Lynsey is walking into the sea.
I knock off my shoes and start running, ignoring the thrashing noises behind me as he comes out from his hidey-hole and scuttles off up the path.
She’s deep enough that her hair is floating out behind her, long silver ribbons of hair streaming out from under the paper hat that’s still jammed on her head, that’s jammed on so low it must be covering her eyes like a blindfold. And she keeps on walking away.
Chapter 10
‘A beach picnic,’ I said. ‘But grand. Think Edwardian.’ I had copied the idea from one of the posh hotels on the island. ‘It’s all down there already in hot boxes and chillers.’ Chicken legs and strawberries. Frittata and fruitcake. I had prepared most of it in advance, bought in the rest and ferried it in two trips. I liked that there was a back drive to a parking space handy for the kitchen. It meant we could hide the rigging and set up the show for maximum impact. We had a key to the slipway barrier in case any of our guests ever brought a boat. It was strictly against beach rules to take a car onto the shore for any other reason except towing a boat in or picking it up, of course, but the beach cottages didn’t overlook the track and no one had seen me.
‘Won’t the gulls have eaten it?’ said Sasha. ‘Or the local peasants?’ They were waiting for Peach, but they’d decided to do their waiting in the breakfast room, while I stacked the dishwasher. I should have known the guests would gravitate towards the kitchen. It happened at every party. The monitor was off and I’d made sure an oven glove was hanging in front of it.
‘It’s safe,’ I said. ‘It’s a private beach.’
‘What if it rains?’ said Sasha. Rosalie huffed out a sigh of exasperation but I was glad someone had brought it up. I like showing off about The Breakers. We worked hard on it.
‘There’s a pavilion,’ I told him. ‘Open to the sea at the front, but with a waterproof blind you can unroll if you need to.’
‘Lovely,’ said Rosalie.
‘Eating lunch huddled in a beach-hut?’ Sasha said.
‘Yes, Sasha,’ said Rosalie. ‘It’s a treat. A beano, an excursion, a jolly, a spree.’
‘Why do you always say fifteen words when one is too many?’ said Sasha.
Paul laughed. ‘Ha! See, Rosie? It’s not just me.’
‘For merriment, joy, diversion and delight,’ said Rosalie.
‘What is wrong with you?’
‘She drives me bonkers with it,’ Paul said.
‘I’m taking the whole weekend off the live tournament,’ said Rosalie. ‘With penalties racking up for lost turns. You can’t expect me not to practise. Acionna’s streaking ahead as we speak.’
‘Who the hell’s Acionna?’ Sasha said.
‘My Scrabble nemesis. I think she’s Russian but she’s a complete ninja in English. So stop acting as if you’re the only one who’s got a life elsewhere, Sasha, and be here and now. With us. We’re going on a picnic.’
‘And does Peach need to take a flask?’ Sasha said. ‘Or is there booze laid on? Oh!’ he added, as Peach appeared in the door from the back hall. ‘There you are.’ But he must have heard her. The rest of us had.
‘Sasha, if you’re going to keep making digs and pulling stunts until I break down and say I’m a miserable alkie with a ruined life, I’ll do it now,’ Peach said. ‘Because it’s really boring for everyone.’
‘Yah-boo, sucks to you,’ said Paul, putting his thumb to his nose and wiggling his fingers at Sasha. ‘You’ve spent so long swishing about your little empire with all your underlings bowing and scraping, you’ve forgotten what it’s like when people don’t revere you.’
‘I suppose it must look like an empire from where you’re standing.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Rosalie. ‘Why don’t you all slap your todgers on the table and settle it once and for all?’
‘Not with ladies present,’ Sasha said. ‘Peach, Kim, why don’t you step outside?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Paul. ‘What about Rosie?’
‘Ignore him,’ said Rosalie. ‘He’s trying to provoke you.’
‘Yes, ignore me,’ Sasha said. ‘Let’s all go and have some jolly fun on the beach at Knockbreak Bay.’
In the silence that followed this, we heard Buck and Ramsay coming, Ramsay taking the stairs in little sets of three, like a kind of dressage, and Buck plodding after him.
‘Where is everyone?’ Buck was saying. Then when he appeared in the doorway: ‘There you all are! Let’s go!’
* * *
‘Operation Laptops,’ I said to my mum. I was upstairs trying to make my bed, which wasn’t going too well with the phone tucked into my neck. ‘I’m going to search the whole house and come clean if I can’t find them.’
‘Of course you’ll find them,’ she said. ‘There’s no need for all the drama.’
‘I’d rather have the tiny drama of a house search today than the major drama on Monday when we find out they’ve been nicked. We’d be up Shit Creek with the insurance if we don’t notice for two days.’
‘Donna, are you seriously telling me there’s been a break-in?’ She sounded strained and it tripped my guilt-switch. I wasn’t the only one working hard on my own this weekend. The convention centre sounded packed to the rafters again.
‘Okay, no,’ I said. ‘Not a break-in. More of a mix-up. I’ll track them down.’
‘They went for the picnic idea, then, if you’re on your own?’ It wasn’t like her to check. She never gives way to anxiety. She was the one talking me down from ledges on the long journey to where we were today. ‘They’re all pals again? No atmosphere?’
‘Equilibrium,’ I said. ‘Or … a Mexican stand-off, at least.’
‘Doesn’t sound like much fun.’
‘It’s going really well, Mum. I didn’t mean to worry you.’
But her anxiety had infected me and, around the back corners of my brain, a whispered chant had begun, about how much we’d ploughed into this venture, even on top of Grandpa’s money. I had wondered if it would cause a rift: Grandpa leaving the hard cash to one of his two kids, only bequeathing his watch and his good golf clubs to my uncle and auntie. But they didn’t care. They came over for the funeral, all suntan and mangled vowels, then couldn’t get back to Sydney quick enough. I got the feeling Grandpa’s money was loose change to them. My auntie said something about it being my mum’s just reward for the grunt work. As if she wouldn’t have bothered helping us clear the house to get half of it.
‘So why do you sound so off, if it’s going so well?’ my mum was asking me.
‘They’re just a weird crowd,’ I said. ‘Kind of competitive. Kind of … cruel.’
‘Cruel?’ It must have seemed like an extreme word to someone who’d never met them.
‘Not all,’ I said. ‘Not the brother that didn’t bring his wife. And the client’s sister-in-law’s working her arse off to keep the peace. But, yeah, some of them are cruel. The husband’s a bit of a … I think his wife needs someone to talk to.’
‘Don’t get involved,’ my mum said. ‘She’s surrounded by people to talk to. Anyway, in a year’s time you won’t even remember their faces. God knows the brides and their mothers are all starting to blur up here. Oh, listen, Donna, there might be a couple coming for a look on Monday. But not till after work and they know we can’t stage the house for them. I should be back, but in case I’m not … If you did have a chance for a bit of a tidy round? It’s a Mark and a…’ I heard her rifling through papers ‘… an Erin. Okay?’
‘You’re a marvel,’ I said. ‘I’ll make a batch of fairy cakes and crack a half of cava.’
But first, I told myself once I’d hung up, where were the bloody phones? Who was in the room this morning when Sasha moaned about not being able to get hold of Jennifer? I screwed my eyes up, remembering. Kim had rushed out; Peach had rushed out after her. Rosalie had gone to see if they were okay. All the men were there. And none of them had admitted to hiding the damn things.
Would they have? I thought so: it was a moment of cooperation.
So one of the women must have them. Peach was far too drunk. The stash would be in either Kim’s room or Rosalie’s. It was worth starting there anyway.
When I saw the state of the master bedroom, I was glad I’d come snooping. The Breakers isn’t a hotel and it’s always hard to say whether people in a holiday let are going to clean up after themselves or expect to be waited on. Kim and Sasha, clearly, didn’t do anything for themselves. The curtains were still shut, except where one had been dragged away from the window and hooked over the edge of the dressing-table mirror – I guessed to let Kim do her make-up. The bed was a twisted mess of covers and pillows. I noticed they hadn’t taken the bedspread off and they’d slept on the decorative cushions instead of the proper pillows with their white linen pillow slips. That always drives me kind of nuts. I used to shudder, when I was on room service, to see some fat salesman sitting up in bed topless with the bedspread clamped under his hairy armpits, and more than once when I was chambermaiding I’d seen mascara or even spit on a velvet cushion someone had fallen asleep on, while the real pillows lay discarded on the floor. I wondered if I could do a turn-down, folding bedspreads over a chair-back and piling cushions up on its seat. I’d start with the next booking, maybe. It would seem like the rebuke it was if I suddenly did it tonight.
It didn’t take long to check the wardrobes and the blanket box. Kim didn’t have the stash anywhere in here. What she did have, hanging on one of the beautiful moleskin padded hangers I had chosen so carefully, was a floor-length white-cotton nightgown with a ruffled neckline and pink ribbon threaded through its cuffs and collar. This was as well as the skimpy lavender-coloured satin teddy she had worn last night that I had just folded under her pillow for her.
I smiled. I like believing people are happy, and it was good to think the sexy lingerie she had brought – or maybe Sasha had brought – for her anniversary had been cracked open a day early. Also, it was endearing to think that Kim, with her expensive hair and her platinum eternity ring, wore such uncool nightclothes normally.
I went into the bathroom, trying not to groan out loud at the litter of towels on the floor. I knew I should have gone for white. Every website I’d looked at about running a holiday home said to go for white towels because you can hot-wash them with bleach and they never fade. But I wanted to carry on the lavender theme from the bedroom and now my lovely bath sheets were lying on the floor, one with a dirty great footprint on it. Sasha must have tromped right over it when he got back in from the garden the night before. I took a photo of it and emailed it to my mum, subject line: When you’re right you’re right.
But before I hit send, I found myself standing still, skin tingling.
I bought the towels to go with the décor and Kim brought a slinky teddy to go with the décor too. The pink and white cotton was the anniversary treat. From the man who had married her when she was sixteen.
I tidied the bathroom as quickly as I could, swallowing hard on the sour taste in my mouth, trying to forget the feel of his lips and the smell of brandy when he kissed me. If he reckoned I was only twenty, same as his sister did …
In five minutes, I was out of there. I let my breath go and sucked in a good deep one from the air in the corridor, which suddenly seemed a lot cleaner than the air inside that bedroom.
Paul and Rosalie’s room couldn’t have been more different. It was the flash one, for a start. We’d had to hold our noses to kit it out and, God, it was awful. But some people like the Bond-villain look. For another thing, it was immaculate. Rosalie had made the bed, tight and smooth, and there was nothing out of place in the bathroom. She’d even dried the taps. It took me no more than a minute to check all round.
Buck and Peach’s room was strewn with clothes, every flat surface sprouting detritus – coins, lens solution, toiletries, crumpled receipts, water glasses, coffee cups, chocolate wrappers. I hoped they were both guilty. If one of them was fastidious, a weekend sharing with the other would be torture.
Where next? The empty room that should have been Peach and Jennifer’s yielded nothing. The snug neither. Nor Ramsay’s room, except for the news that he was as neat as a pin, making me wonder if Paul had dried those taps. If it was a family thing.
It was easier to search downstairs: no wardrobes, no chests of drawers or dressing-tables, no low beds to shove things under. I started in the kitchen and worked round. When I got to the billiards room, I was beginning to have wild thoughts about intruders again and my mouth was dry. If we got stung for compensation this early on, we’d never recover.
Then, with a whoop of relief, I saw what I’d forgotten. There were great big deep built-in cupboards in here – full of deckchairs and parasols since this room faced west to the terrace. I should have thought of it. Who would want all those machines in their bedroom overnight? One of them was bound to chirp or beep at an incoming message or start, near morning, to hoot the melancholy warning that its charge was running low. I threw open the cupboard doors, convinced my search was over.
The smell caught me in the back of the throat, sending me reeling away with my hand over my nose. It was sweet and chemical and vaguely familiar. I took a deep breath, held it, and clicked the cupboard light on. A knife, looked like one of my best kitchen knives, was sticking out of the back wall, pinning a gob of sodden coloured paper to the panelling. Whatever the paper was soaked in was causing the stink. Perfume, maybe. Hairspray? It dripped out, staining the wall in a long smear. And what was that blob, saturated and reeking? I poked a finger at it. It was too dark to be writing paper, too small to be a napkin and too flimsy to be anything else I could think of. I pulled my phone out and snapped a picture of it.
Right after the click, the sound of someone coming in the front door made me fumble the cupboard shut and start away from it. I was racking up the balls in their frame when I heard a whistle.
‘Donna?’ It was a man’s voice, but from that one word, I couldn’t tell whose.
‘In here,’ I shouted.
‘I knew this shutdown would be impossible to stick to,’ Ramsay said, entering the room. ‘We need to look up the tides and whatnot.’ He sniffed but said nothing.
‘Why?’
‘We’ve found a lobster pot and Kim wants it as a souvenir. I say it’s abandoned because it’s far too far up the beach but my brother reckons it’ll float at high tide and we should bait it and try to catch a lobster.’
‘Actually, I’m not sure I’ve got time to cook a lobster. Sorry to be a kill-joy.’
‘More for the thrill of the chase,’ Ramsay said. ‘What larks.’ He sniffed again. ‘Have you spilled something?’
While I was deciding whether or not to answer, he spoke again. ‘What must we all look like to you? Jennifer, for instance. God knows what you think of her. And Peach! The way Buck goes on.’
But he was skirting round what he really wanted to say, I could tell.
‘I don’t think anything. I’m just trying to make sure everyone has a nice weekend,’ I said. ‘You know, for TripAdvisor. It’s worrying to think The Breakers isn’t the kind of house where people feel happy.’
‘It’s nothing to do with the house,’ said Ramsay. ‘The house is lovely.’ But I remembered Buck’s arm bristling with goosebumps as he walked in through the front door and I remembered Peach saying she wouldn’t sleep alone. ‘When we were here before,’ he went on, ‘things went a bit far. At Sasha’s party. Lots of pranks and dares that didn’t go well. If we hadn’t all been cousins we’d have thankfully dropped each other.’
‘Sounds bad,’ I said.
He blinked and tried a laugh that didn’t quite work. ‘I overstated it a bit. There are some memories we’d rather forget. That’s all. Where better than a beach to wash them away?’
‘Wash them? Were you thinking of swimming?’ I hadn’t considered it. I hadn’t put any towels down in the pavilion.
But Ramsay was laughing. ‘God, no! Buck�
�s pretending he might, though, as a wind-up, so Peach is having hysterics and of course Kim doesn’t understand what’s going on. I volunteered to come back up and do the admin, more or less to get away from them.’
‘Strange wind-up,’ I said. I was thinking of the gob of soaked paper and wondering if I should show him. That was a strange joke too, if it was a joke. And Ramsay didn’t seem like a joker. ‘Peach said something last night. I thought she’d had a bad dream.’
He nodded and gave me a thoughtful look. ‘About swimming?’
‘About someone who went swimming.’
‘There was a story,’ Ramsay said. His top was made of that feather-light technical fabric and it was fluttering now as his breathing quickened.
‘Is this the ghost? The one Peach doesn’t believe in? The one the Ouija board would be for contacting?’
‘Telling tales out of school, Ramsay?’ It was Sasha. He was standing in the billiards-room doorway and we couldn’t see more than his silhouette. ‘That’s not cricket, you know. That’s not the spirit of manly honour than runs through every red-blooded British male. ’
‘Is this you outing me again, Sasha?’ Ramsay said. ‘Am I supposed to go and sob into a lace-edged handkerchief now? How many times do you need to hear me say I’m not gay?’
‘Once with feeling would do it,’ Sasha said. ‘Or bring a girl to Christmas dinner. Get married. Give your poor parents some grandchildren. There’s lots of ways, really. Grab the fair Donna right now and make her swoon with your caresses.’
‘Uh,’ I said. ‘That’s not included in the package.’
Ramsay burst out laughing. ‘You’re like something from a panto.’
Sasha took a couple of steps forward into the room, then stopped dead. ‘What’s that smell?’ he said. He swallowed hard. ‘Where’s it coming from?’ His chest was rising and falling too fast for someone standing still, and I was sure his face had paled. All of a sudden the line of his top lip looked clearer than before. ‘What are you cooking up, you two?’ he said. ‘Tell the truth. What did that hysterical bitch tell you to do?’
Go to My Grave Page 12