“No, no, nothing about the business,” he said with a smile. “Please do stay, though. Nothing secretive or embarrassing.”
Anna smiled and dipped down to perch on the chair. She put her hand on her husband’s leg. Brett sat back, at ease.
“Earlier today, a body was found in Brinken Wood,” Jonah said. “We have reason to believe it belongs to Aurora Jackson.”
His eyes were on Brett. Anna’s sudden turn of the head toward her husband was in his peripheral vision, but his focus was on the man who had driven Aurora to that campsite.
He saw the slackening of Brett’s face, and then the sudden increase of tension. Jonah knew shock when he saw it. Brett hadn’t expected this, whatever else he might be thinking.
“Aurora? Really? I always…” He broke off, and rubbed at his forehead with his thumb.
“Sorry?”
“I—I always thought she’d be found alive somewhere.” He shook his head, his eyes fractionally reflective. “Jesus Christ. She was in the woods? How did we miss her? We combed it.”
“She was underground,” Jonah said, his voice absolutely flat. “Buried along with a stash of Dexedrine in a hollow under a tree.”
Brett sat forward in what was more a collapse of his abdomen than a straightening up. “Oh shit,” he said, an arm going across his body in an instinctive defensive gesture.
Jonah smiled very slightly. However much Aurora’s discovery had surprised Brett, he’d known damn well about the drugs.
8
Aurora
Friday, July 22, 1983, 7:20 P.M.
Aurora was overcome by restlessness while the others began frying up hot dogs and tearing open bread rolls and beer cans. She felt distanced from it all. She also felt like time was draining away. There wasn’t much sunlight left and she wanted to be out of the shade of the trees, bathing in it.
Topaz still hadn’t returned from her deliberate absence, and neither had Coralie. Aurora was tensed against her sister’s return. But she still felt out of place without her. All of Topaz’s friends were kind enough, but none of them were her own friends.
Jojo called to her. She was crouched over the fire pit she had dug, setting a frame of branches over it. Aurora had seen her curled lip at the sight of the gas-fired stoves, all shiny and unused, and the way she’d turned her back on them.
Aurora went over, expecting an errand. Heard, instead, Jojo murmur an apology.
“This isn’t very interesting. You can swim if you want. If you go straight toward the river that way, there’s a sandbar and you can see the bottom.” She glanced up at the boys, who were each a few cans down. “I’ve got a costume in my bag there. If you go now and don’t tell them, you’ll get away without them ‘accidentally’ seeing you changing.”
Aurora half laughed. She wasn’t sure if Jojo was joking.
“Thank you. I’d love a swim.”
Jojo nodded, and smiled slightly. “We’ll all jump out of trees and get on the rope swings tomorrow, but sometimes it’s nicer when it’s quiet.”
Aurora rose, picked up Jojo’s tatty black rucksack, and walked as quickly and quietly as she could away from the campsite. Benners was talking, lecturing really, on the state of affairs in Pakistan. None of them seemed to notice her leaving.
The trees between her and the bank looked parched. Underfoot there were brown crackling leaves. Beech, oak, ash, sycamore. Above, enough green to create shade, but scorched foliage, too. The summer was leaving its mark.
Dropping down toward the river, she found sunshine at last. An orange-yellow light that still heated her skin. The riverbank itself was steep, but there was a tiny, slightly muddy beach a little farther up, and she weaved her way along to it before sliding down the bank.
She shielded her eyes and looked around. The far bank of the river was in shade. The shadows of the trees turned the water black and ominous. But close to her the shelf of sand shone yellow in the light, and the water above it was almost perfectly clear.
She let Jojo’s rucksack fall onto the sand. Unzipping it, she found not a swimming costume, but a tight Lycra vest and a small pair of shorts. A mismatch of turquoise and white.
Quickly, she pulled off her underwear and hid them inside the bag. She slid the shorts up under her skirt as she thought about what Jojo had said about the boys.
She realized there was no way of changing her top without nakedness, and decided to do it quickly, all in one. She emerged from the Lycra vest to see the wood and the riverbank still silent and empty.
She slid off her shoes last, and stuffed everything into the bag. She moved it a little farther up the bank, trying to skip over the dusty sand and occasional spiky beechnuts. It was worse on the way back into the water when she trod on an embedded stone.
But under the water there was soft sand. As she waded in, the coolness over her feet and up to her shins felt delicious. She took a few steps, and then leaned forward into the water, submerging herself as far as her neck.
It was a lot colder than the air. Breathless, she swam to the edge of the sand and then along it. She began to relax into the cold as she went. Once she’d swum up and down a few times, she felt almost warm.
She lay back to look at the deep azure of the sky for a while, drifting, until trees appeared overhead once more and the water was suddenly much colder around her.
Aurora swung herself upright, realizing that she’d drifted downstream. Her shoes and clothes were out of sight.
She was on the verge of turning and kicking away when she heard voices on the bank. A lazy, flirty laugh she recognized well. A deeper voice answering, which made her freeze in place, her hands barely moving to keep her upright.
Please, not him.
9
Jonah left Brett in whatever peace he could find for the evening. He’d requested his attendance at the police station at nine the following morning.
Jonah was in some ways distressed by the shadowed look of the man. He recognized someone seeing head-on the potential ruin of his reputation.
“We’ll be informing everyone who was camping with Aurora that evening. We’re expecting you to keep certain information to yourself, however.”
“I understand.” Brett was a little pathetic in his eagerness to please now. He had poured information at Jonah from the first. He’d told him how much he’d regretted trying a little of the Dexedrine.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he had said, his eyes on the ice in his lemonade, a hollow look to them. “Except that I was an eighteen-year-old idiot who wanted to be the coolest kid on the block. A stash of drugs? That’s great, man. Seriously. I do drugs all the time, man. Even though I also watch every bite of food I eat and go to bed early so that I can train.” He sat back sharply, angrily. “What the hell was I doing?”