“Hollis, mate—” said Oliver.
“I’m your mate now, am I? Thought I was mental.”
Oliver laughed like he’d been caught cheating on an exam. Hollis waited.
“If you didn’t want us to be so curious, maybe you should’ve just told us.”
“Maybe I didn’t tell you because it’s none of your fucking business. Ever consider that?”
Oliver stood, the legs of his chair scraping against the linoleum floor.
“I think we all have a right to know if we’re living with a fucking psycho, yeah.”
Ellie whimpered but no one held any concern for her feelings when a match hovered this close to a fuse.
In their minds, they took bets on who would do more damage. Oliver because he was taller or Hollis who had more muscle? Hidden deeper was their desire to watch the violence happen without a care for why or who would get hurt.
“Hey guys? How about that photo?”
And so Callum reentered the conversation, deescalating the tension.
“Remember? We agreed last night? The group shot. You said this morning would be a great time to take it since we’d all be here . . .” He left the sentence trailing, hoping someone would pick up the thread, but the tension that had inched them toward violence receded into an embarrassment that crippled them. “I guess if it’s not a good time, we could scrap it? I have to go see Yanni anyway about sending someone to fix my door before new job orientation at the uni admin office, so . . .”
Oliver held his hands up. “Sorry, Tripod. We did agree. And if that’s important to you, we’ll do it right now.”
“I mean, it’s not like it’s that important.” Callum shrugged.
“No,” said Lorna. “It is. You’ve been talking about it for ages. And isn’t the light perfect right now?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I should go study,” Maeve said. “But a picture would be fun.”
Ellie hopped up from the table. “Tell me where to pose! I love taking pictures. Daddy always says how photogenic I am.”
“Come on,” Oliver said. “Out in the front room. That’ll make for a nice shot.”
Once the shutter clicked, their smiles faded along with the glare of the flash. Crammed into the confines of the dirty pink sofa, sharp elbows and knees jabbing soft stomachs and thighs, they couldn’t wait for this ordeal to be over only to hear . . .
“Wait. If I could just get one more.”
This was what they would remember of Callum all those years later. They couldn’t recall his surname, but the nickname, Tripod, was ingrained in their memory. Along with how he could turn their eye-rolling and exasperation into laughs and friendly ribbing. They posed for shot after shot, making up stories about what had happened on this sofa prior to their moving in, having no idea what they would do to Callum in six months’ time.
Because in six months, in that very room, the phone would be knocked from Callum’s hand, and he would be held down on that same sofa while a hand was pressed over his nose and mouth. He was tall, yes, but so skinny. No muscle on him at all. And he was very, very drunk. Too drunk to put up much of a fight.
If you could travel back in time and warn them about what they would do, about how they would lie about what they had seen, they wouldn’t believe you because it would mean acknowledging a part of themselves that they could not accept existed. The part that emerged when Hollis and Callum almost came to blows. They would never believe you because they thought themselves good people, more or less.
And, more or less, they were.
Once.
Good, decent people who thought they remembered everything about Caldwell Street but never remembered the front door opening as they sat on the couch, waiting for the final click of the shutter, never remembering the person who entered as the timer went . . .
SATURDAY
4
Lorna
Cocooned in an old knit jumper, Lorna stopped halfway down the main staircase to double-check her watch. Half past nine, but the house looked as dark as it had when she went to bed. She listened to the rain all around her, watched it through the large windows above the front door. She hugged the jumper tighter and continued down. Though she couldn’t say she had slept well, surviving the night had given her a fresh perspective on the morning. Callum’s memory remained but had retreated to the darker corners of her mind, no longer suffocating her with its presence. The calm silence of the morning made her believe she could be the cool, measured Lorna Torrington they remembered.
Down in the foyer, fresh blocks of peat burned in the fireplace, but all she could feel was the draft.
“Hello? Good morning?”
She checked the study—empty—then the conservatory where rain sounded like gunshots against the tall glass walls.
Clouds obscured most of the mountains and fog further limited visibility, making Wolfheather House feel even more isolated from the rest of the world. Lorna thought of a snow globe her grandparents used to have, thick with glass that protected a wintry scene. She used to imagine a family lived in the house inside. Had even given them names. When she shook the snow globe, she pictured furniture flying, their bodies toppling over one another. She imagined, once she stopped, how they worked together to rebuild their rooms. And then she would shake it again.
A door slammed.
“Hello?” she called.
Back in the foyer, Lorna saw nothing. No sign of who had come or gone. The dining room door remained open, as it had been last night. A little farther down the same wall was another half-open door, revealing a junk room. Across from it a closet built beneath the main staircase. She made her way through the narrow hallway that ran between these walls to the very back of the house, where large sash windows gave her the same foggy glimpses of the Highlands as the conservatory. Cans of paint flecked red and white were stacked beneath the windows, along with a plastic drop sheet, rollers, and stirrers, all caked with paint. A spider had woven a web from the handle of the paint roller to the windowsill and now dangled in the corner, waiting for a meal.
All was silent.
She closed the junk room door as she returned to the dining room, checking over her shoulder, just in case.
In the kitchen, there was no food or drink to be found. No sound of anyone.
“All by yourself now, aren’t you?” she whispered to herself.
Then she turned. And screamed.
Ellie had appeared like a phantom. Face pale. Hair and clothes soaked in rain. Mud up to her ankles.
“Jesus! Why are you sneaking up on people like that?” Lorna asked.
Ellie said nothing.
“Are you all right? Ellie?”
Ellie looked down at her clothes as if having forgotten she was wearing any. Then words poured out of her mouth like a running tap. “I went for a walk. There’s no gym. I needed some exercise. Is there tea? I hope there’s tea. I really need tea. A great deal of tea because we can’t go to the shop because there is no shop and there’s no way to get to a shop, even if there was a shop, or even a neighbor, because all of our cars have been vandalized and if I don’t get some tea and I’m going to lose my mind!”
Ellie
The suitcase spilled open as she closed the bedroom door. Ellie fell to her hands and knees, scrambling to collect her fallen bras, socks, shirts, toiletries. She couldn’t leave any sign she had been here. Not a trace. Her suitcase left tracks in the carpet as she wheeled it down the hall. She was tempted to go back and rub out those marks, but there wasn’t time. If she wanted to leave, she had to go now. Before the others woke. She cupped her keys in her hand to prevent them from clinking and descended the stairs to the second floor. No sight or sound of Oliver, or anyone else. Just the cracklings of the warm fire. She adjusted her grip on the suitcase and continued down the main stairs. Like crossing a swimming pool in a single breath, Ellie rushed through the foyer and out into the rainy morning.