‘Oh, that’s just Lewis. Once he gets an idea in his head he won’t let it go.’
‘But even after all the revelations? And with the snow?’
‘That’s not the only thing that would put me off going in those caves, but like I said, Lewis gets tunnel vision.’
‘What’s the other reason you wouldn’t go in the caves?’ I expected her to say they were more dangerous than Lewis had made out. An easy place to have an accident.
‘It’s something that happened years ago, when we were kids. It’s the reason Brenda is feeling so shit today.’
I waited.
‘Brenda’s son, Jimmy, died in the caves. Morag’s brother. Lewis and I were there when it happened. Or I should say, we’d been there. We’d spent the evening with him.’
‘What?’ She had never told me any of this before.
‘It was New Year’s Eve, 2006. Or, I guess, the early hours of January the first. An accident. There’s a ledge inside the main cavern, a drop into a pool, and he must have got too close to it. He fell, hit his head. They said he drowned.’
‘Oh Jesus. But… you didn’t see it happen?’
She stared into her mug, which she held cupped in both hands, her legs under the blanket.
‘It was after the rest of us had gone home to bed. They found him the next day, after he didn’t come home and Brenda went looking for him. Morag was still in bed, I think, with a terrible hangover. We were all suffering. I remember waking up that morning and being sick, then going back to bed. Miranda yelled at me for getting vomit on the bathroom floor, shouting that we couldn’t risk Mum catching anything. Then they woke me up around lunchtime to tell me the news. It was awful. They had Lewis and me at the police station for hours, and Morag, too, answering questions about whathappened. It was all really awkward. They immediately asked us about drugs and we both clammed up, thinking we’d get charged and that we’d never get into uni or get jobs or maybe even go to prison.’
‘Very unlikely.’
‘Oh yeah, of course I know that now, but I was seventeen and I was terrified. But then Dad got a lawyer friend to fly up and he sorted it all out. Reassured us we could be honest without fear our futures were going to be ruined.’
I was sitting by her feet now, my hand on the blanket that covered her knees.
‘And… had you been taking drugs?’
‘We had. But not as much as Jimmy. He was off his face. We’d all drunk a lot, smoked some joints… Did some other stuff, too. But the point was, Lewis, Morag and I were fine to walk out of there and go home. Jimmy decided to stay behind for a while, try to sober up a bit before going home.’
‘Poor Brenda,’ I said. ‘And poor Morag.’
‘It was horrible for all of us. Messy. Brenda wanted to talk to us, but Dad sent us all back to Birmingham, saying he didn’t want anything to cause Mum any stress. She only had a few months left at that point. It was an awful time. ‘
I felt like I was interviewing her, but I couldn’t help it. ‘Did Brenda blame you?’
‘Put it this way, she hasn’t been friendly to us since. I think the rest of the village blamed us, even though it wasn’t our idea to go to the caves. It was Jimmy and Morag. They were the locals. The ones who’d been going to the caves since they were kids. But it’s a small community and we were outsiders. And Lewis was the last person to see him alive.’
‘What?’
‘Well, him and Morag.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I’m really notfeeling great. I think this thing with Jasmine has hit me harder than I realized. I think I might go to bed as well. I just need to be on my own for a bit. I need some space.’
She got up and left the room, leaving me sitting there, reeling. Lewis was the last person to see Jimmy alive– in the caves where he was now taking Jasmine?
At the very least, he definitely knew it was a place where someone could have an accident.
A fatal accident.
I promise you, Miranda. It’s not going to turn out like that. I’m going to fix it. Trust me.
And then I remembered something else. The search on the iMac.
How long does it take to drown?
Lewis was taking Jasmine to these caves, a place where a young man had fallen to his death years ago. There was a dangerous ledge in the same cavern as the rock carving. A pool where a young man had drowned.
