Emma: I was staring at Paul, trying to tell him with my eyes that I was sorry. He was looking between Scott and me, probably putting the pieces together.
Paul: I can’t remember how I felt at the time. Probably confused.
Emma: It was like a blink and I was in front of Scott. I’d somehow crossed the path without knowing I’d done it.
We used to be friends in the way people are when they grow up together. Our dads owned a business together, so we’d end up being left alone to play while the grown-ups talked downstairs. We’d always be at each other’s houses, or told to go out and amuse ourselves. Julius was older than me and used to say that Scott was my boyfriend – but we were much too young for that.
By the time we became teenagers, we drifted apart. I had my friends at school and he had his. We didn’t need to be together all the time when our parents were working because we had our own hobbies and interests.
Scott: Is that what she said? It’s… well it’s sort of true. We definitely went our own way as teenagers, but that’s because she dropped me. She was in with all the popular kids.
I had quite bad acne when I was that age. I had to have this special cream from the pharmacy and it reeked. Dad made me sit in my room with my door closed and the windows open. It used to make me gag.
Emma: Acne? I don’t remember that. We were teenagers: we all had acne. Me and my group of friends were like a walking Clearasil advert. If you’re a teenager who stops being friends with people because they have spots, you’re going to be a very lonely person.
Scott: I understand why it happened like it did. She had money because of her dad, plus she was pretty and her chest had exploded when she hit about fourteen.
Yeah, I noticed that. I was a teenage boy. We tend to pay close attention to that sort of thing.
Emma was everything I wasn’t and she didn’t want to hang around with me, so we stopped being friends around then. We’d still see each other because of our dads, but it was never the same. We could go months without talking – and then it was years. The only time I ever saw her was if we all ended up on Galanikos together.
Emma: …
…
I don’t think any of it is quite as brutal as he makes it sound. It’s not like I woke up one day and thought, ‘He’s not my friend any more’. Things happen gradually. We’d be in different classes and I’d have a lot in common with the person I was sitting next to. We might go straight from that class to the canteen, so I’d eat with the person I was already hanging around with. I didn’t try to cut out Scott from my life, but the two of us were changing.
…
I don’t know if I should bring this up – but he started talking to my chest and not my face. He’d do it all the time. I know that he was fourteen or fifteen, that there’s hormones and all that, but why would I want to be friends with someone who looks at me like that? That’s what I mean when I say the two of us were changing.
Scott: Maybe this isn’t the place to say it, but you’ve probably guessed. Emma was my first love. I doubt I was hers, but it’s like that when you’re a kid. She was a girl I’d grown up with and then, suddenly, she was a woman.
I’d have these long, ridiculous fantasy conversations with her where I’d say something, and then she’d say something, and then we’d realise we were meant to be together…
I was probably sixteen then, but you don’t know how anything works at that age. Your body is desperately trying to get you to be an adult, while your mind is stuck watching Ninja Turtles on a Saturday morning.
That probably lasted for about three years in all. I think the first time I finally stopped thinking about Emma like that was when I got to uni and met a girl during freshers’ week.
Emma: Did he really say I was his first love?
…
I kind of want to give him a hug and say sorry. First loves never go right, do they? I never felt like that about him, but I do wish we’d been better friends.
First love? That poor guy.
Scott: Bear in mind, when I saw Emma outside that car hire place, not only do I know that her dad killed my dad, I still have all those old teenage thoughts going through my head. I’ve not seen her properly in nine years and there’s a lot of complicated emotions there.
Emma: Scott turned to the crew and goes: ‘This is Emma. Her dad killed mine. Put that in your film.’
Scott: I probably shouldn’t have said that.
Emma: By this point, everyone is looking at me. I’m still trying to tell Paul I’m sorry without actually telling him. But I’m also thinking of the driving licence I found that morning and wondering for the first time if, maybe, my dad does know something about what happened with Alan…
Perhaps I don’t mean it quite like that. I had a lot of questions and hardly any answers.
Paul: I thought I was going to compromise the entire project. There were only three of us on the crew and we’d made the expense of going to the island – then I’d slept with the daughter of the man who might well have been prime suspect.
Emma: There was a long pause where nobody seemed to know what to say, then I go: ‘Dad didn’t kill anyone.’
Scott: When Dad died, the only person who benefitted was Geoff. With the way things worked out, he got sole charge of the company – and then he brought in someone new.
Emma: Scott was right about that – but so what? After Dad fell, I got to move into a beautiful cottage. I benefitted, but that doesn’t mean I was involved.
That’s how I thought about things at the time.
Scott: She went back to that old line of saying how the police cleared her dad, blah-blah-blah. I told her that the police found no evidence. It’s not the same thing. What’s indisputable is that her dad wasn’t in his room at the time my dad went off that cliff.
Emma: That’s true. Dad never denied that.
Paul: Things were tense and one of the crew said that we should move on. I had two points of view. My professional opinion was that, if we were going to have this conversation with Scott and Emma, then it should be on camera. My personal opinion was that I was in trouble.
Scott: I said something like ‘see you around’ and carried on walking.
Emma: He said: ‘I don’t know how you sleep at night’.
Paul: I started following everyone else and then stopped to tie my shoe. I told the rest of the crew I’d catch up but then went back to Emma.
Emma: I said ‘sorry’ straight away. I was mortified. I still think about it sometimes. I should have told him who I was on that first night and then, if things had happened after that, at least he knew.
Paul: It felt like a genuine apology. I think I laughed it off, saying ‘We had a good time, didn’t we?’ Something like that. I still thought I might have endangered the whole project.
Emma: I asked where the crew were staying and how long they’d been there.