He doesn’t look convinced, but he lowers his foot. And at my insistence he makes a dressing, ripping a piece of fabric from the bottom of his own shirt, pressing it to Iain’s shoulder beneath the jacket, to stop the bleeding.
Iain watches him with dull eyes, unresisting. His skin is greyish, his body is slumped. Doug keeps a foot on him, just above his groin, in case he were to try for an escape … though he hardly seems capable of that.
‘You’ll be all right,’ Doug tells him, matter-of-factly, as if he can hear my thoughts. ‘It’s just torn your shoulder. I’ve seen worse. It’ll sting like a bitch of course, but then … well, you deserve it, don’t you, mate?’
‘Why did you kill her?’ I ask Iain.
‘What?’ He frowns, and then grimaces again, against the pain.
‘The guest. Did you push her into that gully because she saw something? Because she was on to you?’
‘I didn’t kill her,’ he moans.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say.
‘I’ve never killed anyone,’ he says, breathing heavily between each word, as though running up a hill. I hope Doug’s right about the wound not being that bad. ‘I’ve done some bad things in my time, but I’ve never killed a person.’
There seems to be a genuine repugnance about the way he says ‘killed’ – as though it really is something he sees as beyond the pale. But then he’s done a fairly good job of acting the innocent up until now.
‘I didn’t kill that woman. Why would I?’
‘If she saw something,’ I say. ‘Like I saw something – you were prepared to kill me. You were going to shoot me.’
‘No,’ he says, ‘no – I wasn’t. I hardly even know how to use that thing.’ He gestures to the rifle, where it lies on the floor. Doug hefts his own rifle in his hand – a warning. I do, the movement says. I know how to use it. Iain sees this, swallows.
‘But you took it from the storeroom,’ I say, ‘so you must have thought you might use it.’
He looks genuinely perplexed. ‘No,’ he says, weakly, ‘no, I didn’t.’
‘What do you mean, you didn’t? You’ve had it pointed at my head for the last hour.’
He looks at me as if I’m going mad. ‘That’s the rifle you had when you came up here. I pointed it at you to stop you from going anywhere.’ He moves slightly, and winces against the pain. He is sweating horribly. ‘Look, I was the one that saw something. That was why I moved the stash – from the pumphouse to up here.’
I’m caught by those words. I saw something. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, urgently. ‘What did you see?’
‘I saw her get killed. The girl. And then I thought, Oh, fuck, the police are going to be all over this by the morning. They’ll be searching the whole place. They’ll find everything. I knew I had to move the stuff further away from the Lodge, and get it off the estate by the time they arrived. But I hadn’t realised about the snow. They couldn’t get here – but we couldn’t get away, either. The train—’ He stops, as though he knows he’s given too much away. That we interests me, but there isn’t time to ponder it now.
‘You’ve been using the trains?’ Doug asks at the same time as I say, ‘How did she die? The woman. You said you saw it. I suppose you’re going to say she fell?’
‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘Of course not. She was murdered. I saw it all. I was there, near the pumphouse. Early in the morning, about four a.m., checking on the stuff, like I told you. She killed her.’
‘She?’ I ask.
‘Yes. The other woman. One of the guests. They had an argument, I think – I couldn’t hear what about, exactly. But I did hear her saying, “You were never really my friend. Friends don’t do that to each other.” And I thought, oh, classic woman’s tiff, about some love affair or something. Inconvenient, but no matter. I’ll lie low, I thought, wait for it to blow over, wait for them to get out of the area. But then I saw the other one grab her by the neck, like she was trying to choke the words out of her. And then push her, right in the centre of the chest. Just watched as she fell. Cold as anything.’
One day earlier
New Year’s Day 2019
MIRANDA
This is the only thing that brings me some relief: the thought of Julien’s horror at the idea of me telling the world about him. He’ll be thinking, I won’t try her yet. I’ll try in an hour or so, when she’s had a chance to calm down. But he’ll be too late. I’m going to hide out until I can get the first train down to London. I think of Julien going to the cabin, finding it empty, panic setting in properly. My note, left for him: There is nothing you can say. I should never have kept your secret for you in the first place.
‘There.’ I put the pen down, satisfied by my work. The dressing table is neatly ordered. A hairbrush, a small wooden box, a couple of lipsticks. One of them is Chanel. I turn it upside down, read the little label. Pirate: the same shade I wear. I thought I’d recognised it on Emma last night, but it’s so difficult to tell: everyone wears colour differently.
‘I have this one,’ I say. ‘It’s my favourite.’ Actually, I need to buy another. I’ve lost my old one somewhere, probably in the lining of one of my handbags.
‘Oh yeah,’ Emma says. ‘I love it.’ I open it up, and focus on applying it perfectly to my mouth in the mirror, a waxy crimson bow. I read somewhere once that sales of lipsticks go up when times are tough. I pout at myself in the mirror. Never has ‘war paint’ seemed like a more appropriate term. My face is pale, sunken-eyed, but the lipstick transforms it. It gives my face resolution, context, like a piece of punctuation. I try a smile, and quickly stop. I look deranged, like Heath Ledger’s Joker.
‘Lipstick looks so good on you,’ Julien told me once. ‘On other women it always looks like they’re trying a bit too hard. But you’re – what’s that saying – you’re born to wear it.’
I take a tissue from the dispenser, wipe it off. Now my mouth just appears raw-looking, bloody.
‘Look,’ Emma says now. ‘Shall we go over to the Lodge? It’s more comfortable there. Mark’s passed out in the living room, but still …’
‘Oh,’ I say, ‘no thanks. I don’t want to see anyone else. I’m getting the first train in the morning, and that’s going to be it. I don’t ever want to see Julien or Katie again, if I don’t have to.’
Her eyes go wide. ‘Manda – oh my God … what’s happened?’
I have an idea of myself delivering the news with the cool panache of a thirties movie star. But to my horror, I realise that the tears are coming; I can feel them rising within me, like an unstoppable tide. I haven’t cried in so long – not since I got my Third, while just across from me Katie opened her envelope to reveal a big, shiny First.
I clench my hands into fists, dig my nails into the soft flesh of my palms. ‘Julien and Katie have been sleeping together.’ I still can’t bring myself to say: Having an affair. Not yet. It sounds so intimate, so sordid.
‘Oh my God.’ She puts a hand to her mouth. But she’s not quite meeting my eyes. The whole performance rings false.
I don’t believe it. Emma, of all people, knew that my husband was screwing around while I didn’t? What the fuck? ‘You knew?’
‘Only since yesterday night, I swear, Miranda. Mark told me.’
Mark, I think – the little secret of Julien’s he’d warned me about. This was it. This is what he was trying to tell me. No wonder he looked confused when I told him I wasn’t interested in hearing.
‘I didn’t want to just tell you, you know,’ she says. ‘I suppose I wanted to give Katie or Julien a chance to tell you themselves. I didn’t want to presume I had any right.’
‘What, to tell me my husband and my best friend are fucking?’
‘I’m so sorry, Manda. I should have told you … I’ll never forgive myself—’
She looks so tragic that I wave her away with a hand – I can’t be bothered. ‘You know what … whatever. It isn’t about you. I know now. And I know what I’m going to do about it.’ I hand her the note. ‘Look,’ I say, ‘I want you to make sure Julien gets this. I can’t bring myself to give it to him.’
‘OK,’ she says, taking it. ‘But why—’
‘Could I have another?’ I say, at the same time, holding out my glass.