A look passed over his face, a flash of guilt maybe, something he didn’t want to share but couldn’t justify keeping from her.
‘What? Is something wrong with Jason?’
‘No. I mean… No, nothing like that. We just…we found some of Simon’s things upstairs. So we thought…you might want to go through them. Jason thought…’
Jason. Thinking. That would be a first.
‘What sort of things?’ she asked on a whisper.
‘Papers mainly, photos, keepsakes. That sort of thing. Some of his research, from the looks of it. I couldn’t make head or tail of it, but you knew him better than anyone, worked with him. I thought…I mean, Jason and I thought…you’d want them. Simon was on to something, we’re sure of that. But we couldn’t work out what he thought he’d found. Maybe you can figure it out. Maybe he left you a clue.’
Suddenly her throat was tight and her eyes burned again. ‘I don’t know,’ she managed to say. She couldn’t imagine Simon leaving her anything, let alone a clue to find Ys. Not that she believed in it to begin with.
But he had sent her the pendant. Guilt, probably.
‘Whenever you’re ready. There’s no rush. I’ll leave them out for you.’
She shook her head before she could stop herself. ‘Jason should have told me.’
‘He was afraid you’d tell him to get stuffed and never talk to him again.’
Tempting, she thought. Very tempting. But this time she didn’t answer.
Nico pressed on, gentle and persistent. Relentless, some would say. ‘Come on, Ari. Give him a chance. He’s been so desperate to find something, for Simon’s sake. In his memory. To prove him right. And he needs you.’
Ari swallowed hard on the lump in her throat, rising up to strangle her.
For Simon. He was doing all this, the whole project for Simon. Or at least for Simon’s memory.
No one had asked him to.
But Jason was hurting too. She knew that. She just didn’t know how to talk to him about it, how to share the pain. Because somehow it felt like, if she shared it with someone, if she let it out into the world, it would just grow and grow, become something even more monstrous and out of control. If she let it go, just for a second, it would swallow her whole.
Nico knew it too. Perhaps Nico was the only one holding things together. Or at least giving a really good impression of it.
Maybe she owed it to him, at least. He was looking after her brother. Just like always.
And they needed her help. Needed her to work out what Simon had been doing, and use her own expertise to find a lost city that probably never existed. Easy.
‘My bag’s in the car,’ she told him. ‘Give me a hand?’
There was a shower. It even had hot water. And it was in the en suite of her room. Except it wasn’t her room and it wasn’t going to be her room for long, even if she did decide to stay. But the bed was wide and soft, and the window looked out across the headland, towards the sea. Nico had left fresh towels and her bags on the chair inside the door.
No sign of the threatened box of Simon’s things though. Not yet. They didn’t want to scare her off. That was still waiting for her somewhere, lurking.
They’d picked the best room in the house for her, mainly, she suspected, as a bribe.
It was definitely nicer than any hotel she could afford right now. Especially after the cost of getting here at short notice in the first place.
What they didn’t know was that this was the room she and Simon had shared when she visited. How could they? They hadn’t even been here. They hadn’t arrived to work with Simon until after she had gone away.
Simon had smiled at her when she’d told him about the job offer and then he’d looked so sad. They’d been sitting right there, on the edge of that bed, with the sunlight streaming through the window. She could almost hear him even now.
‘I’m not going to be the reason you give up an opportunity like that,’ he told her. ‘Ari, think about it. If one of your mates said they were going to pass up a job like that for a man, what would you say?’
She had to laugh. Even now. The solemn and chiding look on his face. The way he held her hands. She couldn’t doubt how much he loved her.
‘It isn’t for very long,’ she said.
