Once she started on the plan, Theo found her mind clearing. It wasn’t that this was easy—it was not. But at least there was something she could do. Keep busy. Keep moving. Later, she would process. She would find a way to deal with the trauma.
“We need bin bags,” she said. “Lots of them. And gloves. Washing-up gloves will do. Bins, gloves, a broom, cleaning supplies, some gardening sheers or scissors, rope.”
The group, now seven, made their way through the gardens, propping each other up and carrying supplies. The scene was as Sebastian and Theo left it—the overturned wheelbarrow, the door hanging open. It had not been a dream.
“I’ll go inside,” Theo said. “I’ve already seen . . .”
She almost said it. It was them. Rosie and Noel. Noel and Rosie.
“I have to see,” Sooz said, stepping forward.
“Sooz . . .”
Sooz made it as far as the doorway, froze, and backed away.
“I . . . I can’t. You’re sure? Theo, you’re sure? You’re sure?”
She began to shake uncontrollably. Peter got to her first and moved her back, holding her tight.
Theo put on the gloves.
First, she put a trail of unrolled plastic bin bags on the ground between the door and the ladder. The floor was soaked from the lashes of rain that had come in during the night. Theo took off the boots to climb the ladder. No footprints. Once upstairs, she opened the little window. It was tiny, but they would be able to get the plants through it. The other things—the grow lights, the tarps—those might be harder. Those could go down the steps, if necessary.
They formed a brigade. Theo lowered the plants from the window in the bucket. Someone on the ground dumped them directly into a bin bag. Bit by bit, the room was emptied. When it was cleaned out, she swept it for any remaining cannabis on the floor. She tipped the dustpan’s contents into a bag. She considered closing the window, but there was still a smell of cannabis plants in the space. The window had to be open. There was a breeze today—anything they could do to air out the space would be good. On the way down, she wiped the ladder rungs clean.
When she was done upstairs, she cut the rope that opened the hatch and removed it, leaving only a small hole where it had been, and pushed the hatch closed with the handle of a shovel. She backed up out of the shed, taking the tarps with her as she went.
One last thing. The axe. It was on the floor where Sebastian had dropped it. She forced herself to look as she wiped it, picked it up in a bin bag, covering it so the others couldn’t see. She stepped out of the woodshed and walked several yards back, to the stream that wound through the woods into the garden. She shook it out of the bag, dropping it into the water, kicking at it until it was entirely submerged.
She stared at the axe for a moment, peacefully resting there among the rocks. Reality fragmented for a moment. She was cleaning up a murder scene. Rosie. Noel. She had a mental flash of Rosie’s body under the wood . . .
“Keep it together, Theo,” she said to herself. “You’re going to be a doctor. You do whatever needs to be done to help others. You have to do this.”
She shook her head forcefully, as if trying to knock the picture out of her mind. It worked, at least enough for her to pick up her chin and march back to where the others were loading the cars.
“Where do we go with these?” Yash said, regarding the bags. “The woods?”
“They might search,” Peter said. “They might find them.”
“There’s a lot of woods.”
“There’s probably going to be a lot of police.”
Peter and Yash, refining each other’s ideas even now.
“A few miles up the road,” Angela said. “There was a skip by some construction. I saw it as we drove in. Some building site, close to the pub. We could take them there, drop them in with the other rubbish.”
Everyone agreed that this was the correct thing to do.
“Who feels like they can drive?” Theo asked.
“I think I could,” Julian said. “I have no idea why or how, but I think I could.”
“You five go. Get rid of the bags and drive to the shops and get bread or milk or sauce rolls or something, so if anyone says they saw a car leave here in the morning there’ll be a good reason. While you’re gone, we’ll call the police. Once we start this, we need to stay together on it. Not just today. Always. Do we agree?”
One by one, each of the group nodded their assent. Julian, Sooz, Angela, Peter, and Yash backed out of the driveway with their terrible cargo, leaving Theo and Sebastian.
And Rosie and Noel.
Theo reached for Sebastian’s hand. The stage was set. Ready or not, showtime always came. You had to go on even if you felt underprepared.
22
THE FIRE CRACKLED AND LICKED THE DARK AIR. THE CLOCK ON THE mantel did its part and made a gentle, slow heartbeat sound. The Nine circulated a look. They spoke wordlessly to each other. It was weird how they could have an entire conversation this way. Stevie could feel it, even if she couldn’t hear it.
Her butt was way too hot. She stepped forward a bit.
“I didn’t start putting it all together until dinner,” Stevie said. “I didn’t know what I was looking at, at first. But a few things got me thinking. If you hadn’t said plant-based so many times, I don’t think it would have occurred to me what Angela was really saying. Plants. Then I started thinking about all the things Sebastian told me when we were outside. That he used to smoke a lot of weed. He learned about plants from the gardener. When you add it all up: plants, weed, the window closed one day and open after the murder, the rope missing from the pull—it all equals . . .”
“Grow house,” David said, breaking into a smile.
Nothing from the assembled. Too much nothing. She had stepped out into the void and . . .
Then someone sighed.
“This is my fault,” Theo said.
“Don’t you dare, Theo,” Sebastian said. “If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine.”
“It sounds like it was mine,” Sooz added. “Maybe it was my subconscious talking.”
“It’s not anyone’s fault,” Peter said. “No one’s fault. It was . . .”
“What we had to do,” Julian concluded.
. . . and she had landed on solid ground. Across the room, David had a strange look on his face. Not a smile, exactly—a kind of grimace of amazement.
“Do you know where my aunt is?” Izzy said to them.
Everyone shook their head. A chorus of nos.
“We don’t!” Theo said. “If we knew, trust us . . .”
“We would be there,” Sooz said. “We want to know as much as you do. This . . . the cannabis . . .”
“It has nothing to do with it,” Peter said. “Nothing.”
“There’s no harm in explaining now,” Sebastian said. “You seem to have a handle on the situation. And it’s all down to me anyway. You’re right. I had cannabis plants up there. Not many. I put in some lights and fans and grew a few plants—barely anything. I’d pick some up when I visited home. When we came upon the scene that morning, saw the door ripped open, the first thing that occurred to me was that someone must have found out and had come to steal the plants.”