by Agatha Frost
Grateful Sally wasn’t insisting on tagging along, Claire hurried across the square to catch up with Damon before he locked the door behind himself. She found him outside the front door of the café, scrambling for his keys on the pavement.
“Jesus, Claire!” He gasped as he straightened up. “Where’d you pop out from?”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Just got back?”
He nodded tiredly as he slotted his key into the lock. Like Claire’s flat, the only way to access his place was through the door in the back room. Unlike her own candle shop, she wasn’t used to seeing the café unlit and empty. The chairs sat upturned on the tables, the display stands were bare of their usual vegan treats, and eerie stillness replaced the hustle and bustle.
“Don’t mind the mess,” he said as she followed him up the dark, windowless staircase to his flat. “We were in a rush getting ready this morning.”
Claire and Damon’s flat were mirror images of each other, with nearly identical layouts. As much as their flats had in common, they couldn’t have looked more different if they tried. Whereas Claire had decided to paint over the old floral wallpaper with neutral whites and greys to complement her oak and white wood furniture, Damon had chosen dark navy and browns against his walnut furniture and equally dark laminate wood floor. A giant television, twice as wide as Claire’s, took up a big chunk of the space. A myriad of consoles filled the unit beneath it. Quadruple-stacked floating shelves ran across the back wall, stopping at the kitchen in the corner. Rather than ornaments and pictures, Damon had perfectly organised game and DVD cases, all split into their individual franchises. A leather two-seater sofa occupied the middle of the room, leaving no space for the small dining room table Claire had managed to squeeze into her flat. The foot recliners were still popped up, and Sean’s bedding was draped across the leather, half on the floor. Red and blue pizza boxes cluttered the glass table next to open cases with the discs missing. Controllers snaked from one of the consoles, resting atop the pizza boxes. Unlike Claire and Taron’s, Ryan and Sean’s night obviously hadn’t ended after leaving the pub; it felt so long ago already.
“How is he doing?” Claire asked as Damon collapsed onto the sofa, kicking down the recliner in the process.
“He’s in intensive care,” he replied, rubbing at the lines in his forehead. “Surgery lasted five hours. They said it was touch and go, and from how they’re talking, it still is. I wanted to stay, but they wouldn’t let me. Said they’d call if there were any changes.”
Claire took the other side of the small sofa, although she kept the recliner up. Tucking her legs underneath herself, she faced Damon and rested her head on the warm leather. He did the same, and they shared a strained smile. Her earlier suspicions pushed forward, and she diverted her gaze to the mess on the coffee table.
“When you found him,” she started, fidgeting with her legs, “why didn’t you stay with him?”
“Huh?”
“In the alley? I found you on a bench.”
Damon frowned, and she could tell his mind was going where hers had earlier. From the pure shock alone, she’d gone down the wrong path.
“One of the paramedics put me there,” he explained, his frown deepening. “I was in shock. I’d just found one of my best friends in a pool of his own blood.”
“That makes sense.”
“Did you think it was me?” Damon’s voice suddenly rose. “Seriously, Claire?”
“No,” she replied, clenching her eyes shut. “Not really. It’s just . . . you were so angry at him, and then Sally pointed out the bench thing, and I put two and two together—”
“I was angry that we missed our chance to take part in the tournament,” he interrupted bluntly. “And any anger I felt about Taron vanished the second I found him. For goodness sake, Claire. I thought you knew me.”
“I do, I—”
“You just think I have it in me to stab someone?” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands. “One of my closest friends, at that? I’ve been friends with Taron nearly as long as I’ve known you. Sean and Mark, too.”
Marinating in the silence that followed, Claire regretted that the thought had even entered her mind. Even being tired and in some form of shock herself wasn’t an excuse. She knew Damon. She loved Damon. She was close to him in a way she couldn’t be with anyone else, not even Sally. They were the unmarried thirty-somethings of their families, carrying a little too much weight and far too complacent to push hard enough for big changes. They clicked together like two pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said, falling back into the sofa. “I get how it might have looked.” He pulled his phone out from within his costume, looked at the screen, and tossed it onto the pizza boxes. “I’ve been trying to call Sean all day. Think he’s turned his phone off. Don’t suppose you’ve seen him around the village?”
Claire shook her head. “Should we be worried?”
“I’ve been too busy fretting about Taron to think about Sean.” He gave a jaw-splitting yawn. “Although now that you’ve said it, I am worried.”
“He’s an adult.”
“You’ve met him.” Damon laughed. “I love the guy, but he’s a little . . . what’s the word? Underdeveloped?”
“He’s certainly shy.”
“His grandparents raised him. They did everything for him. Babied him, by the sounds of it, and still do. He’s never tried to go out on his own. Works nights stocking shelves at a supermarket where he doesn’t have to speak to anyone. Perfect job for him. He’s been saving up to . . .” His eyes darted down to his nails as he picked at the cuticles. “He and Taron have been talking about house sharing for years. Tried to get me involved, but I wasn’t up for leaving Northash. Thought this would be the year they actually did it.” He paused and chewed on the inside of his lip. “What could have happened to him?”
“I tried to find him at the convention,” Claire said. “Nowhere to be seen. Maybe he left before the commotion? There’s a chance he doesn’t even know about any of this.”
“Maybe,” Damon mused, not sounding convinced. “But where would he go? He’s nearly three hundred miles from home, and I can’t imagine he’d just hop on a train back to Devon without saying anything. And why is his phone turned off?”
They stared at each other, exchanging identical expressions. Claire didn’t know enough about Sean to jump to any conclusions, but maybe that was for the best. Without the bias of friendship clouding her vision, she could see things for what they were. Sean’s disappearing act couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
“Give it until tomorrow,” she suggested. “He’ll show up.”
“I hope so.” He leaned forward and grabbed his phone. “Maybe Rina has seen him.”
“Was that her outside?”
Damon nodded. “Turned up at the hospital a few hours ago. Got the first train down here when she heard what happened to Taron.”
“Does she know someone else in Northash?”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard her tell someone on the phone she was on her way back,” Claire explained. “But I might have caught the wrong end of the stick.”
He arched a brow as he typed something on his phone. “I don’t think she knows anyone other than me. She’s studying up in Glasgow.” He locked his phone and tossed it back on the table. “Taron was only just getting his life back on track. First time in years I’ve seen him happy.” He paused, seeming to notice Claire’s curiosity, and added, “His mum died a few years ago, and then his grandma nearly straight after. Sent him off the rails a little. Getting accepted into university was his fresh start. He’s only been studying since last September. Why is life so unfair sometimes?”
Claire was about to reply when her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and opened the message from Sally: a photograph of two glasses on her kitchen counter, filled to the brim
with red wine. In the screen’s corner, she noticed the time.
“Happy birthday,” she said with a smile and a wink. “It’s one minute past midnight.”
“What a birthday.”
“Come to mine for a drink,” she said as she stood. “And that’s not a question.”
“But—”
“There’s nothing you can do to help Taron now.” She pulled Damon up with one sharp tug. “Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. For what’s left of tonight, at least, try to enjoy the fact you made it to another year. Sally’s already poured the wine. I’ll text ahead to pour another glass.”
“I’ll bring my own,” he said, grimacing as he headed for the kitchen. “I can’t stand that wine she likes.”
“How do you know what wine Sally likes?”
Damon didn’t respond as he bent over to retrieve a four-can pack of toffee apple cider from the salad drawer in his under-counter fridge. He straightened but didn’t immediately turn around.
“You must have told me,” he replied, flicking off the lights.
They left through the café and set off towards Claire’s Candles. The rowdy crowd gathered in the pub’s front beer garden filled the square with the usual Saturday night noise that would likely continue well into the early hours. Not for the first time, Claire was glad her bedroom didn’t face onto the square.
Once inside her flat, which Sally had slightly tidied, they all sat around the L-shaped sofa. They put the television on a music channel for background noise, but none of them paid attention to it. Claire sat between Sally and Damon to provide the usual buffer, but tonight, as she sipped her wine, she couldn’t help noticing they didn’t seem as uncomfortable with each other. They talked across her, rather than through her. Given the various titbits, there’d definitely been a moment where they’d been alone without her, talking about Damon’s friend and drinking Sally’s red wine. As confusing as the change was, Claire didn’t mind. In fact, she’d always wanted her two best friends to be closer. So, why hadn’t they told her?
She sighed and decided that, for now, she wouldn’t push it. She’d simply enjoy what was left of the evening and try to pretend the day had been a normal one.
But it hadn’t, of course.
Taron was fighting for his life in hospital. If he was there because of a random attack, so be it, but she couldn’t sit back and wait for the ‘good lads’ at Blackburn to figure it out.
Her gut screamed at her, and she was going to listen to it.
Tonight, she’d drink wine with her friends.
Tomorrow, she would start investigating . . . and she already had an idea where to begin.
Chapter Five
“Sally,” Claire groaned, struggling under the covers. “Get off.”
Sally snorted in her sleep and rolled onto her back, dragging her leg with her. Freed from the weight of Sally’s cocked-over limb, Claire settled deeper into the mattress and attempted to drift away again. Before sleep had a chance to claim her for another spell, her phone’s alarm blared on the bedside.
“What time is it?” Sally pulled the pillow out from under her and jammed it over her head.
“Time to get up.” Claire tossed back the covers. “Coffee?”
“Strong,” Sally mumbled under the pillow. “Strong enough to wake the dead.”
“We didn’t go to bed that late.”
Leaving Sally to stir in her own time, Claire went through to the sitting room, where Damon was curled up under a fur throw on the sofa. He hadn’t wanted to go home. He also hadn’t wanted to sleep in the same bed Taron had slept in the night before. She couldn’t blame him for either.
“Sleep okay, birthday boy?” she whispered as she wafted the fresh hot coffee under his nose.
“No,” he replied, pulling himself upright and immediately reaching for his glasses. “What time is it?”
“Just gone nine.”
Claire set a cup of coffee next to Sally, who had fallen straight back into a deep sleep, before jumping into the shower to wake herself up. She usually made a point of not setting an alarm on Sundays, especially since she’d started working six days a week at the candle shop. Setting the alarm before bed had felt like a betrayal of her one full day off.
“Visiting starts at ten,” she said to Damon as she left the bathroom with a towel tightly tucked in her armpits. “Go and get yourself showered.”
Leaving Sally in bed, Claire and Damon caught a bus to Royal Blackburn Hospital. Once there, she followed him to the quiet intensive care area tucked away down a deep network of corridors. The receptionist was reluctant to let them through owing to them not being family.
“I was here yesterday,” Damon explained. “I was in a costume, but I was here all day.”
“It was my day off.”
Luckily for them, a passing doctor recognised Damon. He waved them through, and they set off at a quick walk.
“We’ve still not been able to contact any family,” said Dr Mohindra in a quiet voice as he led them down the corridor. “If you have any contact information for anyone, now would be a good time to pass it on.”
The urgency of his request made Claire’s stomach knot.
“There is no one,” Damon replied. “I think his dad is still alive, but they haven’t seen each other for donkey’s years, and I’d have no idea how to contact him. His friends are all he has these days.”
Claire tried not to stare at any of the patients as they hurried past, but she saw the tubes and machines out of the corner of her eye. Some were in open wards, others in private rooms. Whispering voices set against a backing track of rhythmic beeps reminded everyone of the seriousness of where they were. They came to a halt outside a private room where a man was slightly propped up in bed, tubes streaming from every visible patch of skin. It took Claire a second to realise the man the machines were forcing to breathe was Taron.
“The surgery went as well as it could,” the doctor explained with a heaviness. “He seems to be recovering well, but it’s still very early days.”
A lump rose in Claire’s throat.
“Is he asleep?” she asked.
“Not in the way you’re thinking, I’m afraid,” the doctor replied. “He’s yet to come around. The severe blood loss may have affected his brain, but we won’t know for certain until he wakes. It’s best not to rush this process, considering what his body has gone through. We’ve done our best to repair the damage, and we’re doing everything we can to keep him alive, but the rest is up to him.”
“Do you know what kind of knife it was?” Claire asked before she considered if it was a sensible question.
“From the point of entry, it didn’t look like anything special.” The doctor checked his watch as though he had somewhere else to be. “No serrated edges, which we’ve been seeing more of given the rise of knife violence. Pretty long, but it looked like a nice clean blade, maybe two inches in diameter. My best guess? It was an ordinary kitchen knife.”
“Is there a chance he’ll never wake up?” Damon asked, his voice thick.
“Unfortunately, that is a possibility.” The doctor rested a heavy hand on Damon’s shoulder. “Try not to dwell on the worst-case scenarios, but also consider that they might happen. We can’t make any promises, but he was a fit and healthy young man before this. He needs your hope right now.”
The doctor patted Damon’s shoulder before retreating towards the reception area. They stared through the window, watching Taron’s slowly rising and falling chest. Claire wiped away tears before they had a chance to fall. Next to Damon, she didn’t feel like she had the right to cry. She barely knew the man, she’d admitted that much, and one forgotten drunken kiss in a nightclub years ago didn’t warrant the tears.
But the tears came regardless.
She couldn’t help feeling a connection to Taron and his situation. She understood what feeling aimless and lost in one’s thirties, only to suddenly find a calling was like. Damon was right about life being unfair, but Claire wo
uld go one further – it was cruel, and she was seeing the worst of that cruelty on full display.
“Are you staying here?” Claire asked, resting her head on Damon’s shoulder after five slow minutes of silent observation.
“What’s the point?” He scrubbed at his cheeks and took off his glasses to run them along the edge of his t-shirt. “I know the doctor said he needed our hope, but I’ve never felt more hopeless. I should have taken all the problems before the convention as the omens they were clearly intended to be. We should never have gone.”
“Nobody could have predicted this.” She pulled him into a tight bear hug. “We might not be able to help him pull through this, but we can try to figure out what put him here.”
“How?”
“By asking the right people the right questions.” They separated, and after one last look through the window, set off back the way they’d come. “I don’t think all the issues leading up to the convention were omens, but they’re a good place to start looking. In the space of a week, you went from having a group of six friends to a group of three, and you said yourself, there was drama.”
“You think one of my friends could have done this?” he asked, his tone less shocked than it had been the night before. “I know them.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she said, “but how well can you really know people you only see once or twice a year? Most of your relationships happen through a screen, and you can present any version of yourself you want that way.” She paused, trying to better re-phrase her thoughts. “I’m not saying it’s not real, but it’s curated. We all do it, even if we don’t mean to.”
“Fair point.” He nodded his head from side to side. “I almost seem interesting, judging off my profiles.”
“You are interesting.”
“Hardly,” he muttered, gaze darting downwards as they walked. “I’m a loser.”
Before Claire could push to find out where these sudden insecurities were coming from, they reached the reception desk. A familiar sandy-haired man paced slowly by the front desk, his nails crammed between his teeth.
