The House Guest - Mark Edwards Page 0,39
we trust her?’
‘Because you’re nice people? Plus she seems harmless, doesn’t she? Sweet.’
I thought about what she’d been like at the pool. She certainly hadn’t been sweet then. I wondered if that was the only time I had glimpsed the real Eden. And it was hard not to beat myself up about it; how I had allowed myself to be taken in. I suppose it was in my nature to think the best of people. I hadn’t suffered enough knocks in my life. Hadn’t ever been betrayed or badly let down. I’d had it too easy.
From now on, that was going to change.
‘Tell me about Friday night,’ Callum said. ‘What happened?’
I told him everything I could remember, from the point when Eden had come home with the Japanese food and tequila, up to the group hug. I left out the details of Eden’s story because I still couldn’t remember them, though I was sure they had to be significant. Why else would she tell us her life story? Unless it was all made up, of course.
‘The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor.’
Callum scowled. ‘Jesus, I should have stayed outside. I would have seen them leaving.’
‘It was the middle of the night.’
‘Yeah. In the city that doesn’t sleep. I shouldn’t have either. Let’s talk about Ruth. Do you think she would have left of her own accord?’
‘I don’t know. She was drunk. I guess it wouldn’t have been too hard to persuade her. Though I can’t believe Eden would have said, “Hey, I’m a member of a secret organisation. Want to come and check it out?”’
‘Ha. No.’ He twisted his coffee mug around. ‘One of the things that’s bugging me is why Eden’s modus operandi was so different this time. With Sinead, she befriended her, worked on her for months before she whisked her away. With Ruth, it’s been days, right? There must be a reason for the urgency.’
I was still trying to wrap my head round the idea that Ruth had been taken by a secret group. But the answer was obvious.
‘Eden needed to do it before Mona and Jack came back and exposed her.’
‘Of course.’
Something struck me. ‘You said people joined and came back changed. Why hasn’t Sinead come back?’
‘That’s the question that haunts me.’
‘Maybe there’s some kind of test,’ I said.
‘And not everyone passes it.’
‘Jesus.’
We both gazed into the blackness of our coffee cups.
‘Let’s back up to the night in question,’ Callum said. ‘Eden knew she had to take Ruth before your friends returned. Friday night was almost her last opportunity. What would she have done if you hadn’t gone to sleep?’
This was something that had been niggling at me, in the back of my mind, since it had happened. Eden had plied us with drink, sure, but she couldn’t have known I would pass out.
Unless . . .
I stood up. ‘I think she might have drugged me. It would explain how horrific I felt the next day, when I finally woke up. I’ve never felt that bad before, no matter how much I’ve had to drink. I’m still not one hundred per cent now . . . Or what if—’ I broke off. ‘Eden must have known that I would tell Jack and Mona about her as soon as they got back, and that I would find out she was an imposter.’
Callum watched me pace the room.
‘And she must have realised I would freak out when I found out she wasn’t who she said she was. What if she did more than try to knock me out?’
I stopped pacing.
‘What if she was trying to kill me? If I was dead, there would be no one to tell Jack and Mona about her. No one would ever know Eden had been there. And there’d be no one to look for Ruth.’
It all made a sick kind of sense. The way I’d felt on Friday night, like I was tripping. The terrible state I’d been in on Saturday. The way that Eden had removed all trace of herself from the house. It was all designed so Jack and Mona would come home to find me dead and Ruth gone. No one would ever know Eden had been there, so . . .
‘I’m finding this hard to wrap my head around,’ Callum said. ‘If you’d been found dead, the police would search for Ruth. She’d be a murder suspect. Eden wouldn’t want that to happen, would she?’
‘Unless she planned to remove my body.’
He furrowed his