“Of course—” Elin breaks off, her phone loudly trilling. DS Johnson. “Sorry, I need to get this. Can we chat in a minute?”
Farrah nods, tries to smile, but Elin catches the slight tremor of her lip.
59
Bea’s phone.
Hana cradles it in her hands as carefully as if it were a baby.
The screen has been shattered, ragged lightning strikes across the glass. All that remains of the backplate is a fragmented corner of the case.
Utter incomprehension: How could Jo have Bea’s phone?
But as her eyes trace the broken glass, her confusion soon gives way to a lurch of realization as she remembers why she’d snuck into Jo’s room in the first place—what Caleb told her about Jo leaving the lodge.
Hana churns it over, but no matter how much she dissects the various elements, plays them this way and that, the picture they paint isn’t pretty.
* * *
—
I think you need to speak to her about it, Han, as soon as you can.” Maya shoves a tank top into her bag, looking at her helplessly. “I don’t know what else to say. She needs to give you some answers.”
Hana nods. She knew all along that would be Maya’s response; coming into her room was simply a delay tactic. Putting off the moment, scared of what Jo will actually say.
“You’re right.” She nods at Maya’s bag, the messy heap of clothes hastily thrown inside. “I’ll leave you to it. You’re doing better than me. Haven’t even started.”
“I just want to be ready for when they say we can go. Don’t want to be here a minute longer than we have to.” Maya picks up a framed photo from her bedside table. She’s about to push it into her bag when Hana peers over her shoulder.
“It’s lovely.” It’s a beach shot: Maya’s parents leaning over Sofia and Maya in swimsuits. Clearly taken before the fire, it shows Sofia as she was before the stroke—smiling, gap-toothed, at the camera.
“Stupid.” Maya’s voice wavers. “I take it everywhere.”
“Not stupid, I love it,” Hana says softly. “How are your mum and dad?”
“Okay, but they haven’t been to see Sofia, not in weeks. They’ve changed, Han. We all knew how unlikely it was that something miraculous would happen, but I think Mum’s always clung to the idea that she’d make a recovery. The miracle of hope—even when your brain is telling you one thing, your heart’s able to stretch beyond that, cling on to things—someone else’s story, a theory online, an obscure research paper . . .”
“But it does happen, doesn’t it? People getting better years later.”
“Not with this level of brain damage. Doctors have said as much for years; we just haven’t wanted to accept it.” Maya hesitates. “But the past month or so, I think something’s finally clicked. Mum’s lost the last little bit of hope that she had. It’s like a part of her has . . . gone with it. She’s a completely different person.”
Hana finds herself blinking back tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It is what it is.” Maya scoops up the last pile of books from the table. Midturn, she loses her grip. They tumble to the floor and she gives a brittle laugh. “Seems about right.” Hana steps forward to help her pick them up. “It’s okay,” Maya says quickly, and Hana realizes that it isn’t only novels that have fallen.
It’s the sketchbook she’d seen Maya with yesterday, fallen faceup. Hana picks it up, examining with curiosity the sketch on the right-hand side of the page: a profile of two people facing each other.
What strikes her first is the intimacy: not only in how close the faces are but in their expressions—lips turned up into a half smile, eye locked on eye.
The moment before a kiss.
“You’re so talented,” Hana says, examining it more closely. “I wish . . .” She stops, noticing something from the corner of her eye.
A photograph on the floor, fallen from the sketchbook.
With a panicked look on her face, Maya reaches down to get it, but she’s not quick enough.
Hana’s already picked it up.
Gazing at the image, she inhales sharply; it feels as if a fist has been slammed into her solar plexus.
She looks, looks again, wonders if she’s hallucinating, some warped stretch of her imagination.
But she isn’t.
The sketch is an almost perfect copy of this photograph.
Her sister, with Liam.
60
An unfamiliar dullness has consumed the afternoon as Elin steps onto the terrace, phone in hand. The clouds she’d glimpsed earlier are multiplying fast—a steely line hovering across the horizon, overwriting the blue.