The Invitation

by A. M. Castle

  At least Roderick is sitting here, doing his duty with the plebs, phone in hand. He’s stabbing the buttons and sighing. Why bother? None of us are getting a signal. Anyway, don’t tell me his little sinecure of a job needs his input, on a Sunday when the island is already closed for business anyway? He’s outsourced all the grunt work surrounding the murder to Tom. What, exactly, does he have to sigh about? A tiny rival for his inheritance has been removed, a massive fly in the ointment is gone forever, and now his precious family stands to get a lot richer. It would be unseemly to look pleased but this false mourning isn’t fooling any of us.

  The most surprising reaction comes from Nessie. She’s a goth, so you expect doom and gloom. But she looks genuinely stricken, poor lass, her perpetual black for once like real mourning. She hardly knew Rachel, and Rachel, with all her glitz, was as far removed from a teenage emo as they come. Like I said, weird.

  Tom has been striding around, all manly decision, since the lights went up. But it has got us precisely nowhere. Finally, it gets too much for me and I just go ahead and say it. ‘When the hell can we get off this fucking island?’

  Gita winces. Is it the swearing within earshot of her dainty daughters (they’ve let rip with worse, I’m sure) or the fact that I’m voicing what everyone else is thinking? She gives me a look that could eat through titanium.

  That’s the end of all our nice little lunches, isn’t it? Hard to forgive my transgression, even if it is ancient history. The years of secrecy I piled on top of it just make it worse. She ought to be angry with Tom – it takes two, and he’s been living with her all this time. But it’s much easier to hate me.

  Well, don’t worry, Gita. I hate myself, too. Why do you think I drink? Today that’s added to my usual remorse after a well-lubricated evening, and the pain of losing Rachel is a blood-soaked cherry on top. It’s a nasty cocktail, one that even I would turn my nose up at.

  All right, I belly-ached hard enough about dragging myself to meet Gita in Soho all those times. I often wondered what on earth we’d find to say to each other. It was a bit like when I took Raf to museums when he was little. I grew up surrounded by closed pits and drunks. I wanted him to feel at home in galleries. ‘You’ll love it when you get there,’ I’d say.

  ‘Won’t,’ he’d say stubbornly, little arms crossed. But then he’d chatter on about seeing the pharaohs or whatever all the way home.

  I put off my lunches with Gita, but actually I always did love seeing her. The shadow of Tom came between us, though. No matter how thoroughly I tried to drown his ghost, he haunted me.

  Ugh, that makes me think of Rachel, her crumpled body a few doors away. And reminds me that I need answers. I turn to Roderick. ‘You know about the tides, don’t you? You can tell us. When can we cross that damned causeway?’

  Roderick looks up slowly from his phone. For a second, it seems he’s going to blank me completely, but I take a step towards him, and catch my foot in the rug. Once I’ve steadied myself on a chair he looks at me. ‘That depends. As you can see, the weather is a factor.’

  ‘Twice a day. I thought the tide went out twice a day?’ I shake my head at him.

  He laughs but the sound is mirthless. ‘Have you even looked out of the window recently? It’s really not going to be safe today.’

  Somehow, the implication is that I’m too drunk to focus. And I resent it. I go over and have a look. Christ on a bike, he’s right. It’s mad out there, the waves higher than ever, lurching and crashing. The rain is falling thick and fast. The paths are awash. But that causeway, whenever it emerges, is still our only means of escape. Jane comes to join me, though she pointedly stands a little aloof, then Raf. We all watch in silence as another thousand or so litres of water are dumped on us, partly brine, partly rain.

  Finally Raf turns away. ‘Well, as soon as that causeway does appear, I’m going to try and get across.’

  ‘No! No, you can’t,’ I say, going closer and trying to take his arm. He shakes me off as though I’m a gnat. ‘You heard what Roderick said. It’s not going to be safe. What about those waves?’ I wail, hating myself. I sound pathetic.

  ‘Someone’s got to try. Not you and the girls and so on,’ he says, looking respectfully at Ross and Roderick. ‘But I’m a strong swimmer.’

  ‘What about Tom? He could do it?’ I suggest. To my mind, he’s definitely expendable. But Gita is the first to protest. Of course.

  ‘Tom’s needed here – he’ll have to liaise with the police.’ She’s grasping at straws. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised she’s still got his back; she’s put up with so much shit over the years, what’s a bit more? But I don’t want my lad to take the risk.

  ‘Maybe we should all just stay put, until the water dies down? We don’t want to take any chances.’

  ‘You were the one saying we had to get off, two minutes ago.’ Raf’s tone is dry. Now he comes over to me and gives me the briefest possible hug. It’s not enough to mollify me, not nearly, but it’s the closest we’ve been all weekend. It might just stop me from trying to stop him with every fibre in my body, the way I want to. ‘You know I can do it. It has to be me.’

  At this point, Gita does say, ‘I don’t think you should, Raf. It’s too rough.’ And from the sofa, Tasha sobs harder, which I suppose is her way of adding her mite. Raf smiles politely at Gita, avoids Tasha’s eyes and allows Roderick to take him to one side and start explaining tides to him. Poor lad. Those seas are going to be deadly enough without Roderick boring him to death beforehand.

  I sit down and cover my face with my hand. I don’t want him to see me crumble. I know Raf’s right: he’s the fittest, he’s the only one with a ghost of a chance, but I hate it. I hate all of this. I sip from my cup, forgetting it’s water. Damn. But the annoyance helps me spring up again.

  ‘Right. Then we should all get ready, so we can go the moment you’ve fetched help.’ I look around, checking for assent. But everyone avoids looking at me. What’s the matter with them?

  ‘What are we waiting for? Are you all packed?’ I say to the girls. Gita immediately slips a protective arm around them, draws them closer, as though I have the plague – or worse. I swivel from Gita to Roderick, but he looks sheepish too.

  ‘Look, Vicky. Why don’t you just go and … lie down?’

  ‘Me? Why should I? I’m not tired. What are you trying to say?’

  Gita sighs. ‘You seem a little … emotional. A sleep might do you good. You know, while Raf goes to the mainland.’ It sounds anodyne enough. But I catch a glimpse of Nessie’s face. Little tragedy-faced bitch is hiding a sneaky smile.

  ‘Jesus! I’m not drunk, if that’s what you mean,’ I thunder. Gita makes a big deal of shrinking away from me again, taking her girls with her like some sort of fucking mother hen. I’m not having it, I’m not. I’m advancing on them all, about to give them a piece of my mind, when there’s a cough from the doorway. It’s Tom, with a very strange expression on his face. Raf takes the opportunity to sidle out without another look in my direction.

  ‘Roderick? You’re needed upstairs,’ Tom says. There’s something ominous about his tone. It sends a chill right down the back of my neck.

  I’d say there’s absolutely nothing good awaiting Roderick up there.

  Chapter 44

  Jane

  Mount Tregowan, 1st November

  Every time I think this weekend can’t possibly get any worse, something completely ghastly happens. Actually, ghastly doesn’t even begin to cover it.

  If I could draw this scene, how would I do it? I look around the little group of us, collected in this room, huddled almost. The colours have changed. Friday was gold and sea-green, yesterday was Rachel’s glamorous thundering black and red, but today? Today we’re all grey, flotsam and jetsam left behind after the great storm has taken our princess away.

  We are not the people who clinked glasses on Friday, that’s for sure. That little soirée, my awkwardness over my fleece, already seems like several lifetim
es ago. Even last night, with Rachel glittering and gloating over us all, with her announcement …

  The triumph in her voice. The way she looked directly at me as she said it. That tiny, twisted smile. I ought to be sorry she’s dead. I ought to feel … all the sorrow in the world. A young life. Well, youngish. A cruel death. A friend, gone. A person who was so much larger than even her own huge life. But instead I have to hide my expression from the others.

  Because I’m really rather pleased.

  It would have been better if it had been Vicky, drunken spiller of beans, the lurching clown of our group. But Rachel was a fucking bitch too. I’m glad she’s gone. There, I’ve said it. The way she smiled right in my face. I don’t know why I ever confided in her about my feelings for Tom. Although she was a total egomaniac, forever full of clunking name-drops about the people she’d seen and the hotspots she’d been to, she was also a strangely brilliant listener. The way she fixed her eyes on you. It was such a compliment. Rachel, with the world at her feet, hanging on to your every word.

  I suppose I found it intoxicating. She cornered me at one of Gita’s little dos. Ruby’s christening, in fact. Vicky wasn’t the only one who’d had a glass too many that day. It was purely medicinal, for me, under the circumstances. Ruby was so gorgeous I could hardly bear to look at her. Silky black hair from her mum, utter physical perfection from her dad. Rachel had jetted in from Barbados or the Bahamas and was about to sweep out again, to St Helena or St Kitts, when she wedged herself down next to me on a sofa.

  ‘You’re keeping a low profile,’ she said, fixing me with those eyes. ‘These things are such a bore if you don’t like kids, aren’t they?’ After a beat I nodded, wondering how on earth she’d made that leap. It must have shown in my face. ‘I’m sorry, how dumb of me. You do like them. I’d wondered, after … what happened.’

  Bang went my stupid hope that she’d forgotten all about my abortion. And my total humiliation at her long-ago Halloween party too, being hauled off to get my stomach pumped. I froze, while she carried merrily on. ‘But you haven’t had any more children. Is it Geoff? Does he have a … problem?’ she whispered this last bit, and we both looked round to where he was chatting to Tom, or trying to. Tom, as usual, was letting his eyes rove over Geoff’s head as he nodded along. Gita had a lot of very attractive young mum friends. Tom was the king of suburbia, surveying a herd of MILFs. Geoff was talking earnestly, gesticulating with his glass, and as we watched, he sprayed Tom with spittle.

  ‘It’s me,’ I found myself saying in a rush. ‘What I did … It left me with … problems. We’re keeping on trying.’ Rachel had been so sweet, on the surface. But I’ve had years to regret my naivety. She’d even spotted the way my eyes flicked involuntarily over to the source of all my pain and shame. Tom.

  Oh, she was no fool, Rachel. She put it all together, there and then. My quick fling – well, not even that. It was just a cheap fuck, then an expensive trip to the abortion clinic. And when I’d seen Tom with Gita, at Rachel’s party a few weeks later, it had been too much. Love’s young dream – they’d been all over each other, and looking just perfect together. I’d almost ended it all, drinking myself to oblivion and beyond. You see, I’d been consoling myself with the thought that it wasn’t me, it was him. But Rachel’s party proved that, with the right woman, with Gita, he had no problem with commitment. Or so it then seemed.

  Rachel never forgot; that much was clear on Friday night. Talking so loudly, so explicitly, when anyone could have heard. In front of Vicky. Her knowledge had made me sweat. A sword of Damocles, hanging over my head. Over my marriage. I thought the worst had finally happened, when Vicky told Geoff. It was almost a relief. But then, last night, Rachel gave me that pointed, triumphant glance when she made her proud announcement. My jealousy cut me like a knife. And I realised Rachel would always find a way to wound me.

  Oh, why did I ever agree to come? I must have been crazy. But I suppose I thought if I were here, at least Rachel couldn’t talk about me behind my back. I wouldn’t have put it past her, not at all. She might have mentioned it even more loudly, so not just Vicky but the whole room could have heard. Then she’d just do one of those ‘What have I said now?’ little shrugs. And for her, that would have been that.

  As it is, my peace of mind, my reputation, my everything. My life with Geoff. It’s all been destroyed.

  Just as well she won’t be speaking ever again. Silent as the grave, that’s Rachel now. God, I’m horrifying myself. I’m not that person, am I? I’m nice Jane, who draws the nice, nice mice. I’m not gorgeous and glamorous and fertile beyond my years, but I have nieces and nephews and a full life and I have, or had, a loving husband … I need to hang on to all that, tighter than ever.

  I should feel sorry for Rachel, dead with her baby inside her. Who knows, she might have craved that child, as I have yearned for my own over the years. Maybe it made her as mad as I am. Maybe all this is because of what she did, how she did it, and who she did it to.

  I look around again, seeing the slumped shoulders, the apparent dejection. What if all of these people are hiding things, just as I am? What if no one is really sad she’s dead?

  It’s hard to unlock people’s hearts. Ironically, Rachel was gifted at it – but only for her own reasons. I do it sometimes, with my illustrations. People ask me why the mice are sad. Well, children ask me. Their parents never notice. Now we’re the mice, lost and aimless, with the cat dead in the next room. We all have sad faces. But one of us is just pretending.

  She played with us. She was merciless. It got too much, for one of our number. Someone has turned the tables on Rachel at last.

  Suddenly Roderick bursts in on my thoughts. We all look up automatically. His face is grey. God, what now?

  ‘She’s dead,’ he says, his face crumpling. Wake up, Roderick, I think. She’s been dead for hours.

  But it’s Gita who snaps, ‘We know.’ I look over. Her milk of human kindness act is definitely souring. She turned on Vicky just now, and I couldn’t have been more shocked. Now Roderick is getting it in the neck.

  But his grief is suddenly visceral. Real. ‘Not her, not Rachel,’ Roderick almost spits, as though he can’t get her name out of his mouth fast enough. ‘It’s Penny. Penny’s dead,’ he wails, then collapses into a chair, head in his hands. His blubbering is unmanly and, I hate to say it, repellent.

  My God, I think. It can’t be true. Can it? Not Penny?

  Not another one.

  Chapter 45

  Gita

  Mount Tregowan, 1st November

  I can’t help it, I find myself running out of the room and up the stairs. It’s not as though I ever liked Penny that much. And, after what she did to my little Ruby, I positively loathed her. But dead? How can that be true? I need to verify the information, check my sources. I need to see this with my own eyes.

  As I go, I almost collide with Raf, loping down the stairs to the front door with his wetsuit in his arms. It’s almost as cumbersome as a dead body. He must be just about to try the causeway. I’m afraid we’re pretty awkward with each other, super-polite, each stepping gingerly round the other. What’s the etiquette for dealing with your husband’s newly acquired illegitimate son? I’m going to have to get to grips with it. But I’m just not quite able to rise to the occasion now.

  Raf has a slightly odd look on his face, preoccupied, even a bit noble. I’ve seen Tom with the same expression on the rare – let’s face it, very rare – occasions when he decides to do something selfless.

  Raf can’t have heard about Penny. I falter for a second, then decide not to delay him. There’s only a short window with the tides, and Roderick might well have got it wrong about his sister. He’s certainly not behaving rationally. I quickly lean in and try and give Raf a hug. He’s being very brave, after all, doing this for us. He steps back, not sure what I intend, but then smiles. He’s a nice boy, when all is said and done. And his parentage is not his fault. ‘Good luck, honey,’ I say to him,
and he smiles. ‘Nothing to it,’ he says, a bit more jauntily.

  I hope he’s right, but I barely have time to worry, taking the stairs two at a time as soon as he’s passed me. I suppose I ought to stay with the girls, get them through this further shock. But I’m doing this to protect them. How much more can we all take? Ruby – thank God, she was restored to us. Then Rachel, taken instead. Now this, with Penny. What the hell is going on?

  Is there a maniac on the loose? Or is it more sinister still? And where on earth is Tom? It’s him I’m really rushing to find. Whatever happened years ago, however angry I am with him, we need to leave this place. We need to communicate, make the decision together, and then act on it. It’s not safe. Not for the girls. Not for us. Not for anyone. At this moment, more than ever, I really need him.

  My thoughts are whirling as I career on up the stairs. Penny’s room is on the floor above ours, the floor that leads to Rachel’s eyrie at the top of the castle. How did the woman feel, about her new stepmother lording it over her, being promoted right to the top of the heap? It’s irrelevant now. Tom says I have a mind obsessed with trivialities. He says a lot of things. I tell him it’s my job; I need to keep up with everything, know what’s trending. Maybe it’s one of the reasons I stayed in touch with Rachel over the years. Well, I wish I hadn’t now.

  I get to Penny’s door, and stop. I’m breathing hard. Now that I’m here, I’m not so sure I really want to find out what’s behind it.

  Come on, Gita. Big girl now, I tell myself. A mantra that’s got me through a hundred sticky board meetings, seen me arguing for pay rises when there’s been a company freeze. That’s pushed me, if not exactly through the glass ceiling, at least right up there so my nose is pressed hard against it. I put my hand on the brass doorknob. It’s polished to a mirror shine. Of course it is.

  I swallow and push it open. Tom is standing by the window, but I don’t even register him. My eyes fly to the bed. Penny is there, curled into a foetal shape, on top of the covers. I know immediately it’s true; she’s dead. Skeletally thin in life, she is haggard now, a literal bag of bones. Her lank hair is partly over her face, but can’t disguise the trail of vomit that leads to a pile of the stuff beside the pillow. It’s yellowy-green. Suddenly the acrid smell hits me, together with the implications of what I’m seeing, and my stomach heaves. I bend over. Tom is by my side, helping me out of the room.