‘And me, Ned. Why did you keep me around, once you’d got what you wanted?’ she asked.
Ned had actually laughed out loud. ‘A good PA is hard to find, Nikki. And you are a really bloody good PA. You’re polite, you’re efficient, you’re beautiful, but you have so little ego it’s like you’ve made yourself invisible, unlike Annie fucking Spark. And most importantly, I have never met anyone who asked fewer questions. I would have thought at some point in the past quarter fucking century you might have worked out that we’ve been blackmailing members almost since the day I inherited the business. But no. It doesn’t even appear to have entered your pretty little head. Stupid or just naive? I never could work it out. But I know you won’t tell anyone, because who would believe you, my right-hand woman, weren’t in on it?’
It was the laugh that echoed in her head, the tone of his words as much as the words themselves. She thought about all that Ned had done for her over the decades, all that he had done to keep her close, to make her feel part of something, loyal to Home, loyal to him. A father figure for the girl who didn’t have her own. She thought about all she had done, and given up, in return. Still he was smirking and it suddenly hit her that it was because he genuinely could not conceive – and did not care, not one iota – how all of this might make her feel; that after all these years he not only thought of her solely in terms of her value to him, to Home, but also seemed to find it hard to imagine that she might object to that, or see herself differently. That was as galling as anything – the knowledge that he had not just played games with her life, and her son’s life, but with their very ideas of themselves too, their sense of who they were.
There was simply nothing to say. She turned and started to walk towards the shore, glancing back once she was halfway down the jetty to see Ned looking out over the water once more, admiring his boat.
He was a big man, but he’d had a few drinks, and of course he wasn’t expecting it. Not from her: his pliant, stupid, naive PA. （She had surprised herself, too, when she turned and charged at him.） She had a ten or fifteen-foot run-up, to build momentum. Nikki could not remember now, when she looked back, whether she had said or shouted anything as she did it. But she would never forget the moment of impact, her hands against his back, the couple of surprised steps forward he had taken. The second push, with all her force, before he had quite regained his balance. His stumble. His trip – the heel of his shoe catching on something, perhaps. The long, long time – some trick of the brain, surely – he seemed to hang in the air, frozen, falling. The thump with which his body hit the water.
God forgive me, Nikki thought, looking down at the waves, replaying it all again in her head: the push, the fall, the desperate final scrabbling that followed. She had killed him.
She had killed him and she did not regret it at all.
Annie
‘Everything all right, Annie?’
That was what people kept asking, as they passed, as she hurried by. As she made her way – almost blindly, stumbling, on the brink of panic – through the woods, along the paths, back towards The Manor.
‘Having a wonderful time!’ she shouted back, hoping no one noticed the strain in her voice. Or just: ‘Fantastic!’ or ‘Brilliant, darling!’
Presumably she didn’t look all right, though, or people would not be asking.
Keith had killed the wrong man. And she had no idea where Ned Groom was.
Keith had killed the wrong man and now he was loose somewhere on the island with his hands all fucked up and Freddie Hunter was flying off alone in his helicopter. They would blame her, of course. If they got caught, if they got accused, they would both try to pin it all on her in a minute. Unless . . .
She reached the fire pit on the front lawn, from which two members were attempting to light a joint, their masks pushed back onto the tops of their heads.
‘How’s it going, Annie?’