‘How long’s it been like this?’ His voice echoed across the room.
I shrugged. ‘A couple of days, I think.’
‘Electric motor’s gone. Going to have to order in a new one.’
‘Okay,’ I said, completely uninterested.
He collected his tools and left again. I read on, sensing that the book was heading in a very disagreeable direction.
When I finally rose from the sun lounger, my entire neck and back had seized up. I shivered at the cold air. Usually, the heat from the pool made this room warm, if a little stuffy. Now it was as bleak and cold as the landscape beyond. I cursed aloud as I saw snow, once again beginning to fall.
Not again. We had to get the hell out of here, and pronto.
An email pinged on my phone and I quickly glanced at the screen. It was an invoice from the ghostwriter for the remaining £7,500, minus the deposit I had already maxed out my overdraft for to pay him. I quickly typed out a response, telling him he had killed off one of my main characters and that was not what we discussed.
It was true, that wasn’t what we had agreed upon and I was less than happy. In fact, I was apoplectic. All this time spent doubting myself and my own abilities, and this so-called professional gets paid for producing the dumpster fire I’d just had the displeasure of reading.
I’m not going to pay him, I decided.Fuck.Him.
A dog began frantically barking and I almost fell over my own feet trying to get up. I was on edge now; after everything that had occurred, my nerves were completely shot. I scrambled to get out of the room, letting myself outside by a side door. Miles had told me that the police were bringing in cadaver dogs today, and from the sounds of it they had found something. Without thinking, I raced towards the barking, the sound echoing out and reverberating against the manor’s stonework.
Down by the gates, I could see the dog handler with his back to me and a German shepherd scratching at the base of a snowman. My heart seized in my chest. The snowman. The one we’d all seen in the distance and had passed by a dozen times without a second thought. I pushed forward, my breaths quickening.
‘What is it?’ My voice sounded foreign to my own ears, thin and reedy with panic.
The handler turned, his expression grim beneath the brim of his cap. ‘You need to step back,’ he warned, ‘this is an active crime scene!’
‘Miss! You can’t be here,’ shouted another uniformed officer, jogging towards me with his hand raised.
But I couldn’t move. My feet felt rooted to the frozen ground as the dog continued to dig frantically at the base of the snowman, snow flying in all directions. The snowman wore a brown scarf, and his cheerful carrot nose had fallen askew, giving the once innocent creation a macabre, drunken leer. The K9 officer made a clicking sound and the dog stopped digging immediately, sitting perfectly still.
More officers were approaching me now, and I could see Miles jogging over across the lawn, his breath making clouds in the frigid air. My heart pounded in my chest as he approached.
I watched as the snowman’s coal eye plonked to the ground; as it did so it took a chunk of snow with it. Underneath, one human eye was revealed, wide and staring. I let out a shriek. The eye looked clouded over, the eyelashes frozen together in clumps.
The rest of the snow began to collapse, the snowman’s cheerful façade crumbling away to reveal what lay beneath. Icaught a glimpse of a thoroughly frozen head looking back at us all as if he was just as shocked as we were.
He had changed considerably, but I still recognised him.
Quentin.
I couldn’t breathe. The world narrowed to a pinpoint, sounds becoming distant and muffled. Miles was pulling at me to come away. The officers shouting at me, too.
* * *
I don’t remember being led inside, but I was shaking all over as Miles and I arrived in the kitchen to find the family back out of their rooms again, standing around the island sheepishly.
‘Quentin’s dead!’ I blurted.
‘The police just f-found him,’ Miles stammered, dithering from the cold and the shock of what we had just seen.
Martha shook her head slowly, ‘No… not again. I can’t take much more of this. We’re all going to die in here!’
‘Agreed,’ said Callum. ‘Pleasecan we get the hell out of here?’
‘Can we?’ I asked Miles in desperation.
‘I’ve already asked,’ he said, swaying like he was about to collapse. ‘Detective Inspector Randolf wants us all close by for questioning. We need to take part in the investigation, or we will only hold up proceedings. If we don’t tell them everything we know it could delay us catching the plane to Australia.’
