Perhaps only a man whose hands made it impossible for him to drive would have agreed to get into a vehicle that night with Jackson Crane, whose blood alcohol levels were off the scale, although apparently – according to the toxicology report, leaked to the British tabloid press – this was nothing compared to the cocktail of drugs （Xanax, zaleplon, temazepam, zolpidem, ketamine, cocaine） in his bloodstream. A cocktail so potent it was remarkable he could walk or speak, let alone get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and attempt to operate it.
All night long, as one man lay dead, folded into vintage luggage, as two more were en route to their deaths by drowning on the causeway, and one was already floating, face down, in the Blackwater Estuary, the party on the island continued.
Chapter Nine
Sunday Morning
Jess
It was impossible.
At first, despite the evidence of her eyes, her ears – her nose, as he had stumbled past her – Jess was unable to believe it. Jackson Crane, the man she had dosed with enough sleeping pills to kill a horse, who had washed them down with at least a bottle of whiskey, whose greyish, unmoving, seemingly unbreathing body she had looked down upon in the mess of his bed, was still alive.
Admittedly, he had looked better. Georgia, standing next to Jess, had given an audible gasp when she had recognized him, visibly stiffening as he made his lurching, reeking way across the dancefloor of the ballroom, bellowing.
There was at least a minute or two when Jess had assumed he was bellowing about having been spiked, having been poisoned. Then she realized he was shouting for Ned. Did he even know how long he had been passed out for? Did he have any idea how close to death he had come? Or was this just a typical weekend in the life of Jackson Crane, more or less how rough he always woke up looking and feeling? He called Ned’s name again, loud enough this time to pierce the hubbub even at the furthest reaches of the room.
Some of the people near Jess and Georgia tittered, but nervously, and they stopped immediately as his glare swung in their direction.
For a moment his eyes rested on Jess directly.
Then someone – Ned, presumably – took him by the elbow and steered him up the stairs, and someone at the other end of the room dropped or upended a whole tray of drinks, to scattered, ironic cheers.
And even in the state of mind she was in, even with all the things going through her head, Jess thought Georgia Crane’s response interesting: she did nothing. Once, when he stumbled, Georgia flinched and took half a step in his direction, then she very visibly stopped herself. Her hands, clenched at her sides, were shaking. Her eyes, when Jess glanced up at her face, were cold with fury. No, perhaps something even stronger than fury. Perhaps something more like hate.
She didn’t know, Jess found herself thinking, in wonder. She knew about the cheating, sure, but not about the accident. And Jess tried to imagine what that felt like. And for a moment she wanted to rush to Georgia, to comfort her.
Before she had even had a chance to think about what she was doing, where she was going, Jess found herself pushing through the crowd in the other direction, barging her way to the opposite side of the room from the staircase up which Jackson had just exited, shoving against backs, crashing into people’s chests. Someone shouted something she did not hear. Someone pushed her back, hard.
Then she was running full tilt down one of the corridors of The Manor, people turning to watch her go. And as she ran she realized she was crying, sobbing, the sounds echoing strangely in the mask she was still wearing, her cloak flying out behind her and tugging at her throat.
And then she was running down a path through the woods. In the distance, through a screen of thin trees, a group of people were visible standing around a bonfire. One of them threw something onto it and sent a cloud of sparks swirling upwards. Someone laughed. She kept running.
It was impossible.
Jackson Crane was alive.