Читать книгу: «The Guilty Party»

There is no greater sorrow than to know another’s secret when you cannot help them.

ANTON CHEKHOV, UNCLE VANYA

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

PRAISE

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Publisher

1
Cassie

2.30 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping

I’m going to take you back to the summer’s evening near the end of my friendship with Anna, Bo and Dex.

Until that day, the eve of my thirty-second birthday, we had been indivisible; our bond the kind that lasts a lifetime. Afterwards, when everything began to fall apart, I came to understand that the ties between us had always carried the seeds of rottenness and destruction, and that the life we shared was anything but normal. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I think I had probably known this for years, but it took what happened late that night in August for me to begin to be able to put the pieces together. Why had I failed to acknowledge the truth for so long? Was it loneliness, or was I in love with an idea of friendship that I could not bear to let go? Perhaps I was simply a coward? One day, it might become clearer to me. Perhaps it will become clear to you, once I have taken you back there, to that time and that place. And when I am done with the story, when everything has been explained and the secrets are finally out, I will ask you what you would have done. Because that’s what I really want to know.

What would you have done?

Picture this scene: a Sunday morning in the early hours at a music festival in Wapping, East London. Most of the ticket holders have already left, and the organisers are clearing up now – stewards checking the mobile toilets, litter pickers working their grab hooks in the floodlights. Anna, Bo, Dex and I are lying side-by-side on the grass near the main stage, our limbs stiffening from all the dancing, staring at the marble eye of a supermoon and drinking in this late hour of our youth. None of us speaks but we don’t have to. We are wondering how many more hazy early mornings we will spend alone together. How much more dancing will there be? And how soon will it be before nights like these are gone forever?

At last, Bo says, ‘Maybe we should go on to a club or back to yours, Dex. You’re nearest.’

Dex says this won’t work; Gav is back tonight and he’ll kick off about the noise.

We’re all sitting up now, dusting the night from our clothes. In the distance I spot a security guard heading our way. ‘I vote we go to Bo’s. What is it, ten minutes in an Uber?’

Anna has spotted the guard too and jumps onto her feet, rubbing the goosebumps from her arms.

‘I’ve got literally zero booze,’ Bo says. ‘Plus the cleaner didn’t come this week so there’s, like, a bazillion pizza boxes everywhere.’

With one eye on the guard, Anna says, ‘How’s about we all just go home then?’

And that’s exactly what we should have done.

Home. A long night-tube ride to Tottenham and the shitty flat I share with four semi-strangers. The place with the peeling veneer flooring, the mouldy fridge cheese and the toothbrushes lined up on a bathroom shelf rimmed with limescale.

‘Will you guys see out my birthday with one last beer?’

Because it is my birthday, and it’s almost warm, and the supermoon is casting its weird, otherworldly light, and if we walk a few metres to the south the Thames will open up to us and there, overlooking the wonder that is London, there will be a chance for me to forget the bad thing I have done, at least until tomorrow.

At that moment the security guard approaches and asks us to leave the festival grounds.

‘Won’t the pubs be closed?’ asks Anna, as we begin to make our way towards the exit. She wants to go home to her lovely husband and her beautiful baby, and to her perfect house and her dazzling life.

But it’s my birthday, and it’s almost warm, and if Anna calls it a day, there’s a good chance Bo and Dex will too and I will be alone.

‘There’s a corner shop just down the road. I’m buying.’

Anna hesitates for a moment, then relenting, says, ‘Maybe one quick beer, then.’

In my mind I’ve played this moment over and over, sensing, as if I were now looking down on the scene as an observer, the note of desperation in my offer, the urgent desire to block out the drab thump of my guilty conscience. These are things I failed to understand back then. There is so much I didn’t see. And now that I do, it’s too late.

Anna accompanies me and we agree to meet the boys by Wapping Old Stairs, where the alleyway gives onto the river walk, so we can drink our beers against the backdrop of the water. At the shop, I’m careful not to show the cashier or Anna the contents of my bag.

Moments later, we’re back out on the street, and I’m carrying a four pack but, when Anna and I reach the appointed spot, Bo and Dex aren’t there. Thinking they must have walked some short distance along the river path we call and, when there’s no answer, head off after them.

On the walkway, the black chop of the river slaps against the brickwork, but there’s no sign of Bo or Dex.

‘Where did the boys go?’ asks Anna, turning her head and peering along the walkway.

‘They’ll turn up,’ I say, watching the supermoon sliding slowly through a yellow cloud.

‘It’s a bit creepy here,’ Anna says.

‘This is where we said we’d meet, so. . .’

We send texts, we call. When there’s no response we sit on the steps beside the water, drink our beers and swap stories of the evening, doing our best to seem unconcerned, neither wanting to be the first to sound the alarm. After all, we’ve been losing each other on and off all night. Patchy signals, batteries run down, battery packs mislaid, meeting points misunderstood. I tell Anna the boys have probably gone for a piss somewhere. Maybe they’ve bumped into someone we know. Bo is always so casual about these things and Dex takes his cues from Bo. All the same, in some dark corner of my mind a tick-tick of disquiet is beginning to build.

It’s growing cold now and the red hairs on Anna’s arms are tiny soldiers standing to attention.

‘Shall we call it a day?’ she says, giving me one of her fragile smiles.

I sling an arm over her shoulder. ‘Do you want to?’

‘Not really, but you know, we’ve lost the boys and . . . husbands, babies.’

And so we stand up and brushing ourselves down, turn back down the alley towards Wapping High Street, and that’s when it happens. A yelp followed by a shout and the sound of racing feet. Anna’s body tenses. A few feet ahead of us a dozen men burst round the corner into Wapping High Street and come hurtling towards us, some facing front, others sliding crabwise, one eye on whatever’s behind them, clutching bottles, sticks, a piece of drainpipe and bristling with hostility. A blade catches the light of a street lamp. We’re surrounded now by a press of drunk and angry men and women. From somewhere close blue lights begin to flash.

‘We need to get out of here,’ hisses Anna, her skinny hand gripping my arm.

They say a person’s destiny is all just a matter of timing. A single second can change the course of a life. It can make your wildest dreams come true or leave you with questions for which there will never be any answers. What if I had not done what I did earlier that night? And what if, instead of using the excuse of another beer to test the loyalty of my friends and reassure myself that, in spite of what had happened earlier that night, I couldn’t be all bad, I had been less selfish and done what the others wanted and gone home? Would this have changed anything?

‘Come on,’ I say, taking Anna’s hand and with that we jostle our way across the human tide, heading for the north side of the high street but we’re hardly half way across the road when we find ourselves separated by a press of people surging towards the tube. Anna reaches out an arm but is swept forwards away from me. I do my best to follow, ducking and pushing through the throng but it’s no good. The momentum of the crowd pushes me outwards towards the far side of the road. The last I see of Anna she is making a phone sign with her hand, then I am alone, hemmed in on one side by a group of staggering drunks and on the other by a blank wall far too high to attempt to scale.

Moments later, the crowd gives a great heave, a space opens up ahead and I dive into it, ducking under arms and sliding between backs and bellies and a few moments later find myself out of the crush and at the gates of St John’s churchyard, light-headed, bruised and with my right hand aching from where I’ve clutched at my bag, but otherwise unhurt. I feel for my phone and, checking to make sure no one’s looking, use the phone torch to check inside the bag. In my head I am making a bargain with God. Let me get out of here and I will try harder to believe in you. Also, I will find a way to make right what I have done. Not now, not right away, but soon. Now I just want to get home.

The light falters and in its place a low battery message glows. God’s not listening and there’s nothing from the others. I tap out a group text, where r u?, and set myself to the task of getting out.

Taking the path through the churchyard, feeling my way past gravestones long since orphaned from their plots, I head along a thin, uneven stone path snaking between outbuildings at the back of the church. From the street are coming the sounds of disorder. Somewhere out of view a mischief moon is shining, but here the ground is beyond the reach of all but an echo of its borrowed light and it’s as quiet as the grave.

The instant my heart begins to slow there’s a quickening in the air behind me and in that nanosecond rises a sickening sense that I’m not alone. I dare not turn but I cannot run. My belly spasms with an empty heave then I am frozen. Does someone know what I’ve got? Have they come to claim it? What should I do, fight for it or let it go?

A voice cuts through the dark.

‘Cassie, darling, is that you?’

There’s a sudden, intense flare of relief. Spinning on my heels, I wait for Anna to catch me up. ‘Oh I’m so glad.’ She flings an arm around my shoulders and for a moment we hug until the buckle of my bag digs into my belly and I pull away. What a shitty birthday this has turned out to be. If they knew what I’d done some people would say it’s kismet or karma and if this is the extent of it I’ve got off lightly. They’d be right.

‘Have you seen the others?’ I ask Anna.

‘Bo was with me for a bit. He and Dex got caught up in the crowd which was why they didn’t make it to the Old Stairs, then they got separated. No idea where Dex is now. He might have texted me back, but my phone’s croaked.’

‘I got nothing from him either.’

‘You think we can get out that way?’ She points into the murk. ‘Hope so.’

We pick our way down the pathway into the thick black air beside the outbuildings, me in front and Anna following on. As we’re approaching the alleyway between the buildings my eye is drawn to something moving in the shadows. A fox or a cat maybe? No, no, too big for that. Way, way too big.

I’ve stopped walking now and Anna is standing right behind me, breathing down my neck. Has she sensed it too? I turn to see her pointing not to the alley but to the railings on the far side of the outbuildings.

‘Anna?’

‘Thank God!’ She begins waving. ‘The boys have found us – look, over there.’ In the dim light two figures, their forms indistinct, are breaking from the crowd and appear to be making their way towards us.

‘Are you sure it’s them?’

‘Yes, I can tell by way they’re moving. That’s Dex in front and Bo’s just behind him.’

I watch them for a moment until a group of revellers passes by and the two men are lost from view. From the alley there comes a sudden cry. Spinning round I can now see, silhouetted against the dim light of a distant street lamp, a man and a woman. The man is standing and the woman is bent over with her hands pressed up against the wall, her head bowed, as if she’s struggling to stay upright. I glance at Anna but she’s still looking the other way. Has she seen this? I pull on her arm and she wheels towards me.

‘Over there, in that alley.’ It takes a moment for Anna to register, a few seconds when there is just a crumpled kind of bemusement on her face and then alarm. The man has one arm around the woman’s waist and he’s holding her hair. The woman is upright now but barely, her head bowed as if she’s about to throw up.

Anna and I exchange anxious looks.

Every act of violence creates an orbit of chaotic energy around itself, a force beyond language or the ordinary realm of the senses. A gathering of dark matter. The animal self can detect it before anything is seen or heard or smelled or touched. This is what Anna and I are sensing now. There is something wayward happening in that alley and its dark presence is heading out to meet us.

With one hand the man is pressing the woman’s face into the wall while, with the other, he is scrabbling at her clothes. She is as floppy as a rag doll. He has her skirt lifted now, the fabric bunched up around her waist at the back. Her left arm comes out and windmills briefly in the air in protest. Her hand catches the scarf around her neck and there’s a flash of yellow and blue pom-poms before the man makes a grab for her elbow and forces the arm behind her back. The woman stumbles but as she goes down he hauls her up by her hair. Her cry is like the sound of an old record played at half speed.

Something is screaming in my head. But I’m pushing it away. Another voice inside me is saying, this is not what I think it is, this is not what I don’t want it to be, this is not real.

The man has let go of the woman’s hair. He’s pressing her face into the wall with his left hand while his right hand fumbles at his trousers. His knee is in the small of the woman’s back pinning her to the wall. The woman is reaching around with her arm trying and failing to push him away but her movements are like a crash test dummy at the moment of impact.

‘Oh God,’ Anna says, grabbing my arm and squeezing hard, her voice high-pitched and tremulous.

In my mind a furious wave is rising, flecked with swirling white foam, and in the alley the man’s pelvis is grinding, grinding, slamming the woman into the wall. The world has shrunk into a single terrible moment, an even horizon of infinite gravity and weight, from which there is no running away. Anna and I are no longer casual observers. We have just become witnesses.

I feel myself take a step forward. My legs know what I should be doing. My body is acting as my conscience. The step becomes a spring and Anna too is lunging forward and for a moment I think she’s on the same mission as me until her hand lands on my shoulder and I feel a yanking on the strap of my bag and in that instant, Anna comes to an abrupt stop, sending the bag flying into the air. It lands a foot or two away and breaks open, its contents scattering. The shock soon gives way to a rising panic about what might have spilled and I’m down on my knees, rooting around in the murk, scraping tissues and lip balm, my travel card and phone, cash and everything else back inside the bag, checking over my shoulder to make sure Anna hasn’t looked too closely at the spilled contents.

As I rise she’s grabbing my wrist and squeezing the spot where my new tattoo sits. I try to shake her off but she’s hissing at me now, her body poised to pull me back again. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid! You don’t know what you’re getting into.’

‘He’s hurting her! Someone needs to intervene. At least let’s call the police.’

My hand makes contact with my bag, peels open the zip and fumbles around in the mess. And in that moment in my mind a wave crests and rushes to the shore and the foam pulls back exposing a small bright pebble of clarity. What would the police say if they found what I am carrying? What would Anna say?

In my mind an ugly calm descends. My hand withdraws and pulls the zip tight. They say that it’s in moments of crisis that we reveal most about ourselves.

‘My battery’s dead. You’ll have to call from yours.’

I’d like to say I’d forgotten that Anna’s phone was out of juice but I hadn’t. In any case, Anna isn’t listening. Something else has caught her attention. On the far side a phone torch shines, a light at the end of a dark tunnel, and in its beam is Dex, as frozen as a waxwork. Behind him, in the gloom, lurks a shadowy figure that can only be Bo. If anyone is going to put a stop to what is going on in the alley it’ll be Bo.

Won’t it?

‘Please,’ murmurs Anna. ‘Please, boys, no heroics.’

Dex continues to stand on the other side of the alley, immobile, his gaze fixed on me and Anna. It’s at that moment that I become conscious of Anna shaking her head and Dex acknowledging her with a single nod. For a fraction of a second everything seems frozen. Even the man, ramming himself into the woman in the alley. And in that moment of stillness, an instant when nothing moves.

We all know what we are seeing here but in those few seconds and without exchanging a word, we make the fateful, collective decision to close our eyes and turn our backs to it. No one will intervene and no one will tell. The police will not be called. The woman will be left to her fate. From now on, we will do our best to pretend that something else was happening at this time on this night in this alley behind this church in Wapping. We’ll make excuses. We’ll tell each other that the woman brought it on herself. Privately, we’ll convince ourselves that this can’t be a betrayal because you can’t betray a person you don’t know. We will twist the truth to our own ends and if all else fails, we will deny it.

We’ll do nothing. But doing nothing doesn’t make you innocent.

The light at the end of the tunnel snaps off and in a blink Dex and the shadowy figure of Bo have disappeared into the darkness. I look at Anna. She looks back at me, gives a tiny nod, then turns and begins to hurry away up the path towards the church. And all of a sudden I find myself running, past the alley where only the woman remains, slumped against the wall, past the wheelie bins, along the side of the church, between tombstones decked in yellow moonlight and out, finally, into the street.

2
Cassie

6 p.m., Thursday 29 September, Dorset

As the train is pulling into Weymouth a text comes through. So soz, darling, held up, take cab, followed by the address and postcode of the holiday cottage. Not the best of welcomes, but never mind. We’re at the start of a lovely extended weekend, just the four of us, and that’s such a rare event these days, life and careers being what they are, and husbands and babies being what they are. Four whole days in the company of your best friends. Your only real friends.

At the station, a fellow passenger helps me lift my case from the carriage onto the platform. It was cold and drizzly when I left London and it’s more or less the same now, only colder, and naturally, me being me, I’m wearing the wrong jumper for it, but never mind. I’ll find something warmer in the case when I reach the cottage. The bag is heavy with new clothes, new shoes, the results of a rare online spending spree. This weekend I’m intending to dress to impress. If anyone asks where I got the money (and they will) I’ll say I got promoted at the school, something more of a hope than a reality.

The driver slings my bag into the boot of the taxi while I let myself inside. A taxi is fine.

‘You been to the island before?’ the taxi driver says, when I show him the text containing the address.

‘No. Is it nice?’

‘If prisons and quarries are nice,’ he responds, drily.

‘We’re celebrating my friend Bo’s birthday. He used to come here with his dad to collect fossils. It’s his shout.’ Jonathan Bowman was a City lawyer with a passion for palaeontology and a rocky heart that gave out at fifty-six. None of us thought the fact that Bo went on to study the subject at uni was anything but the prince looking for the king’s approval. I have wondered more than once whether this trip is an act of reconciliation, a reckoning of the past as well as a means of reinventing it. Not that Bo, who has never been one for introspection, would ever put it that way.

‘If you ask me, you’d be better off in Weymouth. We got a TGI Fridays,’ the taxi driver says, pulling from the station drop-off into the traffic.

As the taxi makes its way through the scrappy splendour of central Weymouth into nondescript suburbs I’m caught up in the anticipation of it all. Four days. No partners or babies or distractions. It’ll be just like old times. After all that happened at the Wapping Festival, this is what we need.

The road narrows onto Chesil Spit. To our right stretches the long, thin finger of Chesil Beach, empty now save for a few gulls, to the left is a huddle of industrial-looking buildings set on an expanse of what looks like wasteland. The driver explains this was the old naval base where the 2012 Olympic water sports were staged. Then, all of a sudden, we are on the Isle of Portland.

‘Why do they call it an island?’

The taxi driver’s eyes flit to the rear-view mirror. ‘I’ve never asked.’

We sail past an old boozer, an ad outside reading, ‘Wanted: New Customers’, over a mini-roundabout and left up a steep hill on the top of which perches what looks like an ancient fort.

‘The Citadel,’ volunteers the driver, observing my gaze. ‘It was originally a prison for convicts waiting to be transported to Australia. It’s a detention centre for refugees now. Nothing’s changed.’ He lets out a grim laugh. ‘There’s another prison in the middle of the island. Young offenders mostly, that one. I get a lot of business from that prison. Mums visiting, that kind of thing. There’s a bus from the mainland but it doesn’t drop off or pick up at visiting hours. Crazy, innit, but that’s Portland. Nothing here makes much sense.’

Above the roof line, beside a ragged buff, a fistful of raptors swoops and hovers in a beautiful, sinister choreography. The taxi driver says he has no idea what they are. Hawks? Kestrels?

‘They do that when they’re hunting.’

He turns off the main road onto a tiny unpaved lane. We climb steeply through low, wind-burned shrubs in silence, wrapped in our own worlds. Halfway up the hill the driver makes a sharp right into a driveway surrounded by wind-breaking hedges and suddenly, as if rising from the murk, a large cottage of ancient brick with a mossy slate roof appears and a voice on the GPS announces that we have reached our destination.

The driver pulls up behind a silver BMW and a midnight blue Audi coupé and I use the time it takes for him to go round to the boot to fetch my bag to take in the scene. The air is clean and carries a tang of seaweed and moss and even now, before sunset, it’s cold and raw in the way London never is. The cottage itself is Georgian or maybe early Victorian, built for a time long gone when keeping out the elements was more important than bringing in the light. A creeper whose leaves are already turning curls around tiny, squinting windows untroubled by the sun and gives the place a forlorn and slightly malevolent air. It’s beautiful in the way that dying and melancholy things are beautiful.

‘Right then,’ says the driver, depositing my bag on the gravel drive. He mentions the fare, a sum that only a month or so ago would have sent me into a spin but now feels perfectly manageable. I reach for my bag and pull out my purse. How lovely to be able to be so casual about money. This must be how the others feel all the time.

At that moment the front door swings open and Anna appears and comes towards me, arms outstretched. ‘Darling. Look at you!’ she says, flashing her wide, breezy, Julia Roberts smile and wrapping me in a hug before pulling away to pluck at the collar of my cherry-red blouse. ‘Such a good colour on you. But then you’ve always been so brilliant at picking out the charity shop bargains.’

Anna herself looks radiant. Anna is always radiant. And thin. And secretly unhappy. She checks my bag. ‘Such a practical bag. I’ve brought all the wrong things. Of course. I’m so sorry we couldn’t pick you up. Bo’s new car.’ She waves in the direction of the Audi. ‘Some enginey widget went wrong and we had to sit in the garage until the mechanic had fixed it. Bo’s being a bit boring about it, tbh, but it’s his birthday weekend so we all have to find something nice to say.’

Beside us, the taxi driver hovers for his money. A mariner’s lamp flickers on in the porch and Bo appears, dressed in smart casuals draped expensively over a treadmill-lean body.

As I open my purse Anna reaches out a staying hand.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that. Bo will sort it out.’ Anna turns her head and flashes Bo a smile. ‘You’ll bring in Cassie’s bag and deal with the fare, won’t you, darling?’

‘Of course.’ Bo slings an arm around my shoulder and drops a kiss on my head. ‘Welcome to Fossil Cottage, Casspot.’

‘Top wheels.’

Bo eye-rolls. ‘I know you couldn’t care less, but sweet of you to play along. I’m trying not to go on about her but first flush of love and all that. Once we’ve had a few bevs, and I’m wanking on about the multi-collision brake assist function, which I guarantee you I will be, please feel free to tell me to shut the fuck up.’

‘You never bore us, Bo darling, does he, Cassie?’ Anna says, looking to me for confirmation.

‘There’s always a first time.’

Bo laughs and tips me a wink. Anna and I move across the mossy gravel drive towards the front porch leaving Bo to sort out the taxi driver and my bag.

‘Isn’t this heavenly?’ Anna says, meaning the cottage. ‘As soon as I saw it on the website I thought: yes. It’s got a kind of Rebecca meets Wuthering Heights with a Paranormal Activity vibe, don’t you think? Wait till you see inside. You’re going to love it. We’ve given you the bedroom at the top of the house.’

‘The mad woman in the attic spot.’

Anna’s left eye flickers and for a moment she searches my face. ‘Oh I see, yes. Funny you!’ We’re almost at the front porch now. ‘So listen, Dex is in the kitchen sorting out supper. We’re having roast chicken.’

‘My favourite.’

Later, Anna will push whatever Dex cooks around on a plate before hiding it under her cutlery. But for now, she steps jauntily around a large stone carving of what appears to be a cockerel with the tail of a fish.

‘Some Portland thing called a Mer-chicken, Bo says. But maybe he was joking. It’s not always obvious with Bo, is it? Don’t worry, it won’t bite.’ Her voice softens to a whisper. ‘Gav’s here, though, and he might. He gave Dex a lift and they must have had a row on the way because he’s in a terrible grump. Thank heaven he’s not staying, but he wanted to say hello to you before driving on to Exeter to have dinner with his sister.’ She holds the door and waves me through a hallway lined with worn stone flags smelling of new paint in a Farrow and Ball drab.

‘Seems ages since we last did something like this,’ Anna says, directing me to a row of Shaker style coat pegs.

‘Wapping Festival was only a month ago.’ From the corner of my eye I see Anna stiffen.

‘I meant the last time we were together for a whole weekend. Bestival, wasn’t it? Do you remember that Bo threw a strop because that glamping yurt cost him a fortune and it was bloody freezing.’

As I recall it was Anna who threw the strop, but Anna has a habit of reinventing things.

‘I remember the rain and that amazing fluorescent candy floss.’

‘Oh yes, yum,’ says Anna.

We enter the hallway and move into a large kitchen done out boho country style, where Gav is sitting in a bentwood chair at an enormous old pine kitchen table, dressed in the full upper middle class fifty-something Londoner’s idea of country garb, cords and an Aran with a jaunty silk neckerchief tucked beneath to signal both his class and sexual preference, and fiddling with his phone. An expensive-looking wax jacket hangs over the chair. Behind him Dex is smearing butter over a large prepared chicken. A whisky bottle sits on the table and the room smells warm and peaty but there’s a palpable tension in the air.

‘No bloody signal!’ Gav looks up, sees me and manages a smile. ‘Oh, hello there, dear Cassie. Give this old man a hug and he’ll be on his way.’

Gav has always been a huge, beary barrel of a man but the weight loss in the six months since I last saw him is shocking and not altogether flattering. It makes him seem much older and a bit clapped out.

Dex turns and holding two buttery hands in the air, whoops a greeting, then Bo appears carrying a rolled-up newspaper.

‘I’ve put your bag in the hallway, Casspot. The driver said you left this?’ He slaps a copy of the Evening Standard on the table.

‘Not mine, but never mind.’

‘Why don’t I show you to your room?’ Dex says. The chicken has gone in the oven and he’s now washing his hands in the kitchen sink.

We clamber up a steep flight of stone steps with a grab rope on one side onto the first-floor landing off which come three bedrooms and a bathroom. Above each room hangs a fossil, or, more likely, a reproduction of a fossil.

‘Anna allocated the rooms. She thought it would be funny to give everyone the room with the fossil that was most like them, so that one’s Bo’s.’ Dex points to a panelled door at the end of the corridor above which sits what looks like a large elongated snail. ‘Guess.’

‘I don’t know. Leaves a trail of slime behind him?’

Dex’s eyes crease with mirth. ‘That’s what I said too. Wrong though. Apparently it’s called a Portland Screw.’

‘Boom tish.’

‘You have to admit it’s good though. Bo once told me that sex was the only contact sport where he’d played all the known positions.’

‘Funny man. What’s yours?’

‘Oh, my room is named after some kind of fossil oyster called a Devil’s Toenail,’ Dex says, gesturing at a closed door beside the bathroom. ‘Anna thought that was hilaire. Her room is the one at the end. That thing with all the arms is called a Brittle Star.’ He turns and smiles. ‘No one can accuse Anna of not being able to take the piss out of herself.’

And with that we proceed up another, even narrower and more steeply inclined staircase, onto a small landing.

‘Yours is the Urchin room. Tiny, but so are you. You’re the only one with a direct view over Chesil Beach and you’ve got a shower to yourself so we thought you wouldn’t mind.’ Dex opens the door with a flourish. ‘Ta da.’

The room is just large enough to hold a double mattress and a few stylish cushions. A stool doubles up as a bedside table. Through a small window comes the thick smell of brine and the sound of the waves on the shingle. The lights of Fortuneswell wink.

‘It’s brilliant.’

‘Oh good, well, I’ll let you settle in.’ Dex turns to walk away but hesitates by the door, waiting for me to address the elephant in the room. Though there are two, really: Gav’s weight loss and what happened a month ago at the festival.

‘Is Gav OK?’

‘He’s in a sulk, is all. He’s got it into his head that someone took some money from the house. It’s bullshit. He’s just forgotten where he left it.’

‘I meant his weight.’

Dex is hovering with one foot outside the door. He doesn’t like talking about difficult stuff. Never has. When we split up, all those years ago, he took me out for a drink in a very noisy bar, waited until Michael Jackson was working his way through the first chorus of ‘Billie Jean’ on the PA system, and, evidently imagining his moment had come, blurted, ‘I seem to have fallen in love with a man,’ and that was that. Four years as a couple. Game over.

Back then he screwed his eyes tight so as not to witness my distress and he’s doing the same now. He says, ‘Gav’s got pancreatic cancer. It’s pretty advanced. We got confirmation a couple of weeks ago and a couple of days later he was having his first chemo. That’s why he’s going to see his sister, break the news. He’s bloody angry about it.’

‘Is it . . .’

‘Terminal?’

‘I wasn’t going to say that.’

‘But you were thinking it, weren’t you?’ There’s an accusatory note in his voice. ‘Yes, probably.’

When I make a move towards him he backs off a little, unable to be comforted.

‘I’m sorry.’ I really am. Even though he stole Dex from me, I don’t wish anything nearly as final as death on Gav. A little bad luck, maybe, but this, no. Way too much.

‘To be honest, I just want to be able to forget about real life for a couple of days and try to enjoy the break. Have you seen much of the island yet? Not the most obvious spot for a birthday weekend, but at least it’s not dull.’ He softens the corners of his mouth. ‘I should go down and see Gav off, get back to the cooking.’

I wait for him to disappear before drawing the curtains and taking a quick shower, then sit for a moment trying to absorb the news about Gav. If there was a time to bring up what happened in Wapping, this isn’t it. Then putting on my game face, I make my way to the ground floor.

At some point, the owners of the cottage have knocked down a few walls to create a semi open-plan living room cum kitchen. Anna has the oven door open and is peering at the chicken, Bo is setting a fire in the grate in the living room. A bottle of red stands aerating on the kitchen table beside Dex who is sitting at the table with his chin in his one hand, looking pensive. Gav appears to have left.

‘Oh, darling, did you like your room?’ Anna says, swivelling to look at me.

‘Is Gav gone?’

‘Only just. You’ll catch him if you’re quick,’ she adds, with a tilt of the head and a press of the lips to let me know that she too has heard the news.

I run outside, crunching across the gravel and waving madly. Gav is sitting in the BMW adjusting the heating and looking very old and very, very alone. The driver’s side window whines open and before I’ve opened my mouth he cuts me off with, ‘No outpourings, please. It is what it is.’

‘Can I at least say I’m sorry?’ He pauses, as if considering this. To my surprise, because Gav is nothing if not old school, his eyes go filmy. ‘What you can do is be good to Dex. I’m scared I won’t be around for him.’

‘Done.’

‘Another thing. That festival business, with the woman?’ His rheumy eyes fix on mine. ‘I think I should tell you that he is in a lot of trouble about what happened. He thinks he isn’t, but he is.’

I feel myself slump back. What trouble could he possibly be in?

‘I see he hasn’t spoken to you,’ Gav says, drily, registering the shock on my face. ‘Well, since you’re probably closer to Dex than anyone other than me I should probably tell you: the police came round.’

I nod calmly, but my mind is racing. There was that scrap Dex got into at the festival . . . Anna said it started over some drunk accusing him of looking at his girlfriend, but it didn’t amount to anything. Surely the police wouldn’t come round for that?

‘Don’t tell him I let the cat out of the bag, please, or mention it to the others. He’d kill me. Solemn promise?’

‘Yup.’

‘In the scheme of things, really . . .’

‘I understand.’

Gav blinks a thank you and the car window begins to whir to the vertical. He waves and turns the steering wheel and the BMW crunches across the gravel and disappears from view.

3
Anna

7 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Royal London Hospital

When Dex finally emerges from the cubicle in Minors, Anna has been calming herself with some mindful belly breathing exercises for over half an hour and is able to greet him with what she hopes is her normal face.

Since the events of earlier – she’ll say events because it makes what they saw seem less real – she’s been a bit of a mess. Can’t get her mind to engage. Something inside her head is making a sound like a slipped gearbox. The whole evening feels like an odd dream, although she is wide awake and as sober as a judge now. She’ll wake up tomorrow hung-over and wonder if any of it really happened.

Dex is still drunk. She can tell by the way he’s walking towards her. That’s good too. The more everyone’s mind is scrambled the easier it will be for all of them to get through this. Dex is unlikely to remember many of the details. Bo might but he’s less easily shaken than the others. Cassie will do whatever Dex does. Anyway, the worst has been averted. She rises from the plastic chair in the waiting area and spots on the seat beside her a small still wet nugget of gum. Shaking off her disgust, she sets her mouth into a smile and waits, arms outstretched, for Dex to approach.

‘Dex, darling, ouch, oh poor you.’ A bandage is wound over the right fist, a plaster on the right cheek, right eye as burst as a stewed plum. She leans up and plants a kiss on his lips. He gives her his forlorn look. A bit little boy lost.

‘You should see the other guy,’ he says, playing hanging tough. He means the guy at the festival, of course. Some arsehole over by the beer tent, apparently. You looking at my girlfriend? As if. Anna had noticed his war wounds as soon as Dex had got back to the main stage earlier but, honestly, it hadn’t looked particularly bad. Now it’s been a few hours and the injury has had time to swell and fester.

‘Is Bo still in there?’ she asks.

‘I guess so. He got called just before me, but maybe he’s had to have an x-ray or something.’

‘He’s not badly hurt, is he?’ Not long after what happened in the alley Anna had received a message from Dex to say that Bo, too, had got into a skirmish – this time with a couple of guys, something to do with a spilt beer, and they were going to A&E to get him sorted.

‘He’ll live. Where’s Cass? I thought she’d be with you.’ Dex checks his phone and runs a hand over bedraggled hair.

‘We got separated in the churchyard. My phone’s croaked. She’s probably back home by now though. What a horrid birthday celebration it’s turned out to be, poor darling.’

Dex cocks his head, presses his lips together and nods at the truth of this. He’s so easily placated, so much less demanding than Bo. She watches him frown then peer at her neck.

‘That looks like a nasty bruise.’

Anna taps the dark spot then dismisses it with a wave of her left hand. ‘Oh, it’s nothing, darling, I got shoved in that scrum. To be honest I’m more pissed off about my jumpsuit.’ She points to the tears in the fabric, pre-empting any awkward questions. ‘Speaking of, what happened in the churchyard?’

Dex closes his eyes, trying to summon a memory, opens them again and blinks. ‘Oh, you mean that couple?’

‘Is that what they were?’

‘What I saw, a couple of randos having a quickie.’ He seems anxious to change the subject. Good, thinks Anna. In that case, he’ll be cooperative. ‘I thought that arsehole was about to come at me so I decided to take off.’

This is not how Anna remembers it. What Anna recalls is that Dex switched off his phone light and ran away into the night, leaving the woman in the alleyway to her fate. Lowering her voice, Anna says, ‘I honestly don’t think we should talk about it any more, darling. Why get involved? God, it’s a madhouse in here. Let’s find somewhere else to sit.’ She picks up the Diet Coke she left as a placeholder and holds it out to Dex. There’s nothing she wants more than to put this whole awful night to bed. ‘You want some?’

‘Thanks.’

While Dex drains the can, Anna scouts for a more genial spot to wait, not easy in a London A&E during the early hours of a Sunday morning. The place is a heaving mosh pit of drunks and wasters, most, by the looks of them, walking wounded from the fight that kicked off after the festival. A name is called and one of the anxious parents stands up and offers a hand to his son, leaving a couple of plastic chairs empty near the triage station. Anna points and lets Dex lead.

A nurse glides by, smiling, followed by two policemen. All three disappear through swing doors into another part of the hospital. Anna jams her hands in her lap and watches them go with mounting relief. They’ll have other things on their minds. ‘Want another Coke, darling?’

‘Not really.’

The guy opposite is doing his best to remove an Egg McMuffin from its paper bag with one hand. A sickening, sulphurous smell drifts over. Anna flaps her hand and wrinkles her nose. The Egg McMuffin guy gets up and obligingly moves off. A moment later the swing doors part and the two coppers reappear. Anna sits on her hands while they go past. A nurse walks by. A man’s name is called. The Egg McMuffin guy sinks into a more distant chair.

‘When did you get here?’ Anna says. She needs to be careful about the timeline. Doesn’t want to get caught out.

Dex checks his watch. ‘Ages ago. Not sure, to be honest. They kept me waiting in the cubicle for what seemed like forever. Man, I’m wrecked.’

At that moment a figure emerges from behind the swing doors, eyes unfocused, a bit staggery, evidently still high, a couple of nasty-looking abrasions on his face and a puffy nose. Anna feels herself stiffen then soften then stiffen and then, putting her feelings aside, rises up and goes towards him, with Dex following on behind.

‘That looks sore.’ In the circumstances, it hurts her to have to take him in her arms and give him a hug but it’s necessary. Men have to be managed. His body is electric and uncoordinated, like a cheap firework display. He doesn’t notice the bruise on her neck.

‘I’m fine,’ he says, shrugging her off. His pupils are a single grain of lumpfish roe floating on a tissue of blood. What the hell has he taken this time? Whatever it is, the nurse has discharged him so it’s clearly not life-threatening, thank God. ‘Nurse said some bastard must have gone at me with their house keys. I don’t know about you lot, but I need a fry-up.’

‘You need to go home, like now,’ Anna says. She throws him a steady look which he returns, very briefly, the only focus he can manage right now. He’s understood her, though. He’s picked up something serious in the tone. ‘Make sure he gets to bed, Dex, won’t you? I have to get back for Ralphie,’ Anna says.

Slowly, they lead Bo through the corridor towards the exit. As they pass the lifts, the doors open and the two coppers appear from within, solemn-faced, as if they’ve just come from dealing with some hard business. Anna looks away. Thank God they’re about to be rid of the stale air, the smell of vomit and egg and antiseptic, the tang of fear and adrenaline. What an unspeakably difficult night. She’s within whispering distance of being able to put it all behind her. This night, at least. There might be repercussions, though, God knows. But she’ll think about that later. She’s exhausted, at breaking point. If only she could just run home to her parents. If only she had the kind of parents you could run home to. Hers would only make everything worse. Mummy would find a way to make it all about her and Daddy would dump her off on her stepmother.

‘Ordering the Uber right now,’ Dex says, pulling his phone from his pocket.

Anna leans against the retaining wall of the municipal flower bed beside the entrance and waits with them, overwhelmed by the effort of seeming so normal when she’s feeling as if she might at any moment crack open and the separate pieces of her heart fly out into what remains of the night.

‘Anna, gorgeous girl, you’re shaking!’

She brushes this off with a smile. Why does it always have to be Dex who notices these things? ‘Just tired.’

The cab arrives and takes the problem back to the flat with the river view from where he came. And oh, the relief! The instant the vehicle is out of sight her legs go from under her and she has to sit back against the flower bed and recompose herself.

She takes a deep breath and holds it until her face feels as if it might explode then lets it out in one, in the hope that it might take all the guilt and the trauma of the night with it. Adjusting her jumpsuit and smoothing her hair she goes back through the hospital swing doors and picks up the taxi phone.

A voice asks, ‘Where to?’

Home, she thinks. Back to Ralphie.