‘Quentin. What if their fractured relationship is all one big ruse? None of us suspect Fergus because he’s too damn pissed all the time… What if it’s been Quentin all along?’
‘But he only got out four days ago…’
‘Like I said, maybe it’s both of them?’ I concluded with more than a little uncertainty. It was a big reach, and I hadn’t had a chance to think that theory through.
‘Let’s say, hypothetically, that Uncle Fergus and or Quentin did any of those things. If we tell Mother, she will certainly confront him directly. That could be dangerous if he or they are planning something sinister. And the police… Well, they’d need more than vague suspicions to act on.’
I chewed my lip, considering our options.
‘Do you think we are in danger?’
‘The odds certainly aren’t looking good,’ he said. ‘All of these deaths, they could be a complete freak accident… As unlikely as that may seem. The police are going to want to speak to us, so we can’t leave the country. But we need to be careful. If we keep our eyes and ears open…’ He drifted away, a line creasing his forehead.
I reached out and placed a hand on his arm, stilling his movement. ‘I’m so sorry, Miles. I didn’t want to burden you with this, but I felt you needed to know.’
He covered my hand with his own, his skin cold to the touch. ‘No, you were right to tell me. We’re in this together.’ He paused, looking out at the stark winter landscape.
We resumed our walk, the silence between us heavy with unspoken worries. The trees loomed around us, their bare branches casting spidery shadows across the path.
‘What about the move?’ I asked tentatively. ‘Do you think we should postpone it?’
Miles shook his head firmly. ‘No. If anything, this makes me all the more eager to leave. As soon as the police say we are free to leave, we will.’
* * *
After we arrived back at the house, I changed into some comfortable clothes and headed to the pool room to check my emails. Or more accurately, to check my emails and worry myself sick about what I was going to do about being outed for hiring a ghostwriter. I scoured the internet for any information about what my publisher might do if they found out… Odds were they would demand I pay my advance back for committing fraud and then we would be £30,000 in the hole.
So caught up in the mess I had created, I walked into the brightly lit room almost in a daze. The smell of chlorine hit me. All signs of the party were gone, and I had no idea whether Jeannie had cleaned in here or if Mrs Harlow had done it, but even the loungers were stacked up and the pool cover was on, as if the place had shut down for the winter.
I wrangled one of the beds off the top of the stack and set it down in my preferred corner. I checked my emails; nothing from my editor or the ghost writer, which was probably a good sign. Next, I went to the forum, willing with every fibre of my being that there would be no new posts.
There were new posts.
BlackP!ll25 was so incensed, so utterly outraged that I could deceive my readers and the world so thoroughly that he had gone mainstream. Not only had he told his gaming buddies to spam my ratings with one-star reviews, he claimed that he had gone to a newspaper and sent them the emails.
Panic rose as I searched.
My average rating had indeed gone down across several of my books. But there was nothing about me that I could find in either the local or the national newspapers.
I felt a mixture of relief and dread. The damage to my ratings was frustrating, but manageable. The real concern was the potential newspaper story. If it broke, my career and reputation could be irreparably damaged.
My mind raced, trying to formulate a plan. Should I come clean to my publisher before the story potentially broke? Or wait and hope it all blew over? Neither option felt good. And then there was grain of sand at the centre of it all– the irritant. The confounding fact that Jeannie had put this out there in the first place. Jeannie’s whole raison d’être was to protect the Weiss name, to keep it held in high esteem, both in the circles she mixed with and in the public perception.
The only reason I could think of was that she was trying to undermine me. That in desperation she wanted to put a stop to Miles leaving for Australia; and even better, if she could make him doubt my integrity, perhaps it would sow the seed of mistrust in his mind. If he decided to divorce me, my name being in a public scandal would be more than enough reason to prevent me from getting any money from the divorce settlement…
That had to be her reasoning. That and the fact that she had disliked me from the moment we met. Lost in thought, I didn’t hear that someone had entered. A voice startled me out of my spiral.
‘Oh, hello, dear,’ Mrs Harlow said, surprised to see me. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Jeannie anywhere?’
I forced a smile. ‘No, I haven’t, I’m sorry,’ I replied vaguely.
Mrs Harlow frowned at the pool and sniffed.
‘Jeannie must have had the pool man come to clean, but I usually let him in.’ She looked at me and headed closer. ‘Everything all right? You look a bit peaky. You probably shouldn’t work in here, the fumes will make you go funny.’
‘No, it’s okay… I’m fine, honestly.’
‘Come on, now,’ she said warmly as she sat on the end of the lounger, ‘it’s me you’re talking to. I’m not one of them.’
