Charles had come up from the basement, sweaty in a pair of shorts and a vest top that showed off his greying chest hair and a smattering of hair on his shoulders. His arm muscles bulged and a vein throbbed in his forehead. I wondered how much of the conversation he’d overheard.
‘This is not some snake-oil bullshit,’ he said to Miranda.‘It’s all science-based. And I’ve been living healthily for years, as you should know. Meeting Jasmine just made me realize I need to take things up a gear.’
He went over and put his arm around his fiancée. ‘ You’re as cold as ice. I’m about to jump in the shower. Why don’t you join me?’
He kissed her, and I studied his three kids. They all looked horrified, including Lewis, though he quickly rearranged his face to try to look unbothered.
Charles and Jasmine went upstairs, and Miranda shuddered. She watched them go, aiming a look at Jasmine’s back that contained more venom than any snake that might have escaped into this house.
‘Disgusting,’ she whispered as we heard a giggle from upstairs and the sound of the bathroom door closing.
‘They are getting married,’ Lewis said. ‘Isn’t it kind of nice to see him happy?’
‘Nice? He’s got no respect. This was Mum’s house.’
‘Mum’s been gone a long time.’
Zack went over to rub her shoulder, but she shrugged him off aggressively.
‘It wouldn’t…’ Miranda swallowed. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if she was his age. And if she wasn’t Mum’s fucking spitting image. Where did he find her? How did he find her?’
‘I told you,’ Zack said. ‘She was working at the hotel he stayed at in Miami.’
‘So he just happened to stumble across some woman who looks exactly like our mother?’
‘Yes.’
She shook her head. ‘I need a drink.’
She marched into the kitchen, and the rest of us followed her, except Zack, who said he needed to take the dog into thegarden. Miranda made a beeline for the drinks cabinet, filling a tumbler with whisky and knocking it back.
Lewis did the same, while Holly demurred.
‘Would you like a whisky, too, mate?’ Lewis asked me. I accepted gladly. But something was niggling at me. Zack’s version of how Charles and Jasmine had met was slightly different to Jasmine’s. But maybe he had shortened the slightly complicated version, which involved two hotels, for the sake of brevity. Zack was, as far as I could tell, a man who didn’t like to waste too much breath speaking.
Holly, who had been quiet for a while, spoke up.
‘Listen, we’re meant to be on holiday, right? We need to loosen up, have some fun. I’ve got a good idea. Let’s have a games night. It will be a great way to break the ice, get to know Jasmine better.’
‘I’m really not in the mood for games.’ Miranda had already finished her second glass of whisky. Was this her way of coping with Jasmine’s arrival? She didn’t strike me as someone with a drinking problem.
Holly nodded at the glass. ‘A couple more of those and you’ll be up for anything. Come on, sis, it will be fun.’ She leaned closer. ‘You want to know more about Jasmine, right? You know what we can play.’
Miranda got it immediately. It was one of the reasons I’d always yearned to have siblings, to be part of a big family. That secret code. The shared history and knowledge.
‘The truth game,’ she said.
Lewis scoffed. ‘Dad will never play that.’
Holly didn’t agree. ‘I’m sure we can persuade him. He’ll be in a good mood after…’ She lifted her eyes to the ceiling.
‘Urgh,’ Miranda said, but her eyes shone. The idea of getting Jasmine to play this truth game had clearly got her excited. But then she said, ‘I’m going to visit Mum’s grave.’
Holly and Lewis consulted the weather app on their phones– the sleet had stopped and was not forecast to return today– then said they would join her, while Zack announced that he had some work to do. The grave was in the churchyard behind the visitors’ centre and the three siblings headed out in my and Holly’s rental car, leaving me at a loose end.
I went into the living room and poked at the old iMac, surprised to see the screen come to life, with no password protecting it.
I opened the browser and went straight to Google, intending to do some more research into Samir’s death. I began to type ‘how long does it take to die from hypothermia’ into the search engine, but as soon as I’d typed ‘how long does it take’, the search box auto-completed with a different phrase:
