On the show, Ben and Marcia are checking in to a small local hotel. Marcia is distraught, shocked. She doesn’t think she’ll sleep. Ben orders camomile tea for her from the bar downstairs and brings it back to the room, where he slips a sleeping pill into it. Once Marcia is asleep, he lets himself out of the room, then pauses for a moment outside in the corridor, looking at his key card. His eyes go to the ice machine at the end of the hall. He walks there, then walks back to his door. He uses the card to open the door but stays in the corridor and closes it again. The camera goes back to the key card.
‘What’s he doing?’ Richard sits forward, squinting at the screen.
‘He’s worried that the key card records people coming and going. So he’s making it look like he went for ice, then went back inside the room,’ Elena says dully. ‘But obviously he’s not in the room.’
‘Ah, clever,’ Richard says, settling back on the couch.
Ben makes his way out of the hotel, keeping his head bent low. He drives back to his own house. The fire department have left now, the flames are out. There’s still half a house remaining. Half a house and a garden shed. Ben pulls Jane’skeys from his pocket, then gets into her car and reverses it, so the boot is at the entrance to the side passage. He makes his way through to the shed, from where he picks up Jane’s body, carries it to the car and puts it in the boot. Then, keeping to quiet back roads, he drives to a cabin by a lake.
Richard turns to Elena. ‘Wait, is that Jane’s family cabin?’
Elena nods.How does Thandiwe Adams know all of this?
On the show, Ben uses Jane’s key to let himself into the cabin. It’s the kind of holiday home you see on American TV shows all the time. The real-life version here in Ireland was a cottage by the sea in Wicklow. Kristina’s parents’ cottage. Elena doesn’t like to think about Kristina’s parents.
Ben puts on woollen gloves he finds on a shelf just inside the door of the cabin, then opens a bottle of wine, pours two-thirds of it down the sink, and fills a glass. Jane’s body is now lying on the couch. Ben puts the glass of wine on the coffee table, then sets about lighting the logs in the fireplace. He leaves the sleeping pills beside the wine. With Jane’s iPhone, he takes a photo of the full wine glass with the fire in the background. Then he uploads it, still using her phone, to her Facebook, captioning it ‘Feeling blessed to have this sanctuary to go to, happy weekend everyone!’
He spills the last of the wine on the rug and the couch, then lights a match and watches the fire spread. When the flames reach Jane’s body, Ben moves outside and waits, still watching.
‘Why doesn’t he just leave?’ Richard asks.
‘He needs to make sure the fire takes hold. He needs it to look like she drank too much, took some pills, then slept through while a spark flew out and ignited the rug. If the fire burns out too quickly, it won’t make sense that she died.’
Richard gives her an admiring look. ‘Maybe you should be a crime writer.’ He picks up the remote, pauses the show. ‘Still twenty-three minutes left. I’m guessing the police figure out what really happened.’
Elena lets out a slow breath.I’m guessing they don’t.
Richard un-pauses and the action kicks off again. It’s morning in the hotel room. Ben and Marcia are waking up. Ben gets out of bed to take a shower. Marcia, still groggy, sits up and looks at her phone. Messages from horrified friends who saw the news about the fire, missed calls from her mother, a Facebook message from Jane saying she’s staying in her family cabin. Marcia clicks through to Jane’s profile and sees the post – the glass of red, the fire in the grate.
Marcia types a reply.Thank god you were gone. There was a fire last night in our house. We weren’t there but the house is a mess. Glad you’re ok ...
She gets out of bed, begins tidying their discarded belongings. She picks Ben’s jeans off the floor, shaking them out. Something falls from the pocket. Three things. Three keys. Marcia picks them up, turning them over in her hand, a puzzled expression on her face.
Her phone rings: her mother again.
‘Mom, we’re fine, hopefully you got my text last night?’ Marcia climbs back into bed, drops the keys on the duvet. ‘We all got out, so you don’t need to worry.’
‘That’s not it,’ says the voice on the other end of the line. ‘It’s your friend Jane. I heard it at the store this morning.’
‘What?’
‘There was a fire in the cabin at Lake Hugo. I’m so sorry, but Jane is dead. What awful luck – she escapes one fire only to die in another. Poor Jane. Her poor parents.’
As Marcia stares at her phone, the sound of the shower stops.
‘Mom, I have to go,’ Marcia whispers, and disconnects the call.
She goes back to Jane’s Facebook. There is clearly a post from late last night, from the cabin.
Her eyes go to the bathroom door. It opens now, and Ben steps out, wrapped in a towel.
‘Everything OK?’ he asks.
Marcia looks at him, fear and horror on her face.
‘Marcia, are you alright?’ Ben walks across the room, perches on the bed.
Marcia pulls away slightly. The keys lie on the duvet between them. Ben’s eyes go to the keys, then to Marcia.
