The diary dug into her back.
“She’ll keep coming after us,” Ellie said. “One by one. Until we’re all gone. It doesn’t matter if we get out of here. If we escape this island alive. If we return to our families. She knows where we live. She knows all about us. And she’ll keep coming until we’re dead. We’ll spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Maeve’s voice was foggy with tears.
Ellie could keep them together. Keep them on her side. And, if not, at least keep them in sight.
“We stop her here,” she said. “We stop her now.”
Pp. 84–89
When they were so certain they’d figured it all out, it took every ounce of self-control I had not to laugh. That was their problem. They were always so sure of themselves. That they knew everything. That they were doing the right thing. Even when it was obvious to anyone else how wrong they were.
That April, the residents of 215 Caldwell Street moved like planets, large and foreboding but limited in their rotations, passing far enough apart to avoid disaster, waiting for some unknowable force to push them out of orbit. Hollis could be around any of the girls but never Oliver. Oliver could only be in the same room with Lorna. Maeve would not have minded Oliver, but he took exception to her. The possibility of Maeve and Lorna depended on Lorna’s mood. Ellie, attempting invisibility, avoided all, drifting from room to room like a lost satellite. No one paid much attention to Callum. Like Pluto, he once existed as one of them but no longer.
Their lives continued in this way until the day they made the decision that would eventually result in their deaths.
It started—though she would never acknowledge it—with Ellie, who on this day sat alone in her room as the world fell apart around her.
The words on the letter in her hand swirled around the page, each understandable on its own, but when arranged together made little sense. A wild green parrot landed on her windowsill and looked at her through the glass. Ellie stared back.
“I think I’m failing out of university.”
The bird cocked its head to the side, then flew away, disregarding her petty human complaints. Ellie tried again to read the letter in full but found that she could not and gave up. Daddy always said it was fine to give up some things if she found they didn’t suit her, like field hockey or horseback riding, but she was fairly certain one of those things wasn’t a university education. Daddy thought women should be strong, self-sufficient, educated, and with a good job. “Let a man marry you for your money,” he would say, but now that she thought about it, she didn’t think it was a joke at all.
She set the letter on her desk so the words could not be read, but the orange Cahill emblem burned from the page like the eye of Sauron on the cover of the Lord of the Rings book Callum had abandoned in the front room. She stood up, slid the letter into an empty A4 folder, and sat back down. Then she stood up again and put the folder into her desk drawer alongside her diary. But the letter could not live there forever. Someone else would have to see it. She tried to imagine what it would be like to sit down with Daddy and Mother in the living room, surrounded by photographs of herself and her accomplishments, and explain to them the contents of this letter. She found that she couldn’t. So she tried to imagine what it would be like if she simply handed them the letter and watched them react to its contents. She found that she could not do that, either. She could not visualize them receiving the contents of that letter in any form because in no future was it possible for her to explain to her intelligent, well-educated, happily employed parents that their only daughter was failing out of school. It had been bad enough when she’d only managed to get into Cahill. She blamed it on clearing, that she’d got a bad operator at the other university who didn’t get her the spot she wanted, but that hadn’t been true, and she suspected her parents knew as much. They could not see the letter without their perceptions of her potential changing once again. Ergo, they could not see the letter.
A sharp knock interrupted her thoughts. She thought it was the letter attempting to escape.
“Hey,” Hollis called. “The letting agency’s on the phone. They want to know if you want the room next year.”
As with the letter, she had difficulty understanding him.
“Me?”
“Yeah, they’re asking each of us. I can give them your answer if you want.”
“Yes. I mean no. I mean I’m not sure yet. I’m waiting to hear what some other friends are doing,” she lied. “When do they need an answer by?”
“They said today. They need to start advertising it for the autumn term.”
“Do you think they could wait until Friday?”
Hollis said he would ask, and it turned out that, yes, they could wait until Friday but no later. If she hadn’t decided by then, they would assume the answer was no.
“Are you staying?” she asked. If Hollis was staying, that would be all right, wouldn’t it? She liked living with Hollis. But then she looked at her desk drawer and remembered it wasn’t up to her if she wanted to stay.
“Might as well. I mean I . . . Look, this is weird talking through the door. Can I open it?”
“What? Yes, sorry. Of course.” She had a smile on her face by the time the door opened. “Sorry, I was studying.”
She sat on the bed with no books or papers in sight.
“Right, well.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m thinking I’ll stay, then I can leave my stuff over the summer instead of—”
“Let’s order from that Indian place on Sandal Road!”
“Let’s what?”
“Take away. Let’s all get take away. Have dinner together. Order me a chicken tikka masala. With jasmine rice. Oh, and naan bread.”
“Okay. Chicken curry. Jasmine rice. Naan bread. Got it.” He waited in the doorway. Her smile struggled to hold as she waited for him to leave. “So, uhm, are we all going to pay for ourselves this time, or . . .”
“Oh. Oh! Yes, I have cash. Hang on.” She grabbed her handbag from the back of the chair. When she opened her wallet, she saw a twenty-pound note, some change, and the credit card Daddy gave her for emergencies.
“They take card over the phone, don’t they?”
“Yeah, but they won’t split orders. So if you want—”
“That’s all right.” She handed over the card. “I’ll pay for everyone. My treat.”
Hollis hesitated. “Seriously?”
“Mm-hm.”
He took the card as if he were afraid it would run away before he could grab it.
“Okay. Cheers. I won’t tell Oliver, though. He finds out it’s free he’ll—”
She waved him off. “I don’t mind. Tell Oliver. Tell everyone.”
Hollis looked at the card, then at her. “Right. Well, I’ll let you know when the food’s here so you can . . .” He glanced at her bare desk. “Keep studying.”
Her smile lingered a few moments after he closed the door, like the after-image of a camera flash.
Though Indian from Sandal Road normally took over an hour, in what seemed like no time at all, Hollis was again knocking on her door. The letter’s presence remained with Ellie as she walked down the stairs. The memory of its contents wrapped around her waist like an unwanted hug and held her back from the kitchen as her housemates unpacked the food. The smell of curry and spices covered the fetid stench coming from the bin no one had emptied in almost two weeks. Brown paper bags, Styrofoam, and plastic containers littered the countertop. Like foxes in a rubbish bin, her housemates picked and pulled at what they found and filled their plates.