‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t exaggerate,’ Miranda snapped. ‘If I’d meant to attack you, you’d know it.’
‘Okay,’ I said, realizing it was time to step in. ‘I think we all need to chill out.’
‘Fuck off, Patrick,’ Miranda said.
‘Yeah, fuck off, Pat,’ added Lewis.
Holly moved to my side. ‘Don’t talk to him like that.’ Her voice shook and went high-pitched, before she paused and inhaled several deep breaths. ‘Jasmine, what is it you need to talk to us about?’
‘I told you, I want to do it in a public place. There are some things I need you to know.’
Miranda tried to speak again, but Holly shushed her. ‘It’s nearly lunchtime. Why don’t we go to the pub? We can all be civilized, right? Right?’
Nobody responded to that. But nobody disagreed with the plan either. I was still taking in what had just happened. Had Lewis done it deliberately, to provoke Miranda? I couldn’t get a handle on his motivations. He professed to like Jasmine, to be the welcoming sibling, but he kept doing things that he must have known would send Miranda off the deep end.He’s sly, I realized.You can’t trust him.
Jasmine left the room first. As she turned her back on Miranda, I swear I saw Miranda’s eyes go to the block of knives on the counter, as if she was considering plunging the biggest, sharpest knife into Jasmine’s back.
15
Holly and I took our car, and Miranda went in Lewis’s. To my surprise, Jasmine went with them. Perhaps she wanted to ensure they couldn’t talk about her on the way to the pub.
‘Whoa,’ I said, as we pulled off the drive. ‘That was…’
‘Intense. I know. I’m really sorry they both spoke to you like that.’
To be honest, I was a little shaken by both Miranda and Lewis telling me to fuck off, but I didn’t want to tell Holly how much I was beginning to dislike her siblings. We were only a couple of days into this trip and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Surely under normal circumstances, when their dad’s new thirty-four-year-old fiancée, who looked exactly like their dead mum, hadn’t just shown up, they would be a lot nicer.
I bloody hoped so, anyway.
‘We’re only going to need to survive this for a couple more days. I can handle it,’ I said. ‘It’s Jasmine I’m worried about. I thought Miranda was going to punch her.’ Or worse.
‘Miranda isn’t violent.’
‘There’s always a first time.’
Holly shook her head. She was behind the wheel, so we weren’t making eye contact. The sky was thick with clouds, the sun not even attempting to shine through, and an air of gloom hung over the peninsula. On top of that, it was close to zero and I expected it to start snowing at any moment.
‘We’re not that bad, are we?’ Holly asked as we approached the Bay Inn. ‘My family, I mean?’
What could I say? I loved Holly, but so far her dad had ignored me, Miranda was almost unbelievably rude, and I couldn’t get a handle on Lewis. One minute he was overly friendly; the next he was making some vicious comment. It was strange how he had suddenly apologized to me when he thought I was going to leave the kitchen, like he hadn’t wanted me to leave. It was as if he’d wanted me to witness his exchange with Jasmine about the excursion to the caves. But why?
There was something else that had been playing on my mind, too, overshadowed by all the drama with Jasmine and what I was beginning to think of as ‘Gold-digger-gate’.
‘Lewis said something after the truth game last night. Something about “all the truths we could have told”. What did he mean by that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I guess he just meant we could have come up with lots of other facts about ourselves.’
It had sounded a lot more ominous than that. But all I said was, ‘Right.’
‘You think we have some terrible dark secret? Bodies buried in the garden?’
‘I don’t know. It definitely sounded like he was talking about something specific.’
We parked. Sounding impatient, she said, ‘Every family has skeletons, Patrick. They’re not all dark and sinister. This is one of the reasons why I think you should move away from making true-crime documentaries. It warps your imagination.’ She opened the car door. ‘Now let’s go and see what Jasmine thinks we need to hear.’
I’m not exaggerating: when we walked into the pub, a hush fell over the place.
I was sure that every pair of eyes in there watched us as we took off our coats and sat down. There were a couple of ladies in their sixties opposite us who were actively staring, forks clutched in their hands in lieu of pearls.
