The tone of Ellie’s voice kept him from poking fun.
“You owe me a favor.”
Her words crept over him like ants, and he weighed the consequences of saying no. She waited until he was finished.
“Yeah, all right then. What is it?”
“I need you to read a letter.”
And on dancer’s feet she rose and tiptoed around the mess of their meal.
The morning after that fucking party—Ellie’s party—Hollis would be the first downstairs. He would come down to grab his orange juice and instead stand frozen by the armchair Ellie had used the previous night as her throne. He would remember finding his grandfather when he was eleven, looking to all the world as if he were asleep. But Grandad hadn’t been sleeping. And, like the day he found his grandad, Hollis would shout and keep shouting until he heard his housemates’ doors opening, their arrivals announced by the groans of their headaches and hangovers.
Lorna would be the next to arrive and the first to yell at Hollis for waking her and the first to realize why he had shouted. She would stop on the bottom stair and would move no closer.
Maeve and Ellie would come next, and they too would fling their questions into the air, only to have the answers boomerang back as they looked at the sofa.
Oliver would arrive last. The alcohol in his bloodstream would slow his reflexes so that he wouldn’t understand what they were all staring at. It would gradually become clear, like fog lifting from the road.
They would see Callum’s body but also the broken lamp and the phone off the hook and the notebook they didn’t know Callum had kept, and they would know that whatever had happened had not been an accident and that what was written in that notebook would incriminate them all. They knew they could all say they hadn’t done it, and they would all know that one of them was lying, and they would all know that—because of that notebook, because of the records he kept—it could be any one of them.
So for a very long time, no one would say anything. And although they would all think the same question, no one would remember who finally asked it.
“What do we do?”
They could never see past their own problems, their own false solutions. So they could never see what was wrong with Callum, or that they could’ve helped him. To him, they were his friends. But to them, he became the source of their problems, and his death, their solution.
9
Ellie
Ellie was ashamed of what she had written in the diary. What adult wouldn’t be, looking back on what their teenaged-self had written? But it wasn’t shame that kept making her slip her hand to her back, checking that the diary was still there, still hidden. She knew that if Oliver and Maeve were to read it, they wouldn’t see it the way she wrote it. The way she felt it. They would only see the words and infer their own meaning. And she knew how those words might look to an outsider. So she had to keep them busy. Keep them occupied. The less they paid attention to her, the more time she had to think. The diary would have to be destroyed—at least certain pages of it if nothing else—but not while the other two were watching. The idea she’d devised on their short walk through the passage back to the study was perfect. She just had to convince them.
The shadows had grown in the study since they were last there as the unseen sun wound its way to the opposite side of the house. If she didn’t look directly at Caskie’s body, it was easy to imagine he was just asleep in the chair, although the growing dark couldn’t conceal the strong metallic smell of blood.
Once Ellie laid out her plan, Oliver stared at her, slack-jawed. Maeve looked vacantly at the floor. They weren’t on board, not yet. But Ellie had experience closing a sale, experience Oliver only wished he had.
“You both agreed we have to lure her out. This is the only leverage we have.”
“Yeah, but—” Oliver started. Ellie cut him off.
“Her point is to remain hidden. Attack us from the shadows. Nothing we’ve done so far has provoked her into revealing herself. This is the only thing that will.”
She waited for them to realize she was right, but it was taking longer than she’d hoped. Lorna’s death had shaken their foundations. Next to Hollis, she had been the strongest stabilizing force in the group. One who was analytical, avoided hysterics, was able to reason. Lorna was tough and brusque and could easily make people dislike her, but she had no agenda. She hated everyone equally, and her honesty in all things hurt her friendships but allowed them to respect her decisions. It was not lost on Ellie that the three who were left were the three most prone to fighting and hysterics. She had no doubt this was by design.
But Ellie knew the power of silence. She knew not to oversell. And after a few seconds that felt like minutes, the tension in Oliver’s body released. He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned to Maeve.
“Do you want the feet or the head?”
Maeve stopped chewing the cuff of her jumper and blinked. “Huh?”
“Have you heard anything we’ve been saying?” he asked.
She looked between Oliver and Maeve, a vacant expression in her watery eyes. “Sorry. No. Sorry.” She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper. “What are we doing?”
Oliver huffed, flexing his fingers. “Ellie wants us to hide Caskie’s body upstairs. She thinks doing, well, whatever it is she wants to do with this woman’s son, is the only way to draw her out.”
“What I want to do, as I’ve already explained, is to pretend he’s still alive and hold him ransom for the keys to the house. Honestly, if you two would just listen.” Ellie crossed her arms, felt the diary shift against her back, and quickly moved her hands there, pretending she was stretching. Oliver and Maeve didn’t seem to notice. Each was in a bubble—Oliver shrouded in a mist of anger, Maeve a cloud of grief. There was a delay between her words and their actions.
“But—but—” Maeve stammered. “Why not just put him in the cellar? Why do we have to carry him upstairs?”
Ellie’s face got hot the way it did whenever the children were arguing and they wouldn’t listen to her.
“Because,” she snapped, storming around to the back of the bar and emerging with a small paring knife, “and I have already explained this as well, she has obviously been using that passage between the ballroom and the cellar, and the whole point of this endeavor is to put him somewhere he won’t be found.”
As she was talking, she started cutting. The cords that bound Caskie snapped as sharp as her voice. His body slumped forward, then toppled to the floor. The thump echoed in the study. Ellie set the knife on the counter.
“So go on then,” she said. “Pick him up.”
Oliver moved first. Ellie had to hide the smile that twitched at the corner of her mouth. He grabbed Caskie’s shoulders and then Maeve went for his feet. Before they lifted him, Oliver glared up at Ellie.
“Aren’t you going to help?”
“I’m going to get the door.” Ellie marched ahead before he could say anything more and held the study door, which had already been half open to begin with.
Oliver at his head and Maeve at his feet, they carried Caskie facedown. His stomach sagged in the center as they struggled with the tall man’s body. Gravity pulled blood from his open stomach wound onto the hardwood floor. That blood marked a path as they carried him toward the stairs, the sound of its dripping muffled by the carpet runner, then resuming again once they crossed it. Ellie remained by the study door, near the dying peat fire. That had been her plan. To burn the diary in the roaring fireplace while they weren’t looking. But no one had stoked the fire since that morning. The peat bricks were nothing but embers. There were fresh bricks stacked to the side. If she could throw a few on, poke the fire and get the flames going again . . .