‘Please don’t worry about it, Alice,’ her mother said. ‘They’re upset. People do funny things when they’re upset.’
But Alice had heard what Clara’s mother said to her parents: ‘I should have trusted my instincts. I should have said no. I should never have let her come here with you.’
Two days after that, Alice flew home with Robert and their mother to make the start of term. Her father remained behind to ‘keep a watch on things’. He had become strained and argumentative by this stage, insisting that the boys in the other tent must have had something to do with it, even though the police had discounted them early on. ‘I don’t like the look of them, Bev. I don’t like their manner. If you ask me, they’ve got something to hide.’
Back in England, the teachers had been gentle with Alice. The children less so.
‘How could you not have heard her leave?’ one of the girls asked her. ‘Were you drunk, or something?’
‘No. No, I wasn’t.’ And she hadn’t been. Had she?
As Alice lay next to Michael, watching the curtains in the open window drift like ghosts, her memories of it all seemed remote and false. She had gone over what happened so many times since then, relived it for so many people – the French police, the British police, the coroner, the teachers, the parents – that she no longer fully remembered the real events. They had been trodden into the dust, mingled with other footprints, lost.
What stayed with her was the guilt. Even here, now, she could not entirely shift the fear that she was to blame. The belief that, somehow, she should have stopped Clara before she stepped out of the tent and into empty space.
The next day broke bright and fine, the sky a watercolour blue. From downstairs came the sound of water running, Charlie shrieking, Ada laughing. Alice was glad Robert’s children were there, carefree and oblivious. They gave the adults something to fuss over, something to focus on that was not the spectre of the girl who had vanished years before.
They spent that morning and those that followed boating or swimming in the lake, taking Ada and Charlie to the wooden playground, shaded beneath the trees. In the afternoons, they would read or snooze in the sunshine; in the evenings, play cards or watch TV. Only once more had Clara been mentioned, and this time, strangely, it was by Robert.
Alice was sitting in the garden, a book in her lap, when he took a seat next to her and gripped its arms. ‘I think she’s at peace, Alice.’
She closed her book and turned to her brother, glad that her sunglasses obscured her eyes. She had never believed Clara to be at peace. She remained in Alice’s mind, uneasy beneath the surface, waiting to be heard.
‘Why do you think that, then?’
‘I don’t know. I just get that feeling, being back in this place. I think she’s still here, but she’s OK. You know?’
Still here. Alice looked at Robert, his long, earnest face, his large, pale eyes. Little Bobs, who had cried for Clara, who still wanted it all to be all right. She turned away. If Clara was still here, it was surely as fragments or as the echo of a scream. Sometimes Alice imagined draining the entire lake, just to know once and for all – finding a cluster of bones, fragments of cloth. It would be better that way; it would allow her to release Clara from the prison of her mind. Because, how could you grieve if you have no bones? If you had nothing to bury at all?
But she would allow Robert to think Clara was at peace. There was no harm in it. She almost envied him his delusion.
By the last day of the holiday, Alice was desperate to be gone. She never liked other people being too close, and here they were inescapable – their sounds, their smells, their opinions, brushing up against her like the wings of the moths that flew in at dusk. Again, she swam early in the lake, the outlines of the trees reflecting black on the surface of the water. It was cold this morning, but she forced herself to remain in the lake, her limbs white phantoms beneath the surface. It was her goodbye to Clara. Her apology. This was the last time she would visit this place.
When Alice returned to the house, a towel wrapped around her, her bare feet leaving watery prints, she found her mother in the kitchen, her hands around a mug of tea.
‘You’re up early, Mum.’
She nodded. ‘Let me make you a cuppa. The kettle’s just boiled.’
Alice pulled her towel tighter, not wanting to stay talking, but not wishing to offend her mother, who stood at the work surface, putting a tea bag into a cup.
‘Does it bring things back, being here?’ Her mother did not look up.
Alice felt her body tense. She had not expected the question. ‘I suppose so. Maybe. It’s not been as bad as I thought it would.’
At first Alice had thought that coming back would be impossible – too close, too painful. But she knew now that Clara had never really left her. She was always there, just out of reach. Alice was always straining to hear her voice, to catch a glimpse of her. Occasionally, she would see her out of the corner of her eye, and her heart would speed up and her skin prickle with sweat before she realised that, of course, it was not Clara at all, but some dull, dark-haired woman going about her day – a life Clara should have been living.
Her mother was watching her now, her blue eyes flecked with red. ‘It doesn’t make you remember anything new, love?’
Alice looked at her mother’s drawn, tired face and felt a wave of irritation – that she had spoiled her swim, her moment of peace; that she was demanding she speak again of the events she had re-remembered beyond recognition.
‘What do you mean, Mum?’
‘I just wondered.’ She poured the water into the cup. ‘It doesn’t matter, really.’
Alice stared at her mother. Was that why she had brought them back, then? To see if it might prompt Alice to remember something, or to speak out about something she’d long concealed?
‘I didn’t see anything, Mum.’ Her voice was flat and dull. ‘I didn’t hear anything. I can’t remember something I didn’t see, no matter how much you might want me to tidy things up for everybody.’
Her mother was pouring the milk. ‘I’ve just always wondered if perhaps you did see something that night but thought it best not to say.’ She spoke gently, as though to a child.
‘What?’
No answer.
‘You don’t seriously think that I’ve known all these years what happened to Clara, but kept quiet about it?’
Her mother’s lips were a thin line.
‘Really? After what her parents have suffered? After what we’ve all been through? After every look, every snide comment I’ve endured over the years – people who think I must have known, must have heard, must have done something? You can’t think that.’ Her heart beat jerkily, too fast.
Her mother didn’t answer. She still stood at the work surface, her hands to her mouth, her fingers tugging at her lips – an odd, painful gesture.
As Alice watched, she felt her anger drain away, leaving her cold, shivering, on the flagstone floor. ‘Mum, what is it?’
Quietly, her mother began to cry – an odd, choking sound, a sound that made the air leave Alice’s lungs and her heart squeeze tight, like a fist.
She left the kitchen, left the house, returned to the lake, which was glass-still, dark in the shadows of the trees. She stood at the edge, her arms wrapped around herself, and thought. She thought of her mother, cowed and diminished. She thought of Robert: delusional, hopeful.
She thought of her father. Her father insisting that they camp near the trees. Her father handing them a flask full of rum.
Something in the water disturbed the surface, bubbles rose, then disappeared.
All these years her mother had been waiting for Alice to grow up. To work it out. To tell. Because she couldn’t.
Alice walked back into the lake, aware only vaguely of the coldness of the water. She walked until she was submerged up to her shoulders, then closed her eyes, held her nose and disappeared beneath the surface to where it was dark and cool and safe.
&
nbsp; You’ll Be Dead by Dawn
C.L. Taylor
The man is lying face down on the soft Thai sand. I keep expecting him to roar to life, to jump to his feet and come at me, swinging, but he doesn’t move a muscle. There’s a bloody gash at the base of his skull, a sandy crimson halo around his head.
‘You killed your friend,’ I say.
‘He’s not my friend.’ The man standing beside me has a belly so large it’s balanced, beach-ball-like, above the waistband of his neon-green swimming shorts. At his feet is a large, jagged rock smeared with blood.
‘He’d have killed me too if he’d got the chance.’ He pulls a sheet of paper out of the pocket of his shorts, crumples it into a ball and throws it at the body. It bounces off the dead man’s back and lands in the sand. ‘Sick bastard.’
I close my hand over the sheet of paper in my own pocket. I don’t need to re-read it to check what it says.
You’ll be dead by dawn.
Beachball Belly was the first one to find his note. He was lying on the beach with a grey-haired man, a green beer bottle raised to his lips, a pile of unopened bottles peeping out of the top of a cool box beside him, the crystal-clear sea licking at his toes when I sprinted towards them across the sand, sopping wet and screaming.
‘The boat’s come untied from the jetty. We’re stranded!’
Beachball took another slug of his beer and grinned. ‘Very funny, girly.’
‘It has. Look!’ I pointed out to sea where our white motorboat was happily bobbing about on the turquoise water well over a mile away.
Beachball rooted around in his bag and pulled out a pair of metalrimmed spectacles and swapped his sunglasses for them.
‘Shit.’
He set off along the sand, jogging towards the jetty on the other side of the island. Grey-hair and I exchanged a look then set off after him.
Beachball was doubled over and panting when we reached the jetty. He pointed at the post our boat had been tethered to, then into the distance, and shook his head.
‘I could swim out to it,’ I offered. ‘I was a county swimmer when I was at school.’
‘You?’ He snorted derisively. ‘You couldn’t swim from one side of the bath to the other.’
I said nothing. Instead I watched as he yanked his t-shirt over his head and, still gasping, waded into the sea, assuring us that he was a strong swimmer and he’d reach the boat in no time. Ten minutes later the old grey-haired guy – the one that’s lying dead at our feet now – had to wade in after him and drag him back.
‘Bloody asthma,’ Beachball gasped as we half carried, half dragged him back across the island to where he’d left his bag.
He spotted the note as he lay on the sand, squirting his Ventolin inhaler into his mouth and gulping in air like a beached puffer fish. The note was sticking out of the pocket of his rucksack, quivering in the light sea breeze.
You’ll be dead by dawn.
‘Is this your idea of a joke?’ He crumpled it in his fist and threw it at Grey-hair’s head. ‘Not so funny now we’re all stranded here for the night, is it? Or was that all part of your plan? Pop off into the jungle for a piss, untie the boat and then see how much you could freak me out?’ He shook his head. ‘I know you like a practical joke but…’
I opened my bag and glanced inside, then patted the pockets of my shorts and gasped so loudly Beachball and Grey-hair immediately stopped talking and stared at me.
‘I’ve got one too.’ My hand shook as I held out an identical piece of paper, torn from a lined notebook, the words scratched onto the page with a blue biro. ‘I just found it in my pocket. How the … what…’
‘Mate!’ Beachball stared incredulously at the page fluttering in my hand. ‘Winding me up is one thing, but you don’t even know this woman. That’s not cool.’
‘Oh, sod off!’ Grey-hair picked up a handful of sand and threw it at Beachball. It rained down on him, sticking to his wet body like cake sprinkling on fresh icing. ‘This is a sick stunt, even for you. Where did you put my note then, eh?’
He reached into his pockets, then frowned as he pulled them inside out, revealing only the white lining. ‘In here?’ He tipped his black rucksack onto the sand. A bottle of suntan lotion, a packet of cigarettes and half an apple tumbled out, but no note. The colour rose in his cheeks as he swore under his breath and began rooting through the bag’s pockets. I took a small step back, one eye on the jungle to my right, and tightened my grip on my own bag. If either of them made any kind of move to attack me it was my only escape route. They were both bigger and stronger than me, but I was at least twenty years younger and lighter by a good ten stone. It was always going to be risky, tagging along on a boat trip with two total strangers – men at that – but there was no point to my trip if I didn’t.
‘There, look!’ Grey-hair’s voice was jubilant as he scooped from the sand a crime novel with a black cover and vivid orange lettering, and flicked through the pages. He paused near the middle, plucked a piece of paper from the heart of the book and waved it victoriously in Beachball’s face. ‘There you go – “You’ll be dead by dawn”. If I’m playing a sick joke, why would I write a note to myself?’
Beachball looked from him to me and back again. I took another small step backwards. Unlike some of the islands off Phuket where paths have been worn into the vegetation by thousands of tourists’ feet, there’s no obvious route into the jungle here. I’d have to plough through it and find somewhere to hide if either man decided to attack me.
‘Because if you didn’t you’d definitely look guilty!’ Beachball scooped up a handful of sand and chucked it back at Grey-hair, but there was a grin on his face and amusement in his voice.
‘I told you. I didn’t write the bloody note. That’s not the sort of thing I find very funn—’
‘Whatever.’ Beachball reached for a beer. ‘What we need to do is work out how the hell we’re going to get off this sodding island, not get into a debate about your crap sense of humour.’
‘So what happened, then?’ Beachball nods at Grey-hair’s body. The top of his bald head is crimson from the hot sun, the knuckles of his right hand raw and bleeding. He flicks the sheen of sweat from his brow onto the sand. ‘He told me he was going to find somewhere to have a shit. Next thing I know you’re screaming like a banshee.’
I press one hand to my vest, covering the rip in the neckline that is exposing my bikini top.
‘He attacked me.’ I look Beachball straight in the eye, but there’s a quiver in my voice. ‘I came back to the jetty because I was suspicious that the boat didn’t just sail off on its own and I was right. Look.’ I duck down under the jetty, pull out a piece of rope and run my fingers over the short, stubby cords at one end. ‘It was cut. Deliberately. I was examining it when your friend discovered me and attacked me. I think he was planning on killing us both.’
Beachball glances down at the dead man. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘I don’t know. He’s your friend.’
‘I told you. He’s not my friend.’ His lip curls as he says the last word.
‘But you’re on holiday with him.’
‘That doesn’t make us friends. There were supposed to be three of us on this trip, but one of the guys dropped out at the last minute.’
‘So how do you know him?’
He shifts from one foot to the other and rubs his hands over his red, sweaty face, momentarily hiding his eyes from me. ‘We know each other from an internet forum.’
‘What kind of internet forum?’
Beachball peers through his fingers, suspicion and fear flickering across his face for a split second, then the emotion is gone, replaced by a cold smile. ‘Let’s just say we share an interest.’
‘What kind of interest?’
‘My, aren’t we a nosy little girl? How about you answer some questions for a change?’
I glance out to sea. The boat has drifted further away in the last hour or so – it’s still bobbing about, alone,
on the clear, blue water. There are no other boats that I can see. With its dense jungle and tiny stretch of beach this is one of the least popular islands off Phuket. Most of the tourists will be at the festival in the town – drawn by the noise, the booze and the dancing. We could be alone here for hours yet.
‘OK.’ I look back warily at Beachball. Just because Grey-hair is dead doesn’t mean I’m out of danger. ‘What do you want to know?’
He looks me up and down again. ‘Why would a young girl like you earwig on two total strangers in a bar and then ask if you could share their boat to a deserted island? It’s weird. Where are your friends?’
I want to tell him that he’s the weird one, coming on holiday with someone he barely knows and then killing him without a moment’s hesitation. Instead I say, ‘My friends are back in England. None of them could afford to come travelling with me.’
‘So you’re a rich girl, are you?’ He openly sneers. ‘A Trustifarian living off Mummy and Daddy?’
‘Actually I’m an orphan. My mum died of cancer last year, I was only seventeen. And my … my…’ I swallow, my throat suddenly dry, ‘…my stepdad passed away recently. He left me some money.’
‘Oh.’ The expression on Beachball’s face changes, but it’s not one of pity. Is he planning on stealing from me? Worse? He hasn’t shown the slightest regret for braining Grey-hair while I was grappling with him. What’s to stop him killing me next? He rubs a hand over his lips and looks at me thoughtfully. ‘Why us? Why ask to share our boat?’
I look him straight in this eye. ‘I overheard you talking, and when you said you were coming here it seemed like an opportunity too good to miss. I’m not in Phuket for the beaches or the bars. I’m looking for dangerous species.’
Mystery Tour Page 3