The House Guest - Mark Edwards Page 0,81
about your wife dying?’
‘No. That’s all true. But it was Eden who went off the rails after her mom died.’
‘Not the fictional Sinead.’
‘That’s right. And I don’t know who recruited Eden. It might have been this Gabriel asshole himself. Or the jerk driving this van.’
‘And what about the rest of it? The anonymous guy on Facebook who told you about the cult. Is he real?’
In the gloom, I could only see Callum’s outline, but I saw him hang his head a little. ‘No. I invented that part.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Does it really matter?’
‘Yes, it fucking does.’
The van swung around a bend and I leaned against the side to stop myself from toppling over.
‘We really are from Bakersfield. That’s true. And we moved to Los Angeles after Mary died. She was my wife. It wasn’t easy, bringing up a teenage girl on my own. We fought a lot. Eden acted out, got mixed up with the wrong people, got into drugs and drinking and skipping school. Maybe I was too strict.’
I was sure he wasn’t telling me the whole truth about his parenting style, but decided not to push it.
‘She left home when she was eighteen. Moved in with some guy, a dude in a band. I didn’t see her much after that. Every now and again she’d come round asking to borrow money, which I’d always give to her. Once, I came home and found her going through her mom’s old things, crying. That was a good night. We talked about her childhood, watched an old home movie. I cooked dinner and she stayed the night. I thought . . . maybe she was going to come back to me. That it was all going to be okay. But when I woke up the next morning she was gone, along with all the money in the house and her mom’s old jewellery.’ I heard him swallow. ‘That was the last time I saw her.’
‘Until when?’
‘A few months ago, I got a call from an old friend. He’d seen Eden at a spirituality convention near Palm Springs. I wasn’t making that bit up. He said she was with a famous model.’
‘Jade Thomson?’
‘Yeah. Jade was launching her own range of crystals or some bullshit and my friend said he thought Eden was her assistant. After that, I tried to get in touch with Jade but it was impossible. At the same time, I tried to find out as much about her as I could. What I told you about Jade vanishing and coming back changed, like she had this new charisma, this inner glow that made the camera love her even more, that was true. And Eden was hanging out with her, or working with her.’
The van was idling now, apparently stuck in traffic.
‘That’s when I heard the rumours about Jade being part of a cult. There were these guys on 4Chan, these hackers. You know 4Chan?’ I’d heard of it but never used it. I knew it was essentially a message board where users posted anonymously. ‘One of these hackers said a friend of his got into Jade’s phone and found a load of nude pics. These creeps try to do it to all the female celebs. This guy then sent a blackmail demand to Jade.’
‘Let me guess. He ended up dead.’
‘Yep. There was all this speculation on 4Chan about what happened, but one poster swore that Jade was a member of a cult. Other users were telling him that was crap but it rang true, because of some weird stuff Eden had said the last time I saw her.’
The van started moving again.
‘After that, I went to all the conventions I could find where Jade’s crystal business was listed as an exhibitor. Jade was never there herself and neither was Eden. Until three weeks ago, at the convention in Brooklyn. Jade was making a personal appearance, launching a new range, and I went along.’
‘Eden was there?’
‘She was. I knew if I approached her on the spot, she’d freak out. And I wanted to find out if I was right about her being in a cult. So I followed her. You know the rest. So—’
‘Stop talking.’
I didn’t know if Callum was telling the truth now. It was clear from what Emilio had said that Eden hated her dad. He definitely wasn’t telling me the whole story.
I remembered how he’d been that night in the woods, with Krugman. Killing him had hardly seemed to bother Callum at all. And the way he’d stuck