wait until he realized she wasn’t coming?
When they finished their beers, someone found an old bottle of white wine. Maeve drank it warm from a Hoegaarden glass stolen from the pub. Even after the food was gone and Maeve had resorted to licking her finger and pressing it into the crumbs for something more to eat, they remained together, talking and laughing as the rooms within Caldwell Street warmed for the first time that year. The night could have continued in this way and ended amicably if Oliver hadn’t said, “We should have a party.”
The buoyant mood deflated, but Oliver laughed away the silence. “Come on. It’s been ages! We’ve not had one all term.”
They shifted in their seats.
“I don’t mean tonight, obviously. Next week, end of term. We can blow off some steam. Say goodbye to old Caldwell Street in style.”
If someone had said no right away, before breath could blow life into the idea, Oliver’s proposal would have withered and died. Maeve knew she could do it. Maeve who, unbeknownst to them, had saved them from parties so far this term, she could speak up, and she knew she would be heard because she held the words they wanted to hear.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
Everyone turned to Ellie. Maeve swallowed the sentence she’d been forming.
“You do?” Lorna asked.
“It would be great fun to get lots of our friends together. And we could keep it a little more orderly than our other parties. For example, let’s say we can only invite up to three friends each. And everyone has to bring their own drinks and food to share. And it has to end at one.”
Oliver raised an eyebrow. “One?”
“Two, then.”
“Two-thirty and it’s a deal.” He held out his hand. Ellie hesitated, then shook it. “Go on, then. What do the rest of you say? Party, Ellie’s rules?”
Maeve fell back to the fringes. If she held out now, she’d be a spoilsport.
“Ellie’s rules.” Maeve blurted it out so fast, she sprayed spit but pretended no one noticed and offered her hand to Oliver. He ignored her, and she resumed playing with the crumbs on her plate.
Hollis sighed. “Ellie’s rules.”
Lorna took the longest to reply. “If you say so.”
The conversation picked up again with talk of dates, music choices, and bets on how long it would take the neighbors to complain about the noise, until the front door opened and Callum appeared, face red as if he’d been running.
“Do what you want then!” he shouted outside. A woman’s voice shouted back, but Callum slammed the door, cutting her off. He turned around and stuttered to a stop, surprised to see them all gathered there.
“So you decided to eat in?” he asked Maeve, unable to catch his breath.
Maeve couldn’t answer. Couldn’t even look at him.
“Yeah.” He barked a laugh that tore the awkward silence. “I’ll be upstairs. Enjoy the rest of your night.”
Maeve called after him but didn’t follow, and he didn’t answer.
Oliver whistled. “Ooo, trouble with your boyfriend there, love?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Maeve sucked the last crumb off her finger and carried her plate to the kitchen.
“Chill out! I’m only teasing.”
Oliver finished off his beer and crushed the can in his fist. Lorna looked like she wanted to say something but she didn’t, and soon she too was gone from the room. Hollis carried away as much rubbish as he could and did not return for more. Finally, Oliver thought, life was getting back to normal here. It might have been late into the term, but that was better than never.
“That was fun,” he said without sarcasm. “Thanks for backing me up about the party.”
“I need a favor.”
The tone of Ellie’s voice kept him from poking fun.
“You owe me a favor.”
Her words crept over him like ants, and he weighed the consequences of saying no. She waited until he was finished.
“Yeah, all right then. What is it?”
“I need you to read a letter.”
And on dancer’s feet she rose and tiptoed around the mess of their meal.
The morning after that fucking party—Ellie’s party—Hollis would be the first downstairs. He would come down to grab his orange juice and instead stand frozen by the armchair Ellie had used the previous night as her throne. He would remember finding his grandfather when he was eleven, looking to all the world as if he were asleep. But Grandad hadn’t been sleeping. And, like the day he found his grandad, Hollis would shout and keep shouting until he heard his housemates’ doors opening, their arrivals announced by the groans of their headaches and hangovers.
Lorna would be the next to arrive and the first to yell at Hollis for waking her and the first to realize why he had shouted. She would stop on the bottom stair and would move no closer.
Oliver would arrive last. The alcohol in his bloodstream would slow his reflexes so that he wouldn’t understand what they were all staring at. It would gradually become clear, like fog lifting from the road.
They would see Callum’s body but also the broken lamp and the phone off the hook and the notebook they didn’t know Callum had kept, and they would know that whatever had happened had not been an accident and that what was written in that notebook would incriminate them all. They knew they could all say they hadn’t done it, and they would all know that one of them was lying, and they would all know that—because of that notebook, because of the records he kept—it could be any one of them.
So for a very long time, no one would say anything. And although they would all think the same question, no one would remember who finally asked it.
“What do we do?”
They could never see past their own problems, their own false solutions. So they could never see what was wrong with Callum, or that they could’ve helped him. To him, they were his friends. But to them, he became the source of their problems, and his death, their solution.
9
Ellie
Ellie was ashamed of what she had written in the diary. What adult wouldn’t be, looking back on what their teenaged-self had written? But it wasn’t shame that kept making her slip her hand to her back, checking that the diary was still there, still hidden. She knew that if Oliver and Maeve were to read it, they wouldn’t see it the way she wrote it. The way she felt it. They would only see the words and infer their own meaning. And she knew how those words might look to an outsider. So she had to keep them busy. Keep them occupied. The less they paid attention to her, the more time she had to think. The diary would have to be destroyed—at least certain pages of it if nothing else—but not while the other two were watching. The idea she’d devised on their short walk through the passage back to the study was perfect. She just had to convince them.
The shadows had grown in the study since they were last there as the unseen sun wound its way to the opposite side of the house. If she didn’t look directly at Caskie’s body, it was easy to imagine he was just asleep in the chair, although the growing dark couldn’t conceal the strong metallic smell of blood.
Once Ellie laid out her plan, Oliver stared at her, slack-jawed. Maeve looked vacantly at the floor. They weren’t on board, not yet. But Ellie had experience closing a sale, experience Oliver only wished he had.
“You both agreed we have to lure her out. This is the only leverage we have.”
“Yeah, but—” Oliver started. Ellie cut him off.
“Her point is to remain hidden. Attack us from the shadows. Nothing we’ve done so far has provoked her into revealing herself. This is the only thing that will.”
She waited for them to realize she was right, but it was taking longer than she’d hoped. Lorna’s death had shaken their foundations. Next to Hollis, she had been the strongest stabilizing force in the group. One who was analytical, avoided hysterics, was able to reason. Lorna was tough and brusque and could easily make people dislike her, but she had no agenda. She hated everyone equally, and her honesty in all things hurt her friendships but allowed them to respect her decisions. It was not lost on Ellie that the three who were left were the three most prone to fighting and hysterics. She had no doubt this was by design.
But Ellie knew the power of silence. She knew not to oversell. And after a few seconds that felt like minutes, the tension in Oliver’s body released. He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned to Maeve.
“Do you want the feet or the head?”
Maeve stopped chewing the cuff of her jumper and blinked. “Huh?”
“Have you heard anything we’ve been saying?” he asked.
She looked between Oliver and Maeve, a vacant expression in her watery eyes. “Sorry. No. Sorry.” She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper. “What are we doing?”
Oliver huffed, flexing his fingers. “Ellie wants us to hide Caskie’s body upstairs. She thinks doing, well, whatever it is she wants to do with this woman’s son, is the only way to draw her out.”
“What I want to do, as I’ve already explained, is to pretend he’s still alive and hold him ransom for the keys to the house. Honestly, if you two would just listen.” Ellie crossed her arms, felt the diary shift against her back, and quickly moved her hands there, pretending she was stretching. Oliver and Maeve didn’t seem to notice. Each was in a bubble—Oliver shrouded in a mist of anger, Maeve a cloud of grief. There was a delay between her words and their actions.
“But—but—” Maeve stammered. “Why not just put him in the cellar? Why do we have to carry him upstairs?”
Ellie’s face got hot the way it did whenever the children were arguing and they wouldn’t listen to her.
“Because,” she snapped, storming around to the back of the bar and emerging with a small paring knife, “and I have already explained this as well, she has obviously been using that passage between the ballroom and the cellar, and the whole point of this endeavor is to put him somewhere he won’t be found.”
As she was talking, she started cutting. The cords that bound Caskie snapped as sharp as her voice. His body slumped forward, then toppled to the floor. The thump echoed in the study. Ellie set the knife on the counter.
“So go on then,” she said. “Pick him up.”
Oliver moved first. Ellie had to hide the smile that twitched at the corner of her mouth. He grabbed Caskie’s shoulders and then Maeve went for his feet. Before they lifted him, Oliver glared up at Ellie.
“Aren’t you going to help?”
“I’m going to get the door.” Ellie marched ahead before he could say anything more and held the study door, which had already been half open to begin with.
Oliver at his head and Maeve at his feet, they carried Caskie facedown. His stomach sagged in the center as they struggled with the tall man’s body. Gravity pulled blood from his open stomach wound onto the hardwood floor. That blood marked a path as they carried him toward the stairs, the sound of its dripping muffled by the carpet runner, then resuming again once they crossed it. Ellie remained by the study door, near the dying peat fire. That had been her plan. To burn the diary in the roaring fireplace while they weren’t looking. But no one had stoked the fire since that morning. The peat bricks were nothing but embers. There were fresh bricks stacked to the side. If she could throw a few on, poke the fire and get the flames going again . . .
“Oi!”
Oliver shouted at her from the bottom of the stairs. He was panting. So was Maeve. Both of them out of shape and exhausted from carrying the body that short a distance.
“Get over here and lend us a hand,” he said. Maeve used her dirty sleeve to wipe the sweat from her face.
“I thought I should get the fire restarted. It’s going to be dark soon.”
“This takes precedence, don’t you think?”
“So is being able to see. Or do you want to be wandering around in the dark with a killer?”
“All right. Go on then. Fix the fire. We’ll wait.” He folded his arms. Maeve, who looked like she was barely aware of what was going on, mirrored his gesture unconsciously.
“We shouldn’t delay,” Ellie said. “You start taking the body up while I get the fire going and—”
“We stick together.”
“I won’t be long.”
Oliver crossed the room and grabbed Ellie by the arm. She shouted, but he didn’t let go as he dragged her over to the body. She felt the diary shift, slipping from her waistband. Before she could yank her arm free, Oliver let go of her with a shove.
“We stick together, princess. Now grab him in the middle, and help us carry him upstairs so we can get started on your plan.”
Maeve had already taken up the feet again, following Oliver’s co
mmands without question, like one of the little dogs she so loved. Oliver lifted him up underneath the shoulders. They waited for Ellie. She glared at them both, then crouched down, the diary stiff against her back, and placed her arms underneath him. They immediately became cold and sticky as Caskie’s still-drying blood adhered to her, like she’d laid her arms across wet paint.
On the count of three they lifted. Though Ellie used weights at the gym, her arms trembled from the effort. They moved slowly, one step at a time, Oliver at the head leading the pace. Maeve stumbled more than once, falling to her knees on the steps, dropping Caskie’s feet. Each time she dropped him, more of the weight fell to Ellie. She gritted her teeth. Sweat beaded on her forehead, but she was unable to wipe it away. With every slow step, the diary shifted again. She could feel it working free from her waistband, but she couldn’t stop to fix it. Oliver wouldn’t stop staring at her.
He walked backward up the steps so that he could maintain a better grip on Caskie, but by walking backward, he could also watch her.
Princess, he’d said.
He knew how much she hated that word. She wasn’t a princess. Princesses didn’t have to work. Princesses didn’t have to fight. Princesses didn’t have to carry corpses. Princesses were saved.
The next time she looked up, she thought they were finally at the top, but they had four more steps to go. Her arms shook, her lungs burned. Sweat dripped from her armpits down along her sides. Oliver reached the top step first. As soon as Ellie got there, she let go, even though Maeve hadn’t reached the top yet. The sudden loss of support caused Maeve to stumble and drop Caskie’s feet.
Ellie staggered back, her muscles weak from the effort, and stared at the bloodstains on her arms. When Caskie died, she had only got a small stain on her hand. Now his blood was all over her forearms up to her elbows. Without a word, she started away from the group, but Oliver grabbed her before she could get too far.
They Did Bad Things Page 21