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‘Oh, hi,’ he says.
43
THURSDAY
Anna
Anna watches as Sasha climbs the ladder to demonstrate precisely how she wants the Orangery windows cleaned, even though Anna’s already done a few of them and they’re gleaming.
Confidence in yourself is a strange thing, Anna thinks. What makes Sasha believe that she’s the expert here when she’s hardly lifted a finger to do housework over the past five years?
Anna has a feeling that Sasha asked her to work in here because they want to check on whether she did what she said while she was out. She would bet that Olly has gone to the Coach House to see if she really did buy a houseplant. It wasn’t difficult to lay a breadcrumb trail that they could follow and hopefully Olly has found the journal. She’s realised that they think she’s very stupid, and, honestly, she’s not sure she can blame them. I would think the same thing, she tells herself, if I’d manipulated me that successfully for all those years, but she can use it to her advantage.
She’s extremely angry with herself for letting them use her. She doesn’t know which one of them she resents most: Sasha, for reeling her in, or Olly because once she developed a crush on him, he made her even more of a pushover. Probably she resents her own weakness and susceptibility to them the most.
It was a gamble, creating two journals. She can hardly believe she dared to. She kept the original journal all these years, even though she told Olly and Sasha that she threw it out. It has been very well hidden. She didn’t think too much about why she was keeping it at the time. She even felt bad about deceiving them, but she couldn’t bear to give it up. Maybe I did have some protective instincts, she thinks. It’s nice to give herself a little credit for something.
The journal had functioned as it was supposed to, giving her somewhere to work out her thoughts. It had been a comfort in the aftermath of Nick’s death. She’d enjoyed writing in it so much that she’d bought a second, identical journal, but never used it. Recording her thoughts felt too dangerous after Kitty was gone. But it’s come in handy now. She’s made a copy of her original journal in it. The only change she made in the copy was to write a different ending; otherwise, they’re identical. After that, it was simple. Put one in the hands of the police and make sure Olly and Sasha ‘discovered’ the other.
Her plan isn’t perfect. It’s flawed and it could fail, it might put her in some legal jeopardy, or even in danger, but she doesn’t care. She has two goals: to throw a bomb into Olly and Sasha’s lives to reveal what they’re truly capable of and get them out of the Manor forever. She could tell them what she knows and insist they leave, but why should they get the chance of an easyexit when they’ve made a fool of her? It wouldn’t be fair. And besides, she’s afraid that if she confronts them, they’ll outmanoeuvre her and the police somehow. That option seems more dangerous than the one she’s chosen.
The sun doesn’t penetrate the Orangery directly, but the space is heating up. Anna used to love this room. She grew citrus trees, tended a bougainvillea that splashed pink blooms across the back wall and had a productive vine trained partially over the ceiling. She and Nick picked out pale blue wicker furniture and they used to have morning coffee and evening drinks in here. I wasn’t simply dependent on him, she thinks. We were the best of friends. I gave myself to him because I loved him, and he loved me back.
Her eyes drift to the cabinet where her gardening tools have lain, wrapped up and mostly gathering dust since Nick’s death. The snips and secateurs, the Hori Hori knife. She used to keep them sharp, clean and oiled, but hasn’t used them regularly for years. Soon, hopefully, she can start to tend this place again, the way she wants to. She feels somehow confident that she’ll be alright on her own if she can get rid of Olly and Sasha, but it feels like a big and terrifying ‘if’.
‘Anna?’ Sasha says and Anna’s attention snaps back.
‘Sorry,’ she says. It’s not easy to keep her expression placid.
‘Did you hear me say about rubbing each pane with newspaper after washing it, so we get a really good shine?’
I taught you that trick, Anna wants to tell her, because I learned it from watching Kitty clean, but she says, ‘Absolutely.’
Sasha looks dubious. ‘I’ll show you again.’
Anna makes a show of watching and listening, but her head aches from looking up. While Sasha lectures her, she lets hereyes drift down. Sasha’s phone is on the table beside them and the screen lights up with a message. It’s from Olly.
She knows, it says. That’s all. It must be about the journal. Olly’s read it. She wasn’t expecting things to go this smoothly; nor was she expecting to feel so electrified when they did.
‘Do you see?’ Sasha calls.
Anna’s pretty sure the phone is out of Sasha’s sight. The screen will go black again before Sasha climbs down. She won’t know Anna read the message. ‘Amazing!’ she calls to Sasha as if she’s been rapt all this time. ‘How clever. I’ll do exactly that!’
She looks up the ladder. It’s close to midday and the Orangery’s glass roof is bright with reflected glare.
I’m like Icarus, she thinks. Flying close to the sun. But unlike Icarus, she thinks, I will not flytooclose.
Sasha and Olly know one thing and the police know something else.
Her future depends on what they do next.
44
THURSDAY
Olly
Olly bounds across the front lawn and jogs the rest of the way to the Coach House. He lets himself back inside and replaces the journal in Anna’s bedroom, exactly as he found it.
