“No. I never laid eyes on the woman after the two of you left the boat yesterday.” He met her eyes, and she thought she heard a note of pleading under the roughness of his tone.
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” she said.
He turned away, suppressing a bitter laugh. “Would that were true.” The boat rocked gently as the children moved about above s
decks. “I tell you we have to go. The children—we can’t risk staying.”
Althea considered, running over the possibilities in her mind. He could move the boat, and she could meet them at some prearranged mooring to change out the oxygen—but no. She shook her head at her own stupidity.
“Did anyone hear you arguing with Annie that day?” she asked.
“Likely the whole of Barbridge.”
“Then you can’t leave. Don’t you see? The police will be interviewing everyone in the area. Someone is bound to tell them they heard the two of you in a slanging match, and they’ll take your flight as an indication of guilt. It wouldn’t take them long to track you down—the waterways are finite. You’ll have to bluff it out.”
“But—what would I say?”
If Althea had needed reassurance, it was the ingrained honesty of a man who couldn’t manufacture a lie. “Tell them it was a boater’s row. Say she moored badly, and scraped your boat. It wouldn’t be the first time tempers were lost over a bit of bad steering.”
Gabriel was nodding, agreeing with her.
“Was anyone close enough to hear differently?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then maybe they won’t take it further. And you mustn’t volunteer that you knew her.” Even as she spoke, Althea wondered what had possessed her. She, who had spent most of her working life helping the police.
“I’ll get Sam’s things if you’ll gather up Lally’s,” Juliet told Gemma as they climbed the stairs to the first floor.
The house seemed unsettlingly quiet, unwelcoming, and Gemma thought she must have absorbed some of Juliet’s nervousness. They had checked to make sure there was no sign of Caspar’s car at either house or office before going in, and even then they had stood in the
entrance hall, listening, before doing a quick recce of the downstairs rooms.
Chiding herself for being overimaginative, Gemma asked as briskly as she could, “What sort of things should I get?”
What did it matter if Caspar Newcombe did come home, she told herself. Juliet certainly had every right to be there, and to take whatever personal things she needed.
Unfortunately, Gemma had seen the results of too many domestic disputes to be entirely comforted by her own commonsense advice.
“Oh, just undies, a change of jeans and jumpers.” Juliet pointed to the first door on the left of the upstairs hall. “God knows, whatever I chose would be wrong; I thought you might do better.” The strain between mother and daughter had been evident that morning, and Gemma had sensed Juliet’s relief when her parents had taken the children.
Although she felt much better qualified to pick out boys’ things than girls’, Gemma followed Juliet’s direction without protest. Lally’s door was closed, and on it she had tacked a sheet of paper with a carefully hand-drawn skull and crossbones. Beneath the graphic, she had printed KEEP OUT, then below that, in parentheses, (THAT MEANS
YOU, SAM!).
“Sorry, love,” Gemma whispered, and turned the knob. The door swung open and she stood on the threshold, expelling a breath of surprise. She had been expecting openly expressed rebellion—what she found was a room that seemed to bear little imprint of its teenage occupant.
The walls were rose, the duvet a floral mint- and- rose print, the upholstered armchair by the window a coordinating mint-and-rose stripe. A few stuffed animals sat grouped at the head of the hastily made bed; the framed prints on the walls were variations on horses grazing in dreamily impressionistic meadows. These were a child’s things—had Lally held on to them by choice? And if so, why?
The room was too tidy as well, except for a few items of clothing tossed haphazardly on a bench at the foot of the bed and the snaggle-toothed appearance of dressing- table drawers not quite shut.
Sniffing, Gemma caught the faint drift of cheap perfume, the sort that teenage girls bought at Woolworths or the Body Shop with their pocket money, and the normality of it eased her disquiet. She was letting her imagination run away with her again. She certainly didn’t know Lally well enough to make judgments based on something as superficial as her lack of boy-band posters and black drapes.
The sound of Juliet moving around in the next room, opening and shutting doors and drawers, spurred her into action. Juliet hadn’t given her a bag, so the first thing was to find a hold all or suitcase.
Rummaging through the wardrobe, the best she came up with was an empty, slightly worn backpack. Setting the pack on the bed, she quickly riffled through the chest of drawers, pulling out folded panties and bras that were little more than bits of lace and padding. She smiled a bit, remembering when she had worn such things so proudly and she and her sister had fought over who needed them most.
When her hands were full, she turned back to the bed and saw that the pack had tipped over, spilling a brightly colored bit of paper or foil onto the floor. She reached for it absently, then froze as her fingers closed round the small packet and she realized what she held.
It was a condom, wrapped in colored foil.
Gemma dumped the neatly folded clothes on the bed and reached for the backpack. She felt inside, exploring the depths until she found the pocket that had come open.
A sharp edge jabbed her finger, and she pulled out more condoms, a half dozen, their foil wrappers as cheerful as confetti. Sinking down onto the edge of the bed, Gemma thought furiously. Surely the novelty condoms were every schoolgirl’s idea of sophistication, passed giggling from friend to friend at lunch break. Possession didn’t necessarily mean that Lally had a use for them.
She slipped the condoms back into the bag and picked up the
clothes, then stopped, her nose wrinkling. There was something else, a hint of a familiar smell.
This time she protected her fingers with a handkerchief, searching more thoroughly and feeling along the seams of the innermost pockets. Her diligence rewarded her with a bumpy, thumbnail-size packet of cling film. Carefully, she peeled back the clear layers of plastic, but her stomach was plummeting even before she saw what the film held. Tablets. White, unstamped, some oval, some round.
They could be anything, of course, but Gemma suspected the ovals were Xanax, or a similar tranquilizer, and the round tablets Ecstasy. The round tablets were unscored, and had that slightly homemade look. In any case, she was quite sure neither of the pills was something Lally should have.
But there was still something more; the smell was stronger now.
She felt again, and her fingers closed on a softer packet. She knew what it was before she saw the contents. Pot, and a sizable amount.
She sat, staring down at what she held, until Juliet’s voice came anxiously from the hall. “Gemma, are you almost ready? We need to go, soon.”
With a jerk, Gemma shoved the drugs into her pocket and stuffed the clothes into the pack, all the while swearing under her breath. She called out, “Coming,” as she hurried to pull jeans and tops from the drawers, adding them to the pack until she thought she had enough for a few days’ wear.
Then she stopped, her hand on the doorknob, and took a breath.
What the hell was she going to do about this?
How could she tell Juliet what she had found, today of all days?
And how could she not?
“Juliet . . .” Gemma paused, concentrating on stirring the too-hot-to- taste bowl of leek soup before her on the small cafe table. Suspect-ing that Juliet had subsisted through the morning on nothing but
nerves and multiple cups of coffee, she’d insisted that they get some lunch once they were safely away from the Newcombes’ house.
Juliet had agreed, if reluctantly, and within a quarter of an hour they were seated in the tiny tea shop called
