“Lara?”
It’s like ice-cold water sluicing over her skin.
She spins around on the gravel and—it’s quite inexplicable. On the far side of the large pale-faced woman, supporting her on his arm, is Markus. And Leonora looks from Markus’s straw-colored hair to the Backstabber’s; from the Backstabber’s tall, broad-shouldered frame back to Markus. The facts stir and rearrange themselves like autumn leaves picked up by the breeze, and they settle with deceptive gentleness into a new explanation.
This never was the home of the girl in the orange crop top. Markus wasn’t visiting his girlfriend, Kat, here. He and Kat came together to visit his parents.
She can see it, now. She can’t believe how stupid she’s been. Markus is the Backstabber’s son.
She runs for her bicycle and flees.
Beth
December 1989
Ileaped out onto the gravel in front of Raven Hall, and I forced myself to dip my head to say something to Jonas before slamming the door on him.
“Thanks for bringing me back,” I said. “But please, just go now. I’ll explain everything later.”
“Well, when?” he said. “Tonight? Will you ring me?”
The prospect of trying to explain any of this on the phone from Raven Hall, where I might be overheard, made me shake my head quickly. But I was afraid Jonas would refuse to leave if I didn’t suggest an alternative, and I feared it would make everything worse if I burst back into Raven Hall with an inquisitive Jonas hard on my heels.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Wait for Markus’s dad to get back to the B and B after he visits us, and then”—I glanced at the frozen lake—“just—park up on the road, so they don’t know you’re here, okay? Walk across the ice to the island, and I’ll sneak out and meet you there.”
Jonas muttered a few words of annoyance, clearly thinking my caution was over-the-top, but he put the car into gear and left me to it.
I was more than a little relieved to find the front door of Raven Hall wasn’t locked against me. I hurried inside, straining my ears for any sound of the family’s whereabouts. The drawing room and dining room were empty, but in the kitchen, I found Nina, perched on a breakfast stool and finishing off a mince pie, with an empty mug beside her. Enticing savory aromas drifted from the oven—they hadn’t eaten lunch yet.
“Back already?” she said, sounding more wounded than hostile. “Didn’t you like the food at Jonas’s?” Then her tone sharpened. “Hey, what are you doing?”
I grabbed her mug and tilted it toward the feeble light from the window, but there was nothing unusual to be seen. Just tea dregs. No oily residue. I eyed her plate, my pulse still jumping.
“How many mince pies have you had?”
She opened her mouth, but it took her several seconds to answer. “What the hell’s got into you?”
“Nina, seriously. How many have you had?”
“Two—I was starving, and lunch’ll be another half hour. Is that okay with you?”
“Are they—” I snatched the remnant from her fingers and examined it in the palm of my hand. “Are these the ones your mum made? Who gave them to you?”
“Beth, you’re scaring me.” She slipped off the stool, gazing at me, wide-eyed. “Mum gave them to me, just a few minutes ago. She warmed some up for all three of us. Why are you being so dramatic about it?”
“I think—” But suddenly, I didn’t know what to say. What if the substance in the hot chocolate really was something innocuous? How could I blurt out the word poison without making my position here completely impossible? How could I expect Nina to ever forgive me if I wrongly accused her mother of deliberately making her ill?
I set the fragment of pastry back on the plate, thinking frantically.
“How are you feeling?” I asked her. “Do you feel sick? Do you feel okay?”
Nina glanced over my shoulder toward the door, and I heard light footsteps come in behind me.
“Ah, Beth,” Leonora said. “Back already?” She hesitated, glancing at Nina and back to me. “Is something wrong?”
I shook my head stiffly.
Leonora smiled. “Well, not to worry. You can eat with us, then, after all.” She gestured to the oven. “Would you like me to warm you up a mince pie?”
I shook my head and circled around her, stumbling backward toward the door. “Thanks, no, I’m—did Jonas’s mum ring, while I was out?”
Markus’s voice behind me made me jump. “Stephanie? Yeah, she did, but it wasn’t about you. Why, did you and Jonas have an argument or something?”
All three of them watched me with frowns on their faces.
“No, I—” I raised a trembling hand to my cheek. “Actually, I’m just very tired. I’m going to go and have a . . .” I made a vague gesture.
“Nap?” Leonora suggested, after a moment of silence. “Don’t you want any lunch?”
“No. Thanks.” I escaped from the room, and none of them followed me, but even after I’d shut myself in my bedroom, my skin still prickled from their bemused stares, and I pressed my fingers to my burning cheeks. What must they think of me?
I forced myself to take several deep breaths.
Concentrate on the facts. Nina’s grandfather is coming back to Raven Hall tomorrow, for a third visit. Stephanie Blake did ring a little while ago, almost certainly to warn Leonora and Markus about the visit. In which case, Leonora will ask me to pretend to be Nina again. Of course she will. She has no choice.
I am the powerful one in this situation, I tried to insist to myself. But it didn’t feel like it. I sank onto my bed and waited for Leonora to knock.
But when the knock eventually came, I knew straightaway it wasn’t Leonora’s. Nina slipped into my room, and she hovered by my bed, her face painfully, distressingly pale.
“I don’t feel very well,” she whispered. “What’s going on? You’ve got to tell me.”
All those months of worrying, yet I had no idea how I could possibly articulate what my fear was. In the end, I patted the bed and waited for her to sit down beside me, and my heart wouldn’t stop drumming.
“First of all,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t have any answers. And you’re not going to like what I’m going to say. So you can change your mind right now, if you want to, and walk away. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“You’re scaring me, Beth.”
“I’m scared myself. That’s the trouble.”