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But then, innocent until proven guilty, and I’m as much a sucker for a LOLz blood-and-guts scream-along at a remote family mansion as the next inmate. Aren’t I?
‘There,’ she says, dabbing my nose one last time and holding up a plastic mirror for me. It has a slight buckle in it, but she holds it straight and then I see: I’m a sexy witch.
‘Oh my God!’ I squeal and laugh. ‘Thank you.’
She grins and gives me a name that I barely register but will be there, filed away, if I ever need it.
The tables have been pushed in front of a giant projector screen. The chairs are attached to them, so half of them face the wrong way. People have started to fill them, some straddling the backwards seats, and I find the group of women Deandra and I used to sit with on these sorts of occasions. Someone has saved me a seat and smuggled in some crisps.
I can watch this, can’t I? I can have a good laugh at a load of innocents facing certain death in a country manor, right?
I reach down to fiddle with my shoes and give myself a second to take a breath, stop tears from filling my eyes.
And then I sit up and I’m about to walk out – what genius thought Bodies Bodies Bodies was suitable anyway? – and then I catch a glimpse of a face: a slim, dark face with sad, intelligent eyes, and I can’t move as I try to place him. I know this boy – this young man.
And then the movie begins, the lights still on bright, and I slide back into my seat, and I’m right back at Trevethan House, searching for a teenage girl I sent there.
I stepped into the murky light of the hall and it felt like an icy fog was being breathed over me.
I had come here full of bravado, but it took all of my strength not to turn round and run.
Someone is here.
Something is wrong.
‘Jenna?’ I called as I hurried up the stairs, sure someone or something would appear on the landing as I reached it.
But no one was there.
There came a soft sound on the edge of my hearing, a whimper maybe, and I knew where she was: the annexe.
It was the only part of the house my dad had been using, a battery-powered haven of packet food and Tesco Citrus Multi Surface Wipes, which I believe he had been using to clean everything, including himself.
I ran towards the sound, hoping I was wrong – the daughter of my worst enemy wasn’t in my childhood home; I hadn’t done, or wasn’t about to do, something inconceivably stupid that would tie me even closer to the Beaufort-Bradleys.
But at the same time I was hoping I was right – that Jenna had come here to escape her awful family; she would finally open up to me, tell me what she’d seen that had scared her and reveal the identity of this seedy older boy. We would look at our mirror images a generation apart and she would tell me she wished I was her mother – just as Frances would be starting to wonder what the daughter of the woman her brother had murdered would do if she got Jenna completely, entirely alone.
72
NOW
The voices are coming from Patrick’s annexe. Georgia said he’d disappear in here for days when he was composing and often slept in there.
I had such a crush on him. Despite what Georgia said about how cruel he could be. Despite what my dad had said – I didn’t believe him anyway.
On the landing I register the peeling wallpaper, the carpet stained dark under the radiator, the lamps hanging off the walls, and I rush on, following the voices and the dot-to-dot of blood.
At the annexe door, Lydia hesitates and I push past her. ‘What if…’ she starts, and I pause to look back at her. ‘What if someone comes up behind us?’ She means Georgia. What if Georgia comes up behind us and traps us in the annexe?
Glances pass between us but Tristan forges ahead.
‘I’ll stay here,’ Lydia says. ‘Keep watch.’ Her forehead creases. ‘If Rose is there…’
I nod. I don’t know how she can bear it – not coming with us to see for herself – but she’s right, and I leave her standing there and hurry past the room where we used to have our music lessons. It stands empty except for a keyboard in front of an upturned crate. The little kitchenette is bursting with rubbish – wrappers, cartons, takeaway boxes. The shouting is louder and I’m sure it’s just two voices – Ash and Ava – but I cling onto hope.
Tristan stumbles into what used to be Patrick’s bedroom and we follow. There’s a mattress without bedding and a TV and a camp chair and a pile of torches and bin bags taped across the curtainless windows. More rubbish: shiny crisp packets, opened blister packs, tissues.
The TV… I stop and stare. It’s pink and?—
