This car contained the heaviest smokers, and it was a ride full of cigarettes and Blur and Pulp blasting out of the tinny speakers of Noel’s shitty Golf. All during the ride to Merryweather, he smiled and nodded and pretended to be interested in whatever anyone was saying, but his mind was elsewhere. He worked out every step. The first was to get the keys. Surely, when they arrived Sebastian would set them down at some point. This turned out to be exceptionally easy—the keys were still in the door for a moment as everyone pressed inside. Peter removed them, and before tossing them to Sebastian, exchanged them for his own. Had Sebastian looked, he may have noticed the difference. But he didn’t. Sebastian took without a thought. The house was already full of commotion.
Peter sprinted up the grand staircase, past the paintings of the Holt-Careys of the past—the viscounts, the ladies, the ones in military uniforms. One of the rooms he wanted was still available. It wasn’t one of the better ones. It was a little small and poky, papered in arsenic green, but it had one major advantage—it had the most direct line of potential sight to the woodshed. As he peered out, he saw Noel and Rosie still outside, conferring in the garden. Rosie looked up and saw him. In that moment, when they locked eyes, there was a communication: I know what you did.
Peter tried to be casual about it and moved away slowly, but the world wobbled. Only one other room overlooked the kitchen garden and potentially had a view of the woodshed. That room was next door, and he could hear someone moving around inside. He collected himself, pulled his cigarettes from his pocket, and knocked on the door. Angela called out for him to enter. She was standing with the window open.
“Lost my lighter in the car,” he said. “Can I use yours?”
“It’s in my bag, the blue one, on the bed.”
He opened the bag and dug around inside until he found the yellow disposable lighter buried at the bottom.
It was convenient that she was already at the window. Even a few paces away, he could see that Rosie and Noel had left the garden, so it was safe to come to the window and take in the view. The trees utterly obscured the garage and the woodshed from here, as they had almost certainly been planted to do. He silently gave thanks to the wealthy builders of this country pile who worked very hard to make sure they never had to see other people doing work.
For a moment, standing there with Angela, he considered abandoning his entire plan. There was something so lovely about seeing her there. He had always been so fond of her. Angela had shaved her head on a dare. A bit of dark brown fuzz was coming through. It suited her, brought out her freckles, highlighted her deep brown eyes. She looked sad. Angela was loyal and emotional, and he could see that she was taking the fact that this was their last week together as students and roommates hard. In this silver summer night, with the smell of petrichor and climbing roses, nothing terrible could happen. Maybe he could tell Angela, tell everyone, come clean. They would help him. They would understand it had not been his fault. He was one of the Nine, and the Nine stuck together.
There was a tremendous clap of thunder in the distance and the rain came down.
“Do you think we’ll still play?” Angela asked.
This snapped him out of any romantic revelry and brought him sharply back to the matter at hand. Of course he couldn’t tell them. You can’t say to your friends, “I drowned the girl we met at the pub.” Even if he claimed it was an accident, Rosie knew it wasn’t. They had to play. Otherwise, they would stay inside and drink, and Rosie would tell everyone. He had to make damn sure that the game went on as scheduled. He handed Angela back her lighter and left her by the window looking pensive.
Peter took a quiet turn around the dark upstairs hallway, making mental notes of who had taken which rooms. He was about to go downstairs when he noticed Rosie making her way to Angela’s door. He froze and backed up. He stepped into the empty room that was between his and Angela’s. This was one of the worst rooms in the house. It didn’t even have a window. It was perhaps a dressing room, or perhaps a room for a maid or a personal servant, someone not important enough to deserve fresh air and a view of the outdoors. There was an adjoining door to Angela’s room, and he pressed his ear against it to listen, but between the music in the house and the noise of the storm, all he could make out was Julian’s name repeated several times.
Typical. Fucking Julian. And that was usually the problem in a nutshell.
Then there was a heavy footfall, someone taking the stairs two at a time. It was Sooz, who was always a bit louder than everyone else, and she had champagne. Good old Sooz. You could always count on her to bring the party. He heard Sooz directing the other two to go downstairs. He could have kissed her—he had kissed her, everyone had—but at this moment, he felt tremendous affection for her. He cracked open the door to leave the room and found that Rosie and Angela had lingered for a moment. This time, he could make out what was being said.
“I’ll talk to you after,” Rosie said. “Come up and meet me here after the game.”
“But what’s it about? What’s going on?”
“Not now. It’s too important.”
Sooz ushered them on, but Rosie turned at the last moment.
“I’m desperate for a piss,” Rosie said. “Go down. I’ll be there in a moment.”
Sooz and Angela continued to the stairs, and Rosie made her way toward her bedroom. Peter stepped out from his hiding spot, trying not to startle her, and failing. She backed up against the wall.
“Rose,” he said in a low voice, “I need to talk to you about something. I think Yash is in trouble.”
That genuinely confused her. He saw her shoulders relax.
“What?”
“Yash needs our help. I think you know what I mean. We need to talk. Privately. Go around to the woodshed. I have the key. Meet you there as soon as the game starts.”
He nodded confidently and jogged down the stairs, catching the tail end of the preparations for the game. He was sweating already. He had to calm down. He kept an eye on Rosie as the game began. She looked back at him as she went out the front door with Angela. He went to the right, through the library, slipping out the greenhouse side. Best to keep a little distance. Don’t stay on her heels. He was fast, though, making a loop of the house, coming around the back to the shed. At first, she did not appear to be there, but then he heard her voice. She was behind one of the trees by the shed.
“What’s wrong with Yash?” she asked as he approached.
“Not here. Inside.”
The rain was pounding on his head, dripping off the slicker into his face. He fumbled around with the dozen or so keys on Sebastian’s key chain before he finally got the one that opened the lock. The two stepped inside. There was no lock inside, and clearly they could not be disturbed. If he tried to secure the door himself, she might panic.
“Help me,” he said. “We need to keep this shut. We need to hide while we talk.”
After a moment of consideration, Rosie took a rake and secured it just so, enough that the door could not be opened.
“What’s this about Yash?” she said. “Are you going to try to tell me that Yash hurt that girl?”
His suspicions were unfortunately correct, and this was already going too fast.