‘I know. That’s what confused me.’ He scrubbed his face with both hands. ‘She knew how I felt about her. It felt like – I don’t know. Like she was trying to twist the knife or something.’
I looked at him for the first time since we’d got back to the house. ‘You genuinely thought Beth would be like that?’
‘I don’t know. It was a lot clearer in my head at the time.’ Dallin hesitated, then said, ‘I was maybe in denial. You know I loved her, a lot. Right?’
I pressed my lips together. ‘Yes. I know.’
‘And you know we slept together one time.’
I closed my eyes. Yes, I’d known that too. Beth had admitted it to me in a fit of panic, right after we’d agreed we were definitely in a relationship and we didn’t care who knew about it. At the time it’d felt meaningless to me. In my mind, it’d boiled down to a simple question – did I care about anything except the fact she was here now, with me? And if I did care, then how much? Enough to burn a whole relationship because I couldn’t deal with sharing her affection with anyone, even from a time before we’d been together?
‘I know that too, Dallin,’ I said with a sigh. ‘What’s your point?’
‘I’m just trying to explain. I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. I was confused. But I should’ve been able to put my stupid feelings aside. It wasn’t fair to you. Or Beth.’
I suspected it was as close to a full apology as I was likely to get. So why did I still want to kick him in the shins? ‘Okay,’ I said. The backs of my eyes were prickling.
‘I wish I’d come back to see her.’ Dallin leaned against the kitchen counter. His gaze was distant. ‘I genuinely didn’t realise how ill she was. If she’d just come out and told me …’ He sighed. ‘But, you’re right, she shouldn’t have had to. I should’ve known she wasn’t the type to make stuff up.’
‘Not like me, right?’ I put on a smile that was wholly fake. ‘Not like Cora.’
‘Ah, Rosie, don’t be like that.’
‘Why not? It seems to be a recurring theme with you. I say I’ve found a body in the curraghs; you assume I’m making it up. Beth tells you she’s ill; you think she’s exaggerating. Cora finds her tent’s been vandalised; you say she’s done it herself. What’ll it take to convince you we’re telling the truth?’
Dallin grimaced. ‘I just don’t think you should take everything Cora says at face value. That’s all. Being cautious isn’t a character defect.’
I rolled up a response and let it sit on my tongue for a moment. Then I blew it out with a sigh. What was even the point of arguing with him?
‘Here’s your coffee,’ I said instead.
***
There were tears and recriminations. I sat at the top of the stairs, invisible, and listened to you argue with Da. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to ground you; but it was the first time he’d locked the doors and refused to physically let you out of the house.
Your voice rose in anger but Da’s remained weirdly unemotional. He sounded tired, like he’d been fighting this battle too long.
‘You can’t stop me seeing him,’ you said.
‘You should stop yourself,’ Da said. ‘I taught you to have more self-esteem than this.’
‘He wants to be with me.’
‘I don’t doubt that.’
I pictured Da, weary, eyes exhausted, as he blocked your way to the front door. For once it was him being battered by the storm instead of us.
‘He loves me,’ you said.
‘I don’t doubt that either.’
‘So let me leave.’
‘No.’ The word was a sigh. ‘I know you think I’m wrong but you’ll see it eventually. He’s not good for you. I won’t stand by and let him hurt you as well.’
You stormed upstairs and I didn’t get out of your way fast enough. With sharp nails you pinched my arm, hard enough to bruise.
‘Snitch,’ you hissed.
Chapter 30
I phoned Mum when I got home. As soon as Dallin heard me say hello to her, he made himself conspicuously absent by going upstairs. That was fine by me.
‘How’s your friend getting on, pumpkin?’ Mum asked.
‘She’s fine. No luck yet.’
‘And how about your brother? Has he spoken to you about the house?’
My pulse stilled. What about the house? ‘He’s said a few things, yeah,’ I said cautiously.
‘What do you think about it?’
‘I … I need time to think.’
‘Well, we both do, that’s for certain. It’s all well and good him making these grand plans, but it’s my property and your home we’re talking about. I sometimes think he doesn’t take that into consideration.’
I closed my eyes. I felt a sick headache brewing. ‘Mum, can I call you back? I forgot to do something. Ten minutes, okay?’
I barely let her say goodbye before I hung up.
In the kitchen, I snatched up the Filofax and flipped to the first bookmark. According to the date, last year Dallin had paid Lenny two thousand pounds for ‘drainage’. Dallin hadn’t even been on the island then. On another page, he’d again paid Lenny a significant sum, this time for ‘access’. None of it made sense at a glance. But Cora had seen a pattern and, with sickening certainty, I thought I saw it too.
‘Everything okay?’ Dallin asked from the doorway.
I could barely make myself look at him. ‘You want Mum to sell this house,’ I said.
He grimaced. ‘I asked her not to say anything till I’d had a chance to—’
‘Don’t, Dallin.’ I lifted the book. ‘You paid Lenny to do surveys on my house. Drainage, access rights … you asked him to do it on the quiet.’ How many times had Lenny popped round last year, apparently just to check how I was doing? How many times was it due to genuine concern, and how many for Dallin’s agenda? ‘You wanted to find out the state of the house so you could get it on the market.’
‘That’s not—’
‘And then what happened? You ran out of money before you could pay him for his work? No wonder he’s pissed off at you.’
Dallin glowered at me. ‘You’re making this sound like a conspiracy.’
‘You’re trying to sell my house!’
‘Except it’s not yours, is it? It’s Mum’s. She’s letting you live here but it’s not yours. Be realistic, Rosie. This place is too big for you. You could fit a whole family in here.’ He spread his arms to demonstrate. ‘If we sell, we can split the money between you, me, and Mum. She can get somewhere nicer, with an accessible garden. You can use your share of the money as a deposit on your own place.’
His words shocked me. A whole family. Didn’t he know that was what we’d dreamed of?
‘And what do you get?’ I sounded breathless, like he’d kicked me in the stomach.
Dallin rubbed the back of his neck. ‘What does that matter? What’s important is—’
‘No, if it didn’t matter, you’d leave things well enough alone.’ I steadied myself against the table. ‘What do you need the money for?’
‘It’s not that I need it. I just – look, I see you here, in the house I grew up in, while I’m living in some horrendous flat above a vape shop, with no job, and I just—’ He lifted his hands in exasperation. ‘Is it really so bad of me to want to stabilise my life? Pay off my debts and start living like a proper person?’
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t find the words.
Apparently Dallin had run out of justifications as well. ‘I’m going to the pub,’ he said.
At the front door he glanced back, like maybe I would stop him. Like I didn’t intend to lock the door and never let him back in again.
Chapter 31
I texted Cora a few times that afternoon. I suggested she might want to come for dinner at my house. I didn’t tell her what’d happened with Dallin.
I was only as the sun started easing down towards the horizon that a niggle of worry wormed its way into my belly.
During t
he afternoon, I’d also tried contacting Eloise a few times, and Nicole twice. I still wanted to hear Eloise’s side of the story. And I wanted to ask Nicole about the discrepancies between her story and Patrick’s. It probably wasn’t anything to draw attention to, given how long it’d been since Simone was potentially here, but I was interested to get them to compare notes. At the moment, I couldn’t help but feel one or the other was lying.
With Dallin gone, I had the house to myself again. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Before, I’d embraced the silent, empty nature of the house. The few sounds I made as I walked from one room to another were more than enough to make the place sound full. I was suddenly, acutely aware of every slight noise I made; and equally, I was aware how it didn’t fill the rooms at all. I could’ve shouted and screamed the house down and the echoes would’ve still sounded hollow.
I opened my laptop. It automatically brought up the last search page, when I’d been looking for details of Nicole. Again I felt the sting of defeat. What exactly had I been hoping to find?
I tried Cora’s phone twice more, without a response. Possibly it’d run out of charge again.
Don’t these people ever think to charge their phones? The thought was a brief flare in my brain, there and then gone. I was a fine one to talk, since I’d left my own phone uncharged for the last several months.
To distract myself from my whirling thoughts, I tried to tidy the house. But everything was wrong. Cora and Dallin hadn’t made a massive impact on the house, but still, a delicate balance had been disturbed. There were extra pairs of shoes at the bottom of the stairs. Extra towels in the bathroom. Cora had left a window open in the guest bedroom and a healthy breeze was ruffling the curtains.
None of this was particularly difficult or upsetting, but it was different enough to cause a knot of unease in my stomach. I didn’t want to tidy the guest bedroom because that felt like I’d be invading Cora’s privacy. I didn’t want to go into the study, because Dallin’s clothes were on the floor. All of a sudden, my house didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore.
It shouldn’t have mattered. Yet somehow it did.
You could fit a whole family in here.
Faced with not knowing how or where to start tidying the house, I retreated to the kitchen. I glanced out of the window at the curraghs. The dullness of the late afternoon sun made the spindly trees look like they were etched in shades of grey onto the green background of the distant hills.
Are you out there? I thought automatically. This time I wasn’t sure if I was thinking of Bogbean or Cora.
From where I stood, I could see down to the bottom of our garden. In the low shadows around the bench by the wall, I imagined Beth sitting there, just as she’d sat on her last evening.
I left the kitchen and went out into the garden.
I shivered as I made my way down the path to the end of the garden. The rain was taking a break, but the wind was rising, tussling the trees into constant, chattering motion. The chill of evening was already seeping in. Give it another hour, and it would be freezing out there. Despite that, I didn’t go back for my coat.
The bench at the bottom of the garden was wet from the recent rain. I perched on the wooden slats and peered out over the curraghs. Somewhere out there, Cora was searching in vain for her sister’s lost remains.
I’ve got to go, Beth had said to me.
It was at times like this when I heard her voice most clearly. Like, if I could just concentrate in the correct way, her voice would reach me again, not just as an echoing whisper in my mind.
I need you to help me, Beth had said.
I sat in the cold as the sun, behind its veil of clouds, sunk towards the horizon.
I’m not strong enough alone.
It wasn’t something we’d discussed. Even when we’d realised how bad things would get. But that was how things were with us. Sometimes we didn’t need to say anything out loud.
I’d left her there on the bench while I walked around the garden. From the lean-to at the side of the house, up on a shelf where no one would stumble on them, I took down a jar from the row I’d made. The label said Foxglove. If questioned, I could’ve said honestly it contained clippings and seeds, the same as the half-dozen other jars on that shelf. I’d risked asking Nicole’s advice on the best seeds to save.
I brought the contents back to Beth, cupped in my hands. A last offering from the garden we’d cultivated together. She smiled at me.
In her weakened state, she didn’t take long to go. I sat with her through the night, until long after she went cold, until I myself was half-gone from hypothermia. I’d hated the way my body shivered, trying to keep itself warm, when all I’d wanted to do was freeze solid.
At last, as the sun came up, I’d left Beth on the bench, her head slumped onto her shoulder as if she was drowsing, and gone back into the house. I washed the itchy stains of foxglove shoots off my hands. Even then, I’d wondered why I hadn’t picked up enough for both of us.
There was no need for a post-mortem, the doctors told me. It was an expected death. No one thought to take a sample of her congealed blood to check for toxicity.
I’d never told anyone, not even Mum. But I couldn’t help but think Beth’s parents somehow intuited what’d happened. When they resumed sending me the printed pseudo-medical pages in the post, they started highlighting interesting factoids, such as the propensity for someone abnormal like me to become a murderer.
My mobile phone rang, startling me out of my thoughts. I so rarely carried it around that it took me a moment to remember which pocket it was in.
My chilled fingers tapped the screen. ‘Hello?’ I answered.
The reply was blown out by the wind. Distantly, I heard Cora’s voice. ‘Hello? Rosalie?’
I covered my other ear with my hand to hear her better. ‘Cora? Are you okay?’
The words came through patchy. ‘I think I … turned around—’
‘Cora? Hello?’
I hurried up the path back into the house. The warmth of the kitchen was like a balm after the chill outside. But I couldn’t enjoy it because I was anxiously trying to hear Cora.
‘Rosalie? Are you there?’ Her voice was still distant but more audible.
‘I’m here. What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
‘I think I’ve got myself turned around. I don’t know where—’ Another blast of wind drowned her out. It sounded like static from a broken TV. ‘I’m trying to find the road.’
‘What about your GPS?’
‘The battery went. And I left my compass at your house. I think I’ve veered off course.’ Her voice crackled and broke up. ‘—maps are wron—’
‘Cora? Where are you? Wait, hang on.’ I went back out into the garden and hurried to the rear wall. ‘I’m going to shout for you.’ Covering the phone with my hand, I yelled, ‘Cora!’ several times.
I listened but heard nothing in response.
Into the phone I said, ‘Can you hear me? I’m shouting from my garden. If you can hear me, head towards me.’
‘I can’t hear you. Try again.’
I shouted until my throat ached, but the wind kept snatching up my words and bundling them away. Cora must’ve been too far off to hear.
By then the sun was touching the horizon. ‘Stay where you are,’ I told Cora over the phone. ‘I’ll drive round to the car park.’
‘Okay. Thank you.’ Cora’s voice trembled. She was obviously exhausted from trudging through the curraghs, but I could also hear the undercurrent of fear in her voice. I understood all too well how unnerving it was to get lost out there.
I threw on my shoes and grabbed my coat. At the last instant I remembered Dallin was out, and might return before I got back, and he didn’t have house keys. I dithered for a moment before leaving the door unlocked. It was the first time I’d deliberately done that in a year. Even though I was so concerned about Cora, I still found room to worry about leaving our house unsecured.
The first f
at, heavy drops of rain spattered my windscreen as I drove the short distance to the car park in the curraghs. When I got there, Cora’s car was parked in what I was already thinking of as her usual spot. No other cars could be seen.
The sun was below the horizon. It was going to get dark out here very quickly.
When I phoned Cora she answered right away.
‘I’m in the car park,’ I told her. ‘I’m going to beep the horn. Let me know if you can hear it, alright?’
I bipped the horn. It was louder than I expected in the quietness of the forest. I drew up my courage and beeped louder. It felt wrong to be so noisy out there. I swore I saw the trees shiver in distaste.
‘I can hear you!’ Cora said through the phone. ‘It’s – hang on—’
I couldn’t be sure if she was still there or if the line had broken up again. I beeped the horn three more times to be sure.
‘I can definitely hear you,’ Cora said. ‘It’s just – it’s difficult to be sure which direction—’ She broke off, swearing. ‘Sorry, I tripped. The light isn’t great out here.’
Added to that, the rain was starting in earnest. Fat drops bounced off the roof of my car; a few at first, then increasing to a fierce drumming. I turned on my headlights and flashed them on and off a few times.
‘Can you see my headlights?’ I asked Cora.
‘Not yet. Can’t see much of anything. Okay, I’m going to keep coming towards you. I’ll call you back in five minutes, okay? I can’t stay on the phone, I’ve not got much battery left. Keep beeping for me.’
I ended the call with a sense of foreboding. But Cora was right, it wouldn’t do us any good to be on the phone while she walked. She needed her concentration to avoid tripping over. I turned the car engine off, although I left the headlights on. To give myself something to focus on, I waited a thirty-second interval then blew the horn three times. Another thirty seconds, another three blasts. It stopped my thoughts from spiralling.
After five minutes of this, I figured everyone within a mile radius must’ve known I was there, and would probably come to find out who was making such a godawful noise. I glanced in my rear-view mirror, half expecting to see an irate dog-walker bearing down on me. But for once, the area was deserted. The rain and wind had pushed everyone away.
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