The Post, like most businesses on the island, was an old house converted to commercial use. It had a large front room that served as the general store. Bulletin boards, art projects of children long grown, and helicopter shots of the island faded blue with age covered every inch of the walls. A poster promoting tourism encroached on the side window. A historic map seemed to show a slightly enlarged version of the island, with entire peninsulas that had since eroded into the sea. One shelf was stuffed with long life milk, spam, and Heinz baked beans. Another featured screwdrivers and plastic packets of underwear. The narrow aisles met at odd angles.
Emma dragged the makeshift coffin through the middle of the room, almost knocking over an entire shelf of laundry soap.
“Thanks again, Lisa.”
“Right. I’ll see you in the morning, then.” She trailed off and stared at her. Lisa suddenly had more hands than she knew what to do with.
“It’s fine Lisa. I can take it from here.”
The woman gave a nervous smile and retreated at full speed.
The building had been cleared before arrival, which meant it was already full of people again. Jessie peaked in the window and around the poster just as Emma got the cooler around the magazines and the cashier counter, to the door of the back room. Two men in overalls watched from the corner by the front window. One man eating a bacon sandwich had to shuffle sideways to make way for her to pass. No one offered to help.
Emma grabbed a clear package of men’s socks off a rack and shoved them into her coat pocket. With one hand she fished a few notes out of another pocket and threw them on the counter.
“Police business.” She challenged the man standing by the door with her eyes, then shut the heavy door behind her.
The back room was a converted kitchen. The fixtures had been sold ages ago, leaving a featureless room with one window, braced and locked in place with enough room for an air conditioning unit and a meager ray of natural light. This, along with the sturdy door between this room and the main store, created some semblance of security. A bank of locked drawers along one wall served as a makeshift system of safety deposit boxes. Larger valuables that arrived by boat like crucial food or medical supplies were stored here, hence the air conditioner, more useful as a dehumidifier than for lowering the temperature. The principal means of refrigeration on South Alderney was waiting, but controlling moisture was critical to preserving perishables, or in this case evidence.
She entered the room and looked up at the small window. Heads squeezed into the square of glass, looking bored and ravenous for something lurid to gawk at. Emma could feel their eyes on her back as she worked. The faint shaft of light from the window felt like a spotlight.
The coldest part of the room was on a raised concrete floor directly under the air conditioner. She surveyed the dimensions and planned out where the cooler could go and still give her enough room to get to the door. To get the thing in place, Emma needed to lift the cooler over a six-inch step. She grabbed a handle, tilted one end up, and pulled. The bottom of the cooler slammed into the lip of concrete and wouldn’t budge. Emma heard what was in the box shift.
The light was under her clothes now, shining through it like plastic wrap. The eyes squirmed and burrowed under her skin.
She lifted the front end of the cooler higher and pulled as hard as she could. The front end cleared the step and scraped along the top, forcing the cooler to angle even more sharply. She felt the center of gravity move away from her, but it was too late to pull it back. The contents rumbled and shifted, tipping the whole thing on its side. Evan tumbled out of the box and onto the floor. Emma’s eyes snapped shut.
Her mind immediately went to the one place she didn’t want it to go. She imagined that when she opened her eyes the face looking up at her from the cold gray floor would repeat her own lies back to her. Failure here meant an end to the whole charade. The thought of it was more gruesome than the corpse on the floor.
The light on her back shined without judgment, content to expose her and allow the truth to be seen. She braced for someone to tell her she was a fake and a fraud, to get it over with already. But the spotlight did not relent. It waited. It waited for her to whisper the accusation inside her own head. She refused.
You’re alright.
She opened her eyes. Evan was face-down with his arms behind him. It was a relief not to see his eyes. She squatted next to him, wrapped her arms around his chest, and lifted as hard as she could with her legs. Evan’s torso slid over the edge of the cooler, leaving him on his back in the bottom of the box. She tried not to make eye contact while she quickly stuffed his legs and then his arms back into position and closed the lid.
Emma sat on the box and made the conscious decision to start breathing again. The eyes slithered away into their crevices, and the spotlight faded into the normal morning haze.
You’re alright if you’ve got a plan.
Stick to the plan.
What is the plan?
The crowd in the main room of the Post had thinned out, revealing more merchandise stuffed onto the shelves. There were jars of sandwich pickle next to boxes of nails. A curtain of blue plastic raincoats hung from the wall.
The orange anorak. Evan had hung it up next to the door of the station the day before, but
