Hana couldn’t understand Maya’s roadblock with work. So strong in every other part of her life—scaling rock faces, punchy in her politics—she lacked drive with her career. Her fine arts degree had never really amounted to anything, and although she’d taken jobs, her heart didn’t seem to be in them: work experience in a gallery, library assistant, virtual PA.
Maya looks at her. “Han, you go, get us a table. I’ll wait here with Caleb so Seth doesn’t think we’ve abandoned him.”
“Okay, I’ll leave you to it,” she replies, getting the message. “Meet you up there.”
Hana slowly follows the path upward. Although it’s hard work in the heat, her chest loosens; a weight removed. Horrible to say about her own family, but on her own she finds she can breathe more easily.
At the top, she sees a group of guests milling around the yoga pavilion. More people are joining, and she cranes her head to see what they’re looking at.
Her eyes take in everything at once: the twisted snarl of blue-and-white tape strung up around the pavilion, the solemn member of the LUMEN staff in front of it, but what strikes her the most is the flash of color.
The only color against the muted neutral of the pavilion floor.
There’s a strange moment when her eyes focus in and then out on the crinkled plastic bag, the bright, bold fabric folded up inside it. She feels herself growing hotter, not only from the sun on her face, but from the realization dawning on her.
It’s the wrap Jo wore last night, the one their mother brought them back from holiday in Liguria. Splashy, bold colors like paint splotches.
But why would it be here?
She notices a man beside it, dressed in one of those crinkly white suits.
It’s then that it all comes together in her head. The man and the blue-and-white tape and the fabric all squished in the bag. She feels seasick, light-headed, as if the island had suddenly become a boat and the ground beneath her were moving.
Hana takes a breath, and then another, feels herself sway, and she actually puts her arms out to steady herself. She registers that the man’s mouth is now opening, saying something, but she can’t hear it. Only the gulls as they crisscross overhead, and the roaring of the blood in her ears.
Hana jerks forward, toward the pavilion.
Two steps in and she slips. Her shoes, her strappy sandals that she chose because they had a flash of something cool and young about them, have completely flat soles. The fine layer of sand on the path acts like oil. A strange, comic split, her left leg splayed.
Straightening, she starts moving again, pushing through the crowd of people gathered outside. The member of staff guarding the pavilion puts out an arm to stop her, but Hana throws the full weight of her body forward and his arm gives way. She bursts into the pavilion, half running, half walking toward the white-suited man by the balustrade on the far side. He turns, eyes widening in surprise.
He puts up his hand, mouth moving in slow motion. “No,” he says, and it reverberates in her head, big and boomy and exaggerated, like she’s hearing it underwater.
It’s only when her eyes find the little Sharpied arrows on the glass balustrade that it all comes together.
Stepping toward the balustrade, she leans, waist pressed against the glass, looking down to the rocks below. Her eyes skim past a man and a white-suited woman to the body slumped on the ground.
A black dress, fair hair splayed across the rock.
Hana’s breath catches in her throat.
In her head, she’s kicking and screaming like a child, lung-bursting screams that make her throat raw.
When her breath finally comes it’s as a gasp.
She’s dead. Her sister is dead.
19
Elin breaks the silence: “I’ll need a copy of the footage.” Not just for the case file, she thinks, but to examine the moment of the fall more closely. Something about what she saw is niggling at her, but she can’t quite pick it apart. Perhaps . . .
She doesn’t get to finish her thought process. A loud click.
The door opens and a member of staff walks into the room, visibly stricken. “Farrah, sorry to disturb,” he says falteringly, “but there’s a woman, outside, at the yoga pavilion. She’s screaming.”
* * *
—
The dark-haired woman on the floor beside Leon has her arms wrapped around herself, knees brought up to her chin. Her hair, a messy bob, is falling over her face, hiding her features.
Elin feels a horrible sense of disquiet as she puts on her overshoes and ducks under the tape. This close, she can see that the woman’s knees are grazed and bloody, specks of grit and sand dimpling the broken skin. She’s hugging the evidence bag, fingers clutching so tightly she’s puckering the plastic, the bright fabric beneath. She reminds Elin of a child, refusing to let go of her favorite blanket.