by Gytha Lodge
“Hi, Coralie,” Jojo said, and then unfolded herself from the sofa. “Sorry. Too comfortable.”
Jojo loped over and hugged her, but Coralie found herself unable to relax as she felt Jojo’s lean arms round her. Hugging wasn’t something she and Jojo generally did.
The silence returned as soon as Jojo had sat down. Topaz and Connor wouldn’t even look at her. Topaz had her eyes on the floor and one arm folded over the other, everything about her angry.
Coralie felt the panic returning. They didn’t want her here. She should leave.
But then there were footsteps from behind her, and Anna appeared with a tray full of coffee cups and a plate of cookies.
“Coralie, my darling!” she said, and put the tray down quickly on the small glass coffee table before straightening up and giving her a real, warm hug. “Oh, we’ve missed you!”
Although slight, Anna somehow managed to engulf her in the hug, and it was profoundly comforting. Coralie felt her eyes water. She’d sometimes been uncharitable to mousy, uninteresting Anna in the past. And yet she made her feel genuinely welcome. Loved, even.
“I’m sorry,” she said as Anna released her. “London has this bad habit of ensnaring you in all the rubbish.”
“Brett’s just as bad,” Anna said with a small smile at her husband. “Once he’s there, he barely remembers to message me.”
Brett gave a low laugh. “I remember…I just choose not to. Glad to finally get a little peace and quiet…”
“You gobshite!” Jojo exclaimed. “You talk enough for four people!”
It suddenly felt like it used to feel, despite Topaz’s silence. They were bantering together again, and Benners was sitting back with a grin and watching them all, presumably biding his time before launching into some diatribe about economics.
“Come and sit,” Anna said, and drew Coralie to the smaller sofa with her. “Oh, coffee.”
She sprang up again, and started handing out cups. She’d made Coralie a cappuccino, remembering her preference. She started passing cookies around, though only Jojo and Connor actually took one.
“Look,” Topaz said suddenly, over the general chatter of serving. “I know we turned up unannounced, and maybe you don’t all want to talk, but…I’m going mad with all this and I…I want to know what’s happening.”
There was a brief silence, and then Daniel said gently, “You mean what the police are doing?”
“Yes,” Topaz said. “They’ve brought Mr. Mackenzie in for questioning. Her English teacher. I told them to look at him thirty years ago. I hope that means it isn’t too late, and they’ve got something….So what have they asked all of you? And what did you say?”
“Oh. I’m not sure…that they want us doing that,” Brett said apologetically. “I was specifically told—”
“Screw that,” Jojo said, and put her mug down onto the table with a sharp bang. “The thing that’s become really obvious is that we’ve all been hiding small things from each other. For three bloody decades. We’ve been keeping tiny things and…and that has to stop. It’s too important now. I feel like we’ve managed to hide a murderer in all the bollocks, whether it’s a teacher or not, and it’s time to stop it.”
“We didn’t know,” Daniel said quietly.
“No, we didn’t,” Jojo countered, “but we were thinking of ourselves. Me as much as anyone. In the end, who gave a shit if we got in trouble for drugs? We would have found Aurora, and she might even have been alive.”
They were very quiet. And then Connor said, “Are you sure you can remember everything clearly? Because I’m not. There are things I’ve gone over so many times I’ve probably changed them out of all recognition.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say them,” Jojo said. “It’ll all come out in the wash somehow.”
“I want to hear all of it,” Topaz said shortly. She fixed her husband with an unflinching gaze. “I don’t care if it’s half-remembered. I want to know what happened, and how he—how someone ended up raping and killing my sister when we were all right there.”
Coralie felt a strange twist in her stomach. It was impossible not to feel for Topaz.
She saw Daniel lean forward out of the armchair as if to get up, and then stop in the act. She wondered if he’d been going to comfort Topaz, or if it was something else.
“Are you sure? That she was…” Brett said, into the silence.
“The police are sure,” Topaz answered flatly.
Brett gave a long sigh, his eyes somewhere in the distance. Coralie felt as though she were waiting for him to think this out, and solve it all somehow. But it was Daniel who spoke next.
“I feel like most of their questions to me have been all about us,” he said. “They haven’t been pressing me about other people who might have been interested in Aurora, or who might have known we’d be there.”
“It’s because of where she was found,” Jojo said, sounding weary. “Who else knew about the stash in order to dump her body there? I can’t think of anyone. And they did ask me.”
“There’s a chance we were being watched,” Brett said. “By Mackenzie, or by someone else entirely.”
“Did you see anyone?” Topaz asked swiftly.
Brett shook his head, with a slightly wry smile. “I wish I had. I don’t want to believe it was Mr. Mackenzie, who I barely knew. Never mind one of us.”
“Of course it wasn’t one of us,” Connor said. His voice was irritable. “We know it wasn’t. None of us is a bloody rapist.”
“None of you had fucking better be,” Topaz said, low and intensely.
Coralie could see Connor opening his mouth to say something angry, but Brett cut in quickly.
“It’s clearly bloody awful for you, Topaz. Worse for you than for anyone by a long way. She was your sister and you loved her. But we need to be on one side. We almost got torn apart thirty years ago, and I’m buggered if I’ll let them do it to us now. Personally, I trust all of you. And I think we can solve this thing. We must know something that tells us who did it. We must. So if anyone told a friend where we were going, or bragged about the drugs, or anything—we all need to know. There’s no blame. Nobody could know it was going to end up with her being killed. So anything you think you might have said to someone, or anyone you think might have known…”
There was a long silence.
“Fuck it,” Jojo said. “I don’t think I know. I could tell you about that night, or the morning after. The bits when I wasn’t too drunk, but…” She shook her head.
“Can we at least try to think about it?” Brett said quietly. “Because I don’t want to lose a friend to prison because they don’t have anywhere else to look.”
“Of course we will,” Coralie said as positively as she could.
But Jojo was looking a little rebelliously at Brett. “Yes, we will. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s not the only thing I’m going to think about. It’s time for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the fucking truth.”
Coralie found herself watching Connor. He took a small step away from the sofa, and then nodded.
“You’re probably right,” Connor said.
Coralie looked away from him, feeling a little sick again.
30
Topaz
Saturday, July 23, 1983, 6:45 A.M.
“So you didn’t think to check on her?” Brett asked, the fury in his voice biting. He had been striding through the woods for almost an hour, shouting for her with increasing desperation. He’d only returned to them now, when the lack of answer had finally started to mean something. “After you let her sleep miles from anyone on her own in a bloody wood?”
Topaz couldn’t keep still. She was taking pointless small steps, her whole body drenched in fear.
“I didn’t think of it,” Benners said. When she could bring herself to loo
k at him, she thought he looked all wrong, so white and frightened that he wasn’t recognizable.
“Well, you should have done!” Brett said.
“Don’t fucking stand there and criticize us,” Connor retorted, his voice low and vicious. He was crouched with his back against a tree, picking at the bark behind him with one hand. “You were too busy screwing to care.”
Brett shook his head, and then said, “I know, I know. I…I should have…I’m sorry. Blaming each other won’t help. Look, one of us needs to go for help. And I don’t think it can be me, because I can’t drive like this.”
“I’ll go,” Benners said. “I’m OK to cycle, and you all need to keep looking for her.”
“Fuck,” Topaz said, suddenly unable to keep it in. “What do we do? What if someone…”
“We’ll find her,” Brett said quietly. “She’ll be OK.”
“I’ll get going,” Benners said.
And then, before he could go anywhere, Connor asked quietly, “What are we going to do about the drugs?”
Topaz came to a stop for the first time in an hour. “Oh God. We’re going to be in so much shit, aren’t we?”
“No, we aren’t,” Jojo said. “We just need to hide them. We can cover them up.”
“The stash isn’t obvious,” Brett said thoughtfully. “OK. Let’s do it. And then keep looking.”
Benners, who had simply looked between them, said, “I guess it’s me who should be doing it.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jojo said. “Nobody’s getting in shit for something we all had some of. We’ll deal with it. Go.”
Benners hesitated, and then started to lope off down the path toward the car park and his bike.
“Let’s go,” Jojo said to Brett. As she made her way across the campsite toward the river, she called back over her shoulder, “You’d better clear the campsite up a bit, too. There’s a half-used packet of Dexedrine somewhere around.”
Connor got slowly to his feet, and Topaz found her gaze locked on his.
“What will happen?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but we’re not going to leave her out there somewhere.”
31
Once on the road, Jonah wondered if he was driving out to Godshill at a crazily late hour for nothing. There was every chance that his Cannondale would have gone by now. It was such a sleek, expensive-looking machine that even a casual thief with no knowledge of bikes would be likely to covet it.
He did his best to park that worry as he drove, letting his mind wander to Andrew Mackenzie. He agreed with what Hanson had said, in spite of how he had cautioned her. Mackenzie was the most likely candidate. And yet the teacher had seemed to be genuinely unaware of the hollow where Aurora’s body had been hidden.
Jonah’s instinct was still to look at Connor and Daniel and Brett, who had all been there with Aurora that night, and had known about the place she had been hidden.
As he passed through Brook and saw signposts to Fritham, his thoughts went to Jojo Magos’s cottage. And from there he began thinking again of the morning after Aurora’s disappearance. To Jojo and Brett, panicking as they sealed off the hole in the ground that held Aurora. He needed to go over that in detail with Brett. Part of him still found it a strangely cold reaction, and that troubled him.
He drew level with the junction of Furzley Lane, the road that led past Jojo’s cottage, and glanced down it. And then he slowed the car, and looked again at the orange-red halo against the navy blue of the sky. It looked almost like the sodium glow of streetlamps. Only there were no streetlamps along the road, and the light was coming from somewhere near Jojo’s.
There was an icy feeling in his chest as he slowed the car to a stop, and then yanked it round in a U-turn. It was lucky there had been nobody behind him. He hadn’t even checked.
The traction control came on as he took the corner into Furzley Lane. He ignored it and kept the acceleration up. He whipped past two driveways, his eyes going constantly to the glow that was now on his right. He could see smoke now. A pillar of dirty black blotting out the rich glow.
It was coming from Jojo’s house.
* * *
—
HANSON SWITCHED HER desktop off at eight, feeling vaguely dissatisfied. She didn’t really know what she was looking for in all the notes, and hadn’t seen anything today that looked like a strong inconsistency or lie.
Lightman was still working. He gave her a distracted smile when she said goodbye to him.
She had only driven a hundred yards from the station when a call cut through the radio. A moment later, Damian’s name flashed up on the screen on the dashboard.
She had a falling sensation in her stomach. She thought about ending the call, but knew he would just ring again. So she turned the volume right down and let it ring out. Nine rings, and then the noise ended and the radio cut back in.
A few moments later, the radio was interrupted again by the sound of a text arriving. She kept driving, and willed herself to ignore it. But she was caught by a red light on Midway Road, and after a second or two of resisting she turned the engine off and reached to fish her phone out of her bag.
She had time to unlock her phone and see Damian’s message pop up as a banner at the top of the screen.
I need to see you. I’m at your house.
The falling feeling stepped up into a wave of anxiety. What the hell was he doing in Southampton? She thought she’d finally left him behind when she’d moved away from Birmingham.
The lights changed. She shoved the phone onto the passenger seat, started the engine hurriedly, and began to drive. She was only two miles from home, and the traffic was light. She would be there within minutes.
She felt disconnected from her body as she continued to drive, her mind going in circles. What did he want to talk about? Was he angry? Was he going to plead with her?
At the next lights, she picked the phone up again and typed back, I’m not there. Working late. I’ll call you tomorrow, maybe.
His reply came less than a minute later, and she glanced down to read it on the screen.
I’m not going anywhere. When will you be home?
She could feel her heart picking up its pace. Home was getting ever closer. She imagined him waiting next to his car. Maybe smiling. Maybe tight-faced with fury.
There was another buzz as a new message arrived, but this time, she saw it was from her boss. She hesitated for a moment, but decided not to read it. It was too late for work, she thought, and if it had been urgent, she was sure Sheens would have called. Which was really just a justification for not being able to deal with anything else right now.
Half a mile farther on, she made a sudden left turn toward the ring road. She picked up the pace, and roared out onto the M27, listening for the sound of the phone ringing again. It stayed quiet for the ten minutes it took her to get to the Holiday Inn.
Her legs were unsteady as she climbed out of the car. She thought about leaving the phone, but somehow not knowing what he was saying was worse.
She reached in to pick it up, and grabbed the small overnight bag from the back of the car. She’d thought about taking it out once she’d broken up with him, as it had really been there for times she decided to stay over without planning to. But she hadn’t quite got round to it.
Midway across the car park, the phone buzzed again. She didn’t want to read his messages.
She found herself opening it anyway.
Are you not coming home, then? Are you staying with a man?
She thought about ignoring him. But she decided it wouldn’t help.
No. I’m working. Sorry.
He was already typing again by the time she’d sent it.
So if I turned up at the station, you’d be there? That’s what I should do, then.
; She typed back quickly. You know that’s not appropriate.
There was almost no pause at all before he replied.
Haha! You’re a fucking liar. You’re with a man, aren’t you? I knew you’d left me for someone else. You were cheating on me, weren’t you? You fucking slut.
Hanson felt as though she half stumbled, half floated into the Holiday Inn. There was no queue, which was lucky, as she wasn’t convinced that she’d be able to stand for long without falling. She booked a room for the night and didn’t even hear how much it was going to cost her. And then she carried the phone carefully upstairs, and laid it on the bedside table next to her to wait for the series of messages she knew was going to come.
* * *
—
JONAH HAMMERED ON the front door, and then, barely pausing, tried the handle. The door swung open on the unlit hallway. There was a thin haze of smoke, and through the conservatory at the back of the house a bright, wavering glow.
It was an outbuilding that was on fire, he realized. But it was dangerously close to the house, and he doubted they had long before the cottage itself went up.
He took a few steps inside. None of the downstairs lights were on, which meant she had probably gone to bed.
“Jojo!” he called, and started to climb the bare wooden stairs two at a time. He didn’t have time to worry about intruding. The slightly acrid smoke was only going to increase as the blaze got worse, and if she was sleeping, she was in real danger.
He rounded the corner in the stairs, and took the last few steps onto the landing. He saw three open doors, one of them a bathroom. He called out to her again, and ducked into the door to his left.
It was a spartan double room with cushions piled on the bed, and he moved back out immediately. A guest room, he was certain.
There was still no sound of movement as he pushed the door open fully onto the other room. It was a large, airy room with wooden boards on the floor and skylights in the roof. It was in darkness, but he could make out the duvet and pillows on the bed. They were carefully made, and the bed was empty.
