He sat down and propped himself up against the wall under the window, wincing as his ribs protested. ‘I really think I need a rest before we try and make the descent.’
Cat ignored him. She’d repacked everything into the bags, except for the candles, and she was sitting on her heels, the map spread out on the floor in front of her. Tristan’s map. She directed her small torch over the crumpled paper with one hand, and with the other she was tracing a finger across the dotted lines of the trails.
‘I know where we need to go,’ she said. ‘We passed a sign for the fastest route down last night, but we couldn’t go in the dark, so—’
‘By “we”， you mean you and Tristan,’ he cut in.
She ignored him again. ‘He said it’s a bit tricky. You need to use chains to lower yourself down parts of it. Plus it’ll be damp and slippery, as it’s right in the trees where no natural light can penetrate.’
‘Sounds like the kind of place where someone might have an accident.’ He coughed, and it hurt. Tristan had clearly done his homework planning this route for them, he thought. The pair of them would have made quite a formidable couple. Shame Tristan wasn’t quick enough to escape his deadly knife attack.
Cat was still doing her best to ignore him, but he noticed that she flinched a little when he mentioned the possibility of an accident, and he suspected that this was the real location where he and Ginny were supposed to have met their sticky ends.
‘I suppose all the plans got scuppered when Tristan took us on that wrong path early on, eh? Where you nearly slipped over the edge and Ginny saved you.’ He tried to laugh, but it was too painful. ‘Oh, the irony. He didn’t plan that bit very well, did he?’
Cat let go of the map and swivelled around to face him, dropping down on to her knees. She shone the torch in his face and he flinched, squinting his eyes. Well, he thought, that got her attention.
‘What you have to understand, Paul, is that Ginny completely fucked me over.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘OK. And this is the first I’m hearing about it, why?’
She sighed. ‘You were kind of distracted.’
He knew what she was referring to. Of course he did. But that shit was going to have to wait. He needed to know what had brought them both here, first. To this house. To this mountain.
‘The sun’s not quite up yet, Cat. Why don’t you start from the beginning?’
Cat stared at him, biting her lip. Contemplating. He didn’t know the story yet, but he suspected she had little left to lose, now that Ginny and Tristan were out of the picture. He thought back to the start of the hike. Cat snapping pics on that little instant camera. Was that all just part of her game? Deflecting them from the fact that she’d made them leave their phones in the car? What an idiot he’d been to go along with that.
She opened up the side pocket of one of the rucksacks and pulled out two bottles full of blue liquid. It looked like that stuff runners drank to replace fluids. Full of sugar. She’d had this all along, and never offered it before? Wasn’t meant for him though, was it? This was Tristan’s drink.
Bastard.
She handed him a bottle and he popped the cap and drank greedily. He hadn’t realised how thirsty he was. His stomach groaned and cramped, as the sweet, sugary liquid hit its empty depths. He realised he was starving, too.
‘OK.’ She took a sip of her own drink, then recapped it and laid it down. ‘You know Ginny turned thirty back in April?’
He nodded. There had been a party. Bloody awful place in Mayfair where you had to buy a bottle of vodka for ￡200, then it came in a suitcase filled with ice and four different mixers. The music was R’n’B at ear-splitting decibels, and the blingy bouncers had wanted to punch him in the face just for the crime of him being a rich, white male customer. The women were treated differently. Especially the ones in the spray-on dresses with the hair extensions down to their plumped-up arses. Why the fuck Ginny had wanted to go to a place like that was utterly beyond him.
They’d gone, and they’d stayed over in that overpriced hotel on Park Lane too, but then next morning at breakfast there had been an atmosphere between Ginny and Cat that was not fully attributable to a hangover, or even the ill-advised coke they’d all snorted in the ridiculous mirrored toilets at 4 a.m.
They’d checked out shortly after breakfast, and Cat had refused to say what had gone on between the sisters. And because they were sisters, Paul had seen it all before and wasn’t interested enough to ask. More fool him.