But the thing is, deep down, who knows what might have been going on in Luke’s head. Maybe there just comes a point. I mean, all brothers and sisters argue, right? And maybe, the calmer things are between them generally, the more explosive the fights turn out to be . . .
So, yeah, watching Luke forge ahead through the trees, swinging a stick he’d found from somewhere at the leaves, I started imagining him swinging something at Sadie. Just . . . snapping. Not necessarily on purpose. But for Sadie the result would have been the same.
And then there was Fash. He was walking behind Luke, not even trying to catch up. He kept looking over his shoulder. Maybe he was just being paranoid the way I was, because I kept checking to see where Abi was, too. But the more I watched him, the more it looked like he wanted to be on his own. He looked worried about something. Guilty. As though there was something that was playing on his mind.
And the other thing about Fash, the thing you probably don’t know about, is that he always had sort of a thing for Sadie. He would never have admitted it, obviously, and he’d deny it if you asked him about it now. Especially now. Jesus. But if you hung out with them both, and you paid attention, you noticed it more and more. Fash would watch her, just little glances, and then he’d look at Mason to see if he’d noticed. And when Sadie touched him, like on the arm or something—Sadie was always touching people on their arms—Fash would go all tense. Just for a second, as though he’d been touched by a wire and a little jolt of electricity had shot through his body. And OK, everybody had a thing for Sadie. But maybe, with everything else—with Fash’s mum, and all the shit he put up with on a daily basis—things were just building up. Like with Luke, I guess, except different. Like in that movie, the black-and-white one, the one Mason has a poster of on his wall. Where that bloke kills the woman in the shower. Which on the one hand sounds completely ridiculous, comparing Fash to a psycho with a knife . . .
Psycho. That’s what I meant.
But in a way that’s the whole point I’m trying to make. Nothing makes sense. None of it. Why would anyone want to kill Sadie, is what I’m saying. So why should one explanation seem more unlikely than any other?
And fucking Abi. I didn’t like her trailing along behind me. At least with Fash and Luke I could see them. And Abi was acting guiltiest of all. She didn’t want to be there, clearly. She didn’t want any of us to be there. I mean, she wasn’t even looking, for Christ’s sake. Every time I turned around, all I saw was her staring at her phone, shoving sunflower seeds into that gob of hers when she figured nobody was watching. Which was another clue. Because when Abi stuffs her face like that, it’s a sure sign she’s feeling nervous.
And Abi’s always been jealous of Sadie. Always. She would never have admitted it, obviously, but Sadie’s was the life she wished she had. She would have given anything to look the way Sadie did, for a start. To be blonde rather than brunette, to have blue eyes instead of plain brown. To be as popular as Sadie was, too. As talented. As loved, I guess, is the sad part, particularly when you think about Abi’s dad. So who knows? Maybe Abi had just had enough. Like, it must be exhausting trying to catch up all the time, so instead, maybe what she thought was, rather than trying to catch the leader I’ll knock the leader out of the race.
Shit.
I don’t know. The truth is I didn’t know then, and I’m not sure even now.
The ironic thing is, before the search party, I suspected Mason least of all. I’m not saying he didn’t have a temper, that he couldn’t be a bit full-on. You only have to look at what happened on the bridge. But that was just . . . it was just everything boiling over, that was all, and anyway, Ian had it coming. That’s what I told myself at the time. Mason wasn’t dangerous, not the way people were making out. And that’s why I was walking beside him. Because, out of any of them, at that point, it was Mason I trusted most of all. More than Abi, more than Fash, more than Luke even.
Can you believe that? Given what happened?
I was walking next to Mason because he made me feel safe.
ABI
I HATED IT. Every step.
It’s like, the others might have known where they were going, because they still went out into the woods all the time. Not to climb trees and that anymore, just to smoke, to drink sometimes, to hang out without worrying about anyone bothering them. Me, I tended to make up some excuse, or try to convince them to go to the quay instead. It was always way better down there anyway. We could blag our way onto the fairground rides in the summer, or take over one of the benches and talk about school, or our parents, or even just the people passing by. The tourists, Lara Sweeney and all her lot, the weirdos who ran the rides. We were never cruel or anything, except maybe if we were talking about Lara. We were just having a laugh, passing the time. But out in the woods it was never as much fun. I never thought so
